A young
executive was leaving the office late one evening when he
found
the CEO standing in front of a shredder with a piece of paper
in his
hand.
"Listen,"
said the CEO, "this is a very sensitive and important
document
here, and my secretary has gone for the night. Can you make
this
thing work?"
"Certainly,"
said the young executive. He turned the machine on,
inserted
the paper, and pressed the start button.
"Excellent,
excellent!" said the CEO as his paper disappeared inside
the
machine. "I just need one copy."
Wedding Vows
During the
wedding rehearsal, the groom approached the pastor with an
unusual offer.
"Look, I'll
give you $100 if you'll change the wedding vows. When you
get to me
and the part where I'm to promise to 'love, honor and obey'
and 'forsaking
all others, be faithful to her forever,' I'd
appreciate
it if you'd just leave that part out." He passed the
minister a
$100 bill and walked away satisfied.
It is now the
day of the wedding, and the bride and groom have moved
to that part
of the ceremony where the vows are exchanged. When it
comes time
for the groom's vows, the pastor looks the young man in
the eye and
says:
"Will you promise
to prostrate yourself before her, obey her every
command and
wish, serve her breakfast in bed every morning of your
life and swear
eternally before God and your lovely wife that you
will not ever
even look at another woman, as long as you both shall
live?"
The groom gulped and looked around, and said in a tiny voice, "Yes."
The groom leaned
toward the pastor and hissed, "I thought we had a
deal."
The pastor
put the $100 bill into his hand and whispered back, "She
made me a
much better offer."
Microsoft Patent
REDMOND, WA--In
what CEO Bill Gates called "an unfortunate but
necessary
step to protect our intellectual property from theft and
exploitation
by competitors," the Microsoft Corporation patented
the numbers
one and zero Monday.
With the patent,
Microsoft's rivals are prohibited from manufacturing
or selling
products containing zeroes and ones--the mathematical
building blocks
of all computer languages and programs--unless a
royalty fee
of 10 cents per digit used is paid to the software giant.
"Microsoft
has been using the binary system of ones and zeroes
ever since
its inception in 1975," Gates told reporters. "For years,
in the interest
of the overall health of the computer industry, we
permitted
the free and unfettered use of our proprietary numeric
systems. However,
changing marketplace conditions and the
increasingly
predatory practices of certain competitors now leave
us with no
choice but to seek compensation for the use of our
numerals."
A number of
major Silicon Valley players, including Apple
Computer,
Netscape and Sun Microsystems, said they will
challenge
the Microsoft patent as monopolistic and anti-
competitive,
claiming that the 10-cent-per-digit licensing fee would
bankrupt them
instantly.
"While, technically,
Java is a complex system of algorithms used to
create a platform-independent
programming environment, it is, at
its core,
just a string of trillions of ones and zeroes," said Sun
Microsystems
CEO Scott McNealy, whose company created the
Java programming
environment used in many Internet applications.
"The licensing
fees we'd have to pay Microsoft every day would be
approximately
327,000 times the total net worth of this company."
"If this patent
holds up in federal court, Apple will have no choice but
to convert
to analog," said Apple interim CEO Steve Jobs, "and I
have serious
doubts whether this company would be able to remain
competitive
selling pedal-operated computers running software off
vinyl LPs."
As a result
of the Microsoft patent, many other companies have
begun radically
revising their product lines: Database manufacturer
Oracle has
embarked on a crash program to develop "an abacus
for the next
millennium." Novell, whose communications and
networking
systems are also subject to Microsoft licensing fees, is
working with
top animal trainers on a chimpanzee-based message-
transmission
system. Hewlett-Packard is developing a
revolutionary
new steam-powered printer.
Despite the
swarm of protest, Gates is standing his ground,
maintaining
that ones and zeroes are the undisputed property of
Microsoft.
"We will vigorously
enforce our patents of these numbers, as they
are legally
ours," Gates said. "Among Microsoft's vast historical
archives are
Sanskrit cuneiform tablets from 1800 B.C. clearly
showing ones
and a symbol known as 'sunya,' or nothing. We also
own: papyrus
scrolls written by Pythagoras himself in which he
explains the
idea of singular notation, or 'one'; early tracts by
Mohammed ibn
Musa al Kwarizimi explaining the concept of al-sifr,
or 'the cipher';
original mathematical manuscripts by Heisenberg,
Einstein and
Planck; and a signed first-edition copy of Jean-Paul
Sartre's Being
And Nothingness. Should the need arise, Microsoft
will have
no difficulty proving to the Justice Department or anyone
else that
we own the rights to these numbers."
Added Gates:
"My salary also has lots of zeroes. I'm the richest
man in the
world."
According to
experts, the full ramifications of Microsoft's patenting
of one and
zero have yet to be realized.
"Because all
integers and natural numbers derive from one and
zero, Microsoft
may, by extension, lay claim to ownership of all
mathematics
and logic systems, including Euclidean geometry,
pulleys and
levers, gravity, and the basic Newtonian principles of
motion, as
well as the concepts of existence and nonexistence,"
Yale University
theoretical mathematics professor J. Edmund
Lattimore
said. "In other words, pretty much everything."
Lattimore said
that the only mathematical constructs of which
Microsoft
may not be able to claim ownership are infinity and
transcendental
numbers like pi. Microsoft lawyers are expected to
file liens
on infinity and pi this week.
Microsoft has
not yet announced whether it will charge a user fee to
individuals
who wish to engage in such mathematically rooted
motions as
walking, stretching and smiling.
In an address
beamed live to billions of people around the globe
Monday, Gates
expressed confidence that his company's latest
move will,
ultimately, benefit all humankind.
"Think of this
as a partnership," Gates said. "Like the ones and
zeroes of
the binary code itself, we must all work together to make
the promise
of the computer revolution a reality. As the world's
richest, most
powerful software company, Microsoft is number one.
And you, the
millions of consumers who use our products, are the
zeroes."
Some other jokes
Question: How
do you get a TAFE graduate to get off your porch?
Answer :
You pay for the pizza!!
This guy goes
to a psychiatrist. The doctor shows him an inkblot and says 'What does
this remind you of?'
The guy says,
'a naked woman.'
Then he shows
him another inkblot and asks him the same question and the guy says, 'a
naked woman on a bed'.
Then the psychiatrist
tells to him, 'You sick pervert!'
The guy replies,
'I'm not a pervert, you are the one who is showing me all these naughty
pictures.'
