Three chickens successfully hatched on Tuesday from a batch of eggs which orbited the Earth 108 times aboard China's third unmanned spaceship "Shenzhou III"...
... They looked like normal chicks: bald with skinny legs, wrinkled skin, bulging eyes -
kind of like how John Glenn looked the last time he landed...
from Comedy on Tap
In the news, Scientists create pre-plucked chicken. Completely without feathers, these pink fleshy things are a concept in how to make chickens more heat-tolerant and save on feed.
To some, however, this idea lays an egg.
"... problem with the new color scheme, Ensign ... "
from "Stytoons"
.....
Star Wars Special:
There's been a little talk about the Yoda puppet beung replaced by computer animation:
"... I'd like to see them bring back the Muppet Show ... I can just see Yoda as a guest star on it. "
Yoda walks slowly into the theatre / studio / whatever they bring it back as. Miss Piggy catches sight of him and comments, "Oooh, he's a cute one for an old guy."
Scooter runs up and exclaims, "Wow! Its Yoda! I just saw you in your latest movie!"
Yoda replies with annoyance, "Was not me. Replaced me they did! Computer graphics they now use! Puppets can't fight they say! Now...retired am I."
"Puppets can't fight?" asks Miss Piggy indignantly. "Scooter, what did you use to call me when we first met?"
Scooter gulps. "Um...ma'am?"
Piggy shakes her head. "No, before I beat you into submission."
"Miss P..p..pork rinds?" he answers with a visible quiver.
"That's what I needed to hear. HIIIYA!"
Scooter crumples on the first blow and Yoda's eyes widen. "Strong the Force is in you, yes, but beware the Dark Side!"
by "Kree"
A project to revive the Tasmanian Wolf via cloning is in the planning stage - News Article
The Daily Illuminator is calling this the "Test Tube Tassie."
When the original Sim-City, the one that came in a "black and white" version, was being playtested, it was noticed the players were bulldozing churches poping up on land they had zones as residential, thinking the steepled structure was tax-exempt (it wasn't). Needless to say, the programers were not happy with this and made a change ...
With the newer code, whenever a church was razzed, a tornado would plop down onto the town.
So before you do anything to your digitized churches, make sure your sim-city is "saved."
Did Bill Gates once say that computers would never need more than 640K of ram?
According to many people, he said, "640K should be enough for anyone." In fact, he didn't say that or anything like it. He wouldn't have said that anymore than he would have said, "$640,000 should be enough for anyone."
The limitation of 640K of ram on early personal computers had to do with the central processing chip they used and the way it addressed the machine's memory. Actually, there was a total of one megabyte or 1,024K of memory in these machines, but not all of it could be allocated to ram. Gate's company, Microsoft, supplied the operating system, DOS, for the most famous of these machines, the IBM PC. That's how he became linked to that maximum of memory.
So what did Bill Gates actually say? "Monopoly? What monopoly?"
from Topgreetings.com
"How managers see programers."
.....
You Know You're TOO Serious About Computers When...
You comment, while watching a sunset, that the image would be enhanced with 10% more magenta and a higher resolution.
When someone tells you about a great new program and you're very disappointed to find that it's on TV.
If while driving down the street, you are confused by the numbers on the houses - they do not appear to be legitimate WWW addresses.
When you find it easier to dial-up the National Weather Service Weather/your_town/now.html than to simply look out the window.
When you start using phrases like: Hungry.must.eat.food.now@ home .com
If you call in sick because you found a great new WWW site.
If you can type your top 10 favorite Web sites, by heart.
If your fingers quit moving because you've been online for 36 hours.
If your net provider suggests you try a competitor, because you're exceeding 300 hours a month connect time.
If on the way home from work, you use your portable and cellular phone in your car, to reprogram a Tomahawk missile, in flight, and redirect it to take out the joker in the Cadillac who cut you off.
When your desk collapses under the weight of your computer peripherals.
If you try to press Alt-F4 to close your car window.
from Kathy
In financial news...
AOL Time Warner Inc., the world's largest media company, reported a net loss of $54 billion for its first quarter, the largest quarterly loss ever for a U.S. company.
How does a company lose $54,000,000,000.00 in three months, you ask? Good question. The answer involves something called "goodwill." And this is probably not what you think it is. Goodwill is the premium paid for an acquisition above the value of the tangible assets acquired. That is, in language you and I would understand, money that doesn't exist.
Under the old rules, companies could "write off" goodwill over a number of years. In other words, they could declare it as a loss and take a tax deduction on the value. If you do this over a period of 40 years nobody notices that the money has disappeared...off the books, anyway.
However, after Enron and Arthur Anderson, new accounting procedures have been instituted requiring companies to constantly weigh the value of their investment in the acquired company and write off any reduction in value as it occurs. And all of a sudden you get to see the kind of goodwill that AOL was getting. Make sense?
Why is it that you only learn about the loopholes after they're closed? I don't remember Ford Motor Credit giving me any goodwill when I bought the new Thunderbird. I could have had the whole thing written off by now.
Laugh it up, Joe
from Joe's Clean Laffs
On April 23rd 1940, Lee Majors, best known for starring in the TV show The Six Million Dollar Man was born...
... He's so old now, he feels like the $60 man...
Comedy on Tap
"... we don't have a satelite in your area ... "
from "Stytoons"
.....
"Music Industry Unveils New Piracy-Proof Format: A Black, Plastic Disc With Grooves On It ."
from the Daily Illuminator
"Possibly bored by the banal baubles of mundane Mother Earth or inspired by the dashing derring-do of such pioneers as first American in space Alan Shepard and first millionaire in space Dennis Tito, (a) poll says 7 percent of rich Americans would pay $20 million for a two-week orbital flight and 19 percent would pay $100,000 for 15-minute sub-orbital flight." - Rich Eyeing Space Tourism
A vacation that's truly out of this world.
Here are the reactions when somebody leaves a glass of milk next to the keyboard.
Assembly programmers:
No thanks; I drink straight from the cow.
Bill Gates:
Not enough market share to be Microsoft Milk.
C Programmers:
No thanks; I drink straight from the jug.
Non-procedural language programmers:
I drank it when nobody was looking.
Pascal programmers:
Well, what type of milk is it?
Pentium users:
I drank Glass * .49999999 . . . but don't hold me to that.
Prolog programmers:
I know I drank it - just don't ask me how.
Copy protection crazies:
Somebody drank half my milk and didn't pay for it!
Free Software Foundation:
That milk is the cow's contribution to all mankind!
Fuzzy logic guys:
I may or may not have drunk some part of that milk.
IBM:
Rent the glass from us and we'll fill it with something we know is good for you.
Shareware game author:
That glass is free; the next one you have to pay for.
UI designers:
What's that #$%# in my glass?
UNIX users:
Nahh . . . too easy.
Windows users:
Where's my straw?
from Jokes4U
"A research discovery concerning the chemicals used by muscles to build up has led to questions if a pill will soon be developed to act in the place of exercise" - Pop a Pill, Get in Shape?
For health club owners and hardcore exercise nuts, this news must be a hard pill to swallow.
"You used my souviner "Area 51" microchips to fix my car? How could you?! You realize how much money I spent ..."
"Uh, you might not be complaining when I told you what happened ..." Click Here (1.5 MB)
from 'uniqueusername'
.....
Not a joke, but interesting - clock that follows cursor
"It won't feed the hungry, cure the sick, or get the spam off your computer. But it's neat. " Daily Illuminator
And the latest in the odd items at e-bay: Back To The Future Delorean Flux Cap. Replica
And with it, you can go back to any online auction you missed.
"It looked like something from a sci-fi flick: a mysterious silver orb, three feet in diameter, floating in the surf off the South Carolina coast. " News Item
After floating ashore, no one was able to identify where it came from nor did anyone claim it. Inspection showed it to be rather ordinary - " 'There was nothing green, nothing glowing ...' "
They're just calling it the Unidentified Floating Object.
Bill Gates' Vision of the Statue of Liberty
.....
It seems Africanized bees, better known as killer bees, are good for something. A researcher says coffee beans polinated by them are bigger and more flavorfull.
Coffee with a little extra buzz ...
What's the function of characters such as "?," "=" and "~" in URL's?
Even computer cognoscenti don't always know about that stuff after the first "/." Is it the machine's way of cursing you out, as in &%$!!*%+?&?"
No, but it is letting you know where it's at. The familiar part of the address, as in www.cmonupandseemesometime.com/, is the location of the page on the Web. It's like the street address of a house. But what if it's an apartment house or office building? You also have to know where in the house or building you're going. The "~" is one of those direction marks, in this case indicating that the page is on a personal folder on the server.
But maybe you need to ring the bell and use the intercom. The "?" and "=" refer to scripts that handle the information you are asked to input to further narrow your search. Go ahead: input.
Sorry, nobody's home.
from "topgreetings.com"
from the webmaster's Dad
.....
"A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing." -Emo Philips
from "Clean Laffs"
"In a world breakthrough out of the realms of Star Trek, scientists in Australia have successfully teleported a laser beam of light from one spot to another in a split second.
"But he said humans posed a near-impossible task as we are made up of zillions of atoms -- quantified by a one with 27 zeroes --
"So forget Star Trek"
from AOL News
from www.krank.dk/
.....
"I just discovered this as I was surfing. Now you can see anyone's Driver's License on the Internet - including your own. I searched for mine and there it was...picture and all. What an infringement of our privacy! " http://www.license.shorturl.com
from the webmaster's Aunt
from "Stytoons"
.....
"Some lucky 'Star Trek' fan will have a chance to take the captain's seat in an upcoming auction available on eBay.
Captain Kirk's command chair from the starship Enterprise will be one of some 374 mostly "Star Trek"-related lots that will go up for auction next Thursday - Captian Kirk's chair for sale ."
"To boldly sit where Captian Kirk has sat before."
"Royal College of Art students in London have developed a phone that fits inside a tooth." - News item
I've heard of ears ringing, but teeth?
Suppose NASA decided to get its money the same way car racers do? ...
from www.krank.dk/
.....
Those text messages on the fancier moble phones, and their code-like abbreviations, they may soon be about to change.
Newer phones in development have color screens that can send and recieve messages containing video images.
One of the more popular images in testing has been a talking hamster - News Item
So now, your phone will have a hamster to go along with your computer's mouse.
How old is e-mail?
Older than most of us would think. Electronic messaging between computers has been around since 1971 - News Item.
The inventor, Ray Tomlynson, put down his adress as tomlinson@bbn-tenexa .
And why the "@" sign?
"The Model 33 Teletype keyboard connected to the computer Mr Tomlinson was using only had about 12 punctuation characters. Out of this limited pool he plumped for the @ symbol ..."
From such begingings came the "icon for the internet age - as well as ... a thousand naff company names."
Remember when companies began monitoring email in the workplace? Now it's spreading to the Instant-Messengers - Companies Watch Employees' Messages
"Experts wonder what impact Internet porn will have on adolescents who find it." - Troubling Images
The impact on most male ones is obvious - "WOOHOO!!!"
Polish prosecutors said on Thursday they were searching for a computer hacker believed by the United States to have penetrated the NASA space agency, causing damage reportedly estimated at $1 million. - News Item
A Polish joke that's not very funny.