Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 04:35:02 -0400
Subject: Re: Weird sights today.
Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology
Status: R

Kibo writes:

Bruce Tomlin (btomlin@texas.net) wrote:
>
> James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote:
> >
> > Anyway, yeah, my computer (the one that thought it was 1956) takes
> > little batteries whose "form factor" (that's the computer-industry
> > obfuscation for the word "size") is called "1/2 AA".
> 
> Well, at least it didn't make your monitor stop working.  Yes, with some 
> models of macs and some particular monitors, you will get NO VIDEO when 
> the battery goes out! 

Mac weenies tend to get all snotty about how all Windows computers will
OBVIOUSLY explode on January First, Two Thousand, when most of 'em don't
realize that older Macs go black-screen when the clock battery expires --
and although Apple claims the clock batteries last five to seven years,
they tend to go belly-up after two to four.  Modern Macs don't black-screen
when the batteries died, but the ones made a few years ago are pretending
to die RIGHT NOW to trick people into buying new Macs (instead of an
eight-dollar battery) because they think their computer's motherboard has
been fried.  (Worse, in some of the earliest Macs, the battery is soldered
onto the motherboard!)

So, basically, until recently, many Macs would appear to self-destruct after
about three years, whether it was the year 2000 or not.

Computers break down like this:

Windows --   Tends to mysteriously stop working between sessions.
             Then you spend a day re-installing Windows.
             After that, the computer sort of works, but the applications
             act weird, so you never again will use your computer to
             its full potential, which keeps the hardware from wearing out.

Macs --      The hardware breaks early, to keep you from finding out
             that the system software is just as flaky as Windows.

UNIX --      Almost never crashes, but when it does, it trashes your
             entire filesystem.

Amiga --     Little elves make it crash at least once a day.

Atari ST --  It's hard to determine why the computer broke because it
             breaks faster than the human eye can follow.  Also the case
             falls apart if you mistakenly put any pressure on the keyboard,
             and it catches fire if you confuse drive "C:" with drive "c:"
             (the only part of the whole file-system that was case-sensitive
             was the cartridge port) and the computer erases all your files
             if you mistakenly try to move one of the big icons that say
             "DRAG ME WITH THE MOUSE!" even though the only thing that can
             do is destroy your disk.

WebTV --     Can't break.  At least, we think it can't, because we can't
             imagine what the difference between a normal WebTV and
             a non-functional WebTV would be.

Pac-Man --   Breaks after I reach level 255.

So, am I the only one who's not worried about the effects of the year 2000
on DOS/Windows PCs because the worst case would be that the computer wouldn't
know what year it is and all the files would be timestamped "1980" and this
would be exactly like it was around 1986, when the computers didn't HAVE
lithium batteries and they asked you to enter the time every day when you
turned the computer on, and nobody ever bothered doing this?

                                        -- K.

                                        Rule #2:  The faster your computer
                                        runs, the slower it boots.