Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!imspw6!bob
From: bob@imspw6.UUCP (Bob Burch)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Computer Folklore
Message-ID: <221@imspw6.UUCP>
Date: 6 Feb 89 04:11:39 GMT
Organization: IMS Inc., Rockville, MD
Lines: 55


From Ted Holden, HTE:
 
----------------------
 
From Karla Jennings:
 
>I am looking
>for stories. Heard any tales second- or third-hand that sound possibly true but
>that "happened to a friend of a friend" in different places at different times?
>I'm also interested in stories that might have started in actual fact but that
>have become so popular that they keep popping up.
 
OK, you asked for it.  Did you ever wonder about the uses to which modern
computer science and database technology might get put to out there in the
third world?...  a buddy of mine swears this one is true:
 
He claims to have been working as a contractor in Indonesia in the
seventies when, having gotten rid of Suharto and the indigenous
communists, the government of the islands decided to take the last major
step and pull the nation into the 20'th century alltogether:  they
outlawed head-hunting.  The next day, on a number of the islands, the
people were walking around in utter dejection and dismay thinking "Oh my
God, this is the end of civilization as we know it, now nobody can ever
get married or have children any more and we're just all gonna f___ing
die!!!!".  Turned out that before a young man could get married or start a
family, he had to go through initiation, which involved cutting off at
least one human head and shrinking it according to tradition.
 
The economies of the islands involved ground to a crunching halt;  the
legislature was forced to meet again and reconsider whether they'd gone
too far in too short a period of time.  The compromise solution which
they worked out went roughly as follows:  no NEW human heads were to be
cut or shrunk, but census-takers took a total survey of all EXISTING
shrunken heads, tatooing numbers on them and registering them according
to owner, and compiling all of this valuable information into a computer
database.  Thereafter, when a young man was to undergo initiation, the
government supplied him with printouts showing the whereabouts of all
the shrunken heads in his region, and he STOLE one of them, at which
point, the database was updated with him as owner of that head.
 
My buddy claims to have designed that database.
 
 
Ted Holden
HT Enterprises
 
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Johnson!!!  You're the idiot who bought these PS/2s and that System 36
over there!?!?!?!?!!?  YOU'RE FIRED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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