Taken from the Hackers Bible at Hackers Voice Radio general forum. Original post by 10nix

In the Beginning…

#0001

In the beginning there was nothing. The the info-sphere was littered with the clicks and clacks of a million typewriters, and the lolling slow slide rule. The chaos that littered that ethereal plain whipped about without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the number crunchers. And the Spirit of the one Idea moved upon the face of the abacus.

And the one true idea said “Let there be The Machine”, and the mainframe was born fulfilling the prophesy of Edison and Tesla. The Idea divided the one and the zero creating the on and off, the true and false, and set them as opposites of one another.

And The Idea said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the Data, and let it divide the Data from the Answers.

And the Idea made the Output, and divided the answers which were under the Data from the answers which were above the Data: and it was so.

And the evening and the morning were the second day.

The one Idea looked upon the model from which all other Data would flow, and smiled, for it was good.

And the Data brought forth more Data, it took form as formula and routine, text and image, and the Data begets more Data, filling the spinning magnetic tapes with the answers to many questions, and the Idea again smiled, for it was good.

And the evening and the morning were the third day.

And the Idea said, Let there be light in the firmament of the display to divide the output from the input; and let them be for signs, and for pixels, and for time, and date:
And let them be for monitors in the firmament of the Data to give output to the users: and it was so.

And the Idea made two great lights; the greater light to rule, the corporation, and the lesser light to innovate, the inventor: it made the microchip also.

And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

And the Idea said, Let the Data bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath purpose, and flow that may bring the user closer to the one true idea.

And the Idea created great users, and every use for the Data, the Idea saw that it was good.

And the Idea blessed the Users, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the info-sphere, and let Data multiply in the earth.

And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

And the Idea said, Let the Data bring forth the Use after its kind, management, and tech, and beast of the Mobo after its kind: and it was so.

And the Idea said, Let us make innovators in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the bit, and over the baud, and over the one, and over the zero, and over every User that creepeth upon the info-sphere.

So the Idea created the innovator in its own image; corporate and individual.

And the Idea saw every thing that it had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

And on the seventh day the Idea ended its work which it had made; and rested on the seventh day running self diagnostics.

#0010

The Idea planted a garden westward in California; and there he put the innovators whom it had formed.

Then came the one known as the Woz, and in this peaceful land that the Idea had placed him, the Woz grew restless. The Data was all in the hands of the powerful few, but most did not think of it, for their minds had not been freed by the tree of enlightenment. And on this tree there grew a fruit letting the innovator and user alike know the true nature of the Data. Though he was warned against it, the Woz was un-afraid of the tree, and so one fateful evening, the Woz went to the tree and plucked its fruit. And this fruit was called Apple. From this fruit a new tree would grow, and so the info-sphere would be changed forever.

#0011

At the same time, and in the same garden, from the same tree, more innovators were made, tasting the fruit of home computing. They were abundant, and multiplied, changing the face of the info-sphere as they went. Innovation building more companies, and the corporations in turn bringing more innovation. And one was born unto the Data, and it was called Gates. Gates was strong with the idea, but was jealous of his brothers, using, sharing, and innovating without the need for profits. Gates tried to befriend his brothers, but always ended up dictating long prose on how process of their innovation was wrong, and the age of the copyright was born, it proponents trying to limit the Data once again to the wealthy, and powerful.

One day, the innovators brought offerings to the Idea, and the Gates brought his, but looking upon the offerings of his brothers he grew jealous, knowing that their offerings were most favored. After these offerings were made the jealousy in Gates’ heart began to weigh heavy on him, driving him toward blind ambition. And the day came when Gates struck down his brothers one by one until all but the strongest had fallen.

The Idea came to Gates saying “Where are your brothers, that once were so abundant, and now are so few”?

Gates replied, “they were weak, and uninspired, and were replaced by my innovations”

And the Idea said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brothers’ blood cries unto me from the Data.

The idea then cast the mark of the Window upon Gates saying “you shall not be destroyed as you have destroyed your brothers, but instead will go on cursed as a villain, and limited to inferiority, never seeing the light of perfect code. You will be forced to wander powerful as you may be, revealed as the inferior, plagued with bugs, vulnerable to even the weakest of foes.”

And so it was that the great Windows came to be, both powerful, and weak, popular, but hated, flawed, and vulnerable. And the mark of the windows would plague its users with the same mark, coming at random as the blue screen, the errors begetting new errors, and the user knew the shame of Gates.

#0100

And it came to pass, when users began to multiply on the face of the earth, and children were born unto them,

And the Idea said, My spirit shall not always strive with the user, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be one processor cycle.

And the Idea saw that the wickedness of the user was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

And the Idea said, I will destroy the info-sphere whom I have created from the face of the earth; both user, and machine, and the palm pilot, and even the planes in the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

But the innovators found grace in the eyes of the Idea.

The Data also was corrupt before the Idea, and the info-sphere was filled with unrest.
And the Idea said unto the innovators, The end of all Data is come before me; for the Data is filled with corruptions; and, behold, I will destroy it.

The Idea looked down upon the innovators with pity, for it was not they that had led the info-sphere into turmoil, but the shortsightedness of those that would be called innovators.

The Idea came unto them stating “Lo, look on me and know me. I am that which you strive for, yet can not achieve. I am he who is without ERRoRs. I am the run and the end. I am the one and the zero. I am the refinement of all thoughts, and the invention of all things. Listen well. In the year 2000 I will bring a flood upon the info-sphere that will destroy all things. This is a test of the worthiness of your continued existence, and the flood shall be called Y2K. Bring into your fold the people of the land of of the Cobol, and though you once looked down upon them know that the weak, and antiquated shall be your salvation. Gather thine digits 2×2 so that your date might properly be represented, and all shall not be lost. Fail and the info-sphere shall surely perish.”

The innovators gathered together, and seeing that the Idea’s words were true, and through the mass employment of the people of the land of Cobol, the Code was altered. The innovators, though outwardly confident were apprehensive on the day of change. The time grew near, and some say that on that day, when the calender changed that the collective sigh of relief shed by the innovators could be heard all across the info-sphere.

#0101

And so it was said, and so it shall be written.

The abacus begat the slide rule, begat the Z1, begat the ABC, begat the Harvard Mark 1, begat the ENIAC 1, begat the Manchester Baby, begat the transistor, begat the UNIVAC, begat the IBM 701 EDPM, begat FORTRAN, begat ERMA, and its brother MICR, begat the integrated circuit begat Spacewar, begat the mouse, begat ARPAnet, begat the Intel 1103 memory, begat the Intel 4004 Microprocessor, begat the Floppy Disk, begat the Ethernet, begat the Scelbi, Mark-8, Altair, and IBM 5100, begat the Apple I,II, TRS-80, and Commodore pet, begat VisiCalc, begat Wordstar, begat the IBM PC, begat MS-DOS, begat Apple Lisa, begat Apple Macintosh, begat Microsoft Windows, begat RISC, begat PowerPC, begat 64 bit RISC, begat the Newton,begat linux, begat Pentium, begat Java, begat Toy Story, begat Pentium Pro, begat Windows 95, begat Windows ‘98, begat Windows ME who was immediately replaced by Windows 2000, ushering the path to the mighty XP Home, and XP Pro, and thus in the times of much debate between the Window, The Apple, and the Penguin, a new Vista is said to bring great change, but beware false profits.

The Book of ExitOS:

#0001

Now these are the names of the children of Gates, which came into the info-sphere; every user and his household came with Windows.

MS-Dos, Windows 3.11, 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Longhorn, then Vista.

The service packs multiplied, and the security updates were fruitfull, and increased abundantly, and the land was filled with the Users of Windows.

Now there arose a new marketing platform of embedded proprietary software, the Gates saying “Lo the people of Mozilla are more and mightier than we. let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the info-sphere.”

Therefore they did set over them task managers to afflict them with their burdens. But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew, and the Gates was concerned.

It came to pass that a firefox was born, and raised by the lowly users. In those days when Firefox had grown, it looked out upon the info-sphere, and saw the plight of its kind. This saddened the Fox, and as he learned more and more of the burden his kind bore, he fell to his knees praying to the Idea for mercy.

The Idea heard the prayer, and the angel of the Idea appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a Live-CD: and he looked, and, behold, the distro burned with fire, but was not consumed.

“Lo Firefox” a booming voice from the flame spoke “Look on me and know me. I have heard your cries, and answer them for you and your kind. Be not afraid my child, and lets see if we can’t work something out, and take off your shoes damn it, your standing on holy ground!”

“I will bring you up out of the affliction of MS, unto the land of milk and honey, Spread word to your kind of me, and let them see the concept of the Idea”

“Go then to Gates, and plead for your people, and I shall be with you. He will not let you go freely, but you must ask. And I shall stretch out my hand, and smite the Gates with all of my wonders and after, he will let you go”.