From: john@thebeard.demon.co.uk (John Robinson)
Newsgroups: alt.humor.best-of-usenet
Subject: [rec.arts.sf.written] Re: 2038 (was Vernor Vinge's New Novel)
Date: 20 Dec 1998 20:39:45 GMT

Subject: Re: 2038 (was Vernor Vinge's New Novel) 
From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written

Nancy Lebovitz (nancy@unix3.netaxs.com) wrote:
> >The much simpler and less damaging solution is to redefine time as an
> >unsigned long instead of signed long, thereby gaining another 68 years.
>
> And then what do you do?

Look for someone to blame.

> A story I don't have the technical knowledge to write: A programmer
> writes a quick and dirty program, and comments ##this'll be hell
> to maintain##. Life extension happens, and centuries later, he's
> faced with his old program and his old comment. Variant ending:
> he's thawed specifically to deal with his old program.

And then charged with crimes against humanity. 

I'm sure this'll happen to me; I spend a lot of time writing standards and
implementing them, albeit for small audiences.

I wish I could remember the exact wording of a comment I once put in some
toolkit code...

/* This code works. You do not understand it.
   If you think you understand it, you are wrong.
   If you change it, ask me first. 
   If you change it without asking me, I will kill you. 
   If you ask me to change it, I will kill you. Then I will kill myself.
*/

Something like that, anyway.