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mph-humor Digest V97 #18


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mph-humor Digest				Volume 97 : Issue 18

Today's Topics:
	 [alt.sysadmin.recovery] What do I do with this one?
	 Re: MacOS sucks, get UNIX instead?????
	 What is Win32?
	 Apple & Intel
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From: [email protected] (Robert Black)
Newsgroups: alt.sysadmin.recovery
Subject: What do I do with this one?
Date: 11 Apr 1997 15:10:24 GMT
Organization: Imperial College, London, UK
Message-ID: <[email protected]>

Argghhh, no. Where do they find them? I have a luser who is giving me
nightmares. Here is a case history:

When the luser started working here they said that they hadn't used
UNIX very much before and could I recommend any books. I gave them
some books to read and they went away.

Some time later I was wandering through the terminal room and looked
to see what the luser was doing. The luser had one of the UNIX texts
open in front of them and was <doing> <the> <exercises>[1]. After
having worked their way through all of the exercises in about 7 books
they even gave the books back without having to be threatened with a
good larting.

Scene: The terminal room three weeks later...

luser: Can you help me?
me: What's the problem?
luser: My program won't run.
me: Which program?
luser: a.out[2] - it used to run and I haven't changed anything[3]

(pause whilst I try running the program to see what error it
generates - it runs fine...)

me: It seems to work for me.
luser: Yes, it runs in that directory but not in my bin directory.

(I try running the version in the bin directory and it dies with a SEGV)

me: Are you sure you copied the right file?
luser: yes.

(luser types the following:)

% rm bin/a.out [4]
% vi a.out
:w bin/a.out
:q
% bin/a.out

*crunch*

luser: see, it doesn't work...[5]

You can use your imaginations to fill in the rest of the conversation.


Scene: The terminal room 2 months later.
Background: Policy is that lusers do their own backups - I merely
supply them with tapes. This is one policy enforced from on high
that I'm quite happy about.

(I notice that one of the SGI boxen doing double duty as a printer
server has gone away and go to investigate. I find the luser from
hell hunched over the SGI box.)

luser: What does 'Panic, SCSI bus not responding'[6] mean?
me: Oh, $^&^*& - what did you do?
luser: Nothing.
me: What sort of nothing?
luser: Well, I just borrowed the tape drive to do a backup.
me:
luser: When I unplugged the tape drive the screen went black and
	   I got that funny message.
me:
luser: Does that mean I shouldn't have unplugged the tape drive?

At this point I had an attack of precognition and explained to the
luser[7] that if they ever even so much as thought about unplugging
any of my hardware ever again their life was likely to be:

a) Short
b) Messy
c) Involve lots of nasty pointy things.


Scene: The terminal room today.

luser: Can I have some more quota please?
me: Why? You've already had two increases in quota. What do you
	need more for?
luser: I can't delete anything.
me: Don't you think it would be more sensible to come and ask me
	about that rather than just asking for more and more disk space?
luser: Oh.
me: show me what the problem is.

(luser types: )

% cat FORTRAN-PROGRAM[8] > /dev/null

<thwack>
<thwack>
<thwack>

TIme for me to go and have a lie down before I do something my
boss will regret[9].

Rob

[1] Be afraid. Be very afraid.
[2] No, I'm not kidding. Thats what the file was called.
[3] I've heard that before.
[4] Note: this is important to the plot.
[5] Down, not across.
[6] Okay, this is artistic license. SGI boxen don't given nearly such
	clear messages. It was the SCSI cable in the luser's hand which
	gave it away.
[7] In graphic detail.
[8] No, I'm not kidding about that filename either.
[9]  + Done                 rm -rf ~luser

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In article <[email protected]>
George Graves <[email protected]> writes:

> Only two things of note ever came out of Berkeley, LSD and Unix. I do
> not believe that this is a coincidence.



--
Eric Bennett ( [email protected] ; http://www.pobox.com/~ericb )

Sixty-seven percent of the doctors surveyed preferred X to Y.  (Jones
couldn't be persauded.)
-John Allen Paulos
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In article <[email protected]>
"Phil Brewster" <[email protected]> writes:

> >If you want to extend that to assuming that Win 32 means all
> >32-bit development of MS operating systems, then that's your choice.
> >But it isn't mine, so don't criticize me for interpreting the term Win
> >32 the way most other people interpret it.
> 
> You mean,  it wasn't the version of Windows that Microsoft introduced in
> 1932?....



--
Eric Bennett ( [email protected] ; http://www.pobox.com/~ericb )

Sixty-seven percent of the doctors surveyed preferred X to Y.  (Jones
couldn't be persauded.)
-John Allen Paulos
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>From MacWeek reports on the National Association of Broadcasters Conference:

=====
QuickTime 3.0 will be the first version to let users create movies on
Windows. The full-featured PC version had been scheduled to carry the
Version 2.5 label to match the Mac version released last summer (see
11.18.96, Page 1). Apple added features to both versions, however, and
decided to dub the upgrade QuickTime 3.0, a number previously reserved for
a forthcoming interactive version of QuickTime.

Hancock said QuickTime's cross-platform capabilities will not blunt the
Mac's multimedia edge, citing the Mac's faster PowerPCprocessor speeds,
future support for the Philips TriMedia processor and the Rhapsody OS.

"Apple's doing a wonderful job of moving the technology from platform to
platform," said an Intel staffer at Apple's booth demonstrating QuickTime
on a Hewlett-Packard PC. "We're very excited at the prospect of putting
these two technologies together." Underscoring Apple's cross-platform
interest, the Intel rep was approached by an Apple worker with an unusual
request:
"We'd love to get some more of those 'Intel inside' stickers."
=====



--
Eric Bennett ( [email protected] ; http://www.pobox.com/~ericb )

Apple says, 'Hey, Win 3.1 is crummy and it always was crummy.' And we say,
'No, it just
turned crummy. It was really great till Thursday [when Win95 was released].'
-Bill Gates
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