[1672] in Humor
HUMOR: History of the net. Sorta.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew Bennett)
Thu Oct 31 10:46:56 1996
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 10:38:27 -0500
To: humor@MIT.EDU
From: abennett@MIT.EDU (Andrew Bennett)
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 22:19:53 -0500
From: mabehr@MIT.EDU (Michael Behr)
From: Rourke McNamara <rourkem@rourkem.com>
History Of The Net
==================
First there was God. He was quite lonely so he created Dennis.
Dennis was unimpressed with God.
So,... God created Brian.
But, Brian got bored with God.
So Brian and Dennis started playing, and they created C. God saw C,
and saw that it was good. So he decided to let Brian and Dennis play
some more.
Then Brian and Dennis created Unix. God saw Unix, and he was jealous.
So he created Bill to torment Brian and Dennis and obscure their
creation (for God could not destroy Unix, for he secretly admired
its perfection).
So Bill created Microsoft. And Microsoft created Windows. And God saw
that it was bad, but it had market share, so he was happy. Then Bill
got cocky, and his ego got bigger than God's. So to knock Bill down a
couple of pegs, God put into effect, a wondrous plan.
First God created Tim. And Tim created the World Wide Web (using
Unix, of course). This was good, but not THAT good. So God created
Marc. Marc created Mosaic (using Unix, of course). Mosaic created a
huge feeding frenzy that has got a lot of people who are reading this
their jobs.
But that's a different story. Mosaic was good, and God saw it was
good, so he allowed Marc to start Netscape. Back to this later.
But all this time Brian and Dennis started to make something better
than Unix called Plan 9 (because God was successful in foiling Brian
and Dennis' previous seven plans [there was no Plan 8 because Brian
and Dennis pulled the wool over God's eyes and just jumped to Plan 9,
which was too bright a move for even God to figure out.] )
Eventually, God figured out how to create Larry.
No one knows how or why he created Larry, except perhaps to reduce
productivity at the Jet Propulsion Labs at NASA. [Rumors are that God
created Larry because he secretly liked what Dennis and Brian had done
with C, but didn't think C and Unix was enough -- this probably isn't
true because God believed he had destroyed Brian and Dennis' plans by
destroying Plans 1-7, and by creating Microsoft to slay their beloved
Unix.
Anyhow, Larry created Perl (using Unix and C, of course), and God saw
it was good, so he made Randal. Larry and Randal wrote books about
Perl. And everyone saw that this was good, except snobs who were too
much into C, Windows, and Intel. (It so happens that Randal was so
cool he figured out a way to break into Unix at Intel, and Intel sued
him for it but that's another story also -- chances are Randal would
not have been able to break into *Plan 9* at Intel, but Intel isn't
cool enough to be running Plan 9)
Anyhow, back to Randal. So Randal and Larry wrote books, but they had
to be nice because of the people they worked for. So then came Tom.
But back to Tom later.
Anyhow, God saw Netscape (made using Unix and C, of course), and he
saw it was good, and that annoyed Bill quite a bit. And that made Him
very happy, and made Marc very rich. But Bill was very very rich. But
that's a *completely* different story.
But as good as Larry's creation, Perl, was, it couldn't do everything,
so God created Scott. Scott announced Java, and this was big news. Now
Java really pissed Bill off, because Bill also created Blackbird, and
Java killed Blackbird. This was bad because killing Blackbird also
meant killing the Microsoft Network. And many rejoiced over that, but
that, too is another story.
Now Java, obviously had done much to annoy Bill. For Java was so good
that Bill had to license Java. All this time, Scott poked lots of fun
at Bill because Sun, which was where Scott worked, made a better OS,
derived -- of course -- from Unix, which was better than Bill's and
Microsoft's Windows.
Anyhow, even God's creations Steve and Steve who created Apple
couldn't make Bill license the much superior MacOS. But finally, Bill
had to license Java. So justice was served, and Bill's ego was served
him on a platter for him to eat his words. Or something. That part is
unclear.
So by this time Windows and Microsoft and Bill in general really
sucked. Especially considering the advantages that Brian and Dennis'
C and Unix, running Marc's Netscape and Mosaic over Tim's World Wide
Web, doing cool CGI stuff with Larry's Perl, which you learned from
Randal and Tom, and got to program with Scott's Java.
And God realized he had put Bill down too far. So then God made it so
that Marc's Netscape and Mosaic could run on Windows. We already know
that Bill had to license Java from Scott. We know that Bill missed
the boat for not beating Tim to the punch on the World Wide Web. The
last straw was for God to make it possible for Larry's Perl to run on
Bill's Windows.
So back to Tom. Tom was a Perl God. And God didn't like this, but
Tom's a God so there isn't much God could do, so He couldn't stop Tom
from saying things like "install an operating system on your poor
lonely computer the way God and Dennis intended", and "Espousing the
eponymous /cgi-bin/perl.exe?FMH.pl execution model is like reading a
suicide note -- three days too late."
The moral to the story? God is fickle. That's why Microsoft and Bill
and Windows exists. Do what God intended, install C, Unix,
Mosaic/Netscape, Java, and Perl on your system, and make Brian,
Dennis, Larry, Tim, Tom, Randal, Scott, and even Steve and Steve,
I'm sure, happy by doing so.
Oh yeah, Linus was cool too. He's the guy you thank for being able to
run all the cool stuff on your crappy little Pee Cee. (anything with
x86 on it, by default, is crappy, no PERSONAL flames intended)
=======================================================================
Andrew Bennett MIT Department Ocean Engineering
MIT Room 5-424 77 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02139 <Standard Disclaimers Apply> Phone: (617) 253-7950
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