Imagine for a moment if the computer revolution had occoured a decade or
so sooner. With all the power and chaos of the 60's, it's not to hard to
go further and pretend that
Computer Nerds Could Have Controlled Network Programming.
by Robert S. Coats
Gilligan's Island:
The Professor finds some rare binary coconuts that can be used to upgrade
the ROM in his bamboo clone modem to support X.25. After hours of effort,
he manages to establish a connection via his papaya-based VT 100 terminal
and satellite uplink with Telenet, but falls asleep from exhaustion.
Gilligan walks up and types "+++" then "ATH" and drops the line. The
Skipper beans him with a rock and finally loses it, his seafaring years
catch up with him and he starts making lewd remarks to Mary Ann about
playing Leisure Suit Larry IV together. Meanwhile, Mr. Howell finally
figures out how to work the ISDN set that was accidently dropped by a
passing JAL jet and has a heart attack when he hears via Dow Jones News
Retrieval that the stock market has soared above 3000 points. Ginger calls
CompuServe and E-mails some software developers in an effort to convince
them that she should would be a good model for MacStripPoker 2.0.
Eventually, all connectivity on the island is lost, when Gilligan
discovers an actor in a bad gorilla costume has shorted pins 2&3 on the
serial cable, and everybody on the island has just been echoing characters
to each other.
Beverly Hillbillies
Miss Jane tries to convince Mr. Drysdale to network all the PCs in the
bank, but, typically, he won't spend the money. Frustrated, Miss Jane
pleads with Jed Clampett to persuade Mr. Drysdale to "put in the LAN," but
Jed thinks she said "put in the ham." Jed then gets Granny to cook up a
dozen hams and has Jethro and Ellie Mae bring them to the bank. When they
arrive, everybody is out to lunch, so Jethro begins to distribute the
hams, but is frustrated when he can't get the coaxial cable to stay
attached to the ham bone. To further complicate matters, Ellie May has
brought along her pet goats, which begin to eat the ham and cable, causing
the the VAX to short out and force an emergency electronic fund transfer
of the Clampett millions to a competitive bank. As Mr. Drysdale is seen
chasing Miss Jane down the hall with a crazed look in his eye, swinging a
ham at her, Jed is heard to remark, "Weee-doggie! Why look at that Granny.
Mr. Drysdale is so happy about whut we done, he's gonna give Miss Jane her
own ham!"
The Brady Bunch
Peter uses Crosstalk Mk.4 to dial into the high school computer and,
through hacking tricks picked up from a local "adults only" BBS, is able
to access individual student's "permanent records." He scans through the
listings, then, using a clever keyboard macro, alters his completed
courses such that he won't be required to take English Lit again. However,
Jan is working in the school office at the time and is alerted to the
invasion by a diligent anti-virual TSR. She is then tormented with having
to decide to do the "right thing" or be loyal to her brother. Jan goes
home and talks to Alice, who says she should analyze all the factors and
then decide after using the new artificial intelligence software Mr. Brady
has recently installed on his '386 laptop. Jan tries to use the program,
but instead accidently deletes all the files in the Harvard Graphics
directory, leaving Mr. Brady to blow a presentation the next day. Mrs.
Brady finds out via Jan what happened, and forces Peter to write "I will
not hack into the school computer" 5000 times with EDLIN while the rest of
the family eats angle food cake on the patio.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
Mr. Grant tells Mary to come up with some hard facts about all the
activity out in Silicon Valley. Mary grabs her Mac portable and jumps on a
plane west. Unfortunately, she leaves the Mac switched on and, due to an
undiscovered bug in the latest release of System and Finder, the hard disk
continually optimizes itself when no keyboard input is recorded for more
than five minutes. Needless to say, she has a dead Mac when arriving and
spends the next few hours trying to find a replacement. Meanwhile, Ted
begins his broadcast and notes that "We expected to have some good
information about Silicon Valley for this broadcast, but somebody had to
take a Mac and not a reliable laptop PC!" Frantic, Mary calls long
distance over crystalline fiber optic lines to get help from Rhoda, who
doesn't answer the phone because she is playing Bomber and has the
headphones on. However, Phyllis's snotty daughter is around and answers.
She listens to Mary whine, then hangs up the phone. Mary is last seen
violently flinging the Mac out a speeding taxi window while crossing the
Bay Bridge.
W H Y C O P S H A T E Y O U <<<<&l <
-if you have to ask get out of the way-
Have you ever been stopped by a traffic cop and, while he was
writing a ticket or giving you a warning, you got the feeling that
he would just love to yank you out of the car, right through the
window, and smash your face into the front fender?...
