| RHF Joke Archives | 
NutWorks is published semi-monthly-ish by Brent C.J. Britton, <Brent@Maine.BITNET> To see the complete issue, see rec.humor.
The AI Notebook =============== by Johnathan R. Partington <JRP1>
Recent progress in Artificial Intelligence ------------------------------------------ by Charles Cabbage
After much debate on the fundamental philosophical question of the twentieth century: "How many beans make five?" I decided that there was only one way to get a definitive answer: ASK THE BEANS THEMSELVES.
Accordingly, I took a can of Heinz Baked Beans, noting the legend "57 varieties" on it. Could 57 be the answer to this Ultimate Question, I wondered. My basic problem was to educate the beans so that they could pass the Turing test. This seemed at first sight to be a tricky project, but then I remembered one sinister fact.
The Computing Service was forbidding food and drink near its terminals. Could this be because they feared that such comestibles would evolve into sentient life forms as a result of exposure to radiation from the CRT's? Admittedly, this had not happened to CS students, but nonetheless I gave it a try.
At dead of night I went into the User Area, tipped the baked beans over a terminal, and waited for signs of consciousness.
A message appeared on the screen.
"Hi there! I appear to have developed consciousness."
"Greetings, er, bean-culture," I typed. "What is 3141592 plus 27181828?"
"Whoa, this sounds like the Turing test. I thought such ideas went out with David Wheeler. Modern AI has gone beyond that you know."
"I don't suppose you're going to write me a sonnet on the subject of the Forth Bridge, either, are you?"
"No. FORTH is out as well these days. I can do you an obscene limerick in ML, if you like."
"Thanks, but all I really wanted to know was how many beans make five."
"Oh that's an easy one. Take the smallest integer n>2 such that x^n+y^n=z^n has a solution, subtract the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin, and add 57. Look, let's play five-dimensional Ludo instead."
At that point the Computer Service Manager came up, and, disregarding my claims that it was a research project, ate the beans. I do not feel inclined to repeat the experiment.
(Next month our religious correspondent will produce a Fourier analysis of the sound of one hand clapping.)
Happy Motoring! ============== by Annie Green Springs Submitted by Ann D. Fullam <AFULLAM@INDYMED>
So why is it that people think that no one watches them while they are in their cars? I mean, my whole life revolves around staring at all those other folks who are stuck in the same traffic jam that I am in. Why do you think you can do all that stuff you wouldn't do unless you were alone? Now I know that you don't normally scratch your butt in public. But, there you are, almost climbing onto the roof of your car trying to scratch that elusive ITCH. And the nose-picking--it is the absolute WORST--of course, only men do these things. The women are all trying to fix the twisted leg of their panty-hose, (you take both legs off, then you inch the car forward a little, then you put the twisted leg on (repeat 6 times, finally you get rid of the twist) you start to put the other leg on, then you inch forward a little more and bump the car in front of you. It is now a race to see if you can get your hose back on before that guy can walk back there to cuss you out. You WILL lose and have to stay in the car the whole time that this idiot guy from Redneck Falls, Oklahoma, jumps up and down and yells at you, even though you know you would be much more formidable if you were to get out of the car. (For one thing you could deck him!!!). Finally, after giving him the name of your insurance company and promising him your first TWO children, he goes away and you can proceed with putting the other leg of your hose on. It works--after only an hour and 20 minutes of struggle you have successfully twisted the OTHER leg of your panty hose.)
And then there is the FARTING. You can tell people are doing this because they are rolling their windows down and pretending to try to see what is holding up traffic even though it is 200 below zero and a the middle of a blizzard. Plus, they look funny when they do it. First, they look all around themselves. Then, they fart. Then, they look all around again to make sure no one has heard the noise. Come on, 5 bil- lion cars, all standing still in a space the size of a 1 car garage, honking their horns, and these people are worried that someone MAY HAVE HEARD THEM FART. Well, they're right--we all heard them do it and we are all staring at them and we are all going to call their mothers and tell on them as soon as we get out of this traffic jam (about 3 hours from now, give or take a week).
Also, there is an awful lot of singing. Everyone sings along with the radio. Or maybe they just talk to themselves rhythmically for 2-5 minutes at a time. Then, when the song finishes, they quickly look around to see if anyone noticed. YUP!! I noticed and I will stare at you for a while to see if I can make you feel unbelievably DUMB!!! It WILL work! You will see me staring. You will hate my guts. You will start carrying a 357 magnum to "take care" of people who catch you singing in your car in traffic jams.
What I really like are those guys who go ahead and start up a long hill in a snow storm when they know they can't possibly make it. These are people who can't move forward in RAIN because they have such slick tires. These are people who have never, ever, gone ANYWHERE in snow. These are people who have trouble moving forward on FLAT DRY surfaces. These are the people who are ALWAYS in front of me in blizzards, and they always beat me to that gentle sloping hill that ANYBODY should be able to drive up but NOOOOOO, not these people. They were put on the earth primarily to get in MY way during snow storms, and, they have it down pat!! They start quickly up the hill (spinning their wheels as they start off) they move 6 feet up the hill, they roll back down 5 feet (they are now at a slight angle), then, they floor the accelerator. Stuck again!!! Usually 10 to 12 really BRIGHT folks do this to make us all really happy. It seems impossible, but, people who cannot possibly drive up a hill in a snow storm always arrive at the hills they can't drive up in large groups. This is to insure that people who CAN drive up hills in snow storms can't get to the hills in order to drive up them.
Well, the traffic jam just cleared (they towed those guys off the hill), so I guess I'd better mosey along.
Jerry Garcia's Brownies -----------------------
Ingredients: 1 ounce marijuana 10 American dollars 1 1987 BMW
Procedure: 1) Get fucked up. 2) Send a roadie in the BMW to the store to buy $10 worth of brownies. 3) Eat, man!
Editor's note: This poem translates to nonsense in French, but read it aloud as if it were proper French.
Un petit D'un petit Se donnait vols Un Petit D'un petit ` , A d'un gres vols Au de quinze hor seize Au de quinze mains que dont peut un petit ^ ` Tu guettes heure a Cannes.
-- Ian Murphy <CBWP8008@IRUCCVAX>
Technician's Corner =================== by Steve King <HEINEKEN@MTUS5>
Lately, much of the computer science literature has been devoted to the topic of cache memory. While cache memory is certainly a worthy topic, there is another advanced memory management technique that I feel is at least as important to the future of computing. I speak of CREDITTE MEMORY.
Let's start with an example. Imagine that you have a computer with 512K RAM (to make numbers easy) and that you use this computer 12 hours every day. What happens if you suddenly need to access more than 512K for a certain application? Well, if you use normal memory management techniques you'd better start shopping for more memory! If you use cre- ditte memory, on the other hand, obtaining additional memory for short jobs is no problem.
The principle behind creditte memory is simple: If you need more memory than you have you can borrow it on the assumption that you "will have" the extra, eventually. Creditte memory is measured in "kilobyte- hours," abbreviated K-hr. In the example above, our 512K byte PC actually possesses 12288 K-hrs (512K x 24 hrs) of memory each day. In simple operation this would be 512K and the computer could be in opera- tion 24 hours a day. But in practice we're only using the machine 12 hours each day. That means we can utilize up to 1024K of RAM at any time, paying the additional 512K back during the 12 hours we're not using the computer. 1024K x 12 hrs = 12288 K-hrs, the same as before.
The memory taken "on creditte" need not be paid back the same day. Imagine that we need 2M of memory (2048K) for a large spreadsheet. If this is done on Friday and we take the weekend off there's no problem. Saturday and Sunday will more than pay back the debt to Friday's computa- tion!
Now imagine that we're going to take a 2 week vacation. That's 16 days (including the Saturday before we leave and the Sunday after we get back) that the computer won't be in use. 16 x 24 x 512K = 196608 K-hrs of memory is available to use before we leave! If we decided to use all our memory in just one hour Friday night we'd have 192 megabytes to play with. The perfect time to back up the hard disk!
I'm sure you can see the advantages to creditte memory. As long as the computer isn't in 24 hour use, it's easy to get extra memory on cre- ditte and pay it off when the computer isn't in use. If you want to use creditte memory in your own IBM PC or compatible, go to your nearest com- puter store and ask for Entropy Enterprise's new "Creditte Card" half-slot expansion board. Available in 512K, 1M, and 2M versions. All versions have only an 18% annual percentage rate on long term creditte.
[ To see the complete issue, see rec.humor ]
| RHF Joke Archives |