In response to Bill’s comments, General Motors issued a press
release stating, “If G.M. had developed technology like Microsoft, we
would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

• For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a
  day.
• Every time they repainted the lines on the road you would have
  to buy a new car.
• Occasionally, your car would die on the freeway for no reason,
  and you would just accept this, restart, and drive on.
• Occasionally, executing a manner such as a left turn, would
  cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case
  you would have to reinstall the engine.
• Only one person at a time could use the car, unless you bought
  “CarNT,” but then you would have to buy more seats.
• Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun,
  reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but
  would only run on five per cent of the roads.
• The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights
  would be replaced by a single “general car default” warning
  light.
• New seats would force everyone to have the same size
  butt.
• The airbag system would say “Are you sure?” before going
  off.
• Occasionally for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you
  out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the
  door handle, turned the key, and grabbed hold of the radio
  antenna.
• G.M. would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe
  set of Rand McNally road maps (now a G.M. subsidiary), even though
  they neither need them nor want them. Attempting to delete this
  option would immediately cause the car’s performance to diminish
  by fifty percent or more. Moreover, every time G.M. introduced a
  new model, car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over
  again because none of the controls would operate in the same
  manner as the old car.
• You’d press the “start” button to shut off the engine.

Last year I upgraded Girlfriend 1.0 to Wife 1.0 and noticed that the new program began unexpected child processing that took up a lot of space and valuable resources. No mention of this phenomenon was included in the product brochure. In addition, Wife 1.0 installs itself into all other programs and launches during system initialization where it monitors all other system activity. Applications such as Pokernight 10.3 and Beerbash 2.5 no longer run, crashing the system whenever selected. I can not seem to purge Wife 1.0 from my system. I am thinking about going back to Girlfriend 1.0 but un-install does not work on this program. Can you help me?

Regards,
Joe

—————————————-

Dear Joe,

This is a very common problem men complain about but is mostly due to a primary misconception. Many people upgrade from Girlfriend 1.0 to Wife 1.0 with the idea that Wife 1.0 is merely a “UTILITIES & ENTERTAINMENT” program. Wife 1.0 is an OPERATING SYSTEM and designed by its creator to run everything. It is impossible to un-install, delete, or purge the program from the system once installed. You can not go back to Girlfriend 1.0 because Wife 1.0 is not designed to do this. Some have tried to install Girlfriend 2.0 or Wife 2.0 but end up with more problems than the original system. Look in your manual under Warnings -Alimony / Child Support. I recommend you keep Wife 1.0 and just deal with the situation. Having Wife 1.0 installed myself, I might also suggest you read the entire section regarding General Protection Faults (GPFs). You must assume all responsibility for faults and problems that might occur. The best course of action will be to push the apologize button and then the reset button as soon as lock-up occurs. The system will run smoothly as long as you take the blame for all GPFs. Wife 1.0 is a great program but is very high maintenance.

If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash
and the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash
and your data is corrupted ’cause the index doesn’t hash
then your situation’s hopeless and your system’s gonna crash

If the label on the cable on the table at your house
says the network is connected to the button on your mouse
but your packets want to tunnel on another protocol
that’s repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall
and your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss
so your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse
then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang
’cause as sure as I’m a poet, the sucker’s gonna hang

When the copy of your floppy’s getting sloppy on the disk
and the microcode instructions cause unnecessary risk
then you have to flash your memory and you’ll want to RAM your ROM.
Quickly turn off the computer, and be sure to tell your mom.

I found this one just as funny, but for a different reason…

I’m just trying to figure out how a GUI interface can track an ip address – let alone something written in VB.

The US standard railroad gauge (width between the two rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That’s an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used?

Because that’s the way they built them in England, and the U.S. railroads were built by English expatriates.

Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that’s the gauge they used.

Why did they use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons which used that wheel spacing.

Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that’s the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe (and England) were built by Imperial Rome for their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots first formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for (or by) Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Specifications and bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse’s ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.

Each Administratium atom is held together by sub-atomic particles called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons. Since Administratium has no electrons, it is inert. However, it can be detected as it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A minute amount of Administratium caused one reaction to take over 4 days to complete when it would normally take less than a second.

Administratium has a normal half-life of 3 years; it does not decay but instead undergoes a reorganization, in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons and assistant deputy neutrons exchange places.

In fact, Administratium’s mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization causes some morons to become neutrons forming isodopes. This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientists to speculate that Administratium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as “Critical Morass.”

I have been called a nerd, a geek, a guru, and any other number of names that labeled me as a purveyor of computer technology. I’ll bet the majority of you reading this have been called something of the same sort here and there. If you have been given these monikers from time to time, let me ask you a question. Because you understand and enjoy one form of computer technology, is it simply assumed that you know and enjoy all forms of computer technology? It is with me, but I fear that it is simply not the case. For I am a, a…Selective Luddite! Yes, a Selective Luddite. It’s a term I just made up, but it fits perfectly. Maybe you don’t know what makes a person a Luddite. If that’s the case, they you certainly cannot understand why I am a selective Luddite, now can you? Here’s the story as I understand it. Of course, facts often change from one telling of the history to the next.

Around the 1800s, a guy names Ned Lud (I’ve also seen it “Ludd”), broke into a Leicestershire, England, hosiery factory and destroyed a couple of machines. Why? Well, the best reason I read was that it was a “fit of insane rage.” The name Lud became a catch phrase for when something became broken. When the expensive machines were sabotaged, people would blame it on poor Ned Lud and say he must have been there. In the early 1800s (specifically 1811-1816), a group of weavers named themselves Luddites and set to destroying the machinery, mainly textile, which was ushering in the industrial age. You see, the introduction of the machines was putting them out of work, and they wanted to prevent that. Apparently they got their point across. The government did more than simply jail them for their actions. They hanged fourteen of the Luddites. The term Luddite has now become synonymous with a person who shuns technology and the changes new technology may bring.

So, join me! Join me in my new and most interesting group of people, the Selective Luddites. We’ll have meetings every Wednesday. Everybody bring a covered dish. What? Oh. You want to know what a Selective Luddite actually believes in. As a Selective Luddite, I reserve the right to love and adore some forms of technological advancement while at the same time berating people for embracing other forms of technological advancements.

Case in point number one: Cellular phones. I abhor cellular phones. I don’t own one. I dislike using them myself and I cringe every time I am attempting to eat a nice meal and I hear Mozart’s Moonlight Sonata played out of rhythm, by a tiny, tinny speaker. I always hope that my hatred of the cellular phone will be allayed when the person answers the phone. If, just once, I could hear something like, The kidney is in? I’ll be right in to perform the transplant, my faith in cellular phone humanity would be reborn. It’s never happened yet. Usually I get, Hello? Yeah. Uh-huh. Eating dinner. Yeah. OK. Uh-huh. He did? When? Ugh! OK. Gotta go. Gotta go? Why? What at the specific point did that person have to go? Was the food on her plate going to make a break for it? I sat next to a woman once that received three calls before I received my desert. On the third call, I put my fork down and turned towards her, staring as her conversation regarding the price of Nutri-bars dragged on. She noticed me, placed her hand over the speaker, and said, “Do you mind?” Bingo! It was at that point I became a Selective Luddite!

Case in point number two: personal digital assistants (PDAs). I have a good friend who used to lug around a Day-Timer. Now he got this little PDA that’s too small for his fingers to manipulate. Every time I give him a new piece of information, he pulls this small screen out of his hip leatherette belt-clip case and flips it open like a Star Trek tricorder. He then pulls a small stick out of the side and uses that to touch the screen, again, because his fingers are too big for the display. I could probably bring this guy’s world to its knees simply by taking that little stick. Forget the Palm Pilot itself. All I would need to grab is that stick. I’d see him rooting around the campus looking for a stick to replace it. I don’t know why, but there just seemed to be something more civilized about a Daytimer.

Case in point number three: PowerPoint Presentations Just allow me to state that the “ooooo” and “aaaah” factor has pretty much worn off of PowerPoint. It’s not that I don’t like PowerPoint. On the contrary, if used correctly, it is a great assistant to the speaker. What bugs me is when the speaker attempts to incorporate every trick of the PowerPoint trade. Every new letter flies in from a different corner, spins twice, explodes, rebuilds, gets married, has a couple of kids, and finally settles down. Then, right in the middle of the 26-letter firestorm, the author will attempt to spark an emotion by having a panel with one word, like courage or unity. Also – if I see the graphic where the man in a suit is leaning over and looking through a magnifying glass one more time I’m going to scream. The same goes for the numerous stick-figure people who are either snapping their fingers, clicking their heels, or looking pensive while a question mark appears over their heads.

Now that I’ve laid out my three-point plan, join me. Become a Selective Luddite! We’ll all chip in and get t-shirts or those shiny coats all the radio DJs wear. You can still love HTML, drool over the latest release of Internet Explorer, use emoticons, e-mail the world, and generally live in front of a computer. That’s OK, as long as you make a point of drawing boundaries where your Luddite yard begins and ends. The few, the proud…The Selective Luddites.

The group of women reported that the computers should be referred to in the masculine gender because:

1. In order to get their attention, you have to turn them on.
2. They have a lot of data, but are still clueless.
3. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they are the problem.
4. As soon as you commit to one, you realise that, if you had waited a little longer, you could have had a better model.

The men, on the other hand concluded that computers should be referred to in the feminine gender because:

1. No one but the Creator understands their internal logic.
2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else.
3. Even your smallest mistakes are stored in long-term memory for later retrieval.
4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.