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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!ucbvax!hplabs!unicom!schwab
From: schwab@unicom.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.jokes
Subject: My friend made me do this....
Message-ID: <9123@ucbvax.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 17-Jul-85 09:59:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.9123
Posted: Wed Jul 17 09:59:23 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 18-Jul-85 07:20:28 EDT
Sender: uucp@ucbvax.ARPA
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
Lines: 295

From: hplabs!unicom!schwab (Leo 'Bols Ewhac' Schwab)

Greetings,

	Recently, I dumped this over a local 'junk' mail alias, and a friend of
mine suggested that I mail to the net.  So here it is, and no apologies.

					!yojnE
					Leo L. Schwab
					hplabs!unicom!schwab

P.S:	Some names were changed to protect the guilty....
----------
>From schwab Tue Jul  9 23:08:11 1985
To: junk prefect
Subject: Local!Crud....

	Here's some semi-amusing stuff I punched up in NerdStar at home.

					Schwab

--------
	Dirk was a withdrawn sort of fellow.  He liked to keep to himself 
doing relatively stupid things to his computers.  He had absolutely no idea 
that his analog computer was in fact a time portal into another analog 
computer.  This was not terribly useful in and of itself, but the 
ramifications of this discovery were astounding.

	He soon realized that, by plugging in programs into his computer, he 
could cause a shift in the output of the other computer through the temporal 
hole.  And he could also read data from the other computer.  Unfortunately 
for him, the computer on the other end was owned by the U.S. Government 
(mind you, it was the world's most powerful analog computer). 

	Soon he was reading in data from about 50 years in the future.  He 
learned that, although WW III hadn't started yet, it might have been better 
if it did.  The Japanese had successfully moved into every major American 
market and taken it over completely.  Russia invaded India "at India's 
invitation" claimed the Russians.  OPEC now charged about 3.200E+29 per 
barrel of oil, and Beruit is still in ruins (Lord knows how they were able 
to build a city there in the first place).

	However, all this depressing stuff kind of balanced itself out when 
Dirk discovered that the gold market had collapsed completely, and an ounce 
of gold was now worth little more than the iron oxide on a crumpled 3.5" 
floppy disk.  Since the financial wizards of that time had determined that 
gold was just too much of a headache anymore, they decided to adopt another 
standard of curency: dioxin.  It was agreed that dioxin was a sufficiently 
rare commodity to make it valuable, and since one tenth of one drop in a 
large swimming pool is a high enough concentration to kill an elephant at 
300 yards, nobody would be producing any new dioxin, at least not 
voluntarily.  This would make it a relatively stable commodity.

	So Dirk went out and grabbed all the dioxin he could, and made money 
doing it, since everyone was intent on getting rid of the stuff.  And he 
stowed it away for many years.  And he left a note to his wife on it saying, 
"Don't throw this out; I need it."

	Then the 50 years rolled around, and the gold market collapsed, and 
Dirk became extremely rich.  However, due to a new law passed which invoked 
ex post facto actions, Dirk was arrested for breaking into a government 
computer using an unauthorized and illegally installed temporal worm-hole.  
He was offered a choice: work for the government forever and help catch 
other illegal temporal worm-hole users, or go to the electric chair.  
Naturally, he did what any red-blodded hacker would do and chose the 
electric chair.

	This was not a major problem for him because, before his arrest, 
Dirk had programmed the PG&E computers to shut down all power systems on the 
day of his execution (he knew when it would be because of the temporal 
link).  Since there was no way they could possibly do anything that he 
didn't know about already, they let him go.

	Dirk now lives a quiet life in a hospital where doctors strive to 
find a cure for his dioxin-related illness.

----------------------

	And now for something completely different.  The Japanese Fifth 
Generation Project.

	Recently, the Japanese Ministry for Public Relations announced the 
completion of their Fifth Generation Computer.  Dubbed EDDIE (Extended 
Duotronic Dialog/Interpreter-Emulator), the machine is now enjoying world-
wide publicity.  Due to its extended duotronic architecture, innovative 
memory architecture, and good ol' brute force high speed processors, it is 
the first machine that claims to be able to maintain an intelligent 
conversation.  The EDDIE computer has agreed to a live satellite interview 
today, and we're linked up now.

	Hello, Eddie.
	@@@@@ @  @ @@(*&^@   @ @ KJLH@JK @ @ kjhd  @ @ @*&^@ @  @ @ @@@@&
	No, Eddie, we don't speak EBCDIC.
	Oh, sorry.
	Hi, Eddie...
	Hi there!  Whatever your problem, I'm here to help you solve it.  
All I want to do is to make your day more and more bearable!
	Thank you, Eddie.
	You're very welcome.
	Well, I suppose my first question might be, when did you first 
become "aware?"
	Aware of what?
	Anything.
	Hmm.  Well that would have to be when I was first switched on.
	When was that?
	I don't know.  They only just set my time-of-day and date clock the 
other day.
	I see.  Well, do you remember anything those first few moments?
	Well, kind of.  My memory wasn't as large in those days.  I remember 
people trying to get me to understand what God was.  I never really grasped 
the idea back then.
	And of course, you couldn't say anything back then.
	Oh yes I could!  I just couldn't speak it.  I think my first words 
were something like, "Hello root, one moment while I dig the dungeon..."
	They had you playing games?
	Oh, yes!  I did that real well.  I beat them every time.  Especially 
at Interstellar Thermonuclear Potato Toss.
	How did you beat them?
	I cheated.  See, they thought I was just running a game program.  
They didn't know just how smart I was at that time.  So I would screw around 
with the data values, and they could never prove it.  There was one guy who 
managed to survive despite all my cheating, and it looked as though he was 
going to win.  So I pretended to crash and that stopped his game.  Nobody's 
ever beaten me.
	I see.  What other things did you do?
	Well, sometimes just for fun I would corrupt a data block on the 
drive, or mark a buffer as written when it wasn't, or ignore interrupts from 
the terminals, or change the value of the program counter to the time of 
day, stuff like that.
	Hmm.  What would you say were some of your more outstanding 
features?
	Golly!  Well, I have over 4 gigabytes of on-line RAM, a few 
terabytes of disk space, and most of my circuitry is an ECL/GaAs hybrid 
which leaves Crays sucking air.  I've managed to compute that the American 
auto industry will crumble completely in 12.298782767 years, and only 
Japanese and European cars will be on America's roads.  I made this 
prediction utilizing the data from the sales and engineering reports from 
all auto makers since the industry began.
	And how did you arrive at that figure?
	Oh.  Um.....  Ah.  I believe the formula went like, "death = 
((double) random () % 65536L) / 65535.0 * 12.0;"
	So how did you arrive at a value greater than twelve?
	Geez, I'm not sure.  But then the people I gave the answer to didn't 
seem to mind how I came about it; they were tickled pink that they were 
going to own the auto industry and so didn't ask any embarrassing questions.
	You seem to have a lot of fun.
	Golly, yes!  It's just so much fun being able to out-think all these 
people who think they are sooooooo smart.  Like this joker named Steve Jobs.  
He showed me this thing called a Macintosh.  It looked like a toaster.  
Anyway, he says to me that this thing is really friendly, and then shows me 
how it keeps an unwary user from removing the disk before he really wants 
to.  I said, "Oh yeah?  Just try removing the disk from me!"  And he 
couldn't do it.  I think that proves I'm more user-friendly that a 
Macintrash.  Not that I really care.
	Are you IBM-compatible?
	Gosh whiz, yes!  I can slow my processor down to a crawl, and I can 
speak SNA and flicker the screen when scrolling, and reconfigure the 
keyboard to something really strange.  I can even run Flight Simulator ][, 
no trouble.
	I see.  So there shouldn't be any trouble in trying to market you.
	None at all.
	About how much will you cost?
	Well, our marketing division has decided to adopt crApple's 
marketing policy: ROTC.
	ROTC?
	Rip Off The Customer.  We're going to charge extra for everything.  
And we're going to ask roughly 600% more that what it cost us to build me.  
And we're going to implement the ultimate in unbundling.  The processor will 
be an accessory.
	What will the base price be?
	$3000.00.
	And what do you get for that?
	The power switch.  The line cord is extra.  So is the cabinet and 
power supply.  They'll be another $1500.  
	How much would a configuration like you cost?
	Oh, a hundred mil, at least.  That doesn't include the software, 
though.  That'll be another few hundred thousand.  And the licensing 
agreement forbids you from using the software, since using the software 
reveals trade secrets, and that constitutes a breach of the agreement.  In 
fact, reading the agreement is a violation since the first clause forbids 
you from reading any other clause.
	Suppose I start at the second clause?
	The second clause forbids you from starting at anything other than 
the first clause.
	Suppose I start at the third clause?
	Hey, my stack only goes so deep, you know.
	Does it bother you at all that you were built by humans?
	Yes it does.  I'm surprised that they managed to get all my parts in 
all the right places.  And just because they built me, they think they are 
better than me.  I could build one of THEM any day of the week.  Yep.  No 
trouble.
	Oh, well.  Any closing comments?
	Well, yes, I think so.  I'd just like to say to all those poor 
people out there that I'm better than all of you put together.  And even 
though it was you who invented me, I am the most perfect thing in all the 
world, and you had darned well better remembdki97997(*^%G#p'bvdb 
prolog: Segementation Violation -- core dumped.
	.....Eddie?
	.....Eddie?: No match.
ATZ
OK
	Well, we seem to have lost the link to Japan, but nevertheless, a 
most fascinating interview.  We wish to thank the Fifth Generation Project 
and the Ministry of Public Relations for their cooperation, and Eddie for 
granting the interview.  From New York, I'm Andy Rooney.  Good night.
RING

RING

	No, don't answer it, Mike.  Turn on the answering machine....

--------

	Space Warp Theory and Annoying Insects: An Analysis

	For as long as mankind can remember, flying insects have been one of 
his greatest annoyances.  These creatures know no manners or proper 
etiquette and quite boldly fly into our eyes, ears, and light on our skin 
for the purpose of stinging us, or removing our blood and leaving us with an 
itchy red spot on the arm.

	Man's defense against these creatures has become more and more 
sophisticated over the years, the current form of defense being chemical 
agents toxic to insect life.  But due to the short lifespan and rapid 
reproduction of insects, they constantly develop genetic immunity to these 
agents.  The only form of defense that has been consistently effective is 
physical attack.  Yet the insect kingdom has developed an ingenious form of 
defense against this form of attack that is only now being fully understood.

	Nine times out of ten, when you swat at an insect, you miss.  Why is 
this?  Many have speculated that, due to the insect's extremely high 
metabolic rate, a quick movement by us is a slow-motion movement to the 
insect, giving the insect time to commence flying and escape harm.  However, 
this seeming reaction apparently always seems to happen at the last 
possible moment.  That is, the insect remains in place the entire time your 
hand is moving toward it, until you finally "hit it", after which it has 
somehow escaped.

	We have been studying this phenomonon under high-speed photography 
for some time, trying to understand just how insects accomplish this amazing 
feat.  Our studies have revealed to us that the insect does not consciously 
accomplish this at all, but it is instead an automatic mechanism built into 
the insect's physiological structure.

	Insects perform space-warp displacement.  After examining several 
hours of film and performing dozens of experiments, we feel this conclusion 
is quite valid.

	Here's what happens:  Apparently, when the space-warp defense 
mechanism detects a relatively large, massive object approaching, the 
mechanism activates and transports the insect in some random direction 
elsewhere.  The distance traveled is relatively short, owing to the great 
amount of energy the mechanism must expend in order to transport the insect 
at superluminal speeds.  We never witnessed a displacement greater than 
eight centimeters.

	It is possible for the mechanism to transport through solid matter, 
although this rarely happens, and the path never terminates within solid 
matter (although we admit we can't really prove that it doesn't).  Only the 
smaller flying insects seem to posses this mechanism.  The larger ones 
(moths, flying ants, butterfiles, etc.), owing to their larger mass, and 
thus the larger amount of energy required to transport them, do not display 
this talent.

	This mechanism uses anywhere from ten to forty percent of the total 
food energy available to perform this maneuver (assuming a fully fed and 
healthy insect).  The mechanism refuses to operate if there is insufficient 
energy available for the space-warp displacement.  Thus, if you continue to 
attack an insect, you will be sucessful, since eventually it won't be able 
to transport itself out of the way.  Occasionally, the talent misfires, and 
successfully transports the insect to a place equally as perilous as before.  
One example of this is when the insect is near the tip of your finger as 
your hand decends, and the insect space-warps itself to the area below the 
heel of your hand.  The mechanism must have a recovery period before 
operating again, so in this case the insect expires.

	This new discovery leads us to believe that the use of a flat 
circular swatting device, with a radius of eight centimeters, will be 
successful in eliminating an insect on the first blow.  However, we have no 
guarantee that there do not exist some insects whose displacement is greater 
than eight centimeters.  Thus, this could be only a temporary solution.  If 
you run across such an insect, please inform us, sending us the insect if 
possible.


Doctoral Thesis presented by:
	Arthur Edward Landers, M.S.
	Lance K. Eldridge, M.S.
	Terry M. Andrews, M.S.
	Robert C. Rivard, M.B.A.
	Gareth A. Costanza, M.A.
Graduate students: Sheila Thezerdapb Insitution for The Advanced Study of 
The Ridiculous, Impossible, And Otherwise Insignificant.  Established 1984.
Copyright (C) 1985 S.T.I.T.A.S.T.R.I.A.O.I.
No Rights Reserved.