X-NEWS: spcvxb comp.os.vms: 13492 Relay-Version: VMS News - V6.0 13.10.90 VAX/VMS V5.4; site spcvxb.spc.edu Path: spcvxb.spc.edu!njin!uupsi!rpi!uwm.edu!linac!att!ucbvax!RML2.SRI.COM!RIC Newsgroups: comp.os.vms Subject: joke time Message-ID: <667756791.563545.RIC@RML2.SRI.COM> From: RIC@RML2.SRI.COM (Ric Steinberger) Date: 28 Feb 91 15:59:51 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 43 This is from rec.humor.funny. There are probably many variations. IBM and DEC decided to have a boat race, on the Thames, following the famous Oxford vs Cambridge course. Both teams practiced hard, and came the big day, they were as ready as they could be. IBM won by a mile. Afterwards, the DEC team were very downhearted, and a decision was made that the reason for the crushing defeat had to be found, so a working party was set up to investigate and report. Well, they had everybody on the working party, Sales, Systems Engineering, Marketing, Customer Education, Field Service, the whole lot, and after 3 months they came up with the answer, and the working party co-ordinator gave his summary presentation. "The problem was", he said, "that IBM had 8 people rowing and 1 steering, whereas we had 1 person rowing and 8 steering." The working party was then asked to go away and come up with a plan to prevent a recurrence the following year, for DEC's pride had been damaged, and another defeat was not wanted. 2 months later, the working party had worked out a plan, and the coordinator gave his (customarily brief) summary-- "The guy rowing has got to work harder" -ric steinberger -------