Category: computers

*** VIRUS ALERT ***

If you receive an email entitled “Fighting Canaries,” delete it immediately. Do not open it! It will not only erase everything on your hard drive, but it will also delete anything on disks within 20 feet of your computer.

It demagnetises the stripes on ALL of your credit cards.
It reprograms your ATM access code, screws up the tracking on your VCR and uses subspace field harmonics to scratch any CD’s you attempt to play.

It will re-calibrate your refrigerator’s coolness settings so all your ice cream melts and your milk curdles.
It will program your phone autodial to call only your mother-in-law’s number.

This virus will mix antifreeze into your fish tank.
It will drink all your beer.
It will leave dirty socks on the coffee table when you are expecting company.

Its radioactive emissions will cause your toe jam and bellybutton fuzz (be honest, you have some) to migrate behind your ears.
It will replace your shampoo with Nair and your Nair with Rogaine, all while dating your current boy/girlfriend behind your back and billing their hotel rendezvous to your Visa card.
It will cause you to run with scissors and throw things in a way that is only fun until someone loses an eye.

It will give you Dutch Elm Disease and Tinea.
It will rewrite your backup files, changing all your active verbs to passive tense and incorporating undetectable misspellings which grossly change theinterpretations of key sentences.

If the “Badtimes” message is opened in a Windows95 environment, it will leave the toilet seat up and leave your hair dryer plugged in dangerously close to a full bathtub.

It will not only remove the forbidden tags from your mattresses and pillows, but it will also refill your skim milk with whole milk.
It will replace all your luncheon meat with Spam.
It will molecularly rearrange your cologne or perfume, causing it to smell like dill pickles.

It is insidious and subtle. It is dangerous and terrifying to behold. It is also a rather interesting shade of mauve.

These are just a few signs of infection…

Q: When does Micheal Jackson go to bed?
A: When the big hands touch the little hands.

Nike virus: Just Does It!

What If Dr. Seuss was a Technical Writer? Here’s an easy game to play.

Here’s an easy thing to say:

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port, and the bus is interrupted as a very last resort, and the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort, then the socket packet pocket has an error to report!

If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash, and the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash, and your data is corrupted ’cause the index doesn’t hash, then your situation’s hopeless, and your system’s gonna crash!

You can’t say this?

What a shame sir!

We’ll find you another game sir.

If the label on the cable on the table at your house, says the network is connected to the button on your mouse, but your packets want to tunnel on another protocol, that’s repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall.

And your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss so your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse, then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang, ’cause as sure as I’m a poet, the sucker’s gonna hang!

When the copy of your floppy’s getting sloppy on the disk, and the microcode instructions cause unnecessary risk, then you have to flash your memory and you’ll want to RAM your ROM. Quickly turn off the computer and be sure to tell your mom!

Submitted by Glaci
Edited by Curtis

If Hewlett-Packard ran Christmas…They would market the Reverse Polish Ornament, which is put in your attic on the weekend after Thanksgiving, and placed out for viewing the day after the January Bowl Games.

Computer novices may feel like they’re alone these days, but some of the following calls to IBM’s help center show there are plenty of people out there who still are inching onto the information superhighway. After a caller gave a technician her PC’s serial number, he scanned a database of registered users and responded, “I see you have an Aptiva” desktop unit. Before he could say another word, the caller shrieked and said she’d be right back. When the customer returned, the technician asked if she was all right. The caller responded: “Had I realized you could see me, I never would have telephoned in my bathrobe.”
A customer who had just received a laptop computer asked about the power-saving feature known as “hibernate.” Would this hibernate device work in the spring and summer, the caller asked.

Another caller explained she had received a gift of software on 5.25-inch diskettes, but she had only a 3.5-inch disk drive on her computer. The technician said she had two options: Get a second disk drive, or use 3.5-inch diskettes. The customer called back later, now complaining that her disk drive was making a terrible noise. And this despite the fact that she was using a 3.5-inch diskette, she said. After a bunch of questions, the technician determined the caller had used a pair of scissors to trim the 5.25-inch diskettes to fit the 3.5-inch drive.

A caller, perplexed that his new desktop computer – the one that was supposed to do everything short of bringing on world peace – was doing nothing, cried out for help. No problem, the IBM technician said. First, open a “window” to launch a specific program. The conversation continued, and the caller asked a few moments later if it might be all right to close the window. Why, the IBM technician asked. Because, the caller responded, it was getting very chilly.

Remember when…

A computer was something on TV
from a science fiction show
A window was something you hated to clean…
And RAM was the cousin of a goat…

MEG was the name of my girlfriend
And GIG was your middle finger upright
Now they all mean different things
And that really MEGA bytes

An application was for employment
A program was a TV show
A cursor used profanity
A keyboard was a piano

Memory was something that you lost with age
A CD was a bank account
And if you unzipped anything in public
You’d be in jail for a while

Log on was adding wood to the fire
Hard drive was a long trip on the road
A mouse pad was where a mouse lived
And a backup happened to your commode

Cut you did with a pocket knife
Paste you did with glue
A web was a spider’s home
And a virus was the flu

I guess I’ll stick to my pad and paper
And the memory in my head
I hear nobody’s been killed in a computer crash
But when it happens they wish they were dead

A woman called the Canon help desk with a problem with her printer. The tech asked her if she was “running it under Windows.”

The woman then responded, “No, my desk is next to the door. But that is a good point. The man sitting in the cubicle next to me is under a window, and his is working fine.”

Tech Support: “How much free space do you have on your hard drive?”

Customer: “Well, my wife likes to get up there on that Internet, and she downloaded ten hours of free space. Is that enough?”

Overheard in a computer shop:

Customer: “I’d like a mouse mat, please.”

Salesperson: “Certainly sir, we’ve got a large variety.”

Customer: “But will they be compatible with my computer?”

Customer: “Can you copy the Internet for me on this diskette?”

Customer: “So that’ll get me connected to the Internet, right?”

Tech Support: “Yeah.”

Customer: “And that’s the latest version of the Internet, right?”

Tech Support: “Uhh…uh…uh…yeah.”

Customer: “My computer crashed!”

Tech Support: “It crashed?”

Customer: “Yeah, it won’t let me play my game.”

Tech Support: “Alright, hit Control-Alt-Delete to reboot.”

Customer: “No, it didn’t crash — it crashed.”

Tech Support: “Huh?”

Customer: “I crashed my game. That’s what I said before. Now it doesn’t work.”

Turned out, the user was playing Lunar Lander and crashed his spaceship.

Tech Support: “Click on ‘File,’ then ‘New Game.'”

Customer: [pause] “Wow! How’d you learn how to do that?”

A computer geek goes to prison for fraud, they put him in a cell with a 300LB guy,

Having heard what happens to geeks in prison and being nervous he figures he had better introduce himself, He extends his hand and says with a quivering voice, Hi my name is John Smith.

The big guy who actually is a nice guy extends his and says my name is Turner Brown.

The geek passes out.

The big guy fans him and brings him too.

Why did you pass out he asked?

The geek replies, what did you say your name was?

Turner Brown he replies.

Oh God the geek says I thought you said “TURN AROUND”.

1. Never leave diskettes in the disk drive, as data can leak out of the
disk and corrode the inner mechanics of the drive. Diskettes should be
rolled up and stored in pencil holders.

2. Diskettes should be cleaned and waxed once a week. Microscopic metal
particles can be removed by waving a powerful magnet over the surface of
the disk. Any stubborn metallic shavings can be removed with scouring
powder and soap. When waxing diskettes, make sure application is even.
This will allow the diskettes to spin faster, resulting in better access
time.

3. Do not fold diskettes unless they do not fit in the drive. “Big”
diskettes may be folded and used in “little” disk drives.

4. Never insert a disk into the drive upside down. The data can fall off
the surface of the disk and jam the intricate mechanics of the drive.

5. Diskettes cannot be backed up by running them through the xerox
machine. If your data is going to need to be backed up, simply insert two
diskettes together into the drive. Whenever you update a document, the
data will be recorded on both diskettes.

6. Diskettes should not be inserted into or removed from the drive while
the red light is flashing. Doing so could result in smeared or possibly
unreadable text. Occasionally the red light continues to flash in what is
known as a “hung” or “hooked” state. If your system is “hooking” you, you
will probably need to insert a few coins before being allowed to access
the disk drive.

7. If your diskette is full and you need more storage space, remove the
disk from the drive and shake vigorously for two minutes. This will pack
the data enough (Data Compression) to allow for more storage. Be sure to
cover all the openings with scotch tape to prevent loss of data.

8. Data access time can be greatly improved by cutting more holes in the
diskette jacket. This will provide more simultaneous access points to the
disk.

9.Diskettes can be used as coasters for beverage glasses, provided they
have been properly waxed beforehand. Be sure to wipe the diskettes dry
before inserting into drive. (see item #2 above.)

10. Never use scissors and glue to manually edit documents. The data
stored is much too small to be seen with the naked eye, and you may end up
with data from some other document stuck in the middle of your document.
Razor blades and scotch tape may be used, provided the user is equipped
with an electron microscope.

11. Periodically spray diskettes with insecticide to prevent system bugs
from spreading.

DANGER: new viruses discovered!:

Congressional Virus v 2.0 : Runs every program on the hard drive simultaneously, but doesn’t allow the user to accomplish anything.

Tipper Gore Virus : When you attempt to play any sound file, it pops up a warning window stating that some lyrics may be unsuitable for children.

Government Ecomomist Virus : Nothing works, but all your diagnostic software says everything is fine.

New World Order Virus : Probably harmless, but it makes a lot of people really mad just thinking about it.

Warren Commission Virus : Won’t allow you to open your files for 75 years.

David Duke Virus : Makes your screen go completely white.

Pat Buchanan Virus : Shifts all your output to the extreme right of your screen.

Texas Virus : Makes sure it’s bigger than any other file.

Adam And Eve Virus : Takes a couple of bytes out of your Apple.

Warren Beatty Virus : Constantly tries to prove it’s virility by attaching itself to younger or newer files.

Airline Virus : You’re in Dallas, but your data is in Singapore.

Freudian Virus : Your computer becomes obsessed with marrying its own motherboard.

PBS Virus : Your PC stops what it’s doing every few minutes to ask for money.

Jimmy Hoffa Virus : Nobody can find it.

Kevorkian Virus : Helps your computer shut down whenever it wants to.

Healthcare Virus : Tests your system for a day, finds nothing wrong, and sends a you a bill for $4,500.

LAPD Virus : It claims it feels threatened by the other files on your PC and erases them in “self-defence”.

Billy Graham Virus : When you save a file, it prints, “I am saved!” to the screen.

Michael Jackson Virus : Hard to identify because it is constantly altering its appearance. This Virus won’t harm your PC, but it will trash your car.

And finally…

JokeGalore.com Virus : poses as a harmless list of funny computer Virus names! Is quickly passed from one user to all other users known via e-mail, consequently consuming all known network resources.

Caring for floppy disks

ORIGAMI
Art of paper folding. In order to obtain a nice and effectiveness result, put the floppy in the disk drive after folding it several times in different directions. With a little luck, you should be able to get it jammed. Now, ask yourself. How can your disk get damaged if you can’t even get it out of the drive?

SMOKE
Use cigarettes or anything that could be burnt. When you are smoking, blow directly to your disk. In that way, you will be able to destroy it soon, and if you are lucky, damage the drive as well.

PIRANHAS
If you don’t have any at home, you can use a stapler, a clip, or simply write down on the disk label with a hard point pencil or pen. This wonderful method of “caring” for disks also often gives you a pretty bite-like design on the remaining pieces of the disk.

MAGNETS
They are wonderful. You can find them in the telephone, in some paper weights, and stuck on the frige door. If you can’t find any, you can leave the floppies on the printer or on your display for a while, making sure that they are on.

MAIL
Put a disk in an envelope and don’t write any warning on it; then mail it to someone, and that’s all.

MAGIC TOUCH
Touch your floppy. As much as you can. If you have marmelade or butter in your fingers, better. Your floppy will acknowledge it.

DON’T USE ANY ENVELOPE
Archive them wihtout their envelope, piled under a lot of papers and manuals.

DON’T MAKE BACKUPS
Of course, if you don’t have any security copy, you won’t have to worry about how to destroy them once you have lost the original.

SUPREME STUPIDITY
It is the best way of destroying floppies. If you practice it regularly, you’ll find new methods to add to this list.