Computer Humour

If Cars Were Like Computers

What if cars really were like computers? You'd have a helpline to assist in solving problems as they came up... Now just imagine if the same people that answer the phones at Microsoft had to answer the General Motors helpline...

HelpLine: "General Motors HelpLine, how can I help you?"
Customer: "I can get in through the driver's side door just fine, but I can't open the passenger's side."
HelpLine: "How did you try to open the passenger's side?"
Customer: "I pulled up on the handle, just like on the other side."
HelpLine: "People are always making that mistake. You have to push on the passenger's side. Remember, you're always moving the handle toward the left of the car. It's more consistent that way."

HelpLine: "General Motors HelpLine, how can I help you?"
Customer: "How do I turn my windshield wipers on?"
HelpLine: "There's a little button on the radio console . . ."
Customer: "Radio console??"
HelpLine: "Yes, it's more efficient to have all the controls in one central position. Look for the one with a shape like a piece of pie on it."
Customer: "And that's the windshield wiper button? I was always wondering what that did."
HelpLine: "People are always asking that. You'd think they'd be more familiar with the principles of graphic design."

HelpLine: "General Motors HelpLine, how can I help you?"
Customer: "My car will go forward, but when I put it in reverse, nothing happens."
HelpLine: "What model do you have?"
Customer: "It's a brand new 1994 Mongoose."
HelpLine: "Yes, but it is a 1994R with a big R or 1994r with a small r?"
Customer: "I don't know. Let me find out and I'll call you back."
HelpLine: "Alright, but let me tell you you've probably got the small r model. You'll need to upgrade to the big R version to go in reverse."

HelpLine: "General Motors HelpLine, how can I help you?"
Customer: "I just called about the car that wouldn't go in reverse."
HelpLine: "Well, yes, we get a lot of calls about that."
Customer: "It turns out I have the small r model. But I bought the one with the 'Reverse gear option'."
HelpLine: "Yes, that's the option to upgrade to a reverse gear."
Customer: "Why don't they all just come with a reverse gear in the first place?"
HelpLine: "Well, that's very difficult to do, even for our world-class engineers, and not everyone may want it. Also, it makes the car more complicated to drive. So we offer it as an option to our 'power drivers'."
Customer: "How come all the Jupiters have had it standard since 1974?"
HelpLine" "Ahem. Well, yes, they're not a market leader, they're just for people who really like working on cars. If you really want to get involved in those kind complicated details, go right ahead . . ."

But really, we're leaving out an important part:

HelpLine: "General Motors HelpLine, how can I help you?"
Customer: "My car just caught fire."
HelpLine: "I see. And what model was it?"
Customer: "1994r Mongoose."
HelpLine: "Big or small . . ."
Customer: " . . . small r."
HelpLine: "And your registration number?"
Customer: "426917-woof-271828-arf-314159-spam."
HelpLine: "And where did you buy your car?"
Customer: "Fast Eddie's Sports-o-rama in Glendale."
HelpLine: "And what was the name of the salesman?"
Customer: "I don't remember."
HelpLine: "I see. Are you sure you didn't steal this car?"
Customer: "Of course I didn't steal it!"
HelpLine: "And would you be interested in purchasing our extended service contract?"

Windows 95

A 32-bit extention to
a 16-bit graphical interface running on
an 8-bit command line coded for
a 4-bit microprocessor by
a 2-bit company.

That can't stand one bit of competition!

Hollywood Computer Laws

Word processors never display a cursor.
You never have to use the space-bar when typing long sentences.
Movie characters never make typing mistakes.
All monitors display inch-high letters.
High-tech computers, such as those used by NASA, the CIA, or some such governmental institution, will have easy to understand graphical interfaces.
Those that don't, have incredibly powerful text-bases command shells that can correctly understand and execute commands typed in plain english.
Corollary: you can gain access to any information you want by simply typing "ACCESS ALL OF THE SECRET FILES" on any keyboard.
Likewise, you can infect a computer with a destructive virus by simply typing "UPLOAD VIRUS" (see "Fortress")
All computers are connected. You can access the information on the villain's desktop computer, even if it's turned off.
Powerful computers beep whenever you press a key or whenever the screen changes. Some computers also slow down the output on the screen so that it doesn't go faster than you can read. The *really* advanced ones also emulate the sound of a dot-matrix printer.
All computer panels have thousands of volts and flash pots just underneath the surface.
Malfunctions are indicated by a bright flash, a puff of smoke, a shower of sparks, and an explosion that forces you backwards.
People typing away on a computer will turn it off without saving the data.
A hacker can get into the most sensitive computer in the world before intermission and guess the secret password in two tries.
Any PERMISSION DENIED has an OVERRIDE function (see "Demolition Man" and countless others).
Complex calculations and loading of huge amounts of data will be accomplished in under three seconds. Movie modems usually appear to transmit data at the speed of two gigabytes per second.
When the power plant/missile site/whatever overheats, all the control panels will explode, as will the entire building.
If you display a file on the screen and someone deletes the file, it also disappears from the screen (e.g. "Clear and Present Danger").
If a disk has got encrypted files, you are automagically asked for a password when you try to access it.
No matter what kind of computer disk it is, it'll be readable by any system you put it into. All application software is usable by all computer platforms.
The more high-tech the equipment, the more buttons it has ("Aliens").
However, everyone must have been highly trained, because the buttons aren't labelled.
Most computers, no matter how small, have reality-defying three-dimensional, active animation, photo-realistic graphics capability.
Laptops, for some strange reason, always seem to have amazing real-time video phone capabilities and the performance of a CRAY Supercomputer.
Whenever a character looks at a VDU, the image is so bright that it projects itself onto his/her face (see "Alien," "2001").

Shamelessly stolen from here.

A Story About `Magic'

Some years ago, I (GLS) was snooping around in the cabinets that housed the MIT AI Lab's PDP-10, and noticed a little switch glued to the frame of one cabinet. It was obviously a homebrew job, added by one of the lab's hardware hackers (no one knows who).You don't touch an unknown switch on a computer without knowing what it does, because you might crash the computer. The switch was labeled in a most unhelpful way. It had two positions, and scrawled in pencil on the metal switch body were the words `magic' and `more magic'. The switch was in the `more magic' position.I called another hacker over to look at it. He had never seen the switch before either. Closer examination revealed that the switch had only one wire running to it! The other end of the wire did disappear into the maze of wires inside the computer, but it's a basic fact of electricity that a switch can't do anything unless there are two wires connected to it. This switch had a wire connected on one side and no wire on its other side.It was clear that this switch was someone's idea of a silly joke. Convinced by our reasoning that the switch was inoperative, we flipped it. The computer instantly crashed.Imagine our utter astonishment. We wrote it off as coincidence, but nevertheless restored the switch to the `more magic' position before reviving the computer.A year later, I told this story to yet another hacker, David Moon as I recall. He clearly doubted my sanity, or suspected me of a supernatural belief in the power of this switch, or perhaps thought I was fooling him with a bogus saga. To prove it to him, I showed him the very switch, still glued to the cabinet frame with only one wire connected to it, still in the `more magic' position. We scrutinized the switch and its lone connection, and found that the other end of
the wire, though connected to the computer wiring, was connected to a ground pin. That clearly made the switch doubly useless: not only was it electrically nonoperative, but it was connected to a place that couldn't affect anything anyway. So we flipped the switch.The computer promptly crashed.This time we ran for Richard Greenblatt, a long-time MIT hacker, who was close at hand. He had never noticed the switch before, either. He inspected it, concluded it was useless, got some diagonal cutters and diked it out. We then revived the computer and it has run fine ever since.We still don't know how the switch crashed the machine.

There is a theory that some circuit near the ground pin was marginal, and flipping the switch changed the electrical capacitance enough to upset the circuit as millionth-of-a-second pulses went through it. But we'll never know for sure; all we can really say is that the switch was magic.I still have that switch in my basement. Maybe I'm silly, but I usually keep it set on `more magic'.

1994: Another explanation of this story has since been offered. Note that the switch body was metal. Suppose that the non-connected side of the switch was connected to the switch body (usually the body is connected to a separate earth lug, but there are exceptions). The body is connected to the computer case, which is, presumably, grounded. Now the circuit ground within the machine isn't necessarily at the same potential as the case ground, so flipping the switch connected the circuit ground to the case ground, causing a voltage drop/jump which reset the machine. This was probably discovered by someone who found
out the hard way that there was a potential difference between the two, and who then wired in the switch as a joke.