FOR SALE: One useless cat

Looks like too many people have stopped playing with online trading and started playing with image manipulation instead

In the beginning, God created the bit. And the bit was a zero; nothing.

On the first day, He toggled the 0 to 1, and the Universe was. (In those days, bootstrap loaders were simple, and “active low” signals didn’t yet exist.)

On the second day, God’s boss wanted a demo, and tried to read the bit. This being volatile memory, the bit reverted to a 0. And the universe wasn’t. God learned the importance of backups and memory refresh, and spent the rest of the day ( and his first all-nighter ) reconstructing the universe.

On the third day, the bit cried “Oh, Lord! If you exist, give me a sign!” And God created rev 2.0 of the bit, even better than the original prototype. Those in Universe Marketing immediately realized the the “new and improved” wouldn’t do justice to such a grand and glorious creation. And so it was dubbed the Most Significant Bit, or the Sign bit. Many bits followed, but only one was so honored.

On the fourth day, God created a simple ALU with ‘add’ and ‘logical shift’ instructions. And the original bit discovered that by performing a single shift instruction, it could become the Most Significant Bit. And God realized the importance of computer security.

On the fifth day, God created the first mid-life kicker, rev 2.0 of the ALU, with wonderful features, and said “Screw that add and shift stuff. Go forth and multiply.” And God saw that it was good.

On the sixth day, God got a bit overconfident, and invented pipelines, register hazards, optimizing compilers, crosstalk, restartable instructions, microinterrupts, race conditions, and propagation delays. Historians have used this to convincingly argue that the sixth day must have been a Monday.

On the seventh day, an engineering change introduced Windows into the Universe, and it hasn’t worked right since.

1. When computing, whatever happens, behave as though you meant it to happen.

2. When you get to the point where you really understand your computer, it’s probably obsolete.

3. The first place to look for information is in the section of the manual where you least expect to find it.

4. When the going gets tough, upgrade.

5. For every action, there is an equal and opposite malfunction (Created by Nate Askins)

6. To err is human . . . to blame your computer for your mistakes is even more human, it is downright natural.

7. He who laughs last probably made a back-up.

8. If at first you do not succeed, blame your computer.

9. A complex system that does not work is invariably found to have evolved from a simpler system that worked perfectly.

10. The number one cause of computer problems is computer solutions.

The proliferation of modern programming languages (all of which seem to have stolen countless features from one another) sometimes makes it difficult to remember what language you’re currently using. This handy reference is offered as a public service to help programmers who find themselves in such a dilemma.

C: You shoot yourself in the foot.

C++: You accidentally create a dozen instances of yourself and shoot them all in the foot. Providing emergency medical assistance is impossible since you can’t tell which are bitwise copies and which are just pointing at others and saying, “That’s me, over there.”

FORTRAN: You shoot yourself in each toe, iteratively, until you run out of toes, then you read in the next foot and repeat. If you run out of bullets, you continue with the attempts to shoot yourself anyways because you have no exception-handling capability.

Pascal: The compiler won’t let you shoot yourself in the foot.

Ada: After correctly packing your foot, you attempt to concurrently load the gun, pull the trigger, scream, and shoot yourself in the foot. When you try, however, you discover you can’t because your foot is of the wrong type.

COBOL: Using a COLT 45 HANDGUN, AIM gun at LEG.FOOT, THEN place ARM.HAND.FINGER on HANDGUN.TRIGGER and SQUEEZE. THEN return HANDGUN to HOLSTER. CHECK whether shoelace needs to be re-tied.

LISP: You shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds…

FORTH: Foot in yourself shoot.

Prolog: You tell your program that you want to be shot in the foot. The program figures out how to do it, but the syntax doesn’t permit it to explain it to you.

BASIC: Shoot yourself in the foot with a water pistol. On large systems, continue until entire lower body is waterlogged.

Visual Basic: You’ll really only appear to have shot yourself in the foot, but you’ll have had so much fun doing it that you won’t care.

HyperTalk: Put the first bullet of gun into foot left of leg of you. Answer the result.

Motif: You spend days writing a UIL description of your foot, the bullet, its trajectory, and the intricate scrollwork on the ivory handles of the gun. When you finally get around to pulling the trigger, the gun jams.

APL: You shoot yourself in the foot, then spend all day figuring out how to do it in fewer characters.

SNOBOL: If you succeed, shoot yourself in the left foot. If you fail, shoot yourself in the right foot.

Unix:

 % ls
 foot.c foot.h foot.o toe.c toe.o
 % rm * .o
 rm:.o no such file or directory
 % ls
 %

Concurrent Euclid: You shoot yourself in somebody else’s foot.

370 JCL: You send your foot down to MIS and include a 400-page document explaining exactly how you want it to be shot. Three years later, your foot comes back deep-fried.

Paradox: Not only can you shoot yourself in the foot, your users can, too.

Access: You try to point the gun at your foot, but it shoots holes in all your Borland distribution diskettes instead.

Revelation: You’re sure you’re going to be able to shoot yourself in the foot, just as soon as you figure out what all these nifty little bullet-thingies are for.

Assembler: You try to shoot yourself in the foot, only to discover you must first invent the gun, the bullet, the trigger, and your foot.

Modula2: After realizing that you can’t actually accomplish anything in this language, you shoot yourself in the head.

Scientists working in the computer room at Berkeley have identified a new species: Machina Programeus. This strange and enigmatic creature can easily be recognized by its somewhat diminished wardrobe selection, and the ever-present odor of coffee on its breath.

The male of the species often has a lack of interest for matching colors, while the female usually dresses for comfort rather than style. The male and female of this species rarely have a desire for the intimate company of one another, with the exception of sometimes satisfying certain primal urges. Rarely do they travel in pairs and do not function well in a time-based, scheduled environment.

They are gregarious creatures, often chattering on incessantly in a somewhat cryptic language, understood only by their own esoteric community. However, when communicating to members outside of their close-knit circle of understanding, they try to ease the usually unwilling participant into their world by incorporating various terminologies into their conversations; for example, in company meetings, you might hear, “I’ll talk to you ‘off-line’ about that, Phil.” Or, when dealing with mentally challenged individuals, you could hear, “I think the ‘FAT’ is missing from your brain.” And finally, when talking to their offspring, there’s the eternal “You march yourself right in there and ‘defrag’ your bedroom.”

Their diet is simple, yet satisfying, consisting of doughnuts, pizza, soda, hamburgers and, of course, coffee. They tend to frequent electronics stores and are usually found drooling over multi-gigabyte hard drives or Pentium motherboards, muttering to themselves, “If only I had 32 meg of memory, *then* I could keep NT from crashing.”

Their distant cousin, Machina System Managereous, can be nocturnal and is fiercely territorial, without exception. Some Machina Programeous are resentful of the Machina System Managereous because of the control they have over their functional environment. But this attitude is often destructive and only leads to feudal relationships and hours of relentless flaming.

If you ever find yourself alone in a room with a Machina Programeous, try to keep conversations limited to a subject matter unrelated to computer technologies or you may be trapped for hours, attempting to create an exit phrase such as, “Gee, look at the time,” or “I just remembered, I have to return that call.” However, many of these exit phrases are not new to the Machina Programeous and circumventions are readily employed when confronted with them.

I’ve seen links to this floating around but hadn’t actually watched it yet, so thanks to Brendon for sending it my way.

There’s some amazing stuff on YouTube; you could literally spend the whole day surfing there and not get any work done at all. And there’s a universe of diverse content there, from baby’s first steps to women’s lingerie, from economics tutorials to crazy driving in the Isle of Man. Actually, here’s a really good one: Frozen Grand Central Station