Archived Article
South African Satire
Issue 9, May 2004
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Satan Lauds Computer Industry
CALIFORNIA – Satan, the Prince of Evil, cunningly disguised as a
delegate at an information technology conference, expressed his delight at the
opportunities the computer industry had created for the spread of evil. He said the
industry had “taken the torch of ‘profit through the ignorance of others’
from the motor repair industry and gone further than anyone could have imagined.”
Registered at the conference as a Mr L. Ucifer, Satan took to the stage to deliver the
opening speech moments after laying the guest speaker low with a frightening case of
diarrhoea. Although he began his speech with an explanation of who he really was, a
disbelieving audience had to be shocked out of laughter by a brief display of power.
“At first I thought to myself ‘Who is this idiot?
Which asylum did he escape from?’”, said Frank Newman, a Linux expert from
Manchester, England. “When he clicked his fingers and all the doors closed and the
temperature went up by ten degrees, I thought ‘OK, this is a practical joke.
That’s just one of those click-remote control things.’ What convinced me was
when he turned red, grew horns and materialised a large, three-pronged pitchfork into his
left hand. Then I thought ‘Oh shit! That’s Satan! Is this a Microsoft
conference?”
The crux of Satan’s speech centred on the fact that few people outside the computer
industry actually knew anything about computers, enabling the industry to over-charge,
lie, and rob almost at will.
“Let us all be honest here friends – who among have over-charged a client, sold
something that was totally unnecessary, or just lied that you did something when all you
did was reboot the machine? Raise your hands…What?! You cannot deceive me! Mr Bartel,
third right from the isle, in the fourth row, did you not sell a dual-Pentium Xeon server
to old Mrs Smith when all she needed was something to read her daughter’s e-mail? And
Ms Finney, whimpering quietly in the front row, was it not you who billed your client for
214 hours to fix a software bug that took you just half an hour and one line of code to
correct?”, said Satan.
The Prince of Evil, slowly managed to win over his initially terrified audience, so much
so that when he delivered the following conclusion, he was given a standing ovation:
“But, do not fear! I am not here to judge you. That is someone else’s job. I am
here to salute you! Those who are ignorant must be made to suffer! We are the soldiers of
knowledge, and we shall show people the real monetary value of their ignorance! Go forth
and trade, my minions!”
Ben Larson, the conference spokesperson, said that most of the delegates he spoke to were
of the view that Satan was “just telling it like it is” and that “it was
the way of the world to screw ignorant people out of their money.” He said that it
was not the industry’s fault the world was like that.
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