computer jokes

Which language is right for you?

Assembler: You shoot yourself in the foot.

Ada: The Department of Defense shoots you in the foot after offering you a blindfold and a last cigarrette.

BASIC (interpreted): You shoot yourself in the foot with a water pistol until your leg is waterlogged and rots off.

BASIC (compiled): You shoot yourself in the foot with a BB using a SCUD missile launcher.

C++: You create a dozen instances of yourself and shoot them all in the foot. Not knowing which feet are virtual, medical care is impossible.

COBOL: USE HANDGUN.COLT(45), AIM AT LEG.FOOT, THEN WITH ARM.HAND.FINGER ON HANDGUN.COLT(TRIGGER) PREFORM SQUEEZE, RETURN HANDGUN.COLT TO HIP.HOLSTER.

cah: After searching the manual until your foot falls asleep, you shoot the computer and switch to C.

dBASE: You buy a gun. Bullets are only available from another company and are promised to work so you buy them. Then you find out that the next version of the gun is the one that is scheduled to shoot bullets.

Fortran: You shoot yourself in each toe, interactively, until you run out of toes. You shoot the sixth bullet anyway, since no exception-processing was anticipated.

Modula-2: You perform a shooting on what might currently be a foot with what might currently be a bullet shot by what might currently be a gun.

Pascal: Same as Modula-2, except the bullet is not of the right type for the gun and your hand is blown off.

PL/1: After consuming all system resources, including bullets, the data processing department doubles its size, acquires two new mainframes, and drops the original on your foot.

Smalltalk, Actor, etc: After playing with the graphics for three weeks, the programming manager shoots you in the head.

Snobol: Grab your foot with your hand and rewrite your hand to be a bullet.

EMACS: Escape-Meta-Alt-Control-Shift
EMACS: Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping
EMACS: Even a Master of Arts Comes Simpler
EMACS: Emacs Manuals Are Cryptic and Surreal
EMACS: Energetic Merchants Always Cultivate Sales
EMACS: Each Manual's Audience is Completely Stupified
EMACS: Emacs Means A Crappy Screen
EMACS: Eventually Munches All Computer Storage
EMACS: Even My Aunt Crashes the System
EMACS: Eradication of Memory Accomplished with Complete Simplicity
EMACS: Elsewhere Maybe Alternative Civilizations Survive
EMACS: Egregious Managers Actively Court Stallman
EMACS: Esoteric Malleability Always Considered Silly
EMACS: Emacs Manuals Always Cause Senility
EMACS: Easily Maintained with the Assistance of Chemical Solutions
EMACS: Edwardian Manifestation of All Colonial Sins
EMACS: Extended Macros Are Considered Superfluous
EMACS: Every Mode Accelerates Creation of Software
EMACS: Elsewhere Maybe All Commands are Simple
EMACS: Emacs May Allow Customised Screwups
EMACS: Excellent Manuals Are Clearly Suppressed
EMACS: Emetic Macros Assault Core and Segmentation
EMACS: Embarrassed Manual-Writer Accused of Communist Subversion
EMACS: Extensibility and Modifiability Aggravate Confirmed Simpletons
EMACS: Emacs May Annihilate Command Structures
EMACS: Easily Mangles, Aborts, Crashes and Stupifies
EMACS: Extraneous Macros And Commands Stink
EMACS: Exceptionally Mediocre Algorithm for Computer Scientists
EMACS: EMACS Makes no Allowances Considering its Stiff price
EMACS: Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
EMACS: Embarrassingly Mundane Advertising Cuts Sales
EMACS: Every Moron Assumes CCA is Superior
EMACS: Exceptionally Mediocre Autocratic Control System
EMACS: EMACS May Alienate Clients and Supporters
EMACS: Excavating Mayan Architecture Comes Simpler
EMACS: Erasing Minds Allows Complete Submission
EMACS: Emacs Makers Are Crazy Sickos
EMACS: Eenie-Meenie-Miney-Mo- Macros Are Completely Slow
EMACS: Experience the Mildest Ad Campaign ever Seen
EMACS: Emacs Makefiles Annihilate C- Shells
EMACS: Eradication of Memory Accomplished with Complete Simplicity
EMACS: Emetic Macros Assault Core and Segmentation
EMACS: Epileptic MLisp Aggravates Compiler Seizures
EMACS: Evenings, Mornings, And a Couple of Saturdays
EMACS: Emacs Makes All Computing Simple
EMACS: Emacs Masquerades As Comfortable Shell
EMACS: Emacs: My Alternative Computer Story
EMACS: Emacs Made Almost Completely Screwed
EMACS: Each Mail A Continued Surprise
EMACS: Every Mode Acknowledges Customized Strokes
EMACS: Eating Memory And Cycle-Sucking
EMACS: Everyday Material Almost Compiled Successfully
EMACS: Elvis Masterminds All Computer Software
EMACS: Emacs Makes A Computer Slow

IBM: It's Being Mended
IBM: Inmense Ball of Muck
IBM: I Believe in Memorex
IBM: It's Better than Macintosh!
IBM: Idiots Built Me
IBM: Intense Bowel Movement
IBM: Inferior But Marketable?
IBM: I've Been Mislead
IBM: It's Better Manually
IBM: Infinitly Better Macintosh
IBM: Indefinitly Boggled Machine
IBM: I Bought a Mac
IBM: I Blame Microsoft.
IBM: I Bought Macintosh
IBM: I'll Buy Macintosh
IBM: I've Been Moved
IBM: I've Been Mugged
IBM: Incontinent Bowel Movement
IBM: Identical Blue Men
IBM: Idiotic Bit Masher
IBM: Idiots Become Managers
IBM: Incompatible Business Machines
IBM: Incredibly Boring Machine
IBM: Infernal Bloody Monopoly
IBM: Institute of Black Magic
IBM: Internal Beaurocratic Mess
IBM: International Brotherhood of Magicians
IBM: Intolerant of Beards and Mustaches
IBM: It'll Be Messy
IBM: It's Backwards, Man
IBM: Itty Bitty Machines
IBM: Itty Bitty Morons
IBM: It Barely Moves
IBM: I Buy Mainframes
IBM compatible - IBM contemptible

This article is from the Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, March 1, 1994: Befuddled PC Users Flood Help Llines, and No Qquestion Seems To Be Too Basic

AUSTIN, Texas - The exasperated help-line caller said she couldn't get her new Dell computer to turn on. Jay Ablinger, a Dell Computer Corp. technician, made sure the computer was plugged in and then asked the woman what happened when she pushed the power button.

"I've pushed and pushed on this foot pedal and nothing happens," the woman replied. "Foot pedal?" the technician asked. "Yes," the woman said, "this little white foot pedal with the on switch." The "foot pedal," it turned out, was the computer's mouse, a hand-operated device that helps to control the computer's operation.

Personal-computer makers are discovering that it's still a low-tech world out there. While they are finally having great success selling PCs to households, they now have to deal with people to whom monitors and disk drives are as foreign as another language.

"It is rather mystifying to get this nice, beautiful machine and not know anything about it," says Ed Shuler, a technician who helps field consumer calls at Dell's headquarters here. "It's going into unfamiliar territory," adds Gus Kolias, vice president of customer service and training for Compaq Computer Corp. "People are looking for a comfort level."

Only two years ago, most calls to PC help lines came from techies needing help on complex problems. But now, with computer sales to homes exploding as new "multimedia" functions gain mass appeal, PC makers say that as many as 70% of their calls come from rank novices. Partly because of the volume of calls, some computer companies have started charging help-line users.

The questions are often so basic that they could have been answered by opening the manual that comes with every machine. One woman called Dell's toll-free line to ask how to install batteries in her laptop. When told that the directions were on the first page of the manual, says Steve Smith, Dell director of technical support, the woman replied angrily, "I just paid $2,000 for this stupid thing, and I'm not going to read a book."

Indeed, it seems that these buyers rarely refer to a manual when a phone is at hand. "If there is a book and a phone and they're side-by-side, the phone wins time after time," says Craig McQuilkin manager of service marketing for AST Research, Inc. in Irvine, Calif. "It's a phenomenon of people wanting to talk to people.

And do they ever. Compaq's help center in Houston, Texas, is inundated by some 8,000 consumer calls a day, with inquiries like this one related by technician John Wolf: "A frustrated customer called, who said her brand new Contura would not work. She said she had unpacked the unit, plugged it in, opened it up and sat there for 20 minutes waiting for something to happen. When asked what happened when she pressed the power switch, she asked, "What power switch?

Seemingly simple computer features baffle some users. So many people have called to ask where the "any" key is when "Press Any Key" flashes on the screen that Compaq is considering changing the command to "Press Return Key.

Some people can't figure out the mouse. Tamra Eagle, and AST technical support supervisor, says one customer complained that her mouse was hard to control with the "dust cover" on. The cover turned out to be the plastic bag the mouse was packaged in. Dell technician Wayne Zieschan says one of his customers held the mouse and pointed it at the screen, all the while clicking madly. The customer got no response because the mouse works only if it's moved over a flat surface.

Disk drives are another bugaboo. Compaq technician Brent Sullivan says a customer was having trouble reading word-processing files from his old diskettes. After troubleshooting for magnets and heat failed to diagnose the problem, Mr. Sullivan asked what else was being done with the diskette. The customer's response: "I put a label on the diskette and rolled it into the typewriter."

At AST, another customer dutifully complied with a technician's request that she send in a copy of a defective floppy disk. A letter from the customer arrived a few days later, along with a Xerox copy of the floppy. And at Dell, a technician advised his customer to put his troubled floppy back in the drive and "close the door." Asking the technician to "hold on," the customer put the phone down and was heard walking over to shut the door to his room. The technician meant the door to his floppy drive.

The software inside the computer can be equally befuddling. A Dell customer called to say he couldn't get his computer to fax anything. After 40 minutes of troubleshooting, the technician discovered the man was trying to fax a piece of paper by holding it in front of the monitor screen and hitting the "send" key.

Another Dell customer needed help setting up a new program, so Dell technician Gary Rock referred him to the local Egghead. "Yeah, I got me a couple friends," the customer replied. When told Egghead was software store, the man said, "Oh! I thought you meant for me to find couple of geeks.

Not realizing how fragile computers can be, some people end up damaging parts beyond repair. A Dell customer called to complain that his keyboard no longer worked. He had cleaned it, he said, filling up his tub with soap and water and soaking his keyboard for a day, and the removing all the keys and washing them individually.

Computers make some people paranoid. A Dell technician, Morgan Vergaran says he once calmed a man who became enraged because, "his computer has told him he was bad and an invalid." Mr. Vergara patiently explained that the computer's "bad command" and "invalid" responses shouldn't be taken personally.

These days PC-help technicians increasingly find themselves taking on the role of amateur psychologists. Mr. Shuler, the dell technician who once worked as a psychiatric nurse, says he defused a potential domestic fight by soothingly talking a man through a computer problem after the man had screamed threats at his wife and children in the background

There are also the lonely hearts who seek out human contact, even if it happens to be a computer techie. One man from New Hampshire calls Dell every time he experiences a life crisis. He gets a technician to walk him through some contrived problem with his computer, apparently feeling uplifted by the process.

"A lot of people want reassurance," says Mr. Shuler.