[647] in Humor
HUMOR: 1995 - The Year in Preview
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew A. Bennett)
Wed Jan 4 13:36:38 1995
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Wed, 04 Jan 1995 13:31:49 EST
From: "Andrew A. Bennett" <abennett@MIT.EDU>
Date: Tue, 3 Jan 95 18:56:10 PST
From: Connie_Kleinjans@Novell.COM (Connie Kleinjans)
From: rossix!rwc.dnet!apdma@openlink.openlink.com (Mary Ann Anthony)
From: ROSSIX::"fwb@scruz.net" 27-DEC-1994 01:21:07.72
Pulled from the Newsbytes wire service
- -----
Feature - 1995, The Year in Preview 12/23/94
WASHINGTON, D.C., U.S.A., 1994 DEC 23 (NB) -- By Ken Maize.
Here is what our Washington bureau sees in our crystal ball for
the coming year.
January: Incoming Republicans discover that computer systems
left behind by the departing Democrats all have a left-leaning
bias. "There are too many digits to the left of the decimal
place on all of these computers," says Speaker of the House
Newton Leroy "Newtie" Gingrich (R-Ga.).
"We've got move those figures to the right. More numbers right
of the decimal, fewer to the left." Gingrich makes that part of
his Contract with America.
February: IBM announces that it has discovered another bug in
the Intel chip. Big Blue says that extensive tests at its
Almaden, Calif., research center demonstrate that once in every
2,000 disk writes, the Pentium causes the processor to explode
and the monitor screen to go up in flames. Intel responds that
the problem happens only once a millennium, and then only when
the users are located in the California wine district and
drinking chardonnay at the keyboard. Intel stock soars.
March: Having successfully acquired the Catholic Church,
Microsoft's Bill Gates says he is making an offer of $12 billion
a year over five years to acquire the Federal Communications
Commission, the Antitrust Division of the US Justice Department
and the US District Court for the District of Columbia,
including Judge Harold Greene. "This is part of my strategic
vision for a telecommunication revolution, in which Microsoft
owns everything," said Gates, calling the price "chump change."
Gates say Microsoft can recoup the cost "with just a couple of
spectrum auctions." The Clinton administration, anxious to find
ways to pay for a middle class tax cut, takes the deal. Clinton
then announces a new range of middle class tax cuts, including
tax credits for home-delivered pizza and video rentals.
April: Secret Service agents discover pieces of four hand
grenades and a TOW missile on the White House grounds near the
Clinton living quarters. Not to worry, says the Secret Service.
Just a little turf war between two rival D.C. youth gangs.
May: Intel says exhaustive tests it has performed at the
Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, Calif., show
that in about one case in 10,000, the new IBM-Motorola Power PC
chip causes sterility as a result of electrical and magnetic
fields and, in one case in a million, causes AIDS. IBM says it
is studying the problem and will have no comment until it has
reviewed the data, contained in a spreadsheet done on a Pentium
computer. Stock of IBM and Intel soars.
June: A USAir flight arriving at National Airport from
Pittsburgh narrowly avoids a crash after its electronic
instruments fail. An examination by the National Transportation
Safety Board concludes the equipment failure was caused by a
haze of cellular phone signals from telecommunications lobbyists
trying to reach members of Congress prior to a House vote on a
rewrite of the 1934 Communications Act.
July: A scheduled House vote on the rewrite of the 1934
Communications Act is halted in mid-stream after the electronic
voting and tallying system crashes, displaying the names of
members of Congress who had not been in Washington since the
99th Congress. Technicians blame an electronic haze of cellular
phone signals from lobbyists trying to reach members on the
floor.
August: Microsoft announces that its new operating system
software, Windows 96, will not ship until December.
September: President Bill Clinton admits to Newsbytes that he
doesn't have a clue how to operate a personal computer other
than his Nintendo Game Boy. But, in an exclusive interview, he
says, "I will do better, I promise. By November 1996, I will be
a certified nerd. Ya'll got to trust me on this."
October: In a rapidly widening scandal dubbed "Jacobsongate" in
the press, possible presidential candidates Bob Dole, Phil
Gramm, Jack Kemp, Bob Kerrey, Rush Limbaugh and Jesse Jackson
all acknowledge that none of them has a clue about how to
operate a personal computer. All promise to learn by the
November election. It appears that only Vice President Al "Beam
Me Aboard, Scotty" Gore and Speaker Newton Leroy "Newtie"
Gingrich know their mouse from a CD-ROM. Is a new ticket forming?
November: Vice President Al "Earth Station" Gore's body is found
at his computer console, still alive but apparently absent his
brain. "The vital signs are fine, but we can't get a read on an
EEG," says his physician. Gore was found wearing a
helmet-mounted display and wired virtual reality gloves and the
suspicion is that his mind was lost on a continuous loop on the
Information Superhighway. The loss of the brain was not expected to
interfere with either Gore's duties as vice president nor his
political future.
December: Microsoft announces that its new operating system
software, Windows 96, will not ship until mid-year.
(Ken Maize/19941221)
