Collage 266               H u m o u r N e t               22 MAY 96

In the most recent "Stupid Criminals" Collage (Collage 261), there
was a piece about a criminal who tried to hold up a Dunkin' Donuts
(and was promptly arrested). Many of you subsequently wrote to me to
request an explanation; well, here's some "background" information
to help you understand the humor in the "Best-Laid Plans" piece ...

<AP news wire>

"Crank Police Recording Tells Callers Police on Coffee Break"

NEW YORK -- Callers to police headquarters heard a crank recording
that for 12 hours told them officers were too busy eating donuts and
drinking coffee to help them, the New York Post reported today.

(So where does the "crank" part come in?)

The recording ran for 12 hours until 6 a.m. Thursday, when a worker
in the Communications Division discovered it, the newspaper said,
citing unidentified sources.

(If it ran that long, and was discovered in that manner, we can only
assume two things: (1) The callers apparently didn't find anything
odd or suspicious about the message -- at least, not enough to report
to the police directly, and (2) the police must have been too busy
with coffee and donuts to notice that very few calls were coming in.)

Police had no immediate comment on the report.

(<insert gratuitous remark about how they were too busy eating donuts
and drinking coffee to comment>)

Police believe one or more computer hackers decoded an access code
and changed the taped message, a spokesman who wasn't identified told
the paper.

(Well, I'm sure the "HillStreetBlues" access code wasn't too tough
to crack. Probably hasn't been changed yet, either.)

</AP>

Computers. Even the police can't handle them. And to help the rest of
us understand them, we have Collage 266 ...

Kelly in Oregon sends us "Proper Care of Floppies" (even *I* didn't
know most of this stuff!), and Lorraine in Texas contributes "America
Offline" (hysterical!) and "Where Deleted Characters Go" (another
Washington Post piece).

Many thanks to Kelly and Lorraine for the contents of this *first*
(I think) "All Computer Humor" Collage. And, as always, a big thanks
to Jim in L.A. for the AP news story.

Happy bytes!

- Vince Sabio
  HumourNet Moderator
  HumourNet@telephonet.com
____________________________________________________________________
          Opener (above) Copyright 1996 by Vincent Sabio
  Permission is hereby granted to forward or post this "Collage";
  please observe the guidelines stated at the end of the message.
____________________________________________________________________

SUBJ: Proper Care of Floppies

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 needs 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 several
dollars 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 ("data compression") enough to allow for more
storage. Be sure to cover all the openings with scotch tape to
prevent loss of data.

========================[ H U M O U R N E T ]=======================

SUBJ: America Offline: Welcome Back to Reality!

Every day you hear more and more people talking about it. You hear
about it at work, in restaurants, even on the bus. More and more
Americans are discovering how much more free time they have, how
much easier it is to manage their finances and personal & business
relationships. They have discovered the joys of being ...

                * * *  O F F - L I N E  * * *

Our free software includes utilities to seek out and destroy all
remnants of communications software on your computer (also works
over a network). It even removes that pesky little winsock.dll from
your hard drive once and for all! Say goodbye to the World-Wide
Web and hello to the friends and family you forgot you had! Our
software, once run, remains memory-resident, and like a background
virus checker, protects your computer from re-installation of
telecommunications software.

Here's how the program works:

1. First you run the good-bye letter generation program that
automatically logs you into all your favorite on-line services and
posts good-bye notes to the news groups and message areas of your
choice. It encourages people to call or even write you if they want
to talk to you, and lets them know that you're going to be okay, but
that you're just going offline. (It even logs you into your
favorite chat areas and makes witty parting comments, and leaves
requests with systems administrators to cancel your account.)

2. Our program recognizes every version of every known communications
software package for DOS, Windows, Windows 95, Windows NT, OS/2 and
Unix, (and there's even a special version for you Mac Users).

[Editor's Note: Right: the "special Mac version" comes on a single
disk, and has a smiley-face icon that says "Click Me!" -- instead of
*seven* disks and a 235-page instruction manual. :-) </vs>]

[cont'd] ... It will remove all of these programs and overwrite
your hard drive with null strings so they can't be undeleted. And
just so you don't try to sneak in through a back door -- like an
automated check payment window in a program like Quicken -- our
software also removes the serial communications abilities of all
financial and related software.

3. Hardware reconfiguration. Our software alters your system
configuration so that no device that even remotely resembles a
modem or other communications interface will ever work on your
computer again. It installs a "listening program" as a permanent
TST so that even if your computer somehow encounters a modem tone,
it will immediately reboot, thereby keeping you effectively offline,
even in a network environment.

4. Hardware destruction. The next step is to destroy your modems.
This is best done with a hammer. We recommend a hammer because we
know you will start to feel, in that destructive release, the first
real joy of your new life offline. With each crushing blow, we
encourage you to think of the countless hours you've wasted, the
completely irrelevant information you have gathered, and the many
people who completely mis-represented themselves to you when you
were online.

5. Finally, our software brings you a brief lesson on meditation to
help you begin to relax without being online. It also includes a
list of things that you can do offline, like feeding your cat that
you forgot you had, watering the plants, doing the dishes, seeing
your friends in person, writing notes on pieces of paper, calling
your parents on their birthdays instead of sending e-mail. The list
includes more than 1,000 offline living tips.

We're sure you'll agree that this software is the best of its kind
for getting offline quickly -- and staying that way!

To get your free software, please send a hand-written note to
America Offline, Inc., 8630M Guilford Road, Suite 323, Columbia, MD,
21046. Please include a stamped, self-addressed envelope.

Please specify your operating system and 3.5 or 5.25 inch disks.

Note: Our software is not available on CD ROM, and we do not have a
support BBS or a Web page or even a fax machine.

OUR SOFTWARE IS NOT AVAILABLE ONLINE. UPLOADING IT IS EXPRESSLY
FORBIDDEN!

========================[ H U M O U R N E T ]=======================

SUBJ: Where Deleted Characters Go
By Joel Garreau, as reported in his Cybersurfing column in the
Washington Post.

QUESTION: Where do the characters go when I use my backspace or
delete them on my PC?

ANSWER: The characters go to different places, depending on whom
you ask:

* The Catholic Church's approach to characters: The nice characters
go to Heaven, where they are bathed in the light of happiness. The
naughty characters are punished for their sins. Naughty characters
are those involved in the creation of naughty words, such as
"breast," "sex" and "contraception."

* The Buddhist explanation: If a character has lived rightly, and
its karma is good, then after it has been deleted it will be
reincarnated as a different, higher character. Those funny
characters above the numbers on your keyboard will become numbers,
numbers will become letters, and lower-case letters will become
upper-case.

* The 20th-century bitter cynical nihilist explanation: Who cares?
It doesn't really matter if they're on the page, deleted, undeleted,
underlined, etc. It's all the same.

* The Mac user's explanation: All the characters written on a PC
and then deleted go to straight to PC hell. If you're using a PC,
you can probably see the deleted characters, because you're in PC
hell also.

* Stephen King's explanation: Every time you hit the (Del) key, you
unleash a tiny monster inside the cursor, who tears the poor
unsuspecting characters to shreds, drinks their blood, then eats
them, bones and all. Hah, hah, hah!

* Dave Barry's explanation: The deleted characters are shipped to
Battle Creek, Michigan, where they're made into Pop-Tart filling;
this explains why Pop-Tarts are so flammable, while cheap imitations
are not flammable. I'm not making this up.

* IBM's explanation: The characters are not real. They exist only
on the screen when they are needed, as concepts, so to delete them
is merely to de-conceptualize them. Get a life.

* PETA's (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) explanation:
You've been DELETING them??? Can't you hear them SCREAMING??? Why
don't you go CLUB some BABY SEALS while wearing a MINK, you pig!!!!

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</collage266>