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Not true, it doesn't necessarily follow that a C&D letter means a court case: many matters are resolved prior to court, and often in these cases the parties want to keep the matter confidential for commercial reasons. These letters are no different to any other business letter.

Although, LOTR did not seam effected by this Phenomenon.

Better check your school. A lot of them now are teaching boys and girls that they have evil monsters between their legs that should never be touched or shown to anyone else.

Or whatever other lies the religious right wants them to teach this year, hoping that by keeping people stupid, they'll somehow teach them to overcome their natural reproductive urges.

"Steve jobs will manage to create a pointing device with no buttons at all. Mac users will claim this to be a revolutionary feature."

This was posted ages ago on rec.humor.funny:

http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/93q1/macnokbd.ht ml

It also predicts the abscence (sp?) of a keyboard . . .

For the benefit of those few who may not have it at the top of their bookmarks, here's the rec.humor.funny URL:

http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/current.html

The latest installment of this series is currently the top joke on the stack. Let's see if we can slashdot them ...

Also, for those who may not be familiar with this newsgroup-turned-website, they may well now have the world's largest collection of jokes. So you can blame me if the productivity of the rest of your week is destroyed.

They have had to explain their slowdown in new jokes in the past couple of years. The problem is that they have a policy of rejecting jokes that are just trivial retellings of jokes already in their collection. As their collection grows, it slowly becomes more difficult to find truly new jokes. Most of their posted jokes now are the highly-topical type, like this one.

But they're still worth checking out every 2 or 3 days.

Not to mention his tenure as chief moderator of the rec.humor.funny Usenet group, when the infamous Jewish Ventriloquist joke incident occured. He's no stranger to this sort of battle.

Mind you, I hadn't remembered he was chairman of the board of the EFF. Could AmEx have possibly picked a worse person to try to intimidate?

Blockpoth the quoster:

[...] They do code review, bug fixes and testing in a continuous cycle to get all the software bugs out. [...]

In fact, an excerpt of a typical DoD debugging session (and its aftermath) dating from sometime in 1997 can be found disguised as an RHF posting here, among other places.

Ole

...reminds me of this one.

The man thinks about the offer for less than a moment and gives the woman $200. "OK, tell me what you want me to do but remember, only in three words," she tells him.

The man, who has been quiet throughout the exchange says, "Paint my house."

(src )

NEW TECHNOLOGY ANNOUNCEMENT FROM APPLE

In a surprise announcment, yesterday, Apple Computer said that it is finally doing away with the keyboard. Apple stated that the microcomputer user has suffered too long with this awkward and inefficient input device. According to an Apple spokesperson, the technology for replacing the keyboard with only a mouse is here and the computer user is ready for it. The spokesperson said that Apple has received a steady stream of complaints over the years about the need to constantly move the hands between the Mac keyboard and mouse. "The solution was obvious - do away with the keyboard completely."

Acknowledging that there are still a few Mac applications that depend on textual input in addition to graphical manipulation, Apple said the poor people stuck with such outdated technology have not been forgotten. They are introducing the Spinning Alphabet Wheel (SAW) to replace the keyboard. The SAW is a screen display object consisting of concentric circular strips showing all of the characters which normally appear on the keyboard. The wheel rotates continuously under character selector windows. The user selects a character by placing the mouse pointer in the appropriate window at the same time as the desired character is about the appear. "...and, ta-da, the selected character appears on the screen just as though it had been typed on an old fashioned keyboard."

"This is a marvelous new technology with plenty of room for growth." said the spokesperson. For example, the user can configure separate wheels for vowels vs. the consonants. Or, digits can be placed on their own special low speed wheel. "We have conceptualized the keyboard as a big, bulky menu selection device and replaced it with dynamic display menus instead. Apple will eventually replace all menus with their new Rotating Wheel Technology (RWT)."

When asked why the wheels have to rotate, the spokesperson said that Apple's engineers had considered using conventional "point-and- click" technology for the wheel. "However," the Apple spokesperson said, "we feel that this type of operation is too complicated for the typical Mac user. So, we have done away with the mouse button too. It is still hard for us to believe that the IBM world has stepped backwards in technology by providing two or more buttons to confuse the user. The IBM compatible sector, apparently, has not yet recognized that 95% of computer usage is devoted to experimenting with different fonts and character styles in documents"

Asked if this new technology would reduce the price of the typical Mac computer, the spokesperson countered that it would probably increase the price of the Mac. "After all, display space is already scarce on the current screen. We will now deliver Macs with two screens - one for the normal display and a larger one for the multitude of rotating wheels the user needs to access." Apple said that the user who is confused by complicated devices such as keyboards and mouse buttons will gladly pay a premium to avoid them. "In fact, the easily-confused user is our best customer" replied the spokesperson. "Not only are we doing away with the pesky keyboard, but we are also giving them something they have demanded for a long time - more screen space. This is definitely a win-win situation."

Beta testers of the new technology were impressed by its ease of use, but said there are still some minor problems to work out. For example, one tester left his machine unattended with the uppercase character wheel spinning at medium speed. While he was away somebody must have jarred his desk, moving the mouse pointer into the selector window. When he got back he found that his Word document now had one huge paragraph consisting of all of the characters of the uppercase alphabet repeated 2,539,987 times. "At first glance, this appeared to be a big problem. But, I formatted the new paragraph with 33 different fonts and 11 different type styles and it looked great. I hope that Apple fixes this problem before they release it, because these accidents can greatly increase the time spent formatting documents."

nqn heh, you might want to take a look at this joke. [netfunny.com] ;-)

edo

heh, you might want to take a look at this joke. ;-)

While he was in New York on location for Bronco Billy (1980), Clint Eastwood agreed to a television interview. His host, somewhat hostile, began by defining a Clint Eastwood picture as a violent, ruthless, lawless, and bloody piece of mayhem, and then asked Eastwood himself to define a Clint Eastwood picture.

"To me," said Eastwood calmly, "what a Clint Eastwood picture is, is one that I'm in."

Randal Schwartz had this to say, many many rains ago: Try Seattle Carol

I like the reference to Pournelle, he's a great guy. Used to buy Byte just for his column but after Byte went paid-only on the web I lost interest.

Have you seen this parody? Excerpt:

"When we finally got home from the monthly Rambling Writers Conference (this time in Djemaa-el-Fna), we found Fractal Manor's main hall shoulder deep in brand-new state-of-the-art totally free computer hardware and software for me to check out. Drat. I'll never get around to most of it, of course, and probably will end up dumpstering 90% or more. What I really need to properly handle all of the wonderful things companies send me absolutely free to review and enjoy with no obligation whatsoever on my part, is a trash compactor.

I thought I'd start by reconfiguring my main computer, the Hyena 986SXDXMCMXCIV. Right now the sectors on the hard disk run clockwise, but I heard a rumor that you can squeeze 0.2% more throughput by running them counterclockwise. It's worth the effort. Recommended.

I slid the shrink-wrap off version 7.126 of DiskMember Gold (I know, you thought I'd never upgrade from version 4.79, especially after all my bad-mouthing of versions 5.33 and 6.02, but what can I say? Only a Corinthian drinks kevis in a Veronese cantola.) and fired it up. No joy. I reread the documentation to no avail, then scanned the whole manual in, OCRed it, spell- checked the file and uploaded it to BIX with a question mark appended."

More at the link above.

There once was a snake breeder who had two snakes he was trying to mate. For the life of him, he couldn't get them within two feet of each other. Frustrated, he called up the local zoologist, and explained the situation. She hurried over, picked up the snakes and looked at them. "You know what I would do?" she said. "See that tree over there? Chop it down, chop off a good sized log, split the log in two, and make two tables out of them. Put the tables and the snakes into a cage, and let them go at it."

Well, the breeder thought that this was insane, but having no other options, he tried it. Sure enough, a few days later he had a whole slew of baby snakes. He called up the zoologist, and asked her how that was possible. She replied, "Well, you see, those snakes were adders. And everybody knows that to get adders to multiply you need log tables."

A long time favourite of mine, this version google found for me.

/August

boom, you win. don't forget "many small tools where each one does one thing and does it well"

GNU echo's manpage.

This adds a whole new dimension to that old joke about /dev/drum ....

Mark Twain's plan for the improvement of spelling

For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s," and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.

Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c," "y" and "x"--bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez--tu riplais "ch," "sh," and "th" rispektivli.

Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

Apple iPod
15 GB model, lightly used
167 songs loaded

The RIAA says it's worth about $25 million. I'll let it go for $5 million, plus shipping.

(From rec.humor.funny)

"Hey Mike?"

"Yeah, Gabe?"

"We got a problem down on Earth. In Utah."

"I thought you fixed that last century!"

"No, no, not that. Someone's found a loophole in the physics program. They're getting energy out of nowhere."

"Blessit! Lemme check..." "Hey, I thought I fixed that! All right, let me find my terminal." "There, that ought to patch it."

(from Rec.Humor.Funny)

The general public cares as little about computers as "we" do about how our cars operate. We just want to get in them and drive.

Transcripts from the General Motors Help Line

ESD Product service support subject: New Retain tip

• Record number: H031944
• Device: D/T8550
• Model: M
• Hit count: UHC00000
• Success count: USC00000
• Publication code: PC50
• Tip key: 025
• Date created: O89/02/14
• Date last altered: A89/02/15
• Owning B.U.: USA

Abstract: Mouse balls now available as FRU (Field Replaceable Unit)

Text:

Mouse balls are now available as a FRU. If a mouse fails to operate, or should perform erratically, it may be in need of ball replacement. Because of the delicate nature of this procedure, replacement of mouse balls should be attempted by trained personnel only.

Before ordering, determine type of mouse balls required by examining the underside of each mouse. Domestic balls will be larger and harder than foreign balls. Ball removal procedures differ, depending upon manufacturer of the mouse. Foreign balls can be replaced using the pop-off method, and domestic balls replaced using the twist-off method. Mouse balls are not usually static sensitive, however, excessive handling can resutlt in sudden discharge. Upon completion of ball replacement, the mouse may be used immediately.

It is recommended that each servicer have a pair of balls for maintaining optimum customer satisfaction, and that any customer missing his balls should suspect local personnel of removing thes necessary functional items

• P/N33F8462--DOMESTIC MOUSE BALLS
• P/N33F8461--FOREIGN MOUSE BALLS

(Copy typed from the rec.hummor.funny archive. Typos are mine, the origonal posting was in all caps, which does not pas the Lameness filter)

Security experts have been saying for years that the security of the Windows family of products is hopelessly inadequate. Now there is a rigorous government certification confirming this.

(Originally taken from rec.humor.funny).

But ebooks still have one fatal flaw for me: paper reads 10%-30% faster. (Two flaws if you count vulnerability to jacuzzis.) I'd found this out on my own at work. If I needed to read 200 pages of reports I was better off sending print-jobs to every printer in the building (splitting reports to prevent irritated coworkers). My time saved was worth the additional printing costs.

That speed difference is like driving 45 instead of 60... ok for short distances, dreadful on roadtrips. As a dedicated (nee addicted) reader, this could mean 100 fewer books read per year. Ouch.

If you must read on a monitor, this advice helps. But until they get electronic paper right, the crushed tree system is the way for me.

English is pretty open into importing/incorporating any words (even abbreviations like WMD) in the language, but I don't believe most other languages on Earth are.

It's been done in French, too.

In other words, he took Internet jokes, jokes people made up or just saw on the Internet, and profited from them. He took what people believed to be in the public domain, and now makes money off of it. Do you think he would like it if you scanned his book and placed it on Kazaa? Or his software? Or would he be the first to sue you for copyright infringement? If he would sue, doesn't that mean P2P trading is wrong?

In other words, he took Internet jokes, jokes people made up or just saw on the Internet, and profited from them. He took what people believed to be in the public domain, and now makes money off of it. Do you think he would like it if you scanned his book and placed it on Kazaa? Or his software? Or would he be the first to sue you for copyright infringement? If he would sue, doesn't that mean P2P trading is wrong?

That's a much better explanation than the other one I heard about which basically involved a barnacle-like mating solution and a sea squirt-like motile phase.

Unisys didn't build the first ones. A company called Cemcorp (Canadian Educational Microcomputer Corporation) did, using the resources of a couple of other companies. Cemcorp's parent company was a holding company called Meridian Technologies. At the time, Meridian also held MicroDesign (which did the hardware for the Icon, and eventually became part of Cemcorp) and Jutras Die Casting, among other companies. (Now Meridian does only light metal diecasting.) The first two series of Icons were manufactured in Brockville, Ontario, by a company called Microtel.

The processor was the Intel 80186, as an earlier poster noticed. The reason was simple: it was effectively an 8086, and it was available. But with other Canadian companies like Dynalogic/Bytec-Comterm (makers of the Hyperion) wanting 8086s, and Canada being a single distribution region as far as Intel was concerned, there weren't enough 8086s to go around. But nobody else (except the odd controller manufacturer) wanted 80186s. The QNX C compiler had flags to enable '186- and '286-specific instructions, but Cemcorp never used the '186-specific functionality.

The Ontario Ministry of Education provided the seed money for the project. They mandated mostly Canadian content, so QNX was chosen for the operating system. The Waterloo microlanguages, already proven on the Commodore SuperPET were ported for teaching programming, and QNX's own C compiler was included if students wanted to write their own system stuff. It also had a bug-compatibile version of Logo. The Ministry of Education contracted out the development of a graphical shell called Ambience that had three levels of access control: the administrator, teacher, or student. Teachers had access to students' files; the administrator saw everything. There was shared space for showing off good stuff. It was a great concept. But execution was, well, part of the reason the Icon didn't really succeed, because it didn't work like an Apple, and it didn't work like DOS.

So where'd Unisys come in? Well, in 1983 or so when this was getting started (I did co-op stints with Cemcorp from 1984 to 1987), the guys at Cemcorp didn't have the ability to support or market the product. They contracted with Burroughs for support, quality assurance, and marketing. Burroughs and Sperry became Unisys in 1986, and took a greater interest in promoting the Icon, just as the government subsidy was running out. Unisys had taken over all but the design and integration of the product by the time I did my last work term with Cemcorp. With the dropping of government funding, the demand for DOS compatibility, and competition from Apple, the Icon ceased to be viable.

Actually, I think that they were simply shot down by the Martian Air Force...

So you were the one who posted it to rec.humor.funny?

The reds are going for a permanent settlement on the moon? No problem. Reagan had it all worked out years ago. ;^)

Heh.. I find this one to be much better :)

Have you seen this Pournelle article parody?

Web site hosting for anybody: $10/month and up

Threatening letters to people who satirize you, hoping they won't know the law: $500

Reputation as giant corporation required to intimidate small publishers: $billions

Supreme court decisions protecting parody and satire from accusations of copyright and trademark infringement... Priceless

There are some rights money can't buy. For everything else, there's Mastercard's lawyers.

Click here.

BSA Hotline: Hello, would you like to report piracy?
Mr X: Yes, I know some people that don't seem to have thier software licneses.
BSA Hotline: Can you tell us who's software is involved?
Mr X: Microsoft, Adobe and others...
BSA Hotline: They sound like our members. We will arrange for an audit at once. Where are they?
Mr X: They were last seen at large airbase in central Saudi Arabia
BSA Hotline: You mean Dhahran?
Mr X: No, near Riyadh
BSA Hotline: Sorry. [BSA hotline guy downs a shot]
[moments latter -- A troop of Marines are pinned down at a very forward position. Their "embedded" photo journalist is trying to get a good shot for the station back home...]
BSA Dude: We are here to audit your software, can you show me the licneses?
PhotoJ: What? Can't you see I'm kind of busy right now?
BSA Dude: We have a warrant.
PhotoJ: How did you get that here?
BSA Dude: Do you have the orignals with you? CD's, software boxes, receipts, licneses?
PhotoJ: They are all back at the office, can't you see theres a war here?
BSA Dude: I can see you don't want to cooperate
[BSA dude walks away for a bit of privacy and pulls out his cell/sat phone]
BSA Dude: Looks like we got one red handed...
[Pan to a pair of F15's at 75,000 ft, 100 miles away]
F15 Jocky: TopDog 7, Roger that, bogie is an unauthorized radio source
AWACS op: Topdog 7 and 8 are authorized to neutralize...
[back where the action is]
BSA Dude: [still on the sat phone] I think we should make an example of this one
[boom]

here.

http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/88q3/16840.12.ht ml

.nosig

I don't know, it's been a long time since I ran an M$ O$. Here is a good run down of Number Two:

• what BS will get you
  
• One down, one to go..
  
• Yes, the regular crap jokes.
  

  There you have it, number two on your desktop. Cross platform and all, so long as your PC does not blue screen, even M$ users can enjoy this post.

While Rural has a valid copyright in the directory as a whole because it contains some forward text and some original material in the yellow pages, there is nothing original in Rural's white pages. The raw data are uncopyrightable facts, and the way in which Rural selected, coordinated, and arranged those facts is not original in any way. Rural's selection of listings - subscribers' names, towns, and telephone numbers - could not be more obvious, and lacks the modicum of creativity necessary to transform mere selection into copyrightable expression.

Follow this example, one of the winners of the 1991 rec.humor.funny comedy awards

Q&A at Radio Shack

Consider the trend though. Any time a new technology comes out, it becomes the Next Big Thing!, everyone who is somebody buys it, and most of the people who bought it decide they don't want it after the return period expires (IE, 30 days in the case of Fry's, 90 in the case of Target... you get the idea). Those who tend to keep address books on paper may take this if they are anal, those who would keep dead-tree books if it weren't for the hassle of having to periodically sit down and organize the thing will probably flock to them, excepting those who are somewhat clumsy and accidentally break them.

As far as I'm concerned, it fills the application of a laptop, but again, it's convenience sized. Granted I can't do things like play Doom on an airplane or full on desktop publishing, but for that I have a confuser at home. (I still can't play Doom on the airplane, though - nor do I think I would want to.)

Long live the Thing King!

a different toilet story from about 10 years ago:

This appeared in today's (2/17) Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
It was a flush with a rush.
Toilets and urinals in the King County Courthouse exploded yesterday after a worker in Metro's downtown bus tunnel mistakenly connected an air compressor to the building's water line. As soon as hapless individuals flushed the pressurized privies, the plumbing started popping in restrooms throughout the 72-year-old building, said building services manager Bill Kemp. "They started blowing at about 11:30 (a.m.) and it took us awhile to figure it out," he recounted."We knew it had to be air in the system but the Water Department said that was impossible." It wasn't. The source of the problem was finally tracked to the tunnel under Third Avenue, and the errant air compressor was shut down. But not before employees on every floor in the 10-story courthouse had stories to tell about gushing geysers in the john. "We think we've lost about 20 to 25 toilets," said Kemp. "The porcelain is actually cracked." Kemp said no one has admitted being hurt by the unusual blast, although several people were badly drenched. Or very surprised. Explained Kemp, "The urinals acted more like bidets." We had other reports that people were not necessarily on the toilet but close." "This has not exactly been a good day for Metro," he noted. by Mary Rothschild --P-I Reporter

link(story is near bottom, pun intended.

Cells swabbed from inside your cheek are not always such a good idea.

Remember the Denver airport opening delays because of the baggage system bugs?

I carry all my logins etc. in my PalmOS device, encrypted in a Blowfish-protected database, and synched to my personal computer when I'm back in the office. I have to enter one decent password to get at my data, and if I lose the PDA I suppose someone could crack it if they *_really_* wanted to, but at least I know the data are NOT on a Microsoft/Sun/Liberty Alliance box where some disaffected BOFH can get to it.

YMMV.

From the r.h.f. archives:

EULA for your check.