---
title: "An old joke with a new ending"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2005/4/10/an-old-joke-with-a-new-ending.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2005/4/10/an-old-joke-with-a-new-ending.html"
published: "2005-04-10T14:31:00"
updated: "2005-04-10T14:31:00"
tags: ["Off Topic"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "Here's a funny joke I just read (you probably know the first half..) It's taken from slahdot, but I found it over on this Hebrew blog \"A helicopter was flying around above Seattle when an electrical malfunction disabled…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# An old joke with a new ending

By Roy Osherove April 10, 2005 In [Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic)

**Historical article** · Originally published April 10, 2005; technical details may be outdated.

Here's a funny joke I just read (you probably know the first half..)

It's taken from slahdot, but I found it over on [this Hebrew blog](http://linmagazine.co.il/node/view/5434)

"A helicopter was flying around above Seattle when an electrical malfunction disabled all of the aircraft's electronic navigation and communications equipment

Due to the clouds and haze, the pilot could not determine the helicopter's position. The pilot saw a tall building, flew toward it, circled, and held up a handwritten sign that said "Where am I?" in large letters. People in the tall building quickly responded to the aircraft, drew a large sign, and held it in a building window. Their sign said "You are in a Helicopter."

The pilot smiled, waved, looked at his map, determined the course to steer to SEATAC airport, and landed safely. After they were on the ground, the copilot asked the pilot how he had done it.

"I knew it had to be the Microsoft Building, because they gave me a technically correct but completely useless answer."
"

**second part**
"Then the co-pilot says, "Gee, you must be a [Linux](http://linmagazine.co.il/glossary#140) user". "How did you know that?" says the Pilot. "Because here you are in a broken helicopter, you didn't know where you were, and suddenly now it's Microsoft's fault"

## More in Off Topic

[All posts in Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic)

- Apr 13, 2005

    ### [Pitfalls to avoid in an authors publishing contract](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/4/13/pitfalls-to-avoid-in-an-authors-publishing-contract.html)

- Apr 13, 2005

    ### [Scary future ahead?](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/4/13/scary-future-ahead.html)

- Apr 3, 2005

    ### [Weird fonts on this blog?](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/4/3/weird-fonts-on-this-blog.html)

- Mar 26, 2005

    ### [Software Factories And Regular Expressions](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/3/26/software-factories-and-regular-expressions.html)


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

### Social

- X: https://x.com/royosherove
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/

### Contact

- Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7

### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/