HISTORY OF THE WORLD

by Yu Suzuki on 09:27 PM May 23rd, 2000 EST (#10)

2.5 million B.C.: OOG the Open Source Caveman develops the axe and releases it under the GPL. The axe quickly gains popularity as a means of crushing moderators’ heads.

100,000 B.C.: Man domesticates the AIBO.

10,000 B.C.: Civilization begins when early farmers first learn to cultivate hot grits.

3000 B.C.: Sumerians develop a primitive cuneiform perl script.

2920 B.C.: A legendary flood sweeps Slashdot, filling up a Borland / Inprise story with hundreds of offtopic posts.

1750 B.C.: Hammurabi, a Mesopotamian king, codifies the first EULA.

490 B.C.: Greek city-states unite to defeat the Persians. ESR triumphantly proclaims that the Greeks “get it”.

399 B.C.: Socrates is convicted of impiety. Despite the efforts of freesocrates.com, he is forced to kill himself by drinking hemlock.

336 B.C.: Fat-Time Charlie becomes King of Macedonia and conquers Persia.

4 B.C.: Following the Star (as in hot young actress) of Bethelem, wise men travel from far away to troll for baby Jesus.

A.D. 476: The Roman Empire BSODs.

A.D. 610: The Glorious MEEPT!! founds Islam after receiving a revelation from God. Following his disappearance from Slashdot in 632, a succession dispute results in the emergence of two troll factions: the Pythonni and the Perliites.

A.D. 800: Charlemagne conquers nearly all of Germany, only to be acquired by andover.net.

A.D. 874: Linus the Red discovers Iceland.

A.D. 1000: The epic of the Beowulf Cluster is written down. It is the first English epic poem.

A.D. 1095: Pope Bruce II calls for a crusade against the Turks when it is revealed they are violating the GPL. Later investigation reveals that Pope Bruce II had not yet contacted the Turks before calling for the crusade.

A.D. 1215: Bowing to pressure to open-source the British government, King John signs the Magna Carta, limiting the British monarchy’s power. ESR triumphantly proclaims that the British monarchy “gets it”.

A.D. 1348: The ILOVEYOU virus kills over half the population of Europe. (The other half was not using Outlook.)

A.D. 1420: Johann Gutenberg invents the printing press. He is immediately sued by monks claiming that the technology will promote the copying of hand-transcribed books, thus violating the church’s intellectual property.

A.D. 1429: Natalie Portman of Arc gathers an army of Slashdot trolls to do battle with the moderators. She is eventually tried as a heretic and stoned (as in petrified).

A.D. 1478: The Catholic Church partners with doubleclick.net to launch the Spanish Inquisition. A.D. 1492: Christopher Columbus arrives in what he believes to be “India”, but which RMS informs him is actually “GNU/India”.

A.D. 1508-12: Michaelengelo attempts to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling with ASCII art, only to have his plan thwarted by the “Lameness Filter.”

A.D. 1517: Martin Luther nails his 95 Theses to the church door and is promptly moderated down to (-1, Flamebait).

A.D. 1553: “Bloody” Mary ascends the throne of England and begins an infamous crusade against Protestants. ESR eats his words.

A.D. 1588: The “IF I EVER MEET YOU, I WILL KICK YOUR ASS” guy meets the Spanish Armada.

A.D. 1603: Tokugawa Ieyasu unites the feuding pancake-eating ninjas of Japan.

A.D. 1611: Mattel adds Galileo Galilei to its CyberPatrol block list for proposing that the Earth revolves around the sun.

A.D. 1688: In the so-called “Glorious Revolution”, King James II is bloodlessly forced out of power and flees to France. ESR again triumphantly proclaims that the British monarchy “gets it”.

A.D. 1692: Anti-GIF hysteria in the New World comes to a head in the infamous “Salem GIF Trials”, in which 20 alleged GIFs are burned at the stake. Later investigation reveals that mayn of the supposed GIFs were actually PNGs.

A.D. 1769: James Watt patents the one-click steam engine.

A.D. 1776: Trolls, angered by CmdrTaco’s passage of the Moderation Act, rebel. After a several-year flame war, the trolls succeed in seceding from Slashdot and forming the United Coalition of Trolls.

A.D. 1789: The French Revolution begins with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the Bastille.

A.D. 1799: Attempts at discovering Egyptian hieroglyphs receive a major boost when Napoleon’s troops discover the Rosetta stone. Sadly, the stone is quickly outlawed under the DMCA as an illegal means of circumventing encryption.

A.D. 1844: Samuel Morse invents Morse code. Cryptography export restrictions prevent the telegraph’s use outside the U.S. and Canada.

A.D. 1853: United States Commodore Matthew C. Perry arrives in Japan and forces the xenophobic nation to open its doors to foreign trade. ESR triumphantly proclaims that Japan finally “gets it”.

A.D. 1865: President Lincoln is ‘bitchslapped.’ The nation mourns.

A.D. 1901: Italian inventor Guglielmo Marcoli first demonstrates the radio. Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich immediately delivers to Marcoli a list of 335,435 suspected radio users.

A.D. 1911: Facing a break-up by the United States Supreme Court, Standard Oil Co. defends its “freedom to innovate” and proposes numerous rejected settlements. Slashbots mock the company as “Standa~1” and depict John D. Rockefeller as a member of the Borg.

A.D. 1929: V.A. Linux’s stock drops over 200 dollars on “Black Tuesday”, October 29th.

A.D. 1945: In the secret Manhattan Project, scientists working in Los Alamos, New Mexico, construct a nuclear bomb from Star Wars Legos.

A.D. 1948: Slashdot runs the infamous headline “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN.” Shamefaced, the site quickly retracts the story when numerous readers point out that it is not news for nerds, stuff that matters.

A.D. 1965: Jon Katz delivers his famous “I Have A Post-Hellmouth Dream” speech, which stated: “I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the geeks of former slaves and the geeks of former slave geeks will be able to sit down together at the table of geeks… I have a dream that my geek little geeks will one geek live in a nation where they will not be geeked by the geek of their geek but by the geek of their geek.”

A.D. 1969: Neil Armstrong becomes the first man to set foot on the moon. His immortal words: “FIRST MOONWALK!!!”

A.D. 1970: Ohio National Guardsmen shoot four students at Kent State University for “Internet theft”.

A.D. 1989: The United States invades Panama to capture renowned “hacker” Manual Noriega, who is suspected of writing the DeCSS utility.

A.D. 1990: West Germany and East Germany reunite after 45 years of separation. ESR triumphantly proclaims that Germany “gets it”.

A.D. 1994: As years of apartheid rule finally end, Nelson Mandela is elected president of South Africa. ESR is sick, and sadly misses his chance to triumphantly proclaim that South Africa “gets it”.

A.D. 1997: Slashdot reports that Scottish scientists have succeeded in cloning a female sheep named Dolly. Numerous readers complain that if they had wanted information on the latest sheep releases, they would have just gone to freshsheep.net

A.D. 1999: Miramax announces Don Knotts to play hacker Emmanuel Goldstein in upcoming movie “Takedown”

Server updated

Due diskproblems server was unavailable for several days, upnow. Now has 65 GB Diskspace, 35 GB free. Running on Pii233/96 Meg Ram.

Documentation fun

RB AND RS: These commands no longer reboot if there are extra parameters on the command line. The motivation here is that Dave recently typed ‘rb -s’ when he meant to type ‘rd -s’, and he really, really, didn’t want to reboot his system at that particular time.

from the MacsBug 6.5d12 documentation

Server going down

Server will be down tonight for an hour or so, for new harddrive install…

AIIIIEEEEEEEE

Stop! Whoever crosseth the bridge of Death, must answer first these questions three, ere the other side he see!

“What is your name?”
“Sir Brian of Bell.”
“What is your quest?”
“I seek the Holy Grail.”
“What are four lowercase letters that are not legal flag arguments to the Berkeley UNIX version of `ls’?”
“I, er…. AIIIEEEEEE!”

If beer where operatingsystems

DOS Beer: Requires you to use your own can opener, and requires you to read the directions carefully before opening the can. Originally only came in an 8-oz. can, but now comes in a 16-oz. can. However, the can is divided into 8 compartments of 2 oz. each, which have to be accessed separately. Soon to be discontinued, although a lot of people are going to keep drinking it after it’s no longer available.

Mac Beer: At first, came only a 16-oz. can, but now comes in a 32-oz. can. Considered by many to be a “light” beer. All the cans look identical. When you take one from the fridge, it opens itself. The ingredients list is not on the can. If you call to ask about the ingredients, you are told that “you don’t need to know.” A notice on the side reminds you to drag your empties to the trashcan.

Windows 3.1 Beer: The world’s most popular. Comes in a 16-oz. can that looks a lot like Mac Beer’s. Requires that you already own a DOS Beer. Claims that it allows you to drink several DOS Beers simultaneously, but in reality you can only drink a few of them, very slowly, especially slowly if you are drinking the Windows Beer at the same time. Sometimes, for apparently no reason, a can of Windows Beer will explode when you open it..

OS/2 Beer: Comes in a 32-oz can. Does allow you to drink several DOS Beers simultaneously. Allows you to drink Windows 3.1 Beer simultaneously too, but somewhat slower. Advertises that its cans won’t explode when you open them, even if you shake them up. You never really see anyone drinking OS/2 Beer, but the manufacturer (International Beer Manufacturing) claims that 9 million six-packs have been sold.

Windows 95 Beer: You can’t buy it yet, but a lot of people have taste-tested it and claim it’s wonderful. The can looks a lot like Mac Beer’s can, but tastes more like Windows 3.1 Beer. It comes in 32-oz. cans, but when you look inside, the cans only have 16 oz. of beer in them. Most people will probably keep drinking Windows 3.1 Beer until their friends try Windows 95 Beer and say they like it. The ingredients list, when you look at the small print, has some of the same ingredients that come in DOS beer, even though the manufacturer claims that this is an entirely new brew.

Windows NT Beer: Comes in 32-oz. cans, but you can only buy it by the truckload. This causes most people to have to go out and buy bigger refrigerators. The can looks just like Windows 3.1 Beer’s, but the company promises to change the can to look just like Windows 95 Beer’s – after Windows 95 beer starts shipping. Touted as an “industrial strength” beer, and suggested only for use in bars.

Unix Beer: Comes in several different brands, in cans ranging from 8 oz. to 64 oz. Drinkers of Unix Beer display fierce brand loyalty, even though they claim that all the different brands taste almost identical. Sometimes the pop-tops break off when you try to open them, so you have to have your own can opener around for those occasions, in which case you either need a complete set of instructions, or a friend who has been drinking Unix Beer for several years.

AmigaDOS Beer: The company has gone out of business, but their recipe has been picked up by some weird German company, so now this beer will be an import. This beer never really sold very well because the original manufacturer didn’t understand marketing. Like Unix Beer, AmigaDOS Beer fans are an extremely loyal and loud group. It originally came in a 16-oz. can, but now comes in 32-oz. cans too. When this can was originally introduced, it appeared flashy and colorful, but the design hasn’t changed much over the years, so it appears dated now. Critics of this beer claim that it is only meant for watching TV anyway.

En hyrde og en consulent

»En hyrde passede sine fåreflokke på en fjern eng, da en helt ny Jeep Cherokee kom farende ud af en støvsky imod ham. Chaufføren, en ung mand i Brionisæt, Guccisko, Ray Ban-solbriller og Yves Saint Laurent-slips lænede sig ud af vinduet og spurgte hyrden: »Hvis jeg kan fortælle dig nøjagtig, hvor mange får du har, vil du så give mig et?«.
Hyrden ser pÃ¥ yuppien og sÃ¥ pÃ¥ sin fredeligt græssende fÃ¥reflok og svarer roligt: »Værs’go«.
Yuppien parkerer bilen, tager sin notebookcomputer frem, forbinder den med en mobiltelefon, surfer til en NASA-side på Internettet, hvor han kalder et GPS-satellitnavigationssystem, skanner området, åbner en database og omkring 60 Excel spreadsheets med en complex fomular. Til sidst printer han en flere sider lang rapport ud på sin hi-tech miniature printer, vender sig mod hyrden og siger: »Du har nøjagtig 1.586 får her«.
Hyrden sagde: »Det er korrekt. Du kan tage et af fårene«.
Han ser den unge mand foretage sit valg, som han bylter sammen i sin Cherokee. Så siger hyrden: »Hvis jeg kan fortælle dig nøjagtig, hvad din business er, vil du så give mig mit får tilbage?«.
»O.k. Hvorfor ikke«, svarer den unge mand.
»Du er consultant (rådgiver)«, siger hyrden.
»Det er korrekt«, siger yuppien.
»Hvordan gættede du det?«.
»Det var nemt nok«, svarede hyrden.
»Du kommer her, selv om ingen har bedt dig komme. Du ønsker, at jeg skal betale for svaret på et spørgsmål, jeg allerede kendte. Og du ved ingenting om min business, for du har lige taget min hund«.

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