Computers, Heaven, and Hell
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Side note: Mt 5:37 -- the theological background for computer science. <BR>
<BR>
Computers, Heaven, and Hell <BR>
<BR>
A woman approached the Pearly Gates, and Saint Peter asked for her social
security number. The woman told him, and Saint Peter typed on his workstation:
<BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
<PRE>pearly-gates:^/peter grep 212-53-6432 /earth/human/status </PRE>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BR>
The computer responded: <BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
<PRE>212-53-6432 Cindy Smith cms@dragon.com!earth naughty pearly-gates:^/peter </PRE>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BR>
Saint Peter then told her she was eternally damned, and that a minivan to
hell would be arriving shortly. <BR>
<BR>
Cindy began to protest "But what did I do wrong? I loved my fellow
neighbor as I loved myself, I was a kind, warm, gentle person! Surely there
must be a mistake!" <BR>
<BR>
So, Saint Peter looked up on the files, and saw, lo and behold that she
truly was a kind, warm, gentle person...until he saw the entry for jan 7,
1992-earth, which read: <BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
<PRE>***DAMNABLE VIOLATION #69***
Posted irrelevant article to newsgroup. </PRE>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BR>
After probing a little more, Saint Peter explained to the woman, "It
seems that on January 7, 1992 you posted an article to Alt.religion.computers.
This article gave no praise of Emacs, no snide remarks toward Microsoft,
and not even a comment on the proper definition of 'hacker'! In fact, the
article was not even relating to computers at all, and discussed, of all
things, human religion! There wasn't even a reference to Bob or Discordianism,
Zen, or the Tao of programming. Oh, dear! This is terrible." <BR>
<BR>
"You see, heaven is a perfect place, and we only have room for the
most perfect people. Ever since we ran the T-3 line up from New Jersey we've
been particularly harsh on breakers of netiquette. Didn't you read RFC-23654?
The one proposing commandments 11 through 15?" <BR>
<BR>
He opened up an XTerm window and searched for some files. After a few moments,
the laser printer spat out a crisp sheet of paper. It read: <BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE>11: Thou shalt not flame spelling or grammar. <BR>
<BR>
12: Thou shalt not have a .sig file longer than 3 lines. <BR>
<BR>
13: Thou shalt not send "All fags must die" messages to 19 random
groups. <BR>
<BR>
14: Thou shalt not request post a frequently asked question. <BR>
<BR>
15: Thou shalt not post to a group without first reading a week's worth
of posts, thereby avoiding irrelevant articles. <BR>
<BR>
16: Thou shall not post administrative requests to the main list. </BLOCKQUOTE>
<BR>
When she was done, she began to stammer, but Saint Peter stopped her, saying
"I'm sorry. There's nothing I can do. To register a complaint, you'll
have to send mail to: <BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
<PRE>status-change-request@godvax.heaven.com. </PRE>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BR>
We have a group of cherubim who manage such requests. But don't send it
to: <BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
<PRE>status-change@godvax.heaven.com, </PRE>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BR>
otherwise your request will be distributed to the whole mailing list. They
*hate* that! In fact, there's some discussion about making that the 16th
commandment..." <BR>
<BR>
At that point, a Dodge minivan drove up and came to a stop. Satan, in the
form of an IBM salesperson, stepped out. "Welcome!", she said.
"We've been waiting for you..." Cindy, almost in a trance, stepped
into the minivan and was whisked away to the netherworld, a world of COBOL,
System 36's, punch cards, incompatible network standards, and irresponsible
news posters. Satan turned to Cindy, and smiled. "You'll like it here",
she said, "We have netnews, but we've greatly simplified it. We have
only one group, it's: <BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE>alt.talk.sci.comp.soc.rec.misc!" </BLOCKQUOTE>
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