Re: Error Message Boo Boos

["Janet K. Christian" <janetc -at- AUSTIN -dot- APPLE -dot- COM>]

Many years ago, the programmers at Datapoint Corporation included the
following error message in the operating system (DOS 1). The message only
appeared after the user pressed a particularly unusual series of keys:

"This is God. The end of the world is at hand. Go forth and prepare thyself."

The original programmers left the company and the operating system evolved.
Everyone forgot about the message. One day, a young woman at a company
using our systems encountered the message. She was quite religious. She
told her co-workers she was going home to wait for God and she left. When
her boss found out, he called Datapoint wanting to know what in the world
was going on. It took lots of digging and asking around before someone
remembered the original message. Of course, the young woman was mortified.

To make matters worse/funnier, we used to use this story in our customer
education classes as an example of how computers really can't do anything
they aren't programmed to do. Of course, one day, instructor John Todd was
telling the story to a class. One woman was falling off her chair laughing.
Sitting next to her was another woman who was tomato red. You guessed it --
it was the same woman who had gone home to wait for God.

John never told the story in class again. Although, at that point, there
was no reason not to...

Janet