> -----Original Message-----
> From: Johnson, Tracy [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> 
> I've been able to combine these two items
[...]
> (This repeats an old joke from June 2002.)

The joke is older than that -- I seem to recall WAAAAAAY back in "high school"(*), when (PC) computers were "new" and software distributors came up with all sorts of "creative" copy protection schemes [mainly for the Apple] that relied on either "weak bits" [bits that weren't written "at full strength", thus they would tend to "flip" if you re-read them several times...] or even holes burned into the media [so there was nothing there to read -- if you could write to and successfully "read" that sector, you knew you weren't on a "protected" disk...]

In any case, the joke at the time was that someone developed the FASTEST "mirror image copier" -- guaranteed to make perfect copies INSTANTANEOUSLY -- in fact, you didn't even need a disk drive: you held it up to the disk you wanted to copy and BING! at the speed of light you had a "perfect mirror (image) copy"


Tom

(*) that would be >ahem< a couple decades ago by now...


p.s.  I also recall a pizza parlor that would fax you back a pizza if you faxed them the money first...  Never really caught on -- the pizzas tended to be a bit dry...

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