Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
We were young and our happiness dazzled us with its strength. But there was also a terrible betrayal that lay within me like a Merle Haggard song at a French restaurant. [...] I could not tell the girl about the woman of the tollway, of her milk white BMW and her Jordache smile. There had been a fight. I had punched her boyfriend, who fought the mechanical bulls. Everyone told him, "You ride the bull, senor. You do not fight it." But he was lean and tough like a bad rib-eye and he fought the bull. And then he fought me. And when we finished there were no winners, just men doing what men must do. [...] "Stop the car," the girl said. There was a look of terrible sadness in her eyes. She knew about the woman of the tollway. I knew not how. I started to speak, but she raised an arm and spoke with a quiet and peace I will never forget. "I do not ask for whom's the tollway belle," she said, "the tollway belle's for thee." The next morning our youth was a memory, and our happiness was a lie. Life is like a bad margarita with good tequila, I thought as I poured whiskey onto my granola and faced a new day. -- Peter Applebome, International Imitation Hemingway Competition | |
On the other hand, the TCP camp also has a phrase for OSI people. There are lots of phrases. My favorite is `nitwit' -- and the rationale is the Internet philosophy has always been you have extremely bright, non-partisan researchers look at a topic, do world-class research, do several competing implementations, have a bake-off, determine what works best, write it down and make that the standard. The OSI view is entirely opposite. You take written contributions from a much larger community, you put the contributions in a room of committee people with, quite honestly, vast political differences and all with their own political axes to grind, and four years later you get something out, usually without it ever having been implemented once. So the Internet perspective is implement it, make it work well, then write it down, whereas the OSI perspective is to agree on it, write it down, circulate it a lot and now we'll see if anyone can implement it after it's an international standard and every vendor in the world is committed to it. One of those processes is backwards, and I don't think it takes a Lucasian professor of physics at Oxford to figure out which. -- Marshall Rose, "The Pied Piper of OSI" | |
OS/2 Beer: Comes in a 32-oz can. Does allow you to drink several DOS Beers simultaneously. Allows you to drink Windows 3.1 Beer simultaneously too, but somewhat slower. Advertises that its cans won't explode when you open them, even if you shake them up. You never really see anyone drinking OS/2 Beer, but the manufacturer (International Beer Manufacturing) claims that 9 million six-packs have been sold. | |
To say that UNIX is doomed is pretty rabid, OS/2 will certainly play a role, but you don't build a hundred million instructions per second multiprocessor micro and then try to run it on OS/2. I mean, get serious. -- William Zachmann, International Data Corp | |
Alliance: In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they cannot separately plunder a third. -- Ambrose Bierce | |
"Although Poles suffer official censorship, a pervasive secret police and laws similar to those in the USSR, there are thousands of underground publications, a legal independent Church, private agriculture, and the East bloc's first and only independent trade union federation, NSZZ Solidarnosc, which is an affiliate of both the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and the World Confederation of Labor. There is literally a world of difference between Poland - even in its present state of collapse - and Soviet society at the peak of its "glasnost." This difference has been maintained at great cost by the Poles since 1944. -- David Phillips, SUNY at Buffalo, about establishing a gateway from EARN (Eurpoean Academic Research Network) to Poland | |
... The Anarchists' [national] anthem is an international anthem that consists of 365 raspberries blown in very quick succession to the tune of "Camptown Races". Nobody has to stand up for it, nobody has to listen to it, and, even better, nobody has to play it. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" | |
Alliance, n.: In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they cannot separately plunder a third. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" | |
IBM: [International Business Machines Corp.] Also known as Itty Bitty Machines or The Lawyer's Friend. The dominant force in computer marketing, having supplied worldwide some 75% of all known hardware and 10% of all software. To protect itself from the litigious envy of less successful organizations, such as the US government, IBM employs 68% of all known ex-Attorneys' General. | |
IBM: I've Been Moved Idiots Become Managers Idiots Buy More Impossible to Buy Machine Incredibly Big Machine Industry's Biggest Mistake International Brotherhood of Mercenaries It Boggles the Mind It's Better Manually Itty-Bitty Machines | |
Peace, n.: In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" | |
Q: What do you get when you cross a mobster with an international standard? A: You get someone who makes you an offer that you can't understand! | |
Several years ago, an international chess tournament was being held in a swank hotel in New York. Most of the major stars of the chess world were there, and after a grueling day of chess, the players and their entourages retired to the lobby of the hotel for a little refreshment. In the lobby, some players got into a heated argument about who was the brightest, the fastest, and the best chess player in the world. The argument got quite loud, as various players claimed that honor. At that point, a security guard in the lobby turned to another guard and commented, "If there's anything I just can't stand, it's chess nuts boasting in an open foyer." | |
After Donald Trump's stretch limousine was stolen and found undamaged a few blocks away; he said, "Nothing was stolen. I had an honest thief."-International Herald Tribune, page 3, March 2, 1992 | |
Tux Penguin Boxing Match LAS VEGAS, NV -- The unofficial Linux mascot Tux the Penguin will face his arch rival the BSD Daemon in a boxing match this Saturday night. The match is part of the International Computer Mascot Boxing Federation's First Annual World Championship Series. The winner will advance to face one of the Intel "Bunny People". Boxing pundits favor Tux as the winner. Last week Tux won his first match in the Championship Series against Wilbur the Gimp. "The Gimp didn't have a chance," one spectator said. "With Tux's ability to run at top speeds of over 100mph, I don't see how he could possibly lose." The BSD Daemon, however, is certainly a formidible opponent. While boxing rules prohibit the Daemon from using his patented pitchfork, his pointy horns are permitted in the ring. Some observers think the whole Computer Mascot Boxing Federation is a fake. "WWF is all scripted," one sports writer pointed out. "And so is this. You actually think that a penguin is capable of boxing? The idea of a penguin fighting a demon is patently absurd. This whole Championship Series has no doubt been scripted. It's probably nothing more than two little kids in penguin and demon suits duking it out in a boxing ring. What a waste of time." | |
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Gratitude, like love, is never a dependable international emotion. -- Joseph Alsop | |
* athener calls Amnesty International House of Pancakes | |
The most important design issue... is the fact that Linux is supposed to be fun... -- Linus Torvalds at the First Dutch International Symposium on Linux | |
[From an announcement of a congress of the International Ontopsychology Association, in Rome]: The Ontopsychological school, availing itself of new research criteria and of a new telematic epistemology, maintains that social modes do not spring from dialectics of territory or of class, or of consumer goods, or of means of power, but rather from dynamic latencies capillarized in millions of individuals in system functions which, once they have reached the event maturation, burst forth in catastrophic phenomenology engaging a suitable stereotype protagonist or duty marionette (general, president, political party, etc.) to consummate the act of social schizophrenia in mass genocide. |