Computer Jokes II

[Sportsline]

Microsoft runs the I.R.S.
If Microsoft Ran The IRS

"Government should be run like a business." We've all heard that chestnut. Here is how the Internal Revenue Service (nobody's favorite government agency) would be like, if only it were run like Microsoft Corp. (a successful private enterprise).

-- The IRS, as always, announces new tax forms will be mailed the week before the new year. However it will follow Microsoft's example and actually ship them the following May.

-- Responding to pressure from some large corporations and a users' group, some early copies of the tax forms will actually be released in March. The recipients must sign non-disclosure agreements.

-- In June, the forms will be recalled because the IRS loses a suit for appropriating some other country's intellectual property.

-- When you move, the IRS will continue to send mail to your previous address forevermore, just like Microsoft sends its product upgrade notices.

-- When you upgrade from form 1040 EZ to 1040 A, and then to 1040, you will pay an upgrade fee each time. Also you need to send in a new registration card and get a new Social Security Number. In order to upgrade, you have to submit the original first page of your previous year's form.

-- Like Microsoft, when you file a late or amended tax return the IRS will reject it on the grounds that the the prior year is no longer supported.

-- The IRS telephone help will remain similar to Microsoft's, staffed by ill-trained, high-turnover personnel who sometimes give a correct answer, but the IRS will have to discontinue using a toll-free phone number.

-- After struggling with reams of dense documentation of complex options and rules, you discover that you will need publication 3297, with a ten-word-long title, in order to answer (you hope) a single obscure question. The IRS, like Microsoft, will charge a minimum of $40 for that publication.

-- The IRS, like Microsoft, will continue to issue immense volumes of bug fixes, interpretations, and clarifications. However the tax-rule updates should be neither easily searchable nor well-indexed.

-- Instead of three-ring binders containing complete sets of tax code bugs and interpretations, IRS rulings will be promulgated in a haphazard fashion by individual taxpayers via BBS, Usenet, and Compuserve. A for- profit publishing subsidiary would also be nice.

-- The new all-powerful (and eccentric) Commissioner of Internal Revenue will jet around the country giving speeches and granting numerous interviews, but only to sycophantic reporters. Changes to the tax code will be at the whim of the Commissioner and largely kept secret until they are published.

[Sportsline]

Newest MS computer game
Solitaire '99

Here is the README.TXT file from Microsoft's latest software product.

Microsoft Solitaire '98

README file, v4.3

Welcome!

Congratulations!

Welcome to the wonderful world of Microsoft Solitaire '98! This classic game has been a Windows fixture for many years, and after a long period of development, we are pleased to announce that it has been updated to take advantage of many exciting, Microsoft- pioneered technologies, such as "long filenames!"

For years, our users have made demands, and Microsoft has listened. You told us that you wanted an operating system in which Solitaire was a seamless, integrated component. You wanted to blend in Solitaire with how you worked, how you played, and in general, you wanted Solitaire to *define your computing experience.*

Solitaire '98 brings this dream to a blissful reality.

System Requirements:

- 266 MHz Pentium II or better

- 800 megabytes of free hard drive space (2.1 gigabytes recommended)

- 128 megabytes of RAM (256 megabytes for Vegas scoring)

Installation Procedure:

1. Insert the CD-ROM entitled "Microsoft Solitaire" into your CD-ROM drive. You will need to make sure that the drive door is open before you place the disc in the tray.

2. An installation dialog box should appear on your screen. If it does not, you may need to purchase more memory or a larger hard disk drive. See your local Microsoft-certified dealer.

3. Follow the onscreen instructions. If you cannot read, have somebody else sit through the installation procedure.

4. Insert the CD-ROM entitled "Microsoft Solitaire, Disc 2" into your CD-ROM drive. As before, ensure that the drive is open before inserting the disc in the tray.

5. An installation dialog box should appear on your screen. If it does not, you may need to upgrade to a Microsoft "Natural" keyboard, which you can obtain from your nearest dealer. As before, follow the onscreen instructions.

6. After the installation program has completed, check your "Programs" menu for a new Solitaire '98 entry. If the program entry was not successfully created, you may need to uninstall all local copies of Netscape Navigator and/or Communicator and restart the Solitaire installation process from scratch.

Playing The Game:

Assuming that Solitaire '98 has been properly installed, you should be able to find it in your "Programs" menu (you should have verified this as part of the installation process.) Microsoft recommends that you shut down all other programs that may be running on the system before starting Solitaire '98.

To start the game, simply select it from the "Programs" menu. If the game does not start within five to seven minutes of selection, you may need to upgrade to the latest version of Microsoft Office to ensure that your system has the proper DLLs that Solitaire needs.

For game rules, refer to the .HLP files for the Windows 3.1 version of Solitaire. If you don't have these files, you can purchase them online from Microsoft at very competitive rates.

Coming Soon:

Minesweeper '99!

Watch this space.

[ snip millions of blank lines inserted to balloon README file up to Microsoft mandatory one-megabyte minimum file size. ]

[Sportsline]

Microsoft renames itself
Newsflash

Microsoft today announced that it will be changing its name to "Moft" -- which will clear up space on user's hard disks. It is estimated that a typical Windows 95 installation contains about 2,800,000 copies of the word "Microsoft", in copyright notices, end-user licence agreements, 'About' screens, etc. So, after the change, a user will have about 14 MBytes more disk space. Stock prices of hard-disk manufacturers dipped slightly after the announcement.

"Well, the programs will take up less space on the user's disk," said Bill Gates, CEO of Moft. "But we have never cared about that. The change will allow us to ship Windows 95 on 13 disks instead of 14, thus saving about $50 million a year in media costs. We are also looking at shortening the names of some of our software products; for instance 'The Microsoft Exchange' may be changed to 'The Moft Pit'.

Gates added that the junior programmer who discovered the potential savings has been rewarded with a free copy of 'Moft Off for Moft Win 95'. E-mail this joke to your friends!

[Sportsline]

Microsoft trademarks TM
Microsoft Trademarks the Trademark Symbol

By Vince Sabio HumourNet Communications, Ltd.

REDMOND, Wash (UPI) - Software and marketing giant Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) announced today that it has purchased the rights to the well-known "trademark" symbol, formerly denoted as "tm" in most print media.

The symbol is commonly used to identify commercial product names that have not yet been registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

"It was a natural," commented John Schexnader, of Microsoft's Ministry of Information. "Several of us were sitting around after a board meeting a few months ago, and we were talking about what we should buy next. We were tossing around the idea of purchasing a country or two in South America, as kind of a follow-up to Sun Microsystems' trademark-infringement claim against The Island Formerly Known As Java, when it occurred to us that there are no countries named 'ActiveX.' We talked about changing the name of 'ActiveX' to 'Chile' or 'Brazil' -- which would also help distance it from all those recently-uncovered security holes -- when someone joked that we'd save a lot of time and effort in the long run if we'd just trademark the trademark symbol."

Schexnader continued, "At first, we all just laughed -- but one look at Bill's face, and we knew we'd be on the phone with the Patent and Trademark Office in the morning."

Microsoft hasn't wasted any time enforcing the new trademark. According Rue B. Goldberg, an attorney with Microsoft's Ministry of Litigation and Law Enforcement, "Use of the 'tm' symbol will now be restricted to Microsoft and its subsidiaries, like the Catholic Church."

But companies wishing to use the '(tm)' symbol will not be left out in the cold; according to Goldberg, Microsoft has developed a new symbol, '(tMS)', to replace the now-restricted '(tm)' symbol.

"Anyone will be able to use the new symbol, royalty-free," states Goldberg, "though Microsoft reserves the right to charge for its use in the future."

Response to the announcement was varied. Apple Computer CEO Gil Amelio vowed to take the issue to court, stating, "Apple Computer developed the technology for the trademark symbol more than ten years ago," but refused to give any details on the exact nature of the lawsuit.

Meanwhile, Times-Mirror Publishing, Ziff-Davis, the L.A. Times, the N.Y. Times, CNN, the Washington Post, Newsweek, and Kathy Lee Gifford all agreed that it was a landmark move. According to William Spangler, Electronics and Pet Food Editor for the Boston Globe, "[Microsoft's] recent acquisition of the trademark symbol will benefit computer users worldwide. It's a technological breakthrough. As always, the rest of the computer industry is just struggling to play catch-up."

So, what does the future hold for Microsoft and its latest acquisition? Microsoft Ministry of Information spokeswoman Alice Gilbert says that Microsoft is moving quickly on similar purchases. "Our next [acquisition] will be the 'service mark' symbol. We already have the paperwork in place for it." Gilbert stated that the new symbol would be 'sMS', following the trend set by the new trademark symbol.

"It's a natural for us," concluded Gilbert. But apparently, the sky is not the limit at Microsoft. "We'd also looked into acquiring the rights to the 'registered' trademark symbol, but several representatives from the Ministry of Technology determined that doing so would lead to an infinite loop in the trademark registry -- and the only place where we permit infinite loops is in our software. Our standards are very high here at Microsoft."

But that fact has not deterred the software and marketing giant. "Instead, we're looking into purchasing the entire Patent and Trademark Office," stated Schexnader.

No one at the Patent and Trademark Office could be reached for comment Tuesday.

Copyright 1997 by Vincent Sabio, HumourNet Communications Ltd. All Rights Reserved; permission is hereby granted to forward or post "Microsoft Trademarks the Trademark Symbol," provided that the by-line (above) and this copyright statement are included.

[Sportsline]

Waiting on a long line
The checkout line at the hardware store was getting longer and longer as the clerk labored to get the new cash register to cooperate.

At one point she wailed "Oh no, NOW what do I do ? It just rang up sixty-four thousand, five hundered seventy four dollars in sales tax on a ten-dollar sale !"

Suprisingly, the customers in front of me didn't seem too upset by the delay.

Some even chuckled sympathetically. It wasn't until I got near the front of the line that I saw the neatly hand-lettered sign in front of the register: WE ARE CURRENTLY DOING BATTLE WITH OUR NEW COMPUTER FOR CONTROL OF THE STORE---WE APPRECIATE YOUR PATIENCE.

[Sportsline]

New product cuts stress
From "Machine Design" Magazine.

.....Byte Bat

All too often, computers aren't up when you need them, or some sort of system error costs you a lot of time and effort. Hitting a computer or terminal with anything substantial can be satisfying, but expensive. That's where the Byte Bat comes in.

It is a foam rubber baseball bat, 17 in. long, that may give you a harmless but satisfying way in which to "strike back" at computers.

Specially designed to serve as a frustration shunt, the Byte Bat is compatible with all computers and operating systems, making it the first universally compatible foamware. Each Byte Bat comes with a complete user's manual, one genuine "Byte Bat User Button," one multi-color poster showing the device in use, and a warning decal that advises all who approach that "This computer-friendly liveware is protected by Byte Bat."

[Sportsline]

Windows 98 hourly tweaks
11th-hour tweaks for Windows '98 by Microsoft

10. Included subliminal "Impeach Janet Reno" messages in start-up screen.

9. New Internet Explorer feature: whenever you visit a Web site ending in ".gov," a message first appears reminding you that Microsoft is not a monopoly.

8. Source code no longer ones and zeros--try 666s and zeros. Windows start-up theme, played backward, says, Here's to my sweet Satan."

7. Comes with check for $50 that, if cashed, puts your name on an Internet petition telling the DOJ to buzz off *and* changes your long distance carrier to AT&T.

6. New desktop icon--click once, and $1 will go directly from your checking account into the Microsoft Legal Defense Fund.

5. Added new template to preinstalled version of Word: "Letter to the editor expressing delight with Microsoft products."

4. Freebie computer-controlled Barney doll has been reprogrammed to say, "Big government is sca-a-ary. Janet tried to hurt me."

3. TV function scrambles C-Span during antitrust hearings.

2. Desktop display with countdown tracking number of copies of Windows 98 that must yet be bought to prevent worldwide economic collapse!

1. Last-minute name change: was "Windows 98," now "Windows: Assimilate."

[Sportsline]

A letter to the editors
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (The Times of London)

Dear Sir,

I am firmly opposed to the spread of microchips either to the home or to the office, We have more than enough of them foisted upon us in public places. They are a disgusting Americanism, and can only result in the farmers being forced to grow smaller potatoes, which in turn will cause massive unemployment in the already severely depressed agricultural industry.

[Sportsline]

The system crash song
SYSTEM CRASH (to the tune of "The Monster Mash")

I was working in the lab, late one night
When my eyes beheld an eerie sight,
Some smoke from our VAX began to rise
And suddenly, to my surprise...

[chorus]
(There was a crash) There was a system crash
(A mighty crash) I heard the disk heads smash
(A system crash) It came down in a flash
(There was a crash) A fatal system crash

The lab manager then appeared from his room,
Said: "I don't want to be a prophet of doom,
But we had one like this just the other day
Which blew up 4 megs and the SBA"

[chorus]

The system had just been booted, diagnostics
had all run through, When a power fluck made it
all run amuck, then SCOTTY and IRVING blew too

So we'd lost all our VAXes in less than one night
When a VP came in and said: "hey, that's all right,
I'll loan you a Venus - here's what to do
When you call up Support, tell them Gordon sent you...

[chorus]

[Sportsline]

Question and answer
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii.
She sells C shells by the seashore.

Q: What does a proud computer call his little son?
A: A microchip off the old block.

Q: What happens if you cross a midget and a computer?
A: You get a short circut.

Picture a robot on a psychiatric couch: Doc, my intelligence may be artificial, but my problems are real.

The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.