slightly : Dictionary / Wörterbuch (BEOLINGUS, TU Chemnitz)

Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English)	by Linux fortune

Can't act. Slightly bald. Also dances. -- RKO executive, reacting to Fred Astaire's screen test. Cerf/Navasky, "The Experts Speak"
Now I know someone out there is going to claim, "Well then, UNIX is intuitive, because you only need to learn 5000 commands, and then everything else follows from that! Har har har!" (Andy Bates in comp.os.linux.misc, on "intuitive interfaces", slightly defending Macs.)
A master was explaining the nature of Tao to one of his novices. "The Tao is embodied in all software -- regardless of how insignificant," said the master. "Is Tao in a hand-held calculator?" asked the novice. "It is," came the reply. "Is the Tao in a video game?" continued the novice. "It is even in a video game," said the master. "And is the Tao in the DOS for a personal computer?" The master coughed and shifted his position slightly. "The lesson is over for today," he said. -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
Dear Emily: How can I choose what groups to post in? -- Confused Dear Confused: Pick as many as you can, so that you get the widest audience. After all, the net exists to give you an audience. Ignore those who suggest you should only use groups where you think the article is highly appropriate. Pick all groups where anybody might even be slightly interested. Always make sure followups go to all the groups. In the rare event that you post a followup which contains something original, make sure you expand the list of groups. Never include a "Followup-to:" line in the header, since some people might miss part of the valuable discussion in the fringe groups. -- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
The FIELD GUIDE to NORTH AMERICAN MALES SPECIES: Cranial Males SUBSPECIES: The Hacker (homo computatis) Plumage: All clothes have a slightly crumpled look as though they came off the top of the laundry basket. Style varies with status. Hacker managers wear gray polyester slacks, pink or pastel shirts with wide collars, and paisley ties; staff wears cinched-up baggy corduroy pants, white or blue shirts with button-down collars, and penholder in pocket. Both managers and staff wear running shoes to work, and a black plastic digital watch with calculator.
The fountain code has been tightened slightly so you can no longer dip objects into a fountain or drink from one while you are floating in mid-air due to levitation. Teleporting to hell via a teleportation trap will no longer occur if the character does not have fire resistance. -- README file from the NetHack game
The Magician of the Ivory Tower brought his latest invention for the master programmer to examine. The magician wheeled a large black box into the master's office while the master waited in silence. "This is an integrated, distributed, general-purpose workstation," began the magician, "ergonomically designed with a proprietary operating system, sixth generation languages, and multiple state of the art user interfaces. It took my assistants several hundred man years to construct. Is it not amazing?" The master raised his eyebrows slightly. "It is indeed amazing," he said. "Corporate Headquarters has commanded," continued the magician, "that everyone use this workstation as a platform for new programs. Do you agree to this?" "Certainly," replied the master, "I will have it transported to the data center immediately!" And the magician returned to his tower, well pleased. Several days later, a novice wandered into the office of the master programmer and said, "I cannot find the listing for my new program. Do you know where it might be?" "Yes," replied the master, "the listings are stacked on the platform in the data center." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
The fountain code has been tightened slightly so you can no longer dip objects into a fountain or drink from one while you are floating in mid-air due to levitation. Teleporting to hell via a teleportation trap will no longer occur if the character does not have fire resistance. - README file from the NetHack game
Tsort's Constant: 1.67563, or precisely 1,237.98712567 times the difference between the distance to the sun and the weight of a small orange. -- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic" (slightly modified)
One dusty July afternoon, somewhere around the turn of the century, Patrick Malone was in Mulcahey's Bar, bending an elbow with the other street car conductors from the Brooklyn Traction Company. While they were discussing the merits of a local ring hero, the bar goes silent. Malone turns around to see his wife, with a face grim as death, stalking to the bar. Slapping a four-bit piece down on the bar, she draws herself up to her full five feet five inches and says to Mulcahey, "Give me what himself has been havin' all these years." Mulcahey looks at Malone, who shrugs, and then back at Margaret Mary Malone. He sets out a glass and pours her a triple shot of Rye. The bar is totally silent as they watch the woman pick up the glass and knock back the drink. She slams the glass down on the bar, gasps, shudders slightly, and passes out; falling straight back, stiff as a board, saved from sudden contact with the barroom floor by the ample belly of Seamus Fogerty. Sometime later, she comes to on the pool table, a jacket under her head. Her bloodshot eyes fell upon her husband, who says, "And all these years you've been thinkin' I've been enjoying meself."
When I heated my home with oil, I used an average of 800 gallons a year. I have found that I can keep comfortably warm for an entire winter with slightly over half that quantity of beer. -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
Warning: Listening to WXRT on April Fools' Day is not recommended for those who are slightly disoriented the first few hours after waking up. -- Chicago Reader 4/22/83
Fortune's diet truths: 1: Forget what the cookbooks say, plain yogurt tastes nothing like sour cream. 2: Any recipe calling for soybeans tastes like mud. 3: Carob is not an acceptable substitute for chocolate. In fact, carob is not an acceptable substitute for anything, except, perhaps, brown shoe polish. 4: There is no such thing as a "fun salad." So let's stop pretending and see salads for what they are: God's punishment for being fat. 5: Fruit salad without maraschino cherries and marshmallows is about as appealing as tepid beer. 6: A world lacking gravy is a tragic place! 7: You should immediately pass up any recipes entitled "luscious and low-cal." Also skip dishes featuring "lively liver." They aren't and it isn't. 8: Wearing a blindfold often makes many diet foods more palatable. 9: Fresh fruit is not dessert. CAKE is dessert! 10: Okra tastes slightly worse than its name implies. 11: A plain baked potato isn't worth the effort involved in chewing and swallowing.
"Many have seen Topaxci, God of the Red Mushroom, and they earn the name of shaman," he said. Some have seen Skelde, spirit of the smoke, and they are called sorcerers. A few have been privileged to see Umcherrel, the soul of the forest, and they are known as spirit masters. But none have seen a box with hundreds of legs that looked at them without eyes, and they are known as idio--" The interruption was caused by a sudden screaming noise and a flurry of snow and sparks that blew the fire across the dark hut; there was a brief blurred vision and then the opposite wall was blasted aside and the apparition vanished. There was a long silence. Then a slightly shorter silence. Then the old shaman said carefully, "You didn't just see two men go through upside down on a broomstick, shouting and screaming at each other, did you?" The boy looked at him levelly. "Certainly not," he said. The old man heaved a sigh of relief. "Thank goodness for that," he said. "Neither did I." -- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic"
Dave I can produce equivalently valid microbenchmarks showing Linux works much better with the scheduler disabled. They are worth about as much as your benchmarks for that optimisation and they likewise ignore a slightly important object known as "the big picture" - Alan Cox on linux-kernel
My ritual differs slightly. What I do, first thing [in the morning], is I hop into the shower stall. Then I hop right back out, because when I hopped in I landed barefoot right on top of See Threepio, a little plastic robot character from "Star Wars" whom my son, Robert, likes to pull the legs off of while he showers. Then I hop right back into the stall because our dog, Earnest, who has been alone in the basement all night building up powerful dog emotions, has come bounding and quivering into the bathroom and wants to greet me with 60 or 70 thousand playful nips, any one of which -- bear in mind that I am naked and, without my contact lenses, essentially blind -- could result in the kind of injury where you have to learn a whole new part if you want to sing the "Messiah," if you get my drift. Then I hop right back out, because Robert, with that uncanny sixth sense some children have -- you cannot teach it; they either have it or they don't -- has chosen exactly that moment to flush one of the toilets. Perhaps several of them. -- Dave Barry
Libtool shared library portability is only slightly more believable than perpetual motion machines. Especially on AIX :)." -- David Leimbach
Now I know someone out there is going to claim, "Well then, UNIX is intuitive, because you only need to learn 5000 commands, and then everything else follows from that! Har har har!" -- Andy Bates on "intuitive interfaces", slightly defending Macs
According to a recent and unscientific national survey, smiling is something everyone should do at least 6 times a day. In an effort to increase the national average (the US ranks third among the world's superpowers in smiling), Xerox has instructed all personnel to be happy, effervescent, and most importantly, to smile. Xerox employees agree, and even feel strongly that they can not only meet but surpass the national average... except for Tubby Ackerman. But because Tubby does such a fine job of racing around parking lots with a large butterfly net retrieving floating IC chips, Xerox decided to give him a break. If you see Tubby in a parking lot he may have a sheepish grin. This is where the expression, "Service with a slightly sheepish grin" comes from.
If you're like most homeowners, you're afraid that many repairs around your home are too difficult to tackle. So, when your furnace explodes, you call in a so-called professional to fix it. The "professional" arrives in a truck with lettering on the sides and deposits a large quantity of tools and two assistants who spend the better part of the week in your basement whacking objects at random with heavy wrenches, after which the "professional" returns and gives you a bill for slightly more money than it would cost you to run a successful campaign for the U.S. Senate. And that's why you've decided to start doing things yourself. You figure, "If those guys can fix my furnace, then so can I. How difficult can it be?" Very difficult. In fact, most home projects are impossible, which is why you should do them yourself. There is no point in paying other people to screw things up when you can easily screw them up yourself for far less money. This article can help you. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
What they said: What they meant: "If you knew this person as well as I know him, you would think as much of him as I do." (Or as little, to phrase it slightly more accurately.) "Her input was always critical." (She never had a good word to say.) "I have no doubt about his capability to do good work." (And it's nonexistent.) "This candidate would lend balance to a department like yours, which already has so many outstanding members." (Unless you already have a moron.) "His presentation to my seminar last semester was truly remarkable: one unbelievable result after another." (And we didn't believe them, either.) "She is quite uniform in her approach to any function you may assign her." (In fact, to life in general...)
Though I'll admit readability suffers slightly... -- Larry Wall in <2969@jato.Jpl.Nasa.Gov>