'go forth and multiply,' he didn't say 'like rabbits'. With that large a population, ten thousand people die every hour. Over a quarter-million people a day. Do you think Peter can meet them all personally?"

"I guess not".

"You guess right. So Peter had to franchise the operation. Now, Pei:er is the CEO of Team Peter Enterprises, Inc. He just sits in the corporate headquarters and sets policy. Franchisees like me handle the actual inductions." Gabriel looked through his paperwork some more, and then continued, "Your paperwork seems to be in order. And with a background like yours, you'll be getting a plum job assignment"

"Job assignment?"

"Of course. Did you expect to spend the re^t of eternity sitting and drinking ambrosia? Heaven is a big operation. You have to put your weight around here!" Gabriel took out atriplicate form, had Bill sign at the bottom, and then tore out the middle copy and handed it to Bill. "Take this down to induction center #23 and meet up with your occupational orientator. His name is Abraham." Bill started to ask a question, but Gabriel interrupted him, "No, he's not that Abraham."

Bill walked down a muddy trail for ten miles until he came to induction center #23. He met with Abraham after a mere six-hour wait.

"Heaven is centuries behind in building its data processing infra­structure," explained Abraham. "As you've seen, we're still doing everything on paper. It takes us a week just to process new entries."

"I had to wait three weeks?" said Bill. Abraham stared at Bill angri­ly, and Bill realized that he'd made a mistake. Even in Heaven, it's best not to contradict a bureaucrat." Well, Bill offered, "maybe that Bosnia thing has you, guys, backed up."

Abraham's look of anger faded to mere annoyance. "Your job will be to supervise Heaven's new data processing center. We're building the largest computing facility in creation. Haifa million computers connect­ed by a multi-segment fiber optic network, all running into a back-end server network with a thousand CPUs on a gigabit channel. Fully fault tolerant. Fully distributed processing. The works."

Bill could barely contain his excitement "Wow! What a great job! This is really Heaven! "

"We're just finishing construction, and we'll be starting operations soon. Would you like to go to the center now?"

"You bet!"

Abraham and Bill caught the shuttle bus and went to Heaven's new data processing center. It was a truly huge facility, a hundred times bigger than the Astrodome. Workmen were crawling all over the place, getting the miles of fiber optic cables properly installed. But the center was dominated by the computers. Haifa million computers, arranged neatly row-by-row, half a million....

.... Power PC's....

.... all running Mac/OS? Not an Intel PC in sight! Not a single byte of Microsoft code!

The thought of spending the rest of eternity using products that he had spent his whole life working to destroy was too much for Bill. -"What about PCs???" he exclaimed. "What about Windows??? What about Excel??? What about Word???"

"You're forgetting something", said Abraham.

"What's that?" asked Bill plaintively.

"This is Heaven," explained Abraham. "We need an operating sys­tem that's heavenly to use. If you want to build a data processing center based on PCs running Windows, then ....

....GO TO HELL!

E. Can you do a better translation?

A) oa programmers

OA young programmers began to work online,

One didn't pay for Internet, and then there were 9.

9 young programmers used copies that they made, But one was caught by FBI, and then there were 8.

8 young programmers discussed about heaven,

One said, "It's Windows 95!", and then there were 7,

7 young programmers found bugs they want to fix, But one was fixed by the bug, and then there were 6.

6 young programmers were testing the hard drive,

One got the string "Format complete", and then there were 5,

5 young programmers were running the Front Door, The BBS of one was hacked, and then there were 4.

4 young programmers worked using only C,

One said some good about Pascal, and then there were 3.

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3 young programmers didn't know what to do,

One tried to call the on-line help, and then there were 2,

2 young programmers were testing what they done, One got a virus in his brain, and then there was 1.

1 young programmer was as mighty as a hero, But tried to speak with user, and then there was 0.

Boss cried: "Oh, where is the program we must have?!" And fired one programmer, and then there were FF.

0A программистов

0A программистов продукт решили сделать. 1 спросил: «А деньги где?» и их осталось девять.

9 программистов предстали перед боссом 1 из них не знал foxpro и их осталось восемь.

8 программистов купили IBM.

1 из них сказал «Мае — класс!» и их осталось семь.

7 программистов решили help прочесть.

У одного накрылся винт и их осталось шесть.

6 программистов пытались код понять. 1 из них сошёл с ума и их осталось пять.

5 программистов купили CD-ROM.

1 принёс китайский диск — остались вчетвером.

4 программиста работали на «С».

1 из них хвалил PASCAL и их осталось три.

3 программиста играли в сетке в «DOOM».

чуть-чуть замешкался и счёт стал равен двум.

программиста набрали дружно «WIN».

1 устал загрузки ждать — остался лишь один.

1 программист всё взял под свой контроль, Но встретился с заказчиком и их осталось ноль.

0 программистов ругал сердитый шеф, потом уволил одного и стало их FF!!!

b) What if Dr. Suess wrote a manual?

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!

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 effect 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.

А если бы доктор Суэз написал инструкцию?

Если вдруг пакет программный вас решится обобрать, И от прерываний шина станет вдруг озорничать, Если память с дисководом станут люто воевать, Вам ни денег, ни железа, ни покоя не видать.

Если вдруг в меню стандартном ваш курсор начнет шалить, И двойной щелчок иконку сразу может удалить, И мозги у базы данных перестанут вдруг варить, Это значит, все пропало, безвозвратно, может быть.

Если надпись на коробке может дельный дать совет, И мышиный коврик даже подключиться в Internet, А несносные программы вам откажут делово, Видите ли, протокол им не подходит. Каково?

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