Computer History...

The Loony Bin ( loonies@bloodaxe.demon.co.uk )
Tue, 5 Nov 1996 13:37:46 +0000


Hiya All...

Here's a lesson in history sent in by Alan...

Wishes & Dreams...

- ANDREA
        xx

*************<andrea@bloodaxe.demon.co.uk>*************
*****<ajc6@ukc.ac.uk>*****<bloodaxe@geocities.com>*****
***                                                 ***
***                 THE LOONY BIN                   ***
***           loonies@bloodaxe.demon.co.uk          ***
*** Archive: http://eleceng.ukc.ac.uk/~pjw/loonies/ ***
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*******************Internet Goddess********************
**********************ANDROMEDA************************

  ------- Forwarded foolishness follows -------

                       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.)