[619] in Humor
HUMOR: In the beginning
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Sat Dec 17 20:44:52 1994
From: abennett@MIT.EDU
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Sat, 17 Dec 1994 20:41:46 EST
Date: Fri, 16 Dec 94 12:42:51 PST
From: Connie_Kleinjans@Novell.COM (Connie Kleinjans)
>[forwarding info deleted]
>
>In the beginning, God created the bit. And the bit was a zero;
>nothing.
>
>On the first day, He toggled the 0 to 1, and the Universe was. (In
>those days, bootstrap loaders were simple, and "active low" signals
>didn't yet exist.)
>
>On the second day, God's boss wanted a demo, and tried to read the
>bit. This being volatile memory, the bit reverted to a 0. And the
>universe wasn't. God learned the importance of backups and memory
>refresh, and spent the rest of the day ( and his first all-nighter )
>reconstructing the universe.
>
>On the third day, the bit cried "Oh, Lord! If you exist, give me a
>sign!" And God created rev 2.0 of the bit, even better than the
>original prototype. Those in Universe Marketing immediately realized
>the the "new and improved" wouldn't do justice to such a grand and
>glorious creation. And so it was dubbed the Most Significant Bit, or
>the Sign bit. Many bits followed, but only one was so honored.
>
>On the fourth day, God created a simple ALU with 'add' and 'logical
>shift' instructions. And the original bit discovered that by
>performing a single shift instruction, it could become the Most
>Significant Bit. And God realized the importance of computer
>security.
>
>On the fifth day, God created the first mid-life kicker, rev 2.0 of
>the ALU, with wonderful features, and said "Screw that add and shift
>stuff. Go forth and multiply." And God saw that it was good.
>
>On the sixth day, God got a bit overconfident, and invented
>pipelines, register hazards, optimizing compilers, crosstalk,
>restartable instructions, microinterrupts, race conditions, and
>propagation delays. Historians have used this to convincingly argue
>that the sixth day must have been a Monday.
>
>On the seventh day, an engineering change introduced UNIX into the
>Universe, and it hasn't worked right since.
