> remember something in my redhat 5.2 manual along the lines of > "xscreensave gives you hours of enjoyment^h^h^h^h monitor > saving" with a > footnote saying its a joke, not a typo. > > The thing is, how is this funny? Anyone? Have you ever used a TTY? It's basically a typewriter hooked up to a computer. When you are using one of these, backspace won't do what a backspace does on a CRT. Instead, the TTY just prints a '^H' because a backspace is an ascii 8 (H is the 8th letter of the alphabet'. So the joke is usually this: "Please be courteous to these fools^H^H^H^H^Hgentlemen." In the file (or whatever) that he was editing, "gentlemen" will appear, but by looking at the paper roll off the TTY you can see what he really meant. In the example above, however, I'm not sure what the joke is. Perhaps the person works in a stuffy corporate environment where enjoyment is not permitted? Frankly, I find the replacement that "this screen saver gives you hours of screen saving" to be funny in a way that would not normally be permitted in a stuffy corporate environment. So like you, I'm not sure where the humour lies.
