OK, so this is a little “off topic” being non-web-marketing related but it made me smile and it is a computer joke after all.

So,  a computer programmer is given unfettered access to one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, IBM BlueGene/P. He decides that he has only one question that he’d like to ask.

He sits at the terminal and studiously enters everything from the Bible, the Old and New Testaments, from Genesis to Apocalypse, he goes on to enter the Torah, the Qur’an, the Sruti and Smriti and works from other major religions and beliefs.

Having complted that,  he starts to enter the works of the greatest philosophers of all time, from Thales  to Singer, from Abelard to Zhuang-zi

After many weeks of work at his terminal, his work is complete – the computer has everything it needs and all he has to do is ask The Question.

With trembling fingers he asks the mighty BigBlue “Is there a God?”

Lights start to flash on the computer and much whirring and humming can be heard as disc arrays spin in to action, cooling fans speed up and the pumps work ever harder to control the heat generated. For days this continues, the computer room gets ever hotter as BigBlue digests all the material and works on the question, until, finally – things begin to calm down. Hard drives slow, fans spin down to a whisper, air conditioning plant comes to a halt and lights cease flashing until the programmer can wait no more.

He asks the computer “so, have you come to a conclusion, is there a God?”

He waits a while and then his screen bursts back to life – with a simple flashing cursor.

Then, the computer gives its reply

“There is now”