You wake up at 3 a.m. to go to the bathroom and stop to check your e-mail on the way back to bed.

You get a tatoo that reads "This body best viewed with Netscape Navigator 3.0 or higher."

You name your children Eudora, Mozillia and Dotcom.

You turn off your modem and get this awful empty feeling, like you just "pulled the plug" on a loved one.

You spend half of the plane trip with your laptop on your lap ... and your child in the overhead compartment.

You decide to stay in college for an additional year or two, just for the free Internet access.

You laugh at people with 9600-baud modems.

You start using smileys in your snail mail.

Your hard drive crashes. You haven't logged in for two hours. You start to twitch. You pick up the phone and manually dial your ISP's access number. You try to hum to communicate with the modem ... and you succeed.

You find yourself typing "com" after every period when using a word processor.com

You refer to going to the bathroom as downloading.

You start introducing yourself as "JohnDoe at AOL dot com."

All of your friends have an @ in their names.

Your cat has its own home page.

You can't call your mother because she doesn't have a modem.

You check your mail. It says "no new messages." So you check it again.

Your phone bill comes to your doorstep in a box.

You don't know what sex three of your closest friends are because they have neutral nicknames and you never bothered to ask.

You move into a new house and decide to Netscape before you landscape.

You tell the cab driver you live at "http://1000.edison.garden/house/brick.html"

You start tilting your head sideways to smile.

A is for Awk, which runs like a snail, and
B is for Biff, which reads all your mail.

C is for CC, as hackers recall, while
D is for DD, the command that does all.

E is for Emacs, which rebinds your keys, and
F is for Fsck, which rebuilds your trees.

G is for Grep, a clever detective, while
H is for Halt, which may seem defective.

I is for Indent, which rarely amuses, and
J is for Join, which nobody uses.

K is for Kill, which makes you the boss, while
L is for Lex, which is missing from DOS.

M is for More, from which Less was begot, and
N is for Nice, which it really is not.

O is for Od, which prints out things nice, while
P is for Passwd, which reads in strings twice.

Q is for Quota, a Berkeley-type fable, and
R is for Ranlib, for sorting a table.

S is for Spell, which attempts to belittle, while
T is for True, which does very little.

U is for Uniq, which is used after Sort, and
V is for Vi, which is hard to abort.

W is for Whoami, which tells you your name, while
X is, well, X, of dubious fame.

Y is for Yes, which makes an impression, and
Z is for Zcat, which handles compression.

A mathematician is a person who says that, when 3 people aresupposed to be in a room but 5 come out, 2 must go in toreturn the room to an empty state.

Professor of Mathematics: 3 is a prime, 5 is a prime, 7 is a prime,9 is not a prime. Counter-example => claim is false.

Physics Professor: 3 is a prime, 5 is a prime, 7 is a prime, 9 is anexperimental error, 11 is a prime ...

Professor of Engineering: 3 is a prime, 5 is a prime, 7 is a prime,9 is a prime, 11 is a prime ...

Computer: 3 is a prime, 5 is a prime, 7 is a prime ... Abort, Retry,Fail?

A pastor, a doctor and an engineer were waiting one morning behind aparticularly slow group of golfers. At that moment, along comes thegreenskeeper. The the pastor asks, "Say, what's with that group aheadof us? They're rather slow, aren't they?"

The greenskeeper replied, "Oh, yes, that's a group of blind firefighters. They lost their sight saving our clubhouse from a fire last year, so we always let them play for free any time they want."

The group was silent for a moment.

The pastor said, "That's so sad. I think I will say a special prayer forthem tonight."

The doctor said, "And I'm going to contact my ophthalmologist buddy andask if there's anything he can do for them."

The engineer said, "Why can't these guys play at night?"

In the high school gym, all the girls in the class were lined upagainst one wall, and all the boys against the opposite wall. Then,every ten seconds, they walked toward each other until they were halfthe previous distance apart. A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineerwere asked, "When will the girls and boys meet?"

The physicist said, "Never."

The mathematician said, "In an infinite amount of time."

The engineer said, "Well... in about two minutes, they'll be closeenough for all practical purposes."

Mechanical Engineers build weapons, Civil Engineers build targets.

What Engineers Say             What They Really Mean============================   ===============================Major Technological            Back to the drawing board.Breakthrough.Developed after years of       Discovered by accident.intensive research.Project slightly behind        We are working on something else.original schedule due tounforseen difficulties.The designs are well           We just made it, stretching awithin allowable limits.       point or two.Customer satisfaction is       We're so far behind schedule thatbelieved assured.              the customer will be happy to get                               anything at all from us.Close project coordination     We should have asked someone else.is required.                                 or,                               Let's spread responsibility for                               this mess.The design will be             We haven't started the project yet,finalized in the next          but we've got to say something.reporting period.A number of different          We don't know where we're going,approaches are being tried.    but we're moving.Test results were extremely    It works, and are we surprised!gratifying.Extensive effort is being      We just hired three new guys;applied on a fresh approach    we'll let them kick it aroundto the problem.                for a while.Preliminary operational        The darn thing blew up when wetests are inconclusive.        threw the switch.The entire concept will have   The only guy who understood theto be abandoned.               thing quit.Modifications are under way    We're throwing the whole thingto correct certain minor       out and are starting from scratch.difficulties.

HelpLine: "General Motors HelpLine, how can I help you?"
Customer: "I got in my car and closed the door and nothing happened!"
HelpLine: "Did you put the key in the ignition slot and turn it?"
Customer: "What's an ignition?"
HelpLine: "It's a starter motor that draws current from your battery andturns over the engine."
Customer: "Ignition? Motor? Battery? Engine? How come I have toknow all these technical terms just to use my car?"

---

HelpLine: "General Motors HelpLine, how can I help you?"
Customer: "My car ran fine for a week and now it won't go anywhere!"
HelpLine: "Is the gas tank empty?"
Customer: "Huh? How do I know?"
HelpLine: "There's a little gauge on the front panel with a needle andmarkings from 'E' to 'F'. Where is the needle pointing?"
Customer: "It's pointing to 'E'. What does that mean?"
HelpLine: "It means you have to visit a gasoline vendor and purchasesome more gasoline. You can install it yourself or pay the vendor toinstall it for you."
Customer: "What? I paid $12,000 for this car! Now you tell me that Ihave to keep buying more components? I want a car that comes witheverything built in!"

---

HelpLine: "General Motors HelpLine, how can I help you?"
Customer: "Your cars suck!"
HelpLine: "What's wrong?"
Customer: "It crashed, that's what wrong!"
HelpLine: "What were you doing?"
Customer: "I wanted to run faster, so I pushed the accelerator pedalall the way to the floor. It worked for a while and then it crashedand it won't start now!
HelpLine: "It's your responsibility if you misuse the product. What doyou expect us to do about it?"
Customer: "I want you to send me one of the latest version that doesn'tcrash any more!"

---

HelpLine: "General Motors HelpLine, how can I help you?"
Customer: "Hi, I just bought my first car, and I chose your car becauseit has automatic transmission, cruise control, power steering, powerbrakes, and power door locks."
HelpLine: "Thanks for buying our car. How can I help you?"
Customer: "How do I work it?"
HelpLine: "Do you know how to drive?"
Customer: "Do I know how to what?"
HelpLine: "Do you know how to drive?"
Customer: "I'm not a technical person. I just want to go places in mycar!"

If IBM made Toasters ... They would want one big toaster where people bring bread to be submitted for overnight toasting. IBM would claim a worldwide market for five, maybe six toasters.

If Xerox made Toasters ... You could toast one-sided or double-sided. Successive slices would get lighter and lighter. The toaster would jam your bread for you.

If Radio Shack made Toasters ... The staff would sell you a toaster, but not know anything about it. Or you could buy all the parts to build your own toaster.

If Oracle made Toasters ... They'd claim their toaster was compatible with all brands and styles of bread, but when you got it home you'd discover the Bagel Engine was still in development, the CroissantExtension was three years away, and that indeed the whole appliance wasjust blowing smoke.

If Sun made Toasters ... The toast would burn often, but you could get a really good cuppa Java.

Does DEC still make toasters?... They made good toasters in the '80s, didn't they?

If Hewlett-Packard made Toasters ... They would market the ReverseToaster, which takes in toast and gives you regular bread.

If Tandem made Toasters ... You could make toast 24 hours a day, and if a piece got burned the toaster would automatically toast you a newone.

If Thinking Machines made Toasters ... You would be able to toast64,000 pieces of bread at the same time.

If Cray made Toasters ... They would cost $16 million but would befaster than any other single-slice toaster in the world.

If the NSA [National Security Agency] made Toasters ... Your toaster would have a secret trap door that only the NSA could access in case they needed to get at your toast for reasons of national security.

If Sony made Toasters ... The ToastMan, which would be barely largerthan the single piece of bread it is meant to toast, could beconveniently attached to your belt.

If Timex made Toasters ... They would be cheap and small quartz-crystal wrist toasters that could take a roasting and keep on toasting.

If Fisher Price made Toasters ... "Baby's First Toaster" would have a hand-crank that you turn to toast the bread that pops up like aJack-in-the-box.

If Microsoft made Toasters ... Every time you bought aloaf of bread, you would have to buy a toaster.. You wouldn't have totake the toaster, but you'd still have to pay for it anyway. Toaster'95would weigh 15,000 pounds (hence requiring a reinforced steelcountertop), draw enough electricity to power a small city, take up 95%of the space in your kitchen, would claim to be the first toaster thatlets you control how light or dark you want your toast to be, and wouldsecretly interrogate your other appliances to find out who made them.Everyone would hate Microsoft toasters, but nonetheless would buy themsince most of the good bread only works with their toasters.

If Apple made Toasters ... It would do everything the Microsoft toaster does, but 5 years earlier.

If SAP made Toasters ... The manual to run the toaster would beapproximately 10,000 pages long. The toaster would come with 2,500switches which would all have to be set in an exact pattern and in aprecise sequence in order to toast specific kinds of bread. Eachpattern would be established by SAP's experts as the "Best Practices"method of toasting that kind of bread. It would take a team of basisand functional contractors about 1 year to configure the toaster in thebest manner, and then another 6 months to test it. In the mean time,your entire family would need to attend extensive training classes onhow to use the new toaster. In order to support end users andconsultants, MIT would establish a list-serv for people to postquestions and answers regarding toaster set-up and operation.Of course, the online help would randomly pop up in German. But once itwas running, you'd get the best toast possible.

DOS Beer:
Requires you to use your own can opener, and requires you to read thedirections carefully before opening the can. Originally only came in an8-oz. can, but now comes in a 16-oz. can. However, the can is dividedinto 8 compartments of 2 oz. each, which have to be accessed separately.Soon to be discontinued, although a lot of people are going to keepdrinking it after it's no longer available.

Mac Beer:
At first, came only a 16-oz. can, but now comes in a 32-oz. can.Considered by many to be a "light" beer. All the cans look identical.When you take one from the fridge, it opens itself. The ingredientslist is not on the can. If you call to ask about the ingredients, youare told that "you don't need to know." A notice on the side reminds youto drag your empties to the trashcan.

Windows 3.1 Beer:
The world's most popular. Comes in a 16-oz. can that looks a lot likeMac Beer's. Requires that you already own a DOS Beer. Claims that itallows you to drink several DOS Beers simultaneously, but in realityyou can only drink a few of them, very slowly, especially slowly ifyou are drinking the Windows Beer at the same time. Sometimes, forapparently no reason, a can of Windows Beer will explode when youopen it.

OS/2 Beer:
Comes in a 32-oz can. Does allow you to drink several DOS Beerssimultaneously. Allows you to drink Windows 3.1 Beer simultaneouslytoo, but somewhat slower. Advertises that its cans won't explode whenyou open them, even if you shake them up. You never really see anyonedrinking OS/2 Beer, but the manufacturer (International BeerManufacturing) claims that 9 million six-packs have been sold.

Windows 95 Beer:
Before you could buy it, a lot of people taste-tested it and claimedit was wonderful. The can looks a lot like Mac Beer's can, but tastesmore like Windows 3.1 Beer. It comes in 32-oz. cans, but when you lookinside, the cans only have 16 oz. of beer in them. Most people willprobably keep drinking Windows 3.1 Beer until their friends try Windows95 Beer and say they like it. The ingredients list, when you look at thesmall print, has some of the same ingredients that come in DOS beer,even though the manufacturer claims that this is an entirely new brew.

Windows NT Beer:
Comes in 32-oz. cans, but you can only buy it by the truckload. Thiscauses most people to have to go out and buy bigger refrigerators. Thecan used to look just like Windows 3.1 Beer's, but the company recentlychanged the can to look just like Windows 95 Beer's. Touted as an"industrial strength" beer, and suggested only for use in bars.

Unix Beer:
Comes in several different brands, in cans ranging from 8 oz. to 64 oz.Drinkers of Unix Beer display fierce brand loyalty, even though theyclaim that all the different brands taste almost identical. Sometimesthe pop-tops break off when you try to open them, so you have to haveyour own can opener around for those occasions, in which case you eitherneed a complete set of instructions, or a friend who has been drinkingUnix Beer for several years.

AmigaDOS Beer:
The company has gone out of business, but their recipe has been pickedup by some weird German company, so now this beer will be an import.This beer never really sold very well because the original manufacturerdidn't understand marketing. Like Unix Beer, AmigaDOS Beer fans are anextremely loyal and loud group. It originally came in a 16-oz. can, butnow comes in 32-oz. cans too. When this can was originally introduced,it appeared flashy and colorful, but the design hasn't changed much overthe years, so it appears dated now. Critics of this beer claim that itis only meant for watching TV anyway.

VMS Beer:
Requires minimal user interaction, except for popping the top andsipping. However cans have been known on occasion to explode, orcontain extremely un-beer-like contents. Best drunk in high pressuredevelopment environments. When you call the manufacturer for the listof ingredients, you're told that is proprietary and referred to anunknown listing in the manuals published by the FDA. Rumors are thatthis was once listed in the Physicians' Desk Reference as atranquilizer, but no one can claim to have actually seen it.

Windows for brains: You think about one of any number of things at any one time but only for a short amount of time because then your mind goes blank as you encounter a "General Protection Fault". As a last resort you have to re-boot your brain.

DOS for brains: You only think of one thing at a time, and can't remember anything else you wanted to think about. You think only in words, never in pictures.

UNIX for brains: Wow! You can think of *lots* of things all at once ... until your brain runs out of sockets. You can only talk, though, with people who have brains made by the same vendor. Unfortunately, you also never make any sense and have to read manuals to learn how to think. Predominantly a random thinker.

CP/M for brains: A very slow and old fashioned thinker. You can only remember things that are less than 3 letters long.

MVS/CICS for brains: You have a very big and expensive brain. You can think about many things at one time but you never know what other parts of your brain are thinking unless you have set up SNA connections between your brain's hemispheres. You also need an army of systems programmers to define what thoughts you can and cannot have.

OS/2 for brains: You can think about many things at once but need the equivalent of eighteen sets of encyclopedias in memory to produce any rational thought. No one supports your way of thinking and many laugh at you whenever you speak.

Macintosh System/7 for brains: Simple thoughts for simple people. Thinking that looks good and feels good ... but is expensive.

Pick for brains: I now narthing. Narthing, Mr. Fawlty.

Amiga OS for brains: You can think of many things at once, even with a very small memory. The trouble is that, sometimes one thought starts to think about things another thought was using. This leads to a compelling need to wrap a tea towel around your head and sit crosslegged on the floor.

Linux for brains: You can think of any number of things and not run out of sockets. Unfortunately, there is no support for your particular limbs, ears, mouth or ... thingy ... available yet so you are reluctant to change over at this stage.

TASK: Shoot yourself in the foot.

C: You shoot yourself in the foot.

C++: You accidentally create a dozen instances of yourself and shootthem all in the foot. Providing emergency medical assistance isimpossible since you can't tell which are bitwise copies and which arejust 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 anyway 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 placeARM.HAND.FINGER on HANDGUN.TRIGGER and SQUEEZE. THEN return HANDGUN toHOLSTER. 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 largersystems, continue until entire lower body is waterlogged.

Visual Basic: You'll really only appear to have shot yourself in thefoot, 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, thebullet, 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, shootut near line 1

The following poem appeared in INFOCUS magazine. The originalauthors were Fred Bremmer and Steve Kroese of Calvin College & Seminaryof Grand Rapids, MI.

A poll conducted among INFOCUS readers had established "waka" as theproper pronunciation for the angle-bracket characters, althoughsome readers held out resolutely for "norkies."

The text of the poem follows:

<>!*''#
^"`$$-
!*=@$_
%*<>~#4
&[]../
|{,,SYSTEM HALTED

The poem can only be appreciated by reading it aloud, as follows:

Waka waka bang splat tick tick hash,
Caret quote back-tick dollar dollar dash,
Bang splat equal at dollar under-score,
Percent splat waka waka tilde number four,
Ampersand bracket bracket dot dot slash,
Pipe curly-bracket comma comma CRASH.

These acutally work with the Korn Shell (csh):

$ PATH=pretending$ /usr/bin/which senseno sense in pretending$ mkdir matter$ cat > matterksh: matter: cannot create$ cat "food in cans"cat: cannot open food in cans$ cat "door: paws too slippery"cat: cannot open door: paws too slippery$ write "virgin forest"virgin forest is not logged on.$ man youNo manual entry for you.$ look into "my eyes"can't open my eyes$ talk Marv_Albert@NBCtalk: NBC: Can't figure out network address.$ man -kisses dogdog: nothing appropriate

... and one that works with the C Shell (csh):

% 'Thou shalt not commit adultery'Thou shalt not commit adultery: Command not found.

Dilberted
To be exploited and oppressed by your boss. Derived from the experiences of Dilbert, thegeek-in-hell comic strip character. "I've been dilberted again. The old man revised thespecs for the fourth time this week."

Link Rot
The process by which links on a web page became as obsolete as the sites they'reconnected to change location or die.

Chip Jewelry
A euphemism for old computers destined to be scrapped or turned into decorativeornaments. "I paid three grand for that Mac SE, and now it's nothing but chip jewelry."

Crapplet
A badly written or profoundly useless Java applet. "I just wasted 30 minutes downloadingthis stinkin' crapplet!"

Plug-and-Play
A new hire who doesn't need any training. "The new guy, John, is great. He's totallyplug-and-play."

World Wide Wait
The real meaning of WWW.

CGI Joe
A hard-core CGI script programmer with all the social skills and charisma of a plasticaction figure.

Dorito Syndrome
Feelings of emptiness and dissatisfaction triggered by addictive substances that lacknutritional content. "I just spent six hours surfing the Web, and now I've got a badcase of Dorito Syndrome."

Mouse Arrest
Getting busted for violating an online service's rule of conduct. "Sorry I couldn't getback to you. AOL put me under mouse arrest."

Glazing
Corporate-speak for sleeping with your eyes open. A popular pastime at conferences andearly-morning meetings. "Didn't he notice that half the room was glazing by the secondsession?"

404
Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web message "404, URL Not Found," meaningthat the document you've tried to access can't be located. "Don't bother askinghim...he's 404, man."

Dead Tree Edition
The paper version of a publication available in both paper and electronic forms, as in:"The dead tree edition of the San Francisco Chronicle..."

Egosurfing
Scanning the net, databases, print media, or research papers looking for the mention ofyour name.

Graybar Land
The place you go while you're staring at a computer that's processing something veryslowly (while you watch the gray bar creep across the screen). "I was in graybar landfor what seemed like hours, thanks to that CAD rendering."

Open-Collar Workers
People who work at home or telecommute.

Squirt The Bird
To transmit a signal up to a satellite. "Crew and talent are ready...what time do wesquirt the bird?"

Brain Fart
A byproduct of a bloated mind producing information effortlessly. A burst of usefulinformation. "I know you're busy on the Microsoft story, but can you give us a brainfart on the Mitnik bust?" Variation of old hacker slang that had more negativeconnotations.

Cobweb Sitev
A World Wide Web Site that hasn't been updated for a long time. A dead web page.

It's a Feature
From the adage "It's not a bug, it's a feature." Used sarcastically to describe anunpleasant experience that you wish to gloss over.

Keyboard Plaque
The disgusting buildup of dirt and crud found on computer keyboards. "Are there anyother terminals I can use? This one has a bad case of keyboard plaque."

Career-Limiting Move (CLM)
Used among microserfs to describe an ill-advised activity. Trashing your boss while heor she is within earshot is a serious CLM.

Elvis Year
The peak year of something's popularity. "Barney the dinosaur's Elvis year was 1993."

Alpha Geek
The most knowledgable, technically proficient person in an office or work group. "AskLarry, he's the alpha geek around here."

Adminisphere
The rarified organizational layers beginning just above the rack and file. Decisionsthat fall from the adminisphere are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to theproblems they were designed to solve.

Tourists
People who are taking training classes just to get a vacation from their jobs. "We hadabout three serious students in the class; the rest were tourists."

Blowing Your Buffer
Losing one's train of thought. Occurs when the person you are speaking with won't letyou get a word in edgewise or has just said something so astonishing that your traingets derailed. "Damn, I just blew my buffer!"

Gray Matter
Older, experienced business people hired by young entrpreneurial firms looking to appearmore reputable and established.

Bookmark
To take note of a person for future reference (a metaphor borrowed from web browsers)."I bookmarked him after seeing his cool demo at Siggraph."

Nyetscape
Nickname for AOL's less-than-full-featured Web browser.

Beepilepsy
The brief siezure people sometimes suffer when their beepers go off, especially invibrator mode. Characterized by physical spasms, goofy facial expressions, and stoppingspeech in mid-sentence.

Salmon Day
The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed in theend.

SEX(6)              EUNUCH Programmer's Manual               SEX(6)NAME     sex - have sexSYNOPSIS     sex [ options ] ...  [ username ] ...DESCRIPTION     sex allows the invoker to have sex with the user(s) speci-     fied in the command line.  If no users are specified, they     are taken from the LOVERS environment variable.  Options to     make things more interesting are as follows:     -1   masturbate     -a   external stimulus (aphrodisiac) option     -b   buggery     -B          bestiality with      -c   chocolate sauce option     -C   chaining option (cuffs included) (see also -m -s -W)     -d          get a date with the features described in      -e   exhibitionism (image sent to all machines on the net)     -f   foreplay option     -F   nasal sex with plants     -i   coitus interruptus (messy!)     -j   jacuzzi option (California sites only)     -l   leather option     -m   masochism (see -s)     -M   triple parallel (Menage a Trois) option     -n   necrophilia (if target process is not dead, program          kills it)     -o   oral option     -O   parallel access (orgy)     -p   debug option (proposition only)     -P   pedophilia (must specify a child process)Printed 2/15/87              2/15/87                            1SEX(6)              EUNUCH Programmer's Manual               SEX(6)     -q   quickie (wham, bam, thank you, ma'am)     -s   sadism (target must set -m)     -S   sundae option     -T          voice-net sex via standard uucp autodialer facilities;          area code prefix of 900 is assumed.     -v   voyeurism (surveys the entire net)     -w   whipped cream option     -W   whips (see also -s, -C, and -m)ENVIRONMENT     LOVERS          is a list of default partners which will be used if          none are specified in the command line.  If any are          specified, the values in LOVERS is ignored.FILES     /usr/lib/sex/animals          animals for bestiality     /usr/lib/sex/blackbook        possible dates     /usr/lib/sex/sundaes          sundae recipes     /usr/lib/sex/s&m         sado-masochistic equipmentBUGS     ^C (quit process) may leave the user very unsatisfied.     ^Z (stop process) is usually quite messy.MAN AUTHOR     Author prefers to be anonymous.HISTORY     The oldest program.

A customer calls a UNIX consultant with a question:

Customer: What is the command that will tell me the revision code of a program?

UNIX consultant: Yes, that's correct.

C: No, what is it?

UC: Yes.

C: So, which is the one?

UC: No. "which" is used to find the program.

C: Stop this. Who are you?

UC: Use "who am i" not "who r you". You can also "finger you" to get information about you.

C: All I want to know is what finds the revision code?

UC: Use "what".

C: That's what I am trying to find out. Isn't that true?

UC: No. "true" gives you 0.

C: Which one?

UC: "true" gives you 0. "which program name"

C: Let's get back to my problem. What program? How do I find it?

UC: Type "find / -name it -print" to find "it". Type "what program" to get the revision code.

C: I want to find the revision code.

UC: You can't "find revisioncode", you must use "what program".

C: Which command will do what I need?

UC: No. "which command" will find "command".

C: I think I understand. Let me write that.

UC: You can "write that" only if "that" is a user on your system.

C: Write what?

UC: No. "write that". "what program".

C: Cut that out!

UC: Yes. Those are valid files for "cut". Don't forget the options.

C: Do you always do this?

UC: "du" will give you disk usage.

C: HELP!

UC: "help" is only used for Source Code Control System (SCCS).

C: You make me angry.

UC: No, I don't "make me" angry but I did "make programname" when I was upset once.

C: I don't want to make trouble, so no more.

UC: No "more"? "which" will help you find "more" Every system has "more".

C: Nice help! I'm confused more now!

UC: Understand that since "help" is such a small program, it is better not to "nice help". And "more now" is not allowed but "at now" is. Unless of course "now" is a file name.

C: This is almost as confusing as my PC.

UC: I didn't know you needed help with "pc". I'm transferring you to the Pascal compiler team...

Send me mail: cmacina at nac dot net (Sorry there's no link -- this is to reduce spam)

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