Computer Jokes Quotes

Asked about the fact that Apple's iTunes software for Windows computers was extremely popular, Jobs joked, 'It's like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell.

I've proved my point. I've demonstrated there's no difference between me and everyone else! All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day. You had a bad day once, am I right? I know I am. I can tell. You had a bad day and everything changed. Why else would you dress up as a flying rat? You had a bad day, and it drove you as crazy as everybody else... Only you won't admit it! You have to keep pretending that life makes sense, that there's some point to all this struggling! God you make me want to puke. I mean, what is it with you? What made you what you are? Girlfriend killed by the mob, maybe? Brother carved up by some mugger? Something like that, I bet. Something like that... Something like that happened to me, you know. I... I'm not exactly sure what it was. Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another... If I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice! Ha ha ha! But my point is... My point is, I went crazy. When I saw what a black, awful joke the world was, I went crazy as a coot! I admit it! Why can't you? I mean, you're not unintelligent! You must see the reality of the situation. Do you know how many times we've come close to world war three over a flock of geese on a computer screen? Do you know what triggered the last world war? An argument over how many telegraph poles Germany owed its war debt creditors! Telegraph poles! Ha ha ha ha HA! It's all a joke! Everything anybody ever valued or struggled for... it's all a monstrous, demented gag! So why can't you see the funny side? Why aren't you laughing?

Nefarious. This is what we get when we hire a Yale boy.” “You missed sacrosanct earlier. And taciturn and glowering,” Jack said. “What’s glowering?” “Me, apparently.” Wilkins pointed. “Now that has to be a joke.” He turned to Davis. “You heard that, right?” Davis didn’t answer him, having spun his chair around to type something at his computer. “Let’s see what Google says… Ah – here it is. ‘Glowering: dark; showing a brooding ill humor.

Computers can never completely replace humans. They may become capable of artificial intelligence, but they will never master real stupidity.

Well, Mr. Frankel, who started this program, began to suffer from the computer disease that anybody who works with computers now knows about. It's a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is you *play* with them. They are so wonderful. You have these switches - if it's an even number you do this, if it's an odd number you do that - and pretty soon you can do more and more elaborate things if you are clever enough, on one machine. After a while the whole system broke down. Frankel wasn't paying any attention; he wasn't supervising anybody. The system was going very, very slowly - while he was sitting in a room figuring out how to make one tabulator automatically print arc-tangent X, and then it would start and it would print columns and then bitsi, bitsi, bitsi, and calculate the arc-tangent automatically by integrating as it went along and make a whole table in one operation. Absolutely useless. We *had* tables of arc-tangents. But if you've ever worked with computers, you understand the disease - the *delight* in being able to see how much you can do. But he got the disease for the first time, the poor fellow who invented the thing.

Eric approached the octagonal nurses’ station, and a blonde nurse looked up from her computer monitor, smiled, and pointed to examining room  D. Everybody recognized the hospital shrinks from the bright red W on their lanyard IDs. The W stood for Wright, the wing that contained the locked psych unit, but the staff teased that W stood for Wackos. He’d heard all the jokes— How do you tell the psychiatrists from the patients in the hospital? The patients get better and leave. Eric told the best psychiatrist jokes, though he never told the ones about psychiatrist’s kids. He didn’t think those were funny. He lived those.

Now, what does a vampire do with a computer? Keep track of investments? Send e-mail to other vampires as you all plot to take over the world?” “I spend a lot of time on Wikipedia making corrections to the entries of historical figures I’ve known.” I blinked at him. “Really?” “No, Kitty. That was a joke.

But if you’ve ever worked with computers, you understand the disease—the delight in being able to see how much you can do.

I wish that in order to secure his party’s nomination, a presidential candidate would be required to point at the sky and name all the stars; have the periodic table of the elements memorized; rattle off the kings and queens of Spain; define the significance of the Gatling gun; joke around in Latin; interpret the symbolism in seventeenth-century Dutch painting; explain photosynthesis to a six-year-old; recite Emily Dickenson; bake a perfect popover; build a shortwave radio out of a coconut; and know all the words to Hoagy Carmichael’s “Two Sleepy People”, Johnny Cash’s “Five Feet High and Rising”, and “You Got the Silver” by the Rolling Stones...What we need is a president who is at least twelve kinds of nerd, a nerd messiah to come along every four years, acquire the Secret Service code name Poindexter, install a Revenge of the Nerds screen saver on the Oval Office computer, and one by one decrypt our woes.

In a classical joke a child stays behind after school to ask a personal question. "Teacher, what did I learn today? " The surprised teacher asks, "Why do you ask that?" and the child replies, "Daddy always asks me and I never know what to say".

(Hunter) "conner was at his desk, tapping away at another computer. It was amazing how much he and Quinn looked alike. Quinn nudged me as if he knew what I was thinking. "I'm cuter,"he informed me loftily.

Advice to friends. Advice to fellow mothers in the same boat. "How do you do it all?" Crack a joke. Make it seem easy. Make everything seem easy. Make life seem easy and parenthood and marriage and freelancing for pennies, writing a novel and smiling after a rejection, keeping the faith after two, reminding oneself that four years of work counted for a lot, counted for everything. Make the bed. Make it nice. Make the people laugh when you sit down to write and if you can't make them laugh make them cry. Make them want to hug you or hold you or punch you in the face. Make them want to kill you or fuck you or be your friend. Make them change. Make them happy. Make the baby smile. Make him laugh. Make him dinner. Make him proud. Hold the phone, someone is on the other line. She says its important. People are dying. Children. Friends. Press mute because there is nothing you can say. Press off because you're running out of minutes. Running out of time. Soon he'll be grown up and you'll regret the time you spent pushing him away for one more paragraph in the manuscript no one will ever read. Put down the book, the computer, the ideas. Remember who you are now. Wait. Remember who you were. Wait. Remember what's important. Make a list. Ten things, no twenty. Twenty thousand things you want to do before you die but what if tomorrow never comes? No one will remember. No one will know. No one will laugh or cry or make the bed. No one will have a clue which songs to sing to the baby. No one will be there for the children. No one will finish the first draft of the novel. No one will publish the one that's been finished for months. No one will remember the thought you had last night, that great idea you forgot to write down.

People think computers are different from people because they don't have minds, even though, in the Turing test, computers can have conversations with people about the weather and wine and what Italy is like, and they can even tell jokes.

I wish it were different. I wish that we privileged knowledge in politicians, that the ones who know things didn't have to hide it behind brown pants, and that the know-not-enoughs were laughed all the way to the Maine border on their first New Hampshire meet and greet. I wish that in order to secure his party's nomination, a presidential candidate would be required to point at the sky and name all the stars; have the periodic table of the elements memorized; rattle off the kings and queens of Spain; define the significance of the Gatling gun; joke around in Latin; interpret the symbolism in seventeenth-century Dutch painting; explain photosynthesis to a six-year-old; recite Emily Dickinson; bake a perfect popover; build a shortwave radio out of a coconut; and know all the words to Hoagy Carmichael's "Two Sleepy People," Johnny Cash's "Five Feet High and Rising," and "You Got the Silver" by the Rolling Stones. After all, the United States is the greatest country on earth dealing with the most complicated problems in the history of the world--poverty, pollution, justice, Jerusalem. What we need is a president who is at least twelve kinds of nerd, a nerd messiah to come along every four years, acquire the Secret Service code name Poindexter, install a Revenge of the Nerds screen saver on the Oval Office computer, and one by one decrypt our woes.

Jesus, what a complicated process,” Venkat said. “Try updating a Linux server sometime,” Jack said. After a moment of silence, Tim said, “You know he was telling a joke, right? That was supposed to be funny.” “Oh,” said Venkat. “I’m a physics guy, not a computer guy.” “He’s not funny to computer guys, either.” “You’re a very unpleasant man, Tim,” Jack said.

How many computer programmers does it take to change a light bulb? Are you kidding? That's a hardware problem!

As the old computer-science joke goes: “Let’s say you have a problem, and you decide to solve it with regular expressions. Well, now you have two problems.

With a sigh, Cinder wilted onto a crate, staring down at her mismatched hands. She scrunched her whole face up, like preparing for a blow, and muttered, “I’m Princess Selene.” Thorne snorted and they all turned to him. He blinked. “What, really?” “Really.” The joking smile froze on his lips. A heavy silence was followed by a vibration beneath their feet and Iko’s voice. “I don’t compute.

I’d found my niche. Since I belonged to no group I learned to move seamlessly between groups. I floated. I was a chameleon, still, a cultural chameleon. I learned how to blend. I could play sports with the jocks. I could talk computers with the nerds. I could jump in the circle and dance with the township kids. I popped around to everyone, working, chatting, telling jokes, making deliveries. I was like a weed dealer, but of food. The weed guy is always welcome at the party. He’s not a part of the circle, but he’s invited into the circle temporarily because of what he can offer. That’s who I was. Always an outsider. As the outsider, you can retreat into a shell, be anonymous, be invisible. Or you can go the other way. You protect yourself by opening up. You don’t ask to be accepted for everything you are, just the one part of yourself that you’re willing to share. For me it was humor. I learned that even though I didn’t belong to one group, I could be a part of any group that was laughing. I’d drop in, pass out the snacks, tell a few jokes. I’d perform for them. I’d catch a bit of their conversation, learn more about their group, and then leave. I never overstayed my welcome. I wasn’t popular, but I wasn’t an outcast. I was everywhere with everybody, and at the same time I was all by myself.

I mumbled something about how it was easy to calculate e to any power using that series (you just substitute the power for x). “Oh yeah?” they said, “Well, then, what’s e to the 3.3?” said some joker—I think it was Tukey. I say, “That’s easy. It’s 27.11.” Tukey knows it isn’t so easy to compute all that in your head. “Hey! How’d you do that?” Another guy says, “You know Feynman, he’s just faking it. It’s not really right.” They go to get a table, and while they’re doing that, I put on a few more figures: “27.1126,” I say. They find it in the table. “It’s right! But how’d you do it!” “I just summed the series.” “Nobody can sum the series that fast. You must just happen to know that one. How about e to the 3?” “Look,” I say. “It’s hard work! Only one a day!” “Hah! It’s a fake!” they say, happily. “All right,” I say, “It’s 20.085.

Well, Mr. Frankel, who started this program, began to suffer from the computer disease that anybody who works with computers now knows about. It’s a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is you play with them. They are so wonderful.

I worked transferring books to computer discs, to cut down on storage space and replacement costs, they said. Discers, we called ourselves. We called the library a discotheque, which was a joke of ours. After the books were transferred they were supposed to go to the shredder, but sometimes I took them home with me. I liked the feel of them, and the look. Luke said I had the mind of an antiquarian. He liked that, he liked old things himself. It’s

The virus is causing something akin to panic throughout corporate America, which has become used to the typos, misspellings, missing words and mangled syntax so acceptable in cyberspace. The CEO of LoseItAll.com, an Internet startup, said the virus had rendered him helpless. “Each time I tried to send one particular e-mail this morning, I got back this error message: ‘Your dependent clause preceding your independent clause must be set off by commas, but one must not precede the conjunction.’ I threw my laptop across the room.”  . . . If Strunkenwhite makes e-mailing impossible, it could mean the end to a communication revolution once hailed as a significant timesaver. A study of 1,254 office workers in Leonia, N.J., found that e-mail increased employees’ productivity by 1.8 hours a day because they took less time to formulate their thoughts. (The same study also found that they lost 2.2 hours of productivity because they were e-mailing so many jokes to their spouses, parents and stockbrokers.)  . . . “This is one of the most complex and invasive examples of computer code we have ever encountered. We just can’t imagine what kind of devious mind would want to tamper with e-mails to create this burden on communications,” said an FBI agent who insisted on speaking via the telephone out of concern that trying to e-mail his comments could leave him tied up for hours.

What do my colleagues know of Dad? What do they know of me? What kind of friend gets a kick out of posting in the break room a drawing of you eating an entire computer? What kind of friend jokes that someday you'll be buried in a specially built container after succumbing to heart strain? I'm sorry but I feel that life should offer more than this.

Please leave my computer alone.. The only cookies I want to get are the ones I can eat.

To paraphrase an old joke among programmers, “Writing code accounts for 90 percent of programming. Debugging code accounts for the other 90 percent.” Your computer will do only what you tell it to do; it won’t read your mind and do what you intended it to do. Even professional programmers create bugs all the time, so don’t feel discouraged if your program has a problem.

Watney entered the hack earlier today, and we confirmed it worked. We updated Pathfinder’s OS without any problems. We sent the rover patch, which Pathfinder rebroadcast. Once Watney executes the patch and reboots the rover, we should get a connection.” “Jesus, what a complicated process,” Venkat said. “Try updating a Linux server sometime,” Jack said. After a moment of silence, Tim said, “You know he was telling a joke, right? That was supposed to be funny.” “Oh,” said Venkat. “I’m a physics guy, not a computer guy.” “He’s not funny to computer guys, either.

I had started on the marriage and motherhood beat by accident with a post on my personal, read only by friends, blog called ‘Fifty Shades of Men’. I had written it after buying Fifty Shades of Grey to spice up what Dave and I half-jokingly called our grown up time, and had written a meditation on how the sex wasn’t the sexiest part of the book. “Dear publishers, I will tell you why every woman with a ring on her finger and a car seat in her SUV is devouring this book like the candy she won’t let herself eat.” I had written. “It’s not the fantasy of an impossibly handsome guy who can give you an orgasm just by stroking your nipples. It is instead the fantasy of a guy who can give you everything. Hapless, clueless, barely able to remain upright without assistance, Ana Steele is that unlikeliest of creatures, a college student who doesn’t have an email address, a computer, or a clue. Turns out she doesn’t need any of those things. Here is the dominant Christian Grey and he’ll give her that computer plus an iPad, a beamer, a job, and an identity, sexual and otherwise. No more worrying about what to wear. Christian buys her clothes. No more stress about how to be in the bedroom. Christian makes those decisions. For women who do too much—which includes, dear publishers, pretty much all the women who have enough disposable income to buy your books—this is the ultimate fantasy: not a man who will make you come, but a man who will make agency unnecessary, a man who will choose your adventure for you.

Our team of Korean animators hand-draws twenty-four thousand cels to make one episode of The Simpsons; these days, color is added by computer, but for the first decade of the show, each cel had to be hand-painted.

Oh, by the way," Coop announces as he weaves his DeathBot ship through a barrage of space debris on his laptop screen. "In case you didn't know. It's national 'That's What She Said' Day." I give him a thumbs-up. "I like it." We're camping out in Sean's backyard tonight. It's another one of our traditions. One night, every summer, we buy a ton of junk food and energy drinks and set up Sean's six-person tent in the far corner of his yard. We've got an extension cord running from the garage so that we can rough it in style, with computers and a TV and DVD player. There's a citronella candle burning in the middle of the tent to ward off mosquitoes and to mask the thick stink of mildew. Everyone's brought sleeping bags and pillows, but we aren't planning on logging too many Zs. Sean enters the tent carrying his Xbox. "I don't think there are enough sockets for all of these." I waggle my eyebrows at Coop. "That's what she said." Coop busts up. Sean stands there, looking confused. "I don't get it." "That's what she says," Coop says, sending him and me into hysterics. Sean sighs and puts the Xbox down. "I can see this is going to be a long night." "That's what she said," me and Coop howl in chorus. "Are you guys done yet?" Coop is practically in tears. "That's what she said." "Okay. I'll just keep my mouth shut," Sean grumbles. "That's what she said." I can barely talk I'm laughing so hard. "Enough. No more. My cheeks hurt," Coop says, rubbing his face. I point at him. "That's what she said." And with that, the three of us fall over in fits. "Oh, man, now look what you made me do." Coop motions to his computer. "That was my last DeathBot ship." "That's what she said," Sean blurts out, laughing at his nonsensical joke. Coop and I stare at him, and then silmultaniously, we hit Sean in the face with our pillows.

Mr. Frankel, who started this program, began to suffer from the computer disease that anybody who works with computers now knows about. It’s a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is you play with them. They are so wonderful. You have these switches—if it’s an even number you do this, if it’s an odd number you do that—and pretty soon you can do more and more elaborate things if you are clever enough, on one machine.

A blonde girl enters a store that sells curtains. She tells the salesman, "I would like to buy a pink curtain in the size of my computer screen." The surprised salesman replies, "But, madam, computers do not have curtains."  And the blonde said, "Helloooo.... I've got Windows!

Lisp has jokingly been called “the most intelligent way to misuse a computer”. I think that description is a great compliment because it transmits the full flavor of liberation: it has assisted a number of our most gifted fellow humans in thinking previously impossible thoughts.

Fredkin believes that the universe is very literally a computer and that it is being used by someone, or something, to solve a problem. It sounds like a good-news/bad-news joke: the good news is that our lives have purpose; the bad news is that their purpose is to help some remote hacker estimate pi to nine jillion decimal places.

I HAD TO GO to America for a while to give some talks. Going to America always does me good. It’s where I’m from, after all. There’s baseball on the TV, people are friendly and upbeat, they don’t obsess about the weather except when there is weather worth obsessing about, you can have all the ice cubes you want. Above all, visiting America gives me perspective. Consider two small experiences I had upon arriving at a hotel in downtown Austin, Texas. When I checked in, the clerk needed to record my details, naturally enough, and asked for my home address. Our house doesn’t have a street number, just a name, and I have found in the past that that is more deviance than an American computer can sometimes cope with, so I gave our London address. The girl typed in the building number and street name, then said: “City?” I replied: “London.” “Can you spell that please?” I looked at her and saw that she wasn’t joking. “L-O-N-D-O-N,” I said. “Country?” “England.” “Can you spell that?” I spelled England. She typed for a moment and said: “The computer won’t accept England. Is that a real country?” I assured her it was. “Try Britain,” I suggested. I spelled that, too—twice (we got the wrong number of T’s the first time)—and the computer wouldn’t take that either. So I suggested Great Britain, United Kingdom, UK, and GB, but those were all rejected, too. I couldn’t think of anything else to suggest. “It’ll take France,” the girl said after a minute. “I beg your pardon?” “You can have ‘London, France.’ ” “Seriously?” She nodded. “Well, why not?” So she typed “London, France,” and the system was happy. I finished the check-in process and went with my bag and plastic room key to a bank of elevators a few paces away. When the elevator arrived, a young woman was in it already, which I thought a little strange because the elevator had come from one of the upper floors and now we were going back up there again. About five seconds into the ascent, she said to me in a suddenly alert tone: “Excuse me, was that the lobby back there?” “That big room with a check-in desk and revolving doors to the street? Why, yes, it was.” “Shoot,” she said and looked chagrined. Now I am not for a moment suggesting that these incidents typify Austin, Texas, or America generally or anything like that. But it did get me to thinking that our problems are more serious than I had supposed. When functioning adults can’t identify London, England, or a hotel lobby, I think it is time to be concerned. This is clearly a global problem and it’s spreading. I am not at all sure how we should tackle such a crisis, but on the basis of what we know so far, I would suggest, as a start, quarantining Texas.

One thing to be said for Baine was that he couldn’t care less whether the people in his elevator were clothed or unclothed, so Rio was spared the computer’s snide comments. Baine did know about sex, though. As Rio carried Nella out of the lift, Baine muttered, “ Computer interface is so much easier.” “What did he say?” Nella asked as Rio set her on her bed. “Bad machine-language joke. Ignore him.

Mike glanced at the two computer towers lying half-autopsied on her kitchen table. One had a bag of chips in it, the top held shut with a binder clip. A stack of motherboards rested on the chair in Mylar bags. “Maid’s been on vacation, I see,” said Mike. “Yeah. She ran off with the guy who writes your jokes.” “Ouch.” “There’s a postcard from them here somewhere. Want me to look for that instead?” “No, no. Just the logs will be fine.

SATURDAY AT THE STORE is a nightmare. We are besieged by do-it-yourselfers wanting to spruce up their homes. Mr. and Mrs. Clayton and John and Patrick—the two other part-timers—and I are besieged by customers. But there’s a lull around lunchtime, and Mrs. Clayton asks me to check on some orders while I’m sitting behind the counter at the register discreetly eating my bagel. I’m engrossed in the task, checking catalog numbers against the items we need and the items we’ve ordered, eyes flicking from the order book to the computer screen and back as I make sure the entries match. Then, for some reason, I glance up … and find myself locked in the bold gray gaze of Christian Grey, who’s standing at the counter, staring at me. Heart failure. “Miss Steele. What a pleasant surprise.” His gaze is unwavering and intense. Holy crap. What the hell is he doing here, looking all outdoorsy with his tousled hair and in his cream chunky-knit sweater, jeans, and walking boots? I think my mouth has popped open, and I can’t locate my brain or my voice. “Mr. Grey,” I whisper, because that’s all I can manage. There’s a ghost of a smile on his lips and his eyes are alight with humor, as if he’s enjoying some private joke. “I was in the area,” he says by way of explanation. “I need to stock up on a few things. It’s a pleasure to see you again, Miss Steele.” His voice is warm and husky like dark melted chocolate fudge caramel … or something.

As psychologist Bruce Hood writes in his book The Self Illusion, you have an origin story and a sense that you’ve traveled from youth to now along a linear path, with ups and downs that ultimately made you who you are today. Babies don’t have that. That sense is built around events that you can recall and place in time. Babies and small children have what Hood calls “unconscious knowledge,” which is to say they simply recognize patterns and make associations with stimuli. Without episodic memories, there is no narrative; and without any narrative, there is no self. Somewhere between ages two and three, according to Hood, that sense of self begins to come online, and that awakening corresponds with the ability to tell a story about yourself based on memories. He points to a study by Alison Gopnik and Janet Astington in 1988 in which researchers presented to three-year-olds a box of candy, but the children were then surprised to find pencils inside instead of sweets. When they asked each child what the next kid would think was in the box when he or she went through the same experiment, the answer was usually pencils. The children didn’t yet know that other people have minds, so they assumed everyone knew what they knew. Once you gain the ability to assume others have their own thoughts, the concept of other minds is so powerful that you project it into everything: plants, glitchy computers, boats with names, anything that makes more sense to you when you can assume, even jokingly, it has a sort of self. That sense of agency is so powerful that people throughout time have assumed a consciousness at the helm of the sun, the moon, the winds, and the seas. Out of that sense of self and other selves come the narratives that have kept whole societies together. The great mythologies of the ancients and moderns are stories made up to make sense of things on a grand scale. So strong is the narrative bias that people live and die for such stories and devote whole lives to them (as well as take lives for them).

One day in September 2015, FBI agent Adrian Hawkins placed a call to the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C., and asked to speak to the person in charge of technology. He was routed to the DNC help desk, which transferred the call to Yared Tamene, a young IT specialist with The MIS Department, a consulting firm hired by the DNC. After identifying himself, Hawkins told Tamene that he had reason to believe that at least one computer on the DNC’s network was compromised. He asked if the DNC was aware of this and what it was doing. Tamene had nothing to do with cybersecurity and knew little about the subject. He was a mid-level network administrator; his basic IT duties for the DNC were to set up computer accounts for employees and be on call to deal with any problems. When he got the call, Tamene was wary. Was this a joke or, worse, a dirty trick? He asked Hawkins if he could prove he was an FBI agent, and, as Tamene later wrote in a memo, “he did not provide me with an adequate response.… At this point, I had no way of differentiating the call I received from a prank call.” Hawkins, though, was real. He was a well-regarded agent in the FBI’s cyber squad. And he was following a legitimate lead in a case that would come to affect a presidential election. Earlier in the year, U.S. cyber warriors intercepted a target list of about thirty U.S. government agencies, think tanks, and several political organizations designated for cyberattacks by a group of hackers known as APT 29. APT stood for Advanced Persistent Threat—technojargon for a sophisticated set of actors who penetrate networks, insert viruses, and extract data over prolonged periods of time.

We all know that 97% of the money in the world doesn't exist and that's thanks to Fractional Reserve Banking, or should I say fictional reserve banking." He grinned at his own joke, his smile partly hidden by his hair, "Money is no longer attached to the Gold Standard, therefore, it isn't based on anything. So when it says, 'I promise to pay the bearer on demand ten pounds,' I have to ask, ten pounds of what?" Silence. "The world is owned by the rich shareholder, the rich superstar, the rich industrialist, the rich aristocracy." He was now marching around the stage, "It doesn't matter who or what they are, if they're rich then they own a part of the world, but they only own it because they've got lots of money. Which means they own part of the 97% of the world’s fictional money, the pretend money that only exists on a computer." He stopped abruptly and stared out at the audience, "Which means that if they cashed in their fictional nonexistent money they'd get something like this ten pound note offering to pay the bearer the sum of ten pounds of nothing." He held the note aloft, "Which means the rich have managed to buy the entire world with paper nothing that has a value of nothing and we've let them do it.

This kind of pragmatism has become a hallmark of our psychological culture. In the mid-1990s, I described how it was commonplace for people to “cycle through” different ideas of the human mind as (to name only a few images) mechanism, spirit, chemistry, and vessel for the soul.14 These days, the cycling through intensifies. We are in much more direct contact with the machine side of mind. People are fitted with a computer chip to help with Parkinson’s. They learn to see their minds as program and hardware. They take antidepressants prescribed by their psychotherapists, confident that the biochemical and oedipal self can be treated in one room. They look for signs of emotion in a brain scan. Old jokes about couples needing “chemistry” turn out not to be jokes at all.

The business is a simple one. Hiro gets information. It may be gossip, videotape, audiotape, a fragment of a computer disk, a xerox of a document. It can even be a joke based on the latest highly publicized disaster. He uploads it to the CIC database -- the Library, formerly the Library of Congress, but no one calls it that anymore. Most people are not entirely clear on what the word "congress" means. And even the word "library" is getting hazy. It used to be a place full of books, mostly old ones. Then they began to include videotapes, records, and magazines. Then all of the information got converted into machine-readable form, which is to say, ones and zeroes. And as the number of media grew, the material became more up to date, and the methods for searching the Library became more and more sophisticated, it approached the point where there was no substantive difference between the Library of Congress and the Central Intelligence Agency. Fortuitously, this happened just as the government was falling apart anyway. So they merged and kicked out a big fat stock offering.

Little Blaine: Stop! Stop it, you're killing him! Eddie: (in his mind) What do you think he's trying to do to us, squirt? He considered shooting Blaine one Jake had told while they'd been sitting around the campfire that night and then didn't. He wanted to stick further inside the bounds of logic than that one allowed...and he could do it. He didn't think he would have to get much more surreal than the level of, say, a third-grader with a fair-to-good collection of Garbage Pail Kids cards in order to fuck Blaine up royally...and permanently. Because no matter how many emotions his fancy dipolar circuits had allowed him to mimic, HE was still an IT--a computer. Even allowing Eddie this far into riddledom's Twilight Zone had caused Blaine's sanity to totter. Eddie: Why do people go to bed, Blaine? Blaine: BECAUSE...BECAUSE...GODS DAMN YOU, BECAUSE...BECAUSE THE BED WON'T COME TO THEM, GODS DAMN YOU! Eddie: Give up, Blaine. Stop before I have to blow your mind completely. If you don't quit, it's going to happen. We both know it. Blaine: NO! Eddie: I got a million of these puppies. Been hearing them my whole life. They stick to my mind the way flies stick to flypaper. Hey, with some people it's recipes. So what do you say? Want to give? Blaine: NO! Eddie: Okay, Blaine. You asked for it. Here comes the cruncher. Why did the dead baby cross the road? (later) It crossed the road because it was stapled to the chicken, you dopey fuck!

About a month before the handover of sovereignty, Joshua Paul, a young CPA staffer, typed up a joke on his computer and sent it to a few friends in the palace. The recipients forwarded it to their friends, who did the same thing. In less than a week, almost everyone in the Green Zone had seen it. QUESTION: Why did the Iraqi chicken cross the road? CPA: The fact that the chicken crossed the road shows that decision-making authority has switched to the chicken in advance of the scheduled June 30th transition of power. From now on, the chicken is responsible for its own decisions. HALLIBURTON: We were asked to help the chicken cross the road. Given the inherent risk of road crossing and the rarity of chickens, this operation will only cost $326,004. SHIITE CLERIC MOQTADA AL-SADR: The chicken was a tool of the evil Coalition and will be killed. U.S. ARMY MILITARY POLICE: We were directed to prepare the chicken to cross the road. As part of these preparations, individual soldiers ran over the chicken repeatedly and then plucked the chicken. We deeply regret the occurrence of any chicken-rights violations. PESHMERGA: The chicken crossed the road, and will continue to cross the road, to show its independence and to transport the weapons it needs to defend itself. However, in the future, to avoid problems, the chicken will be called a duck, and will wear a plastic bill. AL-JAZEERA: The chicken was forced to cross the road multiple times at gunpoint by a large group of occupation soldiers, according to witnesses. The chicken was then fired upon intentionally, in yet another example of the abuse of innocent Iraqi chickens. CIA: We cannot confirm or deny any involvement in the chicken-road-crossing incident. TRANSLATORS: Chicken he cross street because bad she tangle regulation. Future chicken table against my request.

know that taking a long walk was his preferred way to have a serious conversation. It turned out that he wanted me to write a biography of him. I had recently published one on Benjamin Franklin and was writing one about Albert Einstein, and my initial reaction was to wonder, half jokingly, whether he saw himself as the natural successor in that sequence. Because I assumed that he was still in the middle of an oscillating career that had many more ups and downs left, I demurred. Not now, I said. Maybe in a decade or two, when you retire. I had known him since 1984, when he came to Manhattan to have lunch with Time’s editors and extol his new Macintosh. He was petulant even then, attacking a Time correspondent for having wounded him with a story that was too revealing. But talking to him afterward, I found myself rather captivated, as so many others have been over the years, by his engaging intensity. We stayed in touch, even after he was ousted from Apple. When he had something to pitch, such as a NeXT computer or Pixar movie, the beam of his charm would suddenly refocus on me, and he would take me to a sushi restaurant in Lower Manhattan to tell me that whatever he was touting was the best thing he had ever produced. I liked him. When he was restored to the throne at Apple, we put him on the cover of Time, and soon thereafter he began offering me his ideas for a series we were doing on the most influential people of the century. He had launched his “Think Different” campaign, featuring iconic photos of some of the same people we were considering, and he found the endeavor of assessing historic influence fascinating. After I had deflected his suggestion that I write a biography of him, I heard from him every now and then. At one point I emailed to ask if it was true, as my daughter had told me, that the Apple logo was an homage to Alan Turing, the British computer pioneer who broke the German wartime codes and then committed suicide by biting into a cyanide-laced apple. He replied that he wished he had thought of that, but hadn’t. That started an exchange about the early history of Apple, and I found myself gathering string on the subject, just in case I ever decided to do such a book. When my Einstein biography came out, he came to a book event in Palo Alto and

Early in the boob-emerging years, I had no boobs, and I was touchy about it. Remember in middle school algebra class, you’d type 55378008 on your calculator, turn it upside down, and hand it to the flat-chested girl across the aisle? I was that girl, you bi-yotch. I would have died twice if any of the boys had mentioned my booblets. Last year, I thought my boobs had progressed quite nicely. And I progressed from the one-piece into a tankini. But I wasn’t quite ready for any more exposure. I didn’t want the boys to treat me like a girl. Now I did. So today I’d worn a cute little bikini. Over that, I still wore Adam’s cutoff jeans. Amazingly, they looked sexy, riding low on my hips, when I traded the football T-shirt for a pink tank that ended above my belly button and hugged my figure. I even had a little cleavage. I was so proud. Sean was going to love it. Mrs. Vader stared at my chest, perplexed. Finally she said, “Oh, I get it. You’re trying to look hot.” “Thank you!” Mission accomplished. “Here’s a hint. Close your legs.” I snapped my thighs together on the stool. People always scolded me for sitting like a boy. Then I slid off the stool and stomped to the door in a huff. “Where do you want me?” She’d turned back to the computer. “You’ve got gas.” Oh, goody. I headed out the office door, toward the front dock to man the gas pumps. This meant at some point during the day, one of the boys would look around the marina office and ask, “Who has gas?” and another boy would answer, “Lori has gas.” If I were really lucky, Sean would be in on the joke. The office door squeaked open behind me. “Lori,” Mrs. Vader called. “Did you want to talk?” Noooooooo. Nothing like that. I’d only gone into her office and tried to start a conversation. Mrs. Vader had three sons. She didn’t know how to talk to a girl. My mother had died in a boating accident alone on the lake when I was four. I didn’t know how to talk to a woman. Any convo between Mrs. Vader and me was doomed from the start. “No, why?” I asked without turning around. I’d been galloping down the wooden steps, but now I stepped very carefully, looking down, as if I needed to examine every footfall so I wouldn’t trip. “Watch out around the boys,” she warned me. I raised my hand and wiggled my fingers, toodle-dee-doo, dismissing her. Those boys were harmless. Those boys had better watch out for me.

He held the dipper out to Jake. When Jake reached for it, Tick-Tock pulled it back. "First, cully, tell me what you know about dipolar computers and transitive circuits," he said coldly. "What..." Jake looked toward the ventilator grille, but the golden eyes were still gone. He was beginning to think he had imagined them after all. He shifted his gaze back to the Tick-Tock Man, understanding one thing clearly: he wasn't going to get any water. He had been stupid to even dream he might. "What are dipolar computers?" The Tick-Tock Man's face contorted with rage; he threw the remainder of the watter into Jake's bruised, puffy face. "DON'T YOU PLAY IT LIGHT WITH ME!" he shrieked. He stripped off the Seiko watch and shook it in front of Jake. "WHEN I ASKED YOU IF THIS RAN ON A DIPOLAR CIRCUIT, YOU SAID IT DIDN'T! SO DON'T TELL ME YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M TLAKING ABOUT WHEN YOU ALREADY MADE IT CLEAR THAT YOU DO!" "But...but..." Jake couldn't go on. His head was whirling with fear and confusion. He was aware, in some far-off fashion, that he was licking as much water as he could off his lips. "THERE'S A THOUSAND OF THOSE EVER-FUCKING DIPOLAR COMPUTERS RIGHT UNDER THE EVER-FUCKING CITY, MAYBE A HUNDRED THOUSAND, AND THE ONLY ONE THAT STILL WORKS DON'T DO A THING EXCEPT PLAY WATCH ME AND RUN THOSE DRUMS! I WANT THOSE COMPUTERS! I WANT THEM WORKING FOR ME!" The Tick-Tock Man bolted forward on his throne, seized Jake, shook him back and forth, and then threw him to the floor. Jake struck one of the lamps, knocking it over, and the bulb blew with a hollow coughing sound. Tilly gave a little shriek and stepped backward, her eyes wide and frightened. Copperhead and Brandon looked at each other uneasily. Tick-Tock leaned forward, elbows on his thighs, and screamed into Jake's face: "I WANT THEM AND I MEAN TO HAVE THEM!" Silence fell in the room, broken only by the soft whoosh of warm air pouring from the ventilators. Then the twisted rage on the Tick-Tock Man's face disappeared so suddenly it might never have existed at all. It was replaced by another charming smile. He leaned further forward and helped Jake to his feet. "Sorry. I get thinking about the potential of this place and sometimes I get carried away. Please accept my apology, cully." He picked up the overturned dipper and threw it at Tilly. "Fill this up, you useless bitch! What's the matter with you?" He turned his attention back to Jake, still smiling his TV game-show host smile. "All right; you've had your little joke and I've had mine. Now tell me everything you know about dipolar computers and transitive circuits. Then you can have a drink.

What do you call an evil leader digging a hole? Darth Spader   What do you call Obi Wan eating crunchy toast? Obi Crumb   What do call a padawan who likes to play computer games? i'Pad' me   What do you call a starship pilot who likes to drink cocoa? Han Coco   What starship is always happy to have people aboard? The Millennium Welcome   What did Yoda say to Luke while eating dinner? Use the fork Luke.   What do you call a Sith who won't fight? A Sithy.   Which Star Wars character uses meat for a weapon instead of a Lightsaber? Obi Wan Baloney.   What do call a smelly droid? R2DPOO   What do call a droid that has wet its pants? C3PEE0   What do you call a Jedi who loves pies? Luke PieWalker?   What do call captain Rex when he emailing on a phone? Captain Text   What evil leader doesn’t need help reaching? Ladder the Hutt   What kind of evil lord will always say goodbye? Darth Later   Which rebel will always win the limbo? Han LowLow   What do you call R2D2 when he’s older? R2D3   What do you call R2D2 when he’s busting to go to the toilet? R2DLoo   What do call Padme’s father? Dadme   What’s do you call the Death Star when its wet? The Death Spa   What do call R2D2 when he climbs a tree? R2Tree2   What do you say a Jedi adding ketchup to his dinner? Use the sauce Luke.   What star wars baddy is most likely to go crazy? Count KooKoo   What do call Count Dooku when he’s really sad? Count Boohoo   Which Jedi is most likely to trick someone? Luke Liewalker   Which evil lord is most likely to be a dad? Dadda the Hutt   Which rebel likes to drink through straws? Chew Sucker   Which space station can you eat from? The Death bar   What do call a moody rebel? Luke Sighwalker   What do you call an even older droid R2D4   What do call Darth Vader with lots of scrapes? Dearth Grazer   What call an evil lord on eBay? Darth Trader   What do call it when an evil lord pays his mum? Darth Paid-her   What do call an evil insect Darth Cicada   What sith always teases? General Teasers   Who's the scariest sith? Count Spooko   Which sith always uses his spoon to eat his lunch Count Spoonu   What evil lord has lots of people living next door? Darth Neighbour   What Jedi always looks well dressed? Luke TieWalker   Which evil lord works in a restaurant? Darth waiter   What do you call a smelly storm trooper? A storm pooper   What do you call Darth Vader digging a hole? Darth Spader   What do you C3PO wetting his pants? C3PEE0   What do you call Asoka’s pet frog? Acroaka   What do you call a Jedi that loves pies? Luke Piewalker   What rebel loves hot drinks? Han Coco   What did Leia say to Luke at the dinner table? Use the fork Luke.   What do call Obi Wan eating fruit? Obi plum   What do you call Obi in a band? Obi Drum   What doe Luke take out at night? A Night Sabre   What is the favourite cooking pot on Endor? The e Wok

At first, they joked about it but as they became more detoxed and more assertive from therapy, paid ironically by the husbands, they began to realize that they each had unique strengths and powers and a burning desire for revenge. Between the Three Wise Women they had an IT expert, an actress and a supermodel, all very wealthy and beautiful. All the three men’s’ brains appeared to reside in their pants and they wondered if they set a honey trap could it possibly work. A plan was proposed by Felicity and she called it Operation Devastation. Angelina would hack into their MIS computer systems, bug their telephones, offices, cars and homes. Ava would seduce Ryan, who owned Novels and the computer firm, Angelina’s husband in a honey trap and get it all on DVD for the divorce court. Then Ava would seduce Felicity’s husband, James, the Irish footballer. Finally, Sean who was Felicity’s friend who was an out of work actor would seduce Patrick

How many computer programmers does it take to change a light bulb? Are you kidding? That's a hardware problem! " ♦◊♦◊♦◊♦

her ears? Trying to hold on to a thought." ♦◊♦◊♦◊♦ Hackers in Hollywood movies are phenomenal; all they need to do is: "c:\> hack into fbi" ♦◊♦◊♦◊♦ Hand over the calculator, friends don't let friends derive drunk. ♦◊♦◊♦◊♦ Help support helpless victims of computer error.

A number of collections and adaptations of his lectures have been published, including The Feynman Lectures on Physics, QED (Penguin, 1990), The Character of Physical Law (Penguin, 1992), Six Easy Pieces (Penguin, 1998), The Meaning of It All (Penguin, 1999), Six Not-So-Easy Pieces (Penguin, 1999), The Feynman Lectures on Gravitation (Penguin, 1999), The Feynman Lectures on Computation (Penguin, 1999) and The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (Penguin, 2001). His memoirs, Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman, were published in 1985.

99     What kind of food do computers eat for breakfast?

My computer made a funny sound the other day. Of course, I've never heard it get thrown out a window before.

Bill Gates died and went to purgatory. God looked down and said, “Well, Bill, I’m really confused on this one. I’m not sure whether to send you to heaven or hell. After all, you helped society enormously by putting a computer in almost every home in the world and yet you created that ghastly Windows 95, Windows ME, Windows Vista, Zune, MSN Music Store, ActiMates—need I go on?? Yet I’m going to do something I’ve never done before. I’m going to let you decide where to spend eternity.” Bill replied, “Well, thanks, God. So what’s the difference between heaven and hell?” God said, “I’m willing to let you visit both places briefly to help you decide.” Bill said, “Okay, then, let’s try hell first.” So Bill went to hell. It was a beautiful, clean, sandy beach with clear waters. There were thousands of beautiful women running around, laughing and frolicking. The sun was shining and the sky was blue. “This is great!” Bill said to God. “If this is hell, I really want to see heaven!” Heaven was a high place in the clouds, with angels playing harps and singing. It was nice but not as enticing as hell. Bill thought for a quick minute and decided. “I prefer hell.” So Bill Gates went to hell. Two weeks later, God checked up on Bill in hell. God found him being devoured by demons, burned by eternal flames. “How’s every-thing going, Bill?” Bill replied, “This is terrible, this is not what I expected. What happened to that other place with the beaches and the beautiful women and the sunny skies?” God apologized, “Sorry, Bill, that was just the screen saver.

Q: What do blondes and computers have in common? A: You never truly appreciate them until they go down on you.

But it isn’t the fun of DIY invention, urban exploration, physical danger, and civil disorder that the Z-Boys enjoyed in 1976. It is fun within serious limits, and for all of its thrills it is (by contrast) scripted. And rather obedient. The fact that there are public skateparks and high-performance skateboards signals progress: America has embraced this sport, as it did bicycles in the nineteenth century. Towns want to make skating safe and acceptable. The economy has more opportunity to grow. America is better off for all of this. Yet such government and commercial intervention in a sport that was born of radical liberty means that the fun itself has changed; it has become mediated. For the skaters who take pride in their flashy store-bought equipment have already missed the Z-Boys’ joke: Skating is a guerrilla activity. It’s the fun of beating, not supporting, the system. P. T. Barnum said it himself: all of business is humbug. How else could business turn a profit, if it didn’t trick you with advertising? If it didn’t hook you with its product? This particular brand of humbug was perfected in the late 1960s, when merchandise was developed and marketed and sold to make Americans feel like rebels. Now, as then, customers always pay for this privilege, and purveyors keep it safe (and generally clean) to curb their liability. They can’t afford customers taking real risks. Plus it’s bad for business to encourage real rebellion. And yet, marketers know Americans love fun—they have known this for centuries. And they know that Americans, especially kids, crave autonomy and participation, so they simulate the DIY experience at franchises like the Build-A-Bear “workshops,” where kids construct teddy bears from limited options, or “DIY” restaurants, where customers pay to grill their own steaks, fry their own pancakes, make their own Bloody Marys. These pay-to-play stores and restaurants are, in a sense, more active, more “fun,” than their traditional competition: that’s their big selling point. But in both cases (as Barnum knew) the joke is still on you: the personalized bear is a standardized mishmash, the personalized food is often inedible. As Las Vegas knows, the house always wins. In the history of radical American fun, pleasure comes from resistance, risk, and participation—the same virtues celebrated in the “Port Huron Statement” and the Digger Papers, in the flapper’s slang and the Pinkster Ode. In the history of commercial amusement, most pleasures for sale are by necessity passive. They curtail creativity and they limit participation (as they do, say, in a laser-tag arena) to a narrow range of calculated surprises, often amplified by dazzling technology. To this extent, TV and computer screens, from the tiny to the colossal, have become the scourge of American fun. The ubiquity of TV screens in public spaces (even in taxicabs and elevators) shows that such viewing isn’t amusement at all but rather an aggressive, ubiquitous distraction. Although a punky insurgency of heedless satire has stung the airwaves in recent decades—from equal-opportunity offenders like The Simpsons and South Park to Comedy Central’s rabble-rousing pundits, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert—the prevailing “fun” of commercial amusement puts minimal demands on citizens, besides their time and money. TV’s inherent ease seems to be its appeal, but it also sends a sobering, Jumbotron-sized message about the health of the public sphere.

A computer programmer happens across a frog in the road. The frog pipes up, “I’m really a beautiful princess and if you kiss me, I’ll stay with you for a week.” The programmer shrugs his shoulders and puts the frog in his pocket. A few minutes later, the frog says, “Okay, okay, if you kiss me, I’ll give you great sex for a week.” The programmer nods and keeps walking. A few minutes later the frog says, “Turn me back into a princess and I’ll give you great sex for a whole year!” The programmer smiles and walks on. Finally, the frog says, “What’s wrong with you? I’ve promised you great sex for a year from a beautiful princess and you won’t even kiss a frog?” “I’m a programmer,” he replies. “I don’t have time for sex, but a talking frog is pretty neat.

Mom you should really start online shopping, It is the trending thing to do and will make your life a lot simpler. Mom: Oh honey, that is crap. Every time I try online shopping, my trolley just falls off the top of your computer.

From the Bridge” by Captain Hank Bracker Behind “The Exciting Story of Cuba” It was on a rainy evening in January of 2013, after Captain Hank and his wife Ursula returned by ship from a cruise in the Mediterranean, that Captain Hank was pondering on how to market his book, Seawater One. Some years prior he had published the book “Suppressed I Rise.” But lacking a good marketing plan the book floundered. Locally it was well received and the newspapers gave it great reviews, but Ursula was battling allergies and, unfortunately, the timing was off, as was the economy. Captain Hank has the ability to see sunshine when it’s raining and he’s not one easily deterred. Perhaps the timing was off for a novel or a textbook, like the Scramble Book he wrote years before computers made the scene. The history of West Africa was an option, however such a book would have limited public interest and besides, he had written a section regarding this topic for the second Seawater book. No, what he was embarking on would have to be steeped in history and be intertwined with true-life adventures that people could identify with. Out of the blue, his friend Jorge suggested that he write about Cuba. “You were there prior to the Revolution when Fidel Castro was in jail,” he ventured. Laughing, Captain Hank told a story of Mardi Gras in Havana. “Half of the Miami Police Department was there and the Coca-Cola cost more than the rum. Havana was one hell of a place!” Hank said. “I’ll tell you what I could do. I could write a pamphlet about the history of the island. It doesn’t have to be very long… 25 to 30 pages would do it.” His idea was to test the waters for public interest and then later add it to his book Seawater One. Writing is a passion surpassed only by his love for telling stories. It is true that Captain Hank had visited Cuba prior to the Revolution, but back then he was interested more in the beauty of the Latino girls than the history or politics of the country. “You don’t have to be Greek to appreciate Greek history,” Hank once said. “History is not owned solely by historians. It is a part of everyone’s heritage.” And so it was that he started to write about Cuba. When asked about why he wasn’t footnoting his work, he replied that the pamphlet, which grew into a book over 600 pages long, was a book for the people. “I’m not writing this to be a history book or an academic paper. I’m writing this book, so that by knowing Cuba’s past, people would understand it’s present.” He added that unless you lived it, you got it from somewhere else anyway, and footnoting just identifies where it came from. Aside from having been a ship’s captain and harbor pilot, Captain Hank was a high school math and science teacher and was once awarded the status of “Teacher of the Month” by the Connecticut State Board of Education. He has done extensive graduate work, was a union leader and the attendance officer at a vocational technical school. He was also an officer in the Naval Reserve and an officer in the U.S. Army for a total of over 40 years. He once said that “Life is to be lived,” and he certainly has. Active with Military Intelligence he returned to Europe, and when I asked what he did there, he jokingly said that if he had told me he would have to kill me. The Exciting Story of Cuba has the exhilaration of a novel. It is packed full of interesting details and, with the normalizing of the United States and Cuba, it belongs on everyone’s bookshelf, or at least in the bathroom if that’s where you do your reading. Captain Hank is not someone you can hold down and after having read a Proof Copy I know that it will be universally received as the book to go to, if you want to know anything about Cuba! Excerpts from a conversation with Chief Warrant Officer Peter Rommel, USA Retired, Military Intelligence Corps, Winter of 2014.

All philosophies are either monist or dualist. Monists believe that the material world is the only world -- hence, materialists. Dualists believe in a binary universe, that there is a spiritual world in addition to the material world." "Well, as a computer geek, I have to believe in the binary universe." The Librarian raises his eyebrows. "How does that follow?" "Sorry. It's a joke. A bad pun. See, computers use binary code to represent information. So I was joking that I have to believe in the binary universe, that I have to be a dualist." "How droll," the Librarian says, not sounding very amused. "Your joke may not be without genuine merit, however." "How's that? I was just kidding, really." "Computers rely on the one and the zero to represent all things. This distinction between something and nothing -- this pivotal separation between being and nonbeing -- is quite fundamental and underlies many Creation myths." Hiro feels his face getting slightly warm, feels himself getting annoyed. He suspects that the Librarian may be pulling his leg, playing him for a fool. But he knows that the Librarian, however convincingly rendered he may be, is just a piece of software and cannot actually do such things. "Even the word 'science' comes from an Indo-European root meaning 'to cut' or 'to separate.' The same root led to the word 'shit,' which of course means to separate living flesh from nonliving waste. The same root gave us 'scythe' and 'scissors' and 'schism,' which have obvious connections to the concept of separation." "How about 'sword'?" "From a root with several meanings. One of those meanings is 'to cut or pierce.' One of them is 'post' or 'rod.' And the other is, simply, 'to speak.'" "Let's stay on track," Hiro says. "Fine. I can return to this potential conversation fork at a later time, if you desire." "I don't want to get all forked up at this point.

It is probably not a joke that computer games, spectator sports, television violence fantasies, and weekend hunting and fishing expeditions are the necessary transformations of outmoded but undiminished vestigial drives and skills that humans still carry with them. But is the creation of a menu of imaginative diversions our only recourse to the unremitting sway of an obsolete “hunter-gatherer” heritage?

So, at the end of the day, humor works by distracting a person long enough to lower his resistance to the new information and then makes a positive association with the person/brand/computer screen that provided that humor to him. The reality is that people want to be entertained more than they want to be educated. Brand owners have gotten wise to this and now connect with consumers by providing information in an entertaining manner. It’s what the ad agency world has dubbed “infotainment.” The new school of business teaches that if you do not deliver your information via infotainment, you lose out to those who do.

A man was crossing a road when a frog called out, “If you kiss me, I’ll turn into a beautiful princess.” He bent over, picked up the frog, and put it in his pocket. The frog spoke up later and said, “If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful princess, I will tell everyone how smart and brave you are and how you are my hero.” The man took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it, and returned it to his pocket. The frog spoke up again and said, “If you kiss me and turn me back into a princess, I’ll stay with you for a year and do anything you want.” Again the man took the frog out, smiled at it, and put it back into his pocket. Finally, the frog asked, “What is the matter? I’ve told you I’m a beautiful princess, that I’ll stay with you for a year and do anything you want. Why won’t you kiss me?” The man said, “Look, I’m a computer programmer. I don’t have time for a girlfriend, but a talking frog is cool.

How do you know a blonde has been using the computer? A: There is cheese in front of the mouse.

There are fun programs with jokes in them, there are exciting programs which do The Right Thing, and there are sad programs which make valiant tries but don’t quite fly.

First bit of good news, the presence of an Asian corpse would help them search through the computer database. Plaisant left the pencil in the stiff’s nose, picked up a sliced skull, set it down on its jaws, and pushed it backward. It began to rock. “You always get this rocking motion with men. Women’s skulls don’t move. Brains are too small—” He smiled. “I’m just kidding…” Sharko’s face remained neutral; he was in no mood for jokes. His sleep had been disturbed by traffic noises and the buzzing of a fly he couldn’t swat. The doctor thought better of his attempt at humor and fell serious again.

kissing, clawing at one another while a group of men watch and laugh, like these two women are an inside joke among the men. These images feel designed specifically for men who hate women. I gape at the computer as a paralyzing understanding washes over me: I was wrong. I was wrong I was wrong I am wrong. I thought the rules were different in my family, in this little world I’d made. I thought I was safe here. But the rules are the same as they’ve always been. I am back on the laundry room floor. I am back in line looking at a NO FAT CHICKS sign. I am sitting on the shoulders of a frat boy holding up my beer, singing,

During 2015 hackers repeatedly breached U.S. government computer systems. Not just the State Department, which seemed to be constantly ejecting unwanted intruders, but the Pentagon and the White House as well. Derek and I joked about how her private email probably was more secure than a State Department system, which we knew would have been hacked.

Q: What did the computer say when it fell into quicksand? A: “Help me! I’m syncing!

Q: What does a computer do when it’s tired? A: It crashes. Q: What did the tooth fairy use to fix her wand? A: Toothpaste. Q: Why did the computer get glasses? A: To improve his web sight. Q: What stays in the corner but travels all over the world? A: A stamp. Q: What did the computer say when it fell into quicksand? A: “Help me! I’m syncing!” Q: What do you get when you have two doctors at once? A: Pair-a-medics. Q: What should you do when you get in a jam? A: Grab some bread and peanut butter. Q: How can you go surfing in the kitchen? A: On a micro-wave.

computer thought about it for a few seconds, and then it showed us a pig joke:

It shouldn’t surprise you, then, that notes written by internists read like novellas (ones in which we’re paid by the word), while a colleague of mine jokes that a typical post-op surgical note reads something like “Feeling well and doing swell.

Well, I know you don’t want to talk about it anymore, but I signed you up for that computer match thingy.” Why is it that so many people over the age of sixty refer to everything on the Internet as some sort of “computer thing”? Helen was trying to contain her laughter. “Laura, do you mean Match.com?” My father was groaning audibly now. “Yes, that’s it. Charles helped me put up her profile.” “Oh my god, Mother. Are you kidding me?” Helen jumped out of her seat and started running toward the computer in my dad’s home office, which was right off the dining room. “Get out of there, Helen,” my dad yelled, but she ignored him. I chased after her, but she stuck her arm out, blocking me from the monitor. “No, I have to see it!” she shouted. “Stop it, girls,” my mother chided. “Move, bitch.” We were very mature for our age. “This is the best day of my life. Your mommy made a Match profile for you!” “Actually, Chuck made it,” my mother yelled from across the hall. Oh shit. Helen typed my name in quickly. My prom picture from nine years ago popped up on the screen. My brother had cropped Steve Dilbeck out of the photo the best he could, but you could still see Steve’s arms wrapped around my purple chiffon–clad waist. “You’re joking. You’re fucking joking.” “Language, Charlotte!” my dad yelled. “Mom,” I cried, “he used my prom photo! What is wrong with him?” I still had braces at eighteen. I had to wear them for seven years because my orthodontist said I had the worst teeth he had ever seen. You know how sharks have rows of teeth? Yeah, that was me. I blame my mother and the extended breastfeeding for that one, too. My brother, Chuck the Fuck, used to tease me, saying it was leftovers of the dead Siamese twin I had absorbed in utero. My brother’s an ass, so it’s pretty awesome that he set up this handy dating profile for me. In case you hadn’t noticed, our names are Charlotte and Charles. Just more parental torture. Would it be dramatic to call that child abuse? Underneath my prom photo, I read the profile details while Helen laughed so hard she couldn’t breath. My name is Charlotte and I am an average twenty-seven year-old. If you looked up the word mediocre in the dictionary you would see a picture of me—more recent than this nine-year-old photo, of course, because at least back then I hadn’t inked my face like an imbecile. Did I forget to mention that I have a tiny star tattooed under my left eye? Yes, I’d been drunk at the time. It was a momentary lapse of judgment. It would actually be cute if it was a little bigger, but it’s so small that most people think it’s a piece of food or a freckle. I cover it up with makeup. I like junk food and watching reality TV. My best friend and I like to drink Champagne because it makes us feel sophisticated, then we like to have a farting contest afterward. I’ve had twelve boyfriends in the last five years so I’m looking for a lifer. It’s not a coincidence that I used the same term as the one for prisoners ineligible for parole. “Chuck the Fuck,” Helen squeaked through giggles. I turned and glared at her. “He still doesn’t know that you watched him jerk off like a pedophile when he was fourteen.” “He’s only three years younger than us.” “Four. And I will tell him. I’ll unleash Chuck the Fuck on you if you don’t quit.” My breasts are small and my butt is big and I have a moderately hairy upper lip. I also don’t floss, clean my retainer, or use mouthwash with any regularity. “God, my brother is so obsessed with oral hygiene!” “That’s what stood out to you? He said you have a mustache.” Helen grinned. “Girls, get out of there and come clear the table,” my dad yelled. “What do you think the password is?” “Try ‘Fatbutt,’ ” I said. “Yep, that worked. Okay, I’ll change your profile while you clear the table.

might be just a set of equations and eye-blearing numbers disembodied from all physical significance. She might not hear another word about the work until a piece appeared in Air Scoop or Aviation or Air Trails. Or never. For many men, a computer was a piece of living hardware, an appliance that inhaled one set of figures and exhaled another. Once a girl finished a particular job, the calculations were whisked away into the shadowy kingdom of the engineers. “Woe unto thee if they shall make thee a computer,” joked a column in Air Scoop. “For the Project Engineer will take credit for whatsoever thou doth that is clever and full of glory. But if he slippeth up, and maketh a wrong calculation, or pulleth a boner of any kind whatsoever, he shall lay the mistake at thy door when he is called to account and he shall say, ‘What can you

Why do computer teachers never get sick? A: Because an apple a day keeps the doctor away!

Q: What did the hungry computer eat? A: Chips, one byte at a time.

Corporate interests raised a nearly unified voice heralding automation as a certain and universal beneficial advancement. However, some observers saw the new technology as a cause for concern and cautioned that the final word on automation would depend on the choices that industry and the nation made in the face of difficult questions regarding the pace of automation’s implementation, the uses of the new productivity, and the fate of displaced workers as well as depleted or eliminated job classifications, communities, and even industries. Norbert Wiener, for example, a prominent MIT mathematician and pioneer in the science of cybernetics, emphasized the potentially calamitous economic and social consequences of the new production technology. Wiener had begun to express concerns about the impacts of automation on labor and the entire society during World War II, and he authored two books in the immediate Cold War years warning that potentially disastrous unemployment and related social problems may come from industry’s drive toward automation. He characterized automation and computer controls in the production process as the “modern” or “second” industrial revolution, which even more than the first held “unbounded possibilities for good and evil.” 104 In particular, Wiener feared that the larger impact of the changes caused by automation would be a massive displacement of workers, compounded by the profit-driven indifference of industry. “The automatic machine … will produce an unemployment situation, in comparison with which the present recession and even the depression of the thirties will seem a pleasant joke.” 105

As the New York Times described it, Trump was “urging a power often hostile to the United States to violate American law by breaking into a private computer network.” Katy Tur of NBC News followed up to see if this was a joke or he really meant it. She asked if Trump had “any qualms” about asking a foreign government to break into Americans’ emails. Instead of backing off, he doubled down. “If Russia or China or any other country has those emails, I mean, to be honest with you, I’d love to see them,” he said. He also refused to tell Putin not to try to interfere in the election: “I’m not going to tell Putin what to do; why should I tell Putin what to do?” This was no joke. Despite Trump’s attempts to cover for Putin, cybersecurity experts and U.S. intelligence officials were confident that the Russians were behind the hack. There still wasn’t official consensus about whether their goal was to undermine public confidence in America’s democratic institutions or if Putin was actively trying to derail my candidacy and help elect Trump. But I didn’t have any doubt. And the timing of the public disclosure, as well as the specific nature of the material (did Russian intelligence really understand the ins and outs of DNC politics and the decisions of Debbie Wasserman Schultz?), raised the strong possibility that the Russians had gotten help from someone with experience in American politics—a truly alarming prospect.

What's the difference between a blonde and a computer? You only have to punch information into a computer once.

Other than showing up in white tie and tails for the lavish awards ceremonies—the event is so fancy that even the traffic cops outside wear tuxedos, and the sterling silver laid out for the ensuing banquet is never used for any other function—a Nobel laureate’s only unavoidable duty during prize week is to deliver a lecture. Jack Kilby’s Nobel lecture in physics took place in a classically Scandinavian lecture hall, all blond wood and sleek modern furniture, on the campus of Stockholm University. Jack was introduced by a Swedish physicist who noted that “Dr. Kilby’s” invention had launched the global digital revolution, making possible calculators, computers, digital cameras, pacemakers, the Internet, etc., etc. Naturally, Jack wasn’t going to let that go unanswered. “When I hear that kind of thing,” he said, “it reminds me of what the beaver told the rabbit as they stood at the base of Hoover Dam: ‘No, I didn’t build it myself, but it’s based on an idea of mine.’” Everybody liked that joke, so Jack quickly added that he had borrowed the story from Charles H. Townes, an American who won the physics prize in 1964.

Another completely different way that the contacts of a relay could fail was if dirt or an insect got trapped in the spacing between contacts. If a fly or a moth, for example, happened to be sitting on the make contact when the coil was energized, then it could be squashed and, after its smashed little body dried, the contacts would be covered with a very disgusting but quite effective insulator. To clean up such a disabled relay was called debugging, a term that has survived in the vocabulary of modern computer users trying to fix their faulty programs. This is not a joke—I heard it as a quite serious story in a lecture at the Naval Postgraduate School in 1982 from a legend in computer science, Rear Admiral Grace Hopper (1906–1992), a Yale PhD mathematician who worked during the Second World War with Harvard’s five ton, 800 cubic foot Mark I relay computer, which when operating was described as sounding like a “roomful of ladies knitting.” To debug such a machine must have been an “interesting” job for someone;

Susie is having trouble with her computer so she calls Harry, the computer guy, over to her desk. Harry clicks a couple buttons and solves the problem. “So, what was wrong?” asks Susie. Harry replies, “It was an ID ten T error.” “ So what’s that?” asks Suzie. “Write it down,” says Harry. “You’ll figure it out.

On one’s first day it was customary for Doc to bring the new person up to the front of the class to introduce themselves. Doc would ask you to tell a joke. … I had been warned of this tradition, so when I got up in front of everyone I was prepared. “So, you got a joke” Doc asked. I hit the audience with the following gem: “How’d the computer get so fat? … He downloaded too many cookies.” Crickets. A complete swing and a miss. Maybe not complete. One person laughed: Derrick Bateman, who would go on to become one of my first Tampa friends.

Woz was equal parts programming genius and mischievous prankster, known around the San Francisco Bay Area for running his own dial-a-joke phone number. In computers, Woz found the perfect place to combine his humor and his math skills, creating a game that flashed the message "Oh Shit" on the screen when the player lost a round. Jobs recruited Woz to design Breakout, a new game for Atari. This alchemy of Jobs's entrepreneurial vision and Woz's programming ingenuity gave birth to their company, Apple. Created in 1976, the first Apple computer was essentially a prototype for the Homebrew crowd, priced devilishly at $666.66.

Garys droning on about how many hours they billed back in their day. And Nora wants to scream at them in the break room, “Things were different!” They billed for spending the night at the print shop, waiting for closing documents to be spat out and manually compiled. They billed the hours they slept on a plane traveling to in-person meetings. They counted the time spent driving to any number of legal libraries for archaic case law research that has now gone completely online, all while chitchatting on the road. Chitchat is now obsolete. In contrast, for every six-minute increment of their time billed, Nora and her peers sit hunched over computers. Meetings happen on-screen. She takes calls on the evening commute. Her email chimes just before bedtime. The volume of work she can handle in a day has more than doubled since Gary was a young attorney, and yet somehow Nora’s work ethic is the butt of every senior partner’s joke. Millennials, as a punchline, stands on its own.

Joke from my book. Why are cats so good at computer games? Because they have 9 lives.

Andrei avoided the internet as well and this evasion only added to his gloom. He loved music, especially old songs, and he loved movies, of all sorts. If he had the patience, sometimes he would read. While most of the pages he turned bored him to sleep, certain books with certain lines disarranged him. Some literature brought him to his feet, laughing and howling in his room. When the book was right, it was bliss and he wept. His room hushed with serenity and indebtedness. When he turned to his computer, however, or took out his phone, he would inevitably come across a viral trend or video that took the art he loved and turned it into a joke. The internet, in Andrei’s desperate eyes, managed to make fun of everything serious. And if one did not laugh, they were not intelligent. The internet could not be slowed and no protest to criticize its exploitation of art could be made because recreations of art hid perfectly under the veneer of mockery and was thus, impenetrable. It was easy to use Chopin’s ‘Sonata No. 2’ for a quick laugh, to reduce the ‘Funeral March’ to background music. It was a sneaky way for a digital creator to be considered an artist—and parodying the classics made them appear cleverer than the original artist. Meanwhile, Andrei’s body had healed playing Chopin alone in his apartment. He would frailly replay movie moments, too, that he later found the world edited and ripped apart with its cheap teeth. And everyone ate the internet’s crumbs. This cruel derision was impossible to escape. But enough jokes, memes, and glam over someone’s precious source of life would eventually make a sensitive body numb. And Andrei was afraid of that. He needed his fountain of hope unblemished. For this reason, he escaped the internet’s claws and only surrendered to it for e-mails, navigation, and the weather.

it often occurred to me that there was a time before family radios and television when people had nothing but themselves for entertainment. The point I thought we missed about all that was that in those days – the ‘olden days’, as Ronnie puts it – there was little to take you out of your home. Television did more because there was little left to the imagination. You were captured totally in someone else’s imagination, whether it was the set designs, the settings chosen or the lighting and sound to accompany the actors. Computers wired you to the outside world in a much more complete way. It was something you did alone. Ronnie tried to get me to go into his office to witness what he was seeing, but for the most part he was oblivious to everything and everyone else around him. He was truly gone for those hours he spent reading emails, sending them, copying and pasting in quotes and jokes, and reading the blogs he favored.

Right now, my husband, Ronnie, is in his home office on his computer, forwarding political diatribes and jokes to his ditto compatriots who watch the same television talk shows and listen to the same radio talk show hosts parroting each other in a wide echo chamber. Although I can’t imagine why, it invigorates him. When he finally does come up for air, he has his chest out and a broad butter smile smeared over his face. He looks as if he has accomplished something important, as if he knows something the rest of the world doesn’t know.

Someday, people will be buying these in antique shops, and they’ll have tiny computers that they carry around with them”—which I think he probably meant as a joke, except he didn’t laugh.

My wife told me she'll slam my head on the keyboard if I don't get off the computer. I'm not too worried, I think she's jokinlkjhfakljn m,.nbziyoao78yv87dfaoyuofaytdf.

CUSTOMER: I cleaned my computer and now it’s broken! REPAIR TECHNICIAN: What did you clean it with? CUSTOMER: Water and soap. REPAIR TECHNICIAN: You’re not supposed to bring water near a computer! CUSTOMER: I don’t think it was the water that broke it. … I think it was the spin cycle!

Q: Why did the computer get glasses? A: To improve his web sight.

When then senator Obama visited Google in 2007, CEO Eric Schmidt jokingly began the Q&A like a job interview, asking him, “What’s the best way to sort a million thirty-two-bit integers?” Without missing a beat, Obama cracked a wry smile and replied, “I think the Bubble Sort would be the wrong way to go.” The crowd of Google engineers erupted in cheers. “He had me at Bubble Sort,” one later recalled.

I’d found my niche. Since I belonged to no group I learned to move seamlessly between groups. I floated. I was a chameleon, still, a cultural chameleon. I learned how to blend. I could play sports with the jocks. I could talk computers with the nerds. I could jump in the circle and dance with the township kids. I could tell jokes to any group that was laughing.

In the words of John McCarthy, who coined the term “artificial intelligence”: “As soon as it works, no one calls it AI anymore.” AI is—as those of us building it like to joke—“what computers can’t do.” Once they can, it’s just software.

As I stood ready to leave for the casino, Claude cocked his head and with an elfish smile asked, “What makes you tick?” Claude was jokingly referring to the strange sounds (actually these were musical tones) he would be sending from the computer he was wearing to my ear canal, once we went into action at the roulette table. As I look back now from the future, seeing myself wired up with our equipment, I stop that moment in time and I think about a deeper meaning to the question of what makes me tick. I was at a point then in life when I could choose between two very different futures. I could roam the world as a professional gambler winning millions per year. Switching between blackjack and roulette, I could spend some of the winnings as perfect camouflage by also betting on other games offering a small casino edge, like craps or baccarat. My other choice was to continue my academic life. The path I would take was determined by my character, namely, What makes me tick? As the Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, “Character is destiny.” I unfreeze time and watch us head for the roulette tables.

You shouldn’t make fun of that. It’s not a joke.” She walked away before I could reply. I stayed in my seat until everyone had gone, pretending the zipper on my coat was stuck so I could avoid looking anyone in the eye. Then I went straight to the computer lab to look up the word “Holocaust.” I