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The LA Fox Developer Newsletter
July2000
Humor from the ‘Net
Bill Gates died in a car accident. He found himself in Purgatory being sized up by God.

“Well, Bill, I’m really confused on this call. I’m not sure whether to send you to Heaven or Hell. After all, you enormously helped society by putting a computer in almost every home in the world - yet you created that ghastly Windows 95. I’m going to do something I’ve never done before. In your case, I’m going to let you decide where you want to go.”

Bill replied, “Well, thanks, God. What’s the difference between thetwo?”

God said, “I’m willing to let you visit both places briefly, if it will help you make a decision.”

“Fine, but where should I go first?”

God said, “I’m going to leave that up to you.

Bill said, "OK, then, let’s try Hell first.” So Bill went to Hell. He saw a beautiful, clean, sandy beach with clear waters. There were thousands of beautiful women running around, playing in the water, laughing and frolicking about. The sun was shining and the temperature was perfect.

Bill was very pleased. “This is great!” he told God, "If this is Hell, I REALLY want to see Heaven!”

"Fine," said God, and off they went.

Heaven was a high place in the clouds, with angels drifting about playing harps and singing. It was nice, but not as enticing as Hell.

Bill thought for a quick minute and rendered his decision. "Hmm, I think I prefer Hell” he told God.

“Fine,” returned God, “as you desire.” So Bill Gates went to Hell.

Two weeks later, God decided to check up on the late billionaire to see how he was doing in Hell. When God arrived in Hell, he found Bill shackled to a wall, screaming amongst the hot flames in a dark cave. He was being burned and tortured by demons.

“How’s everything going, Bill?” God asked.

Bill responded - his voice full of anguish and disappointment, “This is awful not at all what I expected. I can’t believe this happened. What became of that other place with the beaches and the beautiful women playing in the water?”

God replied, “That was the screen saver.
Undocumented FoxProNFP
Functions
Part 2 of 3
by Bill Anderson
SET(”MACHELP”)
Returns “DISABLED”, regardless of the prior SET MACHELP setting.

SET(”MBLOCK”)
Returns the previous setting of SET MBLOCK, multiplied by 64.
Unless MBLOCK is set to 1, then this function returns 1.

SET(”Menu”)
This returned the On or Offsetting of the editor menu in dBaselll+. Has no meaning forVFP but it doesn’t generate an error, either.

SET(”Pause”)
For compatibility with dBaselV.

SET(”PRECISION”)
This function returns 16 no matter what you do.

SET(”SQL”)
This function always returns “ON”, even if you precede it with
SET SQL OFF.

SET(”TITLES”)
Returns the SET TITLE setting.

SET(”TRAP”)
This function always returns “ON”, even if you precede it with
SET TRAP OFF.

SET(”XCMDFILE”)
This should return the value set by SET XCMDFILE. You can set SET XCMDFILE to a file, but the above function to retrieve it generates an error.
Gofigure.

SYS(101 1)
Here’s a function that’s been around for a while, apparently since the existence of VFP. Supposedly, this function returns the number of memory handles in use. Useful for diagnosing memory leaks...

SYS(1020)
This function made it’s first appearance in version 1.02 of Fox. I wonder if the name of the function and the version were not a coincidence. We may never know this one. This function returns “Resuming Normal Operation” in the status bar. These functions work and sometimes they don’t, depending on the version of Fox or VFP you’re running.
SYS(1 021)

This function made it’s first appearance in version 1.02 of Fox.
(Con’t, page 4)
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