In the begining

     In the beginning, God created the bit.  And the bit was a zero. On  
     the first  day, he toggled the 0 to 1, and the Universe was.  (In 
     those days,  bootstrap loaders were simple, and "active low" signals 
     didn't yet exist.)  
     
     On the second day, God's boss wanted a demo, and tried to read the  
     bit. This being volatile memory, the bit reverted to a 0.  And the 
     universe wasn't.  God learned the importance of backups and memory 
     refresh, and spent the  rest of  the day (and his first all-nighter) 
     reinstalling the universe. 
      
     On the third day, the bit cried "Oh, Lord!  If you exist, give me a  
     sign!" And God created rev. 2.0 of the bit, even better than the 
     original prototype. Those in Universe Marketing immediately realised 
     that "new and  improved"  wouldn't do justice to such a grand and 
     glorious creation. And so it was dubbed the Most Significant Bit. Many 
     bits followed, but only one was so honored.
     
     On the fourth day, God created a simple ALU with 'add' and 'logical 
     shift' instructions.  And the original bit discovered that by 
     performing a single shift instruction, it could become the Most 
     Significant Bit. And God realised the importance of computer security. 
      
     On the fifth day, God created the first mid-life kicker, rev. 2.0 of 
     the ALU, with wonderful features, and said "Forget that add and shift 
     stuff. Go forth  and multiply."  And God saw that it was good. 
     
     On the sixth day, God got a bit overconfident, and invented pipelines, 
     register hazards, optimising compilers, crosstalk, restartable 
     instructions,  microinterrupts, race conditions, and propagation 
     delays. Historians  have  used this to convincingly argue that the 
     sixth day must have been a Monday.
     
     On the seventh day, an engineering change introduced Windows into the 
     Universe, and it hasn't worked right since.



-b

Bob Antia                                           nagvn@yrsgonax.pbz
The Left Bank Operation, Inc.                       http://www.leftbank.com
TCP/IP Internetworking                              LAN/WAN/NT/UNIX Admin
PGP fingerprint          9B 70 FF 2D 03 CC 5F C1  3E 29 6E D4 16 79 44 A8