While driving along, you come up behind a car who's license plate reads "961 EXE", and you wonder why anyone would name a program "961". Once I aimed my remote at the TV and pointed it at the upper left corner, where the "close" box should have been, and double-clicked the "power" button on the remote. I swore I would never add to this again (I O/D'd on the thread a year or two back!), but today I was labelling a disk, and suddenly thought `I can't do that - it's write-protected' Bob. When you try to format the new tape you just put in your VCR (and panic because you can't remember how). >I've got a similair one, I saw a license plate `PGP 823', and the first >thing that came to my mind was, `Hey, the release hasn't gotten that far, I saw a Swedish car in town the other day, with a licence plate that went something like `DNS 123'. I automatically parsed that to `Domain Name Service', and laughed a bit at myself for doing so. Later that day, I told a fellow hacker about the incident, that I had seen a DNS-registered car, and automatically parsed that into `Domain Name Service' "Why should a car be registered in DNS?" he pondered. The very notion that I was talking about the car's registration plates didn't occur to him at all :-) you see a license plate with ATZ on it and instantly think 'OK' You start your wordprocessor and get ready to type your username and password. (actually, it happened to me while starting almost any application today and only in 3 out of 20 cases it was needed) I've got a similair one, I saw a license plate `PGP 823', and the first thing that came to my mind was, `Hey, the release hasn't gotten that far, has it?' >YKYBHTL when you're driving on a motorway and you worry that you >shouldn't be driving as root, in case you crash and do damage to >your car. >If there was a way to do your driving in an unprivileged user mode, >I'd feel safer with that. Of course there's no way to do that, silly. Only root can steer, turn on the air, change the radio station... Strange, in my car, I keep the radio and environmental controls writable by group "guest". Steering still requires "wheel" privs, tho, and you gotta be root to even get near the brake and the gas. Security on the parking brake and the gearshift seems a bit weak. The ZR-1 Corvette has something similar to this called a "valet key." In "root" mode, you have 400+ hp available for use. In "user" mode, you have only 210 hp. This doesn't keep you from crashing into a tree, it just keeps you from crashing into a tree at 180 mph. You see a license plate on a bus with DDN on it and think "Uh, a military bus, perhaps I should get off". Speaking of 'interesting user tricks' (notice that I'm attempting to be PC even tho I'm normally anti-pc to the max -- grin): The last one that I have heard (actually consult with the guy who incountered the weirdness) was a machine in pieces on the sec's desk. We received a phone call requesting that we 'fix the broken system' and found it had not even been plugged together _at all_!! I wasn't sure what to be more amazed at.... The fact that the people (actually political types -- added humor here :) did this _or_ that the consultant kept his face straight when presented with a machine in pieces. When he left they assumed that he was the 'god of computers' -- snicker. Found out later that the department responsible for maintaining the computer equipment for the place (part of the city government nonsense) barely knew more than the sec who placed the trouble call. They were quite nervious about enountering people who could actually assemble a computer and install software. What a sad state of things when so called 'professionals' of this quality are loose on the streets. Dan Smith You are afraid to turn off the TV without unmounting syncing disks and unmounting the file systems. Erm, I _do_ rewind the video tape, and eject it, and turn off the VCR before I turn off the TV. The TV is essentially only a monitor for the VCR, after all.... :) -Mark Hughes "In headlines today, the dreaded killfile virus spread across the country adding aol.com to peoples usenet kill files everywhere. The programmer of the virus still remains anonymous, but has been nominated several times for a Nobel peace prize." -Mark Atkinson With apologies to the ghost of Henry VIII, here's a version of "99 Wives with Heads on the Wall", written in RDDBOL (Doc Demento would probably love this): comment-section-begins comment-line: Copyright (C) 1995 Robert D. Davis comment-line: [who else would write something like this?] comment-line: All rights reserved comment-line: rumored date of origin: April 1 comment-section-ends useless-code-section-begins foo! useless-code-section-ends useful-code-section-begins set monty-python's-flying-circus-emulation-mode to on one variable is used variable-one is wife-count and is numeric displ "Henry the Eighth I am, I am, Henry the Eighth I am,[nl]" displ "Marrying wives, then off with their heads,[nl]" displ "Henry the Eighth I am, I am![nl][nl]" assign 99 to wife-count iterate wife-count down to 1 by 1 per iteration displ "@wife-count wives with heads on the wall,[nl]" displ "@wife-count wives with heads,[nl]" displ "Chop one off, toss it around,[nl]" displ "@(wife-count - 1) wives with heads on the wall.[nl]" displ "[nl]" end iteration stop halt crash short things out and shoot sparks from tantalum capacitors catch fire melt terminate-all-processing exit useful-code-section-ends ObYKYBHBGTLW: You know you've been hating Bill Gates too long when you see an ad in the paper saying "Win a trip to the NT" and you think "Why would I want to win a trip to WinNT? I already run !" For non-Australian readers, NT is the Northern Territory of Australia. >: (or infamous) within your circle of friends! Wild customer service stories >: are the best. John I have a friend who works at the help desk at Compuserve, and she got a call from a guy who bought a pentium computer, and when asked to provide a credit card number, shoved his Visa card into the 3.5" drive slot. She put him on hold while she burst out laughing. You walk in the house, see a Nordstrom's bag on the table, and wonder (a) why your wife has a Netscape shopping bag, and (b) when Netscape started issuing shopping bags, and (c) what they're for. Then you realize that the logo isn't *quite* the same as Netscape's... ..phsiii You lie in bed sleeping listening to the cicadas (large insect thing that makes a clicky noise bit like a grasshopper), and you decide the noise sounds like the clicky-clicky noise of an Indy booting up ... > ... you see a bus with FIFO written on its side in big letters, and > think it would be far more sensible for the _last_ person to have got > in to get off first. There are plenty of FIFO buses around though - they have an extra set of doors half way back. I suppose a true FIFO bus would have them at the rear, but I guess this would only work well if everyone wanted to get off in the same order as they got on, whereas real life is a bit messier than that, with some people making shorter journeys than others. Subject: YKYBHTLW... From: Tony Lima Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers I recently bought a new electric toothbrush. (If you have a problem with that, talk to my dentist.) While perusing the short instruction manual I noticed that technology has improved: the toothbrush now begins with gentle brushing, gradually increasing speed over the first week or so until it reaches full force. Then came the clincher. You can start the cycle over again by holding down the power button for five seconds. I realized I had just read the instructions for re-booting my toothbrush. I feel very old. - Tony