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Here's a tale we originally posted on LEM back in 1997 and somehow
lost as we moved from server to server. It's a personal favorite.
Bill Gates died and, much to everyone's surprise, went to Heaven.
When he got there, he had to wait in the reception area.
Heaven's reception area was the size of Massachusetts. There were
literally millions of people milling about, living in tents with
nothing to do all day. Food and water were being distributed from the
backs of trucks, while staffers with clipboards slowly worked their
way through the crowd.
Bill lived in a tent for three weeks until one of the staffers
finally approached him. The staffer was a young man in his late
teens, face scarred with acne. He was wearing a blue T-shirt with the
words TEAM PETER emblazoned on it in large yellow letters.
"Hello," said the staffer in a bored voice that could have been
the voice of any clerk in any overgrown bureaucracy. "My name is
Gabriel, and I'll be your induction coordinator."
Bill started to ask a question, but Gabriel interrupted him. "No,
I'm not the Archangel Gabriel. I'm just a guy from Philadelphia named
Gabriel. Now give me your name, last name first."
"Gates, Bill."
Gabriel started searching though the sheaf of papers on his
clipboard, looking for Bill's Record of Earthly Works.
"What's going on here?" asked Bill. "Why are all these people
here? Where's Saint Peter? Where are the Pearly Gates?"
Gabriel ignored the questions until he located Bill's records.
Then Gabriel looked up in surprise.
"It says here that you were the president of a large software
company. Is that right?"
"Yes."
"Heaven is decades behind in building its data processing
infrastructure," explained Gabriel. "As you've seen, we're still
doing everything on paper. It takes us a week just to process new
entries."
"I had to wait three weeks," said Bill.
Abraham stared at Bill angrily, and Bill realized that he'd made a
mistake. Even in Heaven, it's best not to contradict a
bureaucrat.
"Well then, do the math. When Saint Peter started, it was an easy
gig. Only a hundred or so people died every day, and Peter could
handle it all by himself, no problem. But now there are six billion
people on earth. With that large a population, ten thousand people
die every hour. Over a quarter-million people a day. Do you think
Peter can meet them all personally?"
"I guess not."
"You guess right. Peter had to franchise the operation. Now he's
the CEO of Team Peter Enterprises, Inc. He just sits in the corporate
headquarters and sets policy. Franchisees like me handle the actual
induction."
Gabriel looked though his paperwork some more and continued. "Your
paperwork seems to be in order. And with a background like yours,
you'll be getting a plum job assignment."
"Job assignment?"
"Of course. Did you expect to spend the rest of eternity sitting
around and drinking ambrosia? Heaven is a big operation. You have to
pull your weight."
Gabriel took out a triplicate form, had Bill sign at the bottom,
and then tore out the middle copy and handed it to Bill.
"Take this down to induction center #23 and meet up with your
occupational orientator. His name is Abraham."
Bill started to ask a question, but Gabriel interrupted him. "No,
he's not that Abraham."
Bill walked down a muddy trail for ten miles until he came to
induction center #23. He met with Abraham after a mere six-hour
wait.
"Well," Bill offered, "maybe that Bosnia thing has you guys backed
up."
Abraham's look of anger faded to mere annoyance. "Your job will be
to supervise Heaven's new data processing center. We're building the
largest computing facility ever - a half million computers connected
by a multisegment fiber optic network, all running into a backend
server network with a thousand CPUs on a gigabit channel. Fully fault
tolerant. Fully distributed processing. The works."
Bill could barely contain his excitement. "Wow! What a great job!
This really is Heaven!"
"We're just finishing construction, and we'll be starting
operations soon. Would you like to go see the center now?"
"You bet!"
Abraham and Bill caught the shuttle bus and went to Heaven's new
data processing center. It was a truly huge facility, a hundred times
bigger than the Astrodome. Workmen were crawling all over the place,
getting the miles of fiber optic cables properly installed.
The center was dominated by the computers - a half million
computers, arranged neatly row-by-row, a half million Macintoshes,
each running FileMaker Pro and AppleWorks.
Not a PC in sight!
Not a single byte of Microsoft code!
The thought of spending the rest of eternity using products that
he had spent his whole life working to destroy was too much for
Bill.
"What about PCs?" he exclaimed. "What about Windows? What about
Excel? What about Word?"
"You're forgetting something," said Abraham.
"What's that?" asked Bill plaintively.
"This is Heaven," explained Abraham. "We need a computer system
that's heavenly to use. If you want to build a data processing center
based on PCs running Windows, you'll have to go to Hell."
iPods that never passed beta or focus groups, 09.13.
"What most Apple fans don't realize is that there were a few iPod variants that never made it out of beta testing and the focus group stage."
Mac of the Day: Umax SuperMac C500, Nov. 1996 - The smallest, least costly Mac clone had two PCI slots.
List of the Day: Mac Video Group covers digital video hardware and software for Mac users.
October 11 in LEM history: 99: Kihei revisited - 00: Bring back beige - AT&T proposes extortion - 01: Mimio for the Mac - 02: Of docks and roadblocks - Reasons not to switch - PowerBook G3 repair - 04: Virtual PC 7 puts Windows on your Mac - Modem Magic - 05: Why we oppose any iPod tax - Trash shortcuts - 06: 30 days of old school computing - Firefox and Safari chipping away at Microsoft
Best Mac Pro Deals, Low End Mac Deals, 10.10.
Used 2.66 GHz 4-core, $1,799; new, $1,949 after rebate; 2.8 4-core, $2,099 shipped; 8-core, $2,599 shipped; 3.0 $3,399 shipped; 3.2, $4,099 shipped.
Best PowerBook G3 Deals, Low End Mac Deals, 10.10.
Used 14" WallStreet G3/266 MHz, $90; Lombard G3/400 MHz, $150; Pismo G3/400 MHz, $300; 500 MHz, $350.
Best Time Capsule and AirPort Deals, Low End Mac Deals, 10.10.
Refurb 500 GB Time Capsule, $249; new, $294; refurb 1 TB, $419; new, $462; AirPort Extreme Card, $39; Base Station, $159; Express, $60.
Modding Your Old Mac to Make It More Useful, Phil Herlihy, The Usefulness Equation, 10.09.
If your old Mac is too slow, too noisy, too plain looking, or has too little room for expansion, you might want to mod it.
Best iMac G4 Deals, Low End Mac Deals, 10.09.
Used 15" 700 MHz CD-RW, $269; 800 Combo, $300; 1 GHz, $390; 17" 1.25 GHz SuperDrive, $400; 20", $529.
Best 15" MacBook Pro Deals, Low End Mac Deals, 10.09.
Used 1.83 GHz Core Duo, $995; 2.16, $1,125; new, 2.2, $1,400 after rebate; refurb 2.4, $1,699; 2.5, $1,999; 2.6, $2,299; rebates on new.
Best Mac OS X 10.4 'Tiger' Deals, Low End Mac Deals, 10.09.
DVD upgrade from 10.3, $75; upgrade bundle with 10.3, $118; full version, $129; family pack, $200; 10-user Server, $350; unlimited, $400.
Migrating My Law Office from Windows to Macintosh, Andrew J Fishkin, Best Tools for the Job, 10.08.
By switching to Leopard Server, everyone in the office will be able to move to a Mac - but which ones will best meet their needs?
Low End Mac Needs Help Moving to Joomla, Dan Knight, Mac Musings, 10.08.
We've settled on Joomla as the content management system that should work very well for Low End Mac, but we're running stuck with templates.
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