** ELEPHANT HUNTING **

In order to hunt elephants:

A PROGRAMMER >>
        1. Begins at the tip of South Africa;
        2. Performs alternating west to east and east to west searches;
        3. Decrements the latitude argument in a non integer sequence
           between each search;
        4. Finds an animal;
        5. Compares found animal to a known elephant;
        6. If found animal matches known elephant terminates search
           else resumes at 3;
        7. end;

AN ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE PROGRAMMER >>
        Will perform the same search on hands and knees.

AN EXPERIENCED PROGRAMMER  >>
        Places an elephant in Cairo, Egypt to ensure
        that the search will terminate properly before
        initiating the above.

A REALLY EXPERIENCED PROGRAMMER  >>
        Either :
        1. Places the elephant JUST OFF-SHORE from Cairo, Egypt; or
        2. Ensures that the elephant placed in Cairo is sky-blue and scarlet
        with purple spots, green stripes and yellow polka-dots, in order to
        distinguish it from any elephant which may have been hiding there
        already.

AN ENGINEER >>
        After determining that an elephant is mammal, gray and weighs
        3.628739*(10^3) Kg, will begin the search collecting all gray
        mammals.  When the sum of the weight of all the collected gray
        mammals equals the specified weight of an elephant, +/- 10% ,
        the search will be terminated.

CONSULTANTS >>
        Don't actually hunt elephants and indeed may never have
        hunted elephants, but they can be hired at great expense
        by the hour, plus expenses, to advise those who do.
        This will include the time it takes to find out what an elephant is.

AN ACOUNTANT >>
        1. Formulate a monthly budget, design a Elephant Journal Entry
           format, a Batch Logging book, add appropriate accounts (both P&L
           and B/S), and a list of approved authorisors for Journals.
        2. Enter accruals for the estimated numbers to be caught per month.
        3. As elephants are caught, Journal them into the appropriate period
           and reverse out the accruals.
        4. Keep the droppings in a filing cabinet for audit purposes.

A MATHEMATICIAN >>
        Will first develop a hypothesis supporting the existence
        of a unique elephant before proceeding with the search
        as a subordinate operation, collecting all animals found,
        testing them against the hypothesis and discarding all that don't
fit.

A PROFESSOR OF MATHEMATICS >>
        Will first develop a hypothesis supporting the
        existence of a unique elephant before sending his/her
        students on the search, requiring that they collect all
        animals found, test them against the hypothesis, and bring
        all matching animals to him for publication.

STATISTICIANS >>
        Hunt the first animal they encounter `n' times and call it
        an elephant.

TRICKLE-DOWN ECONOMISTS >>
        Don't hunt elephants.  They believe that if you give the elephants
        a small tax incentive, they will hunt themselves.

POLITICIANS >>
        Don't hunt elephants but will share any elephants YOU catch
        with the people who voted for them.

LAWYERS >>
        Don't hunt elephants, but they do follow herds around arguing
        about who owns the droppings.

SOFTWARE LAWYERS >>
        Will claim that they know who owns the entire herd based
        on the look and feel of one pile of droppings.

MBAs >>
        Only hunt elephants they can see from where they're standing.

SENIOR MANAGEMENT >>
        Sets broad elephant hunting policies based on the
        assumption that elephants are just like big field
        mice, but with deeper voices.

CEO's >>
        May try to hunt elephants but their staffs are designed to prevent
        it.  When the CEO does get to hunt elephants, the staff will try
        to ensure that all possible elephants are completely pre-hunted
        before the CEO sees them.  If the CEO does see a non-pre-hunted
        elephant, the staff will:
        1) Compliment the CEO's keen eyesight, and
        2) Enlarge itself to prevent any recurrence.

QUALITY ASSURANCE STAFF >>
        Ignore the elephants and spend their time looking
        for mistakes the hunters made while packing the jeep.

SALES STAFF >>
        Don't hunt elephants but spend their time selling elephants
        the hunters haven't caught yet, and promising delivery
        two days before the opening of elephant hunting season.

SOFTWARE SALES STAFF >>
        Ship the first thing they catch, write up an
        invoice for an elephant, modify the documentation to
        match and promise a real elephant at the next update.

HARDWARE SALES STAFF >>
        Catch rabbits, paint them grey and sell them as lap
        top elephants.