As many of you know, each year the internet must be shut down for 24 hours in order to allow us to clean it. The cleaning process, which eliminates dead e-mail and inactive ftp, www and gopher sites, allows for a better-working and faster internet.

This year, the cleaning process will take place from 12:01 a.m. GMT on April 1 until 12:01 a.m. GMT on April 2. During that 24-hour period, five very powerful Japanese built multi-lingual internet-crawling robots (Toshiba ML-2274) situated around the world will search the internet and delete any data that they find.

In order to protect your valuable data from deletion we ask that you do the following:
1. Disconnect all terminals and local area networks from their internet connections.
2. Shut down all internet servers, or disconnect them from the internet.
3. Disconnect all disks and hardrives from any connections to the internet.
4. Refrain from connecting any computer to the internet in any way.
5. Avoid placing operating microwave ovens or toaster/toaster ovens near your computer modem.
6. Avoid wearing nylon (or other dielectric fiber) undergarments because of the possibility of electrical discharge.

We understand the inconvenience that this may cause some internet users, and we apologize. However, we are certain that any inconvenience will be more than made up for by the increased speed and efficiency of the internet, once it has been cleared of electronic flotsam and jetsam.

We thank you for your cooperation.

Kim Dereksen
Interconnected Network Maintenance staff
Main branch, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Sysops and others: Since the last internet cleaning, the number of internet users has grown dramatically. Please assist us in alerting the public of the upcoming internet cleaning by posting this message where your users will be able to read it. Please pass this message on to other sysops and internet users as well. Thank you.

How to Hire a Programmer
by Kevin D. Weeks
VB Tech Journal
January 1998

Forget about competency tests, previous work history, personality profiles like the MBTI, reference-checking, and follow-up interviews. After years of rigorous and admittedly maverick research, I've identified five key characteristics you can use to quickly assess the fitness of a programmer candidate. I humbly submit that if you follow my advice and check for these attributes, you'll shorten your hiring cycle and simultaneously increase your success rate.

The best programmers prefer cats as pets. I've canvassed hundreds of programmers on the subject of preferred pets, and despite the odd ferret-lover (and believe me, ferret-lovers are odd), time after time cats turn out to be the non-human companion of choice. Think about it; it makes perfect sense because programmers are human cats. Cats are night animals, as are programmers. Cats are independent, like programmers. Cats prefer to be left alone except when they want attention, and so do programmers. Cats are notoriously elegant animals and ... uhm, well ... programmers love elegant code. What's more, software guru Meilir Page-Jones has likened managing programmers to herding cats.

Turning to the next characteristic, programmers have a highly developed sense of the absurd. And if you think about it, this makes no sense at all. I don't know why so many programmers can quote The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or know the entire Naughty Hungarian Phrase Book skit, but they do. The next time you interview a programmer candidate throw a "You're all individuals" at him and see what he says.

Perhaps a sense of the absurd matters because so much of what developers put up with is absurd - absurd schedules, absurd requirements, absurd hours. Treating the absurdities of the average development process with humor makes developers' jobs much easier.

Developers are usually science-fiction fans. Great programmers love technology, especially technology that doesn't yet exist. You're in a business where the only constant is change, and you need developers who don't mind a few arrows in their backs. Make sure your candidate has read Robert Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. And remember, every programmer worth her salt knows what grok means. Many developers also are musicians, painters, or photographers. Some will claim this is because both programming and artistic endeavors require great creativity. They're wrong. It's because programming is more like painting than engineering. Like painters, when programmers make mistakes, they just code right over them.

Then there's the matter of puns. I've witnessed online pun-fests that lasted as long as a week, with as many as 30 programmers trying to outdo each other. I've noticed that some participants are punctilious about staying with the root word, while others approach them as pun-tests where misspelling words is permitted. Again, the predilection makes perfect sense. Programming is about using language to accomplish something, and programmers have a highly evolved appreciation of how a language can be manipulated to specific ends. Puns are ways of both displaying a mastery of language and honing it.

So there you have it. Look for developers who love cats, quote Monty Python, read Heinlein, play guitar, and are accomplished punsters. If you find all these characteristics in a single individual, hire that person immediately - confident you're hiring a truly great developer.

She came back and started typing and immediately got a distressed look on her face.

She called the teacher over and explained that no matter what she typed, nothing would happen. The teacher tried everything. By this time I was hiding behind my monitor and quaking red-faced.

I started to type, "Leave me alone!"

They both jumped back, silenced. "What the . . . " the teacher said. I typed, "I said leave me alone!"

The kid got real upset. "I didn't do anything to it, I swear!" It was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud. The conversation between them and HAL 2000 went on for an amazing five minutes.

Me: "Don't touch me!"

Her: "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hit your keys that hard."

Me: "Who do you think you are anyway?!" Etc. Finally, I couldn't contain myself any longer and fell out of my chair laughing.

After they had realized what I had done, they both turned beet red.

Funny, I never got more than a C- in that class.

After putting her children to bed, a mother changed into old slacks and a droopy blouse and proceeded to wash her hair. As she heard the children getting more and more rambunctious, her patience grew thin. At last she threw a towel around her head and stormed into their room, putting them back to bed with stern warnings. As she left the room, she heard her three-year-old say with a trembling voice, "Who was that?"

Two little boys were visiting their grandfather, and he took them to a restaurant for lunch. They couldn't make up their minds about what they wanted to eat. Finally the grandfather grinned at the server and said, "Just bring them bread and water." One of the little boys looked up and quavered, "Can I have ketchup on it?"

A new neighbor asked the little girl next door if she had any brothers and sisters. She replied, "No, I'm the lonely child."

A mother was telling her little girl what her own childhood was like: "We used to skate outside on a pond. I had a swing made from a tire; it hung from a tree in our front yard. We rode our pony. We picked wild raspberries in the woods." The little girl was wide-eyed, taking this in. At last she said, "I sure wish I'd gotten to know you sooner!"

My grandson was visiting one day when he asked, "Grandma, do you know how you and God are alike?" I mentally polished my halo while I asked, "No, how are we alike?" "You're both old," he replied.

A little girl was diligently pounding away on her father's word processor. She told him she was writing a story. "What's it about?" he asked. "I don't know," she replied. "I can't read."

I didn't know if my granddaughter had learned her colors yet, so I decided to test her. I would point out something and ask what color it was. She would tell me, and always she was correct. But it was fun for me, so I continued. At last she headed for the door, saying sagely, "Grandma, I think you should try to figure out some of these yourself!"

A ten-year-old, under the tutelage of her grandmother, was becoming quite knowledgeable about the Bible. Then one day she floored her grandmother by asking, "Which Virgin was the mother of Jesus: the Virgin Mary or the King James Virgin?"

A Sunday school class was studying the Ten Commandments. They were ready to discuss the last one. The teacher asked if anyone could tell her what it was. Susie raised her hand, stood tall, and quoted, "Thou shall not take the covers off thy neighbor's wife."