| Penn & Teller PCC articles by Penn Jillette | Reprinted with permission. |
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Is this funny? Write a program that prints to screen, "Except
that one" after any keystroke following the sentence "Press Any
Key." What do you think? It's just a nice little joke, right?
It's not mean spirited and nobody will get hurt. Are you rolling
around on the floor laughing? If your idea of comedy is not
hurting anyone - you can stop reading here. If your idea of
comedy is doing damage to yourself and others I fly a lot. It's my job. I also bring a laptop with me. Computers are the only thing I've ever really loved that I haven't tried to destroy (maybe I'm sharing too much for a computer magazine, I don't know). You people fly. You people have computers. There's a part of flying with a computer that is hateful and miserable and I have a suggestion. This prank will not solve the problem or diminish your discomfort. In fact it will increase your problems, pain and discomfort but it will make other people suffer too and that's even better. Here's the problem: security. I guess if you fly out of some Hooterville airport they just let you walk through whistling the "Andy Griffith Theme" with a few pounds of hardware over your shoulder. But all the real airports want to check it out. They want you to turn the computer on. They want you to show them it works. They want to make sure you haven't got a gun hidden in it. They're big cry babies. It's just another pain in the ass of living in this "no risk is acceptable" society. I say let a few more planes go down like falling twisted burning human cattle cars and let me walk through the airport without taking my bracelets off and without having to turn my computer on (actually I'm glad they check carefully and I don't mind turning on my computer, it gives me a chance to show-off - but never mind that, I'm setting up a joke). So I got an idea that I think is real cool and I think someone should do it and I think that someone should not be me.
All they ask you to do at security is to turn on the laptop and
show something on the screen. They just want to see it print
something to the screen (We all know that a bomb with a laptop
taped on top of it could print something on it's screen but
that's not important now). That's all they want to see,
something on the screen. So let's give them something on the
screen. Add this to your
echo READY Go ahead, do it. I don't know what will happen. They probably won't notice, they're just looking for letters, they're not going to read it. If they do notice, you might be able to convince them it's funny. But it also might be a federal offense. I don't know enough about it. I did see a sign at an airport once that said, "All jokes will be taken seriously," which bad improv groups should read and take to heart. They might want to make an example of you. The country loves to see "nerds" with your haircut in a suit holding cuffed hands up to obscure the guilty face. They'll probably call you the "Airport Hacker" or "Terrorist Hacker" or "Prankster Hacker" but you know they'll get the word "hacker" in there. And you know they'll force Cliff Stoll to make a statement. And you'll try saying you did it because some Bozo in a computer magazine told you to. You'll try the ever popular "the-media-made-me-do-it" defense. The climate in the country is such that they probably would drag me in. But they won't have a thing on me, not after I do this: THE ABOVE IS NOT FUNNY. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES DO WHAT I'VE SUGGESTED ABOVE. I, PENN JILLETTE, AND ALL THE EMPLOYEES AND FAMILIES OF PC COMPUTING THINK THAT EVERYONE IN THE WORLD SHOULD REALLY TRULY AND HONESTLY FOLLOW ALL FEDERAL AND STATE LAWS AND ALL F.A.A. RULES, REGULATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. NO KIDDING. So, try it if you want but I'm not going down. |