Originally, this was a joke about mathematicians. Some Linux pups probably twisted it into an anti-Microsoft joke.
Quote:
Three men are flying in a hot air balloon and suddenly they realize that they are lost. Luckily they see a man plowing a field and ask, "Where are we?". The man on the ground thinks for a minute and then answers, "You are in a hot air balloon". One of the men in the air then says to his friends, "He was a mathematician - he thought before answering, his answer was totally right and totally useless".
Jokes in the same vain:
Quote:
An engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician are all staying at a hotel one night when a fire breaks out. The engineer wakes up and smells the smoke; he quickly grabs a garbage pail to use as a bucket, fills it with water from the bathroom, and puts out the fire in his room. He then refills the pail and douses everything flammable in the room with water. He then returns to sleep. The physicist wakes up, smells the smoke, jumps out of bed. He picks up a pad and pencil and makes some calculations, glancing frequently at the flames. He then measures exactly 15.6 liters of water into the garbage pail, and throws it on the flames, which are extinguished. Smiling, he returns to sleep. Finally the mathematician wakes up. He too grabs a pad and begins furiously writing; glancing at the flames; and then writing more. After a while he gets a satisfied look on his face; entering the bathroom, he produces a match, lights it, and then extinguishes it with a bit of running water. "Aha! A solution exists," he murmurs - and returns to his slumbers.
Quote:
So a software engineer, a hardware engineer and their manager are in the car going to an expo in their rental car. To get there they must navigate a treacherous mountain road. While they are coming down a steep and narrow incline the car's brakes go out. The car starts going way too fast and they all fear this will be the end of their lives. But somehow the driver manages to not careen off the road and the manage glide to a stop once safely down the hill. They all get out and catch their breath for a minute. The manager is first to speak, "Well, let me get my cell phone so I can call the tow truck to take it to the garage." The hardware engineer says, "No, no, no, just pop the hood and we can fix the problem ourselves." The software engineer says, "Guys, just wait. Before we do anything we should take it up the hill and see if it happens again!"
Quote:
Four men rode in a car: a mechanical engineer, an electrical engineer, a chemical engineer, and a computer engineer. The car stalled out. The mechanical engineer said, "It must be the pistons; let's repair them and be on our way." The electrical engineer said, "It has to be the spark plugs; we'll replace them and be ready to roll in no time at all." The chemical engineer said. "No, it's got to be bad gas; we'll flush the system and be on our way." They turned to the computer engineer. "What do you think we should do?" they asked. The computer engineer shrugged and said, "Let's get out of the car, close the doors, then get back in and try restarting it."
I saved the best for last:
Quote:
A physicist is someone who thinks that equations approximate reality. An engineer thinks that reality approximates equations, and a mathematician doesn't really see a connection between these concepts. A physicist, an engineer, and a mathematician are each told to enclose a hurd of sheep into within the smallest possible fence. The engineer goes first. He gathers the sheep into a circle, and places a fence around them (a circle has the least perimeter for its area). The physicist starts out with an infinitely large fence and draws it infinitely tight around the sheep. The mathematician places a much smaller fence around himself, and declares that he is on the outside of the fence.