Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
bugs in the RAID | |
After sifting through the overwritten remaining blocks of Luke's home directory, Luke and PDP-1 sped away from /u/lars, across the surface of the Winchester riding Luke's flying read/write head. PDP-1 had Luke stop at the edge of the cylinder overlooking /usr/spool/uucp. "Unix-to-Unix Copy Program;" said PDP-1. "You will never find a more wretched hive of bugs and flamers. We must be cautious." -- DECWARS | |
As long as there are ill-defined goals, bizarre bugs, and unrealistic schedules, there will be Real Programmers willing to jump in and Solve The Problem, saving the documentation for later. | |
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it. -- Donald Knuth | |
Each new user of a new system uncovers a new class of bugs. -- Kernighan | |
Ever wondered about the origins of the term "bugs" as applied to computer technology? U.S. Navy Capt. Grace Murray Hopper has firsthand explanation. The 74-year-old captain, who is still on active duty, was a pioneer in computer technology during World War II. At the C.W. Post Center of Long Island University, Hopper told a group of Long Island public school adminis- trators that the first computer "bug" was a real bug--a moth. At Harvard one August night in 1945, Hopper and her associates were working on the "granddaddy" of modern computers, the Mark I. "Things were going badly; there was something wrong in one of the circuits of the long glass-enclosed computer," she said. "Finally, someone located the trouble spot and, using ordinary tweezers, removed the problem, a two-inch moth. From then on, when anything went wrong with a computer, we said it had bugs in it." Hopper said that when the veracity of her story was questioned recently, "I referred them to my 1945 log book, now in the collection of the Naval Surface Weapons Center, and they found the remains of that moth taped to the page in question." [actually, the term "bug" had even earlier usage in regard to problems with radio hardware. Ed.] | |
Hacker's Guide To Cooking: 2 pkg. cream cheese (the mushy white stuff in silver wrappings that doesn't really come from Philadelphia after all; anyway, about 16 oz.) 1 tsp. vanilla extract (which is more alcohol than vanilla and pretty strong so this part you *GOTTA* measure) 1/4 cup sugar (but honey works fine too) 8 oz. Cool Whip (the fluffy stuff devoid of nutritional value that you can squirt all over your friends and lick off...) "Blend all together until creamy with no lumps." This is where you get to join(1) all the raw data in a big buffer and then filter it through merge(1m) with the -thick option, I mean, it starts out ultra lumpy and icky looking and you have to work hard to mix it. Try an electric beater if you have a cat(1) that can climb wall(1s) to lick it off the ceiling(3m). "Pour into a graham cracker crust..." Aha, the BUGS section at last. You just happened to have a GCC sitting around under /etc/food, right? If not, don't panic(8), merely crumble a rand(3m) handful of innocent GCs into a suitable tempfile and mix in some melted butter. "...and refrigerate for an hour." Leave the recipe's stdout in a fridge for 3.6E6 milliseconds while you work on cleaning up stderr, and by time out your cheesecake will be ready for stdin. | |
Heuristics are bug ridden by definition. If they didn't have bugs, then they'd be algorithms. | |
If graphics hackers are so smart, why can't they get the bugs out of fresh paint? | |
Still a few bugs in the system... Someday I have to tell you about Uncle Nahum from Maine, who spent years trying to cross a jellyfish with a shad so he could breed boneless shad. His experiment backfired too, and he wound up with bony jellyfish... which was hardly worth the trouble. There's very little call for those up there. -- Allucquere R. "Sandy" Stone | |
Testing can show the presense of bugs, but not their absence. -- Dijkstra | |
The bugs you have to avoid are the ones that give the user not only the inclination to get on a plane, but also the time. -- Kay Bostic | |
The number of computer scientists in a room is inversely proportional to the number of bugs in their code. | |
The wise programmer is told about the Tao and follows it. The average programmer is told about the Tao and searches for it. The foolish programmer is told about the Tao and laughs at it. If it were not for laughter, there would be no Tao. The highest sounds are the hardest to hear. Going forward is a way to retreat. Greater talent shows itself late in life. Even a perfect program still has bugs. -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" | |
There are never any bugs you haven't found yet. | |
X windows: You'd better sit down. Don't laugh. It could be YOUR thesis project. Why do it right when you can do it wrong? Live the nightmare. Our bugs run faster. When it absolutely, positively HAS to crash overnight. There ARE no rules. You'll wish we were kidding. Everything you never wanted in a window system. And more. Dissatisfaction guaranteed. There's got to be a better way. The next best thing to keypunching. Leave the thrashing to us. We wrote the book on core dumps. Even your dog won't like it. More than enough rope. Garbage at your fingertips. Incompatibility. Shoddiness. Uselessness. X windows. | |
There are bugs and then there are bugs. And then there are bugs. -- Karl Lehenbauer | |
"He don't know me vewy well, DO he?" -- Bugs Bunny | |
"Would I turn on the gas if my pal Mugsy were in there?" "You might, rabbit, you might!" -- Looney Tunes, Bugs and Thugs (1954, Friz Freleng) | |
"Why waste negative entropy on comments, when you could use the same entropy to create bugs instead?" -- Steve Elias | |
Nobody shot me. -- Frank Gusenberg, his last words, when asked by police who had shot him 14 times with a machine gun in the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre. Only Capone kills like that. -- George "Bugs" Moran, on the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre The only man who kills like that is Bugs Moran. -- Al Capone, on the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre | |
Acceptance testing: An unsuccessful attempt to find bugs. | |
bug, n: An elusive creature living in a program that makes it incorrect. The activity of "debugging", or removing bugs from a program, ends when people get tired of doing it, not when the bugs are removed. -- "Datamation", January 15, 1984 | |
Bugs, pl. n.: Small living things that small living boys throw on small living girls. | |
A newspaper is a circulating library with high blood pressure. -- Arthure "Bugs" Baer | |
As I was passing Project MAC, I met a Quux with seven hacks. Every hack had seven bugs; Every bug had seven manifestations; Every manifestation had seven symptoms. Symptoms, manifestations, bugs, and hacks, How many losses at Project MAC? | |
Eleanor Rigby Sits at the keyboard And waits for a line on the screen Lives in a dream Waits for a signal Finding some code That will make the machine do some more. What is it for? All the lonely users, where do they all come from? All the lonely users, why does it take so long? Hacker MacKensie Writing the code for a program that no one will run It's nearly done Look at him working, fixing the bugs in the night when there's nobody there. What does he care? All the lonely users, where do they all come from? All the lonely users, why does it take so long? Ah, look at all the lonely users. Ah, look at all the lonely users. | |
Hack placidly amidst the noisy printers and remember what prizes there may be in Science. As fast as possible get a good terminal on a good system. Enter your data clearly but always encrypt your results. And listen to others, even the dull and ignorant, for they may be your customers. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, for they are sales reps. If you compare your outputs with those of others, you may be surprised, for always there will be greater and lesser numbers than you have crunched. Keep others interested in your career, and try not to fumble; it can be a real hassle and could change your fortunes in time. Exercise system control in your experiments, for the world is full of bugs. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for linearity and everywhere papers are full of approximations. Strive for proportionality. Especially, do not faint when it occurs. Neither be cyclical about results; for in the face of all data analysis it is sure to be noticed. Take with a grain of salt the anomalous data points. Gracefully pass them on to the youth at the next desk. Nurture some mutual funds to shield you in times of sudden layoffs. But do not distress yourself with imaginings -- the real bugs are enough to screw you badly. Murphy's Law runs the Universe -- and whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt <Curl>B*n dS = 0. Therefore, grab for a piece of the pie, with whatever proposals you can conceive of to try. With all the crashed disks, skewed data, and broken line printers, you can still have a beautiful secretary. Be linear. Strive to stay employed. -- Technolorata, "Analog" | |
It hangs down from the chandelier Nobody knows quite what it does Its color is odd and its shape is weird It emits a high-sounding buzz It grows a couple of feet each day and wriggles with sort of a twitch Nobody bugs it 'cause it comes from a visiting uncle who's rich! -- To "It Came Upon A Midnight Clear" | |
Bugs come in through open Windows. | |
He whom opens thee Windows invites the bugs in. | |
Windows 95 never has bugs. It just develops random features. | |
Microsoft broke Volkswagen's world record: Volkswagen only made 22 million bugs! | |
Why doesn't DOS ever say "EXCELLENT command or filename!" | |
DOS Tip of the Day: Add BUGS=OFF to your CONFIG.SYS file. | |
Why would people waste their time developing viruses for Microsoft products when Microsoft does such a good job itself of adding in bugs which crash your system? -- From a Slashdot.org post | |
I Want My Bugs! An entymologist in Georgia is threatening to sue Microsoft over false advertising in Windows 2000. "According to Microsoft, Win2K contains 63,000 bugs," he explained. "However, the shrink-wrapped box I purchased at CompUSSR only had one cockroach along with some worthless papers and a shiny drink coaster. I got ripped off." The entymologist hoped that the 63,000 promised bugs would greatly add to his insect collection. "I had my doubts that Microsoft could deliver 63,000 insects in one small box for only US$299," he said. "However, with a company as innovative as Microsoft, the sky is the limit. Or at least that's what I thought." He then asked angrily, "Where do I want to go today? Back to the store for a refund!" | |
Brief History Of Linux (#15) Too many hyphens: Traf-O-Data and Micro-soft Bill Gates and Paul Allen attended an exclusive private school in Seattle. In 1968, after raising $3,000 from a yard sale, they gained access to a timeshare computer and became addicted. After depleting their money learning BASIC and playing Solitaire, they convinced a company to give them free computer time in exchange for reporting bugs -- ironically, an early form of Open Source development! The two then founded a small company called Traf-O-Data that collected and analyzed traffic counts for municipalities using a crude device based on the Intel "Pretanium" 8008 CPU. They had some success at first, but ran into problems when they were unable to deliver their much hyped next-generation device called "TrafficX". An engineer is quoted as saying that "Traf-O-Data is the local leader in vaporware", the first documented usage of the term that has come to be synonymous with Bill Gates. Soon thereafter, the two developed their own BASIC interpreter, and sold it to MITS for their new Altair computer. April 4, 1975 is the fateful day that Micro-soft was founded in Albuquerque, NM as a language vendor. | |
Brief History Of Linux (#17) Terrible calamity IBM chose Microsoft's Quick & Dirty Operating System instead of CP/M for its new line of PCs. QDOS (along with the abomination known as EDLIN) had been acquired from a Seattle man, Tim Paterson, for the paltry sum of $50,000. "Quick" and "Dirty" were truly an accurate description of this system, because IBM's quality assurance department discovered 300 bugs in QDOS's 8,000 lines of assember code (that's about 1 bug per 27 lines -- which, at the time, was appalling, but compared with Windows 98 today, it really wasn't that shabby). Thanks in part to IBM's new marketing slogan, "Nobody Ever Got Fired For Choosing IBM(tm)", and the release of the VisiCalc spreadsheet program that everybody and their brother wanted, IBM PCs running DOS flew off the shelves and, unfortunately, secured Microsoft's runaway success. Bill Gates was now on his way to the Billionaire's Club; his days as a mediocre programmer were long gone: he was now a Suit. The only lines of code he would ever see would be the passcodes to his Swiss bank accounts. | |
"No bugs were harmed in the preparation of this patch. It's just me fartarsing around." - Andrew Morton | |
> Is there anything else I can contribute? The latitude and longtitude of the bios writers current position, and a ballistic missile. Please boot 2.2.18pre24 (not pre25) on the machine and send me its DMI strings printed at boot time. I'll add it to the 'stupid morons who cant program and wouldnt know QA if it hit them on the head with a mallet' list - Alan Cox on BIOS bugs | |
Alan Cox wrote: > In theory however i2o is a standard and all i2o works alike. In practice i2o > is a pseudo standard and nobody seems to interpret the spec the same way, the > implementations all tend to have bugs and the hardware sometimes does too. That's a pretty good description of standards in general, at least when it comes to hardware :-) - Jens Axboe's interpretation of standards | |
Nvidia driver loaded - bugs to nvidia. vmware loaded bugs to vmware, both loaded, god help you, nobody else will - Alan Cox explaining where to send bug reports for binary-only drivers | |
If you _really_ feel this strongly about the bug, you could either try to increase the number of hours a day for all of us or you could talk to my boss about hiring me as a consultant to fix the problem for you on an emergency basis :) - Rik van Riel explaining what to do against kernel bugs | |
> Not that the kernel list is the best place to bring this up, but NVIDIA > would NOT be on that list. They are by far one of the best companies out > there providing support for their cards. I bought my GF2 for exactly that > reason too.... Sure. I spent much happy time telling people to report bugs to nvidia because their closed drivers mean that only nvidia can debug all the crashes people see with them loaded - at least some of which dont occur without the modules - Alan Cox on linux-kernel | |
Of course, some people consider hidden bugs to _be_ fixed. I don't believe in that particulat philosophy myself. - Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel | |
Alan Cox wrote: > Linus Torvalds wrote: > > And quite frankly, if your disk can push 50MB/s through a 1kB > > non-contiguous filesystem, then my name is Bugs Bunny. > > Hi Bugs 8), previously Frodo Rabbit, .. I think you watch too much kids tv > 8) Three kids will do that to you. Some day, you too will be there. - Linus Torvalds and Alan Cox on linux-kernel | |
> If you took my patch for it, PLEASE don't send it for inclusion; it's an > evil hack and no longer needed when Intel fixes the bug in their 440GX bios. "when" is not a word I find useful about most bios bugs. Try "if" or "less likely that being hit on the head by an asteroid" - Alan Cox on linux-kernel | |
> I got a kernel crash when dial up. But I am using > 2.4.0-rmk1 and pppd-2.4.1. Is there any known ppp problem > in that release? Will it help if I upgrade my kernel? Who knows, we're now many versions ahead, many bugs have been fixed, and a lot of work has been done. - Russell King on linux-arm-kernel | |
<jim> Lemme make sure I'm not wasting time here... bcwhite will remove pkgs that havent been fixed that have outstanding bugs of severity "important". True or false? <JHM> jim: "important" or higher. True. <jim> Then we're about to lose ftp.debian.org and dpkg :) * netgod will miss dpkg -- it was occasionally useful <Joey> We still have rpm.... | |
<zarkov> "NT 5.0. All the bugs and ten times the code size!" | |
<stu> apt: !bugs <apt> !bugs are stupid <dpkg> apt: are stupid? what's that? <apt> dpkg: i don't know <dpkg> apt: Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder... <apt> i already had it that way, dpkg. | |
<Culus> Saens demonstrates no less than 3 tcp/ip bugs in 2.2.3 | |
<Knghtbrd> you know, Linux needs a platform game starring Tux <Knghtbrd> kinda Super Marioish, but with Tux and things like little cyber bugs and borgs and that sort of thing ... <Knghtbrd> And you have to jump past billgatus and hit the key to drop him into the lava and then you see some guy that looks like a RMS or someone say "Thank you for rescuing me Tux, but Linus Torvalds is in another castle!" | |
<Knghtbrd> mariab - don't think Debian hasn't had some very stupid and obvious bugs before <Knghtbrd> of course, we usually fix ours BEFORE we release =D | |
<jt> should a bug be marked critical if it only affects one arch? <james-workaway> jt: rc for that arch maybe, but those kind of arch specific bugs are rare... <jt> not when it's caused by a bug in gcc <doogie> jt: get gcc removed from that arch. :) | |
<taniwha> Knghtbrd: we should do a quake episode :knee deep in the code": you run around shooting at bugs:) <Knghtbrd> taniwha: I'll pass the idea on to OpenQuartz ;> | |
99 little bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code, fix one bug, compile it again... 101 little bugs in the code.... | |
<doogie> dpkg has bugs? no way! | |
<hoponpop> my program works if i take out the bugs. | |
Oh, and this is another kernel in that great and venerable "BugFree(tm)" series of kernels. So be not afraid of bugs, but go out in the streets and deliver this message of joy to the masses. -- Linus, in the announcement for 1.3.27 | |
Eh, that's it, I guess. No 300 million dollar unveiling event for this kernel, I'm afraid, but you're still supposed to think of this as the "happening of the century" (at least until the next kernel comes along). Oh, and this is another kernel in that great and venerable "BugFree(tm)" series of kernels. So be not afraid of bugs, but go out in the streets and deliver this message of joy to the masses. -- Linus Torvalds, on releasing 1.3.27 | |
Also another major deciding factor is availability of source code. It just gives everybody a warm fuzzy feeling knowing that there is source code available to the product you are using. It allows everybody to improve on the product and fix bugs etc. sooner that the author(s) would get the time/chance to. -- Atif Khan | |
> Also another major deciding factor is availability of source code. > It just gives everybody a warm fuzzy feeling knowing that there is > source code available to the product you are using. It allows everybody > to improve on the product and fix bugs etc. sooner that the author(s) > would get the time/chance to. I think this is one the really BIG reasons for the snowball/onslaught of Linux and the wealth of stuff available that gets enhanced faster than the real vendors can keep up. -- Norman | |
"We don't do a new version to fix bugs." - Bill Gates "The new version - it's not there to fix bugs." - Bill Gates -- Retranslated from Focus 43/1995, pp. 206-212 | |
I just uploaded xtoolplaces-1.6. It fixes all bugs but one: It still coredumps instead of doing something useful. The upstream author's e-mail address bounces, Redhat doesn't provide it and I never used it. -- Sven Rudolph <sr1@os.inf.tu-dresden.de> | |
Charles Briscoe-Smith <cpbs@debian.org>: After all, the gzip package is called `gzip', not `libz-bin'... James Troup <troup@debian.org>: Uh, probably because the gzip binary doesn't come from the non-existent libz package or the existent zlib package. -- debian-bugs-dist | |
<jim> Lemme make sure I'm not wasting time here... bcwhite will remove pkgs that havent been fixed that have outstanding bugs of severity "important". True or false? <JHM> jim: "important" or higher. True. <jim> Then we're about to lose ftp.debian.org and dpkg :) * netgod will miss dpkg -- it was occasionally useful <Joey> We still have rpm.... -- Seen on #Debian | |
If you remove stricture from a large Perl program currently, you're just installing delayed bugs, whereas with this feature, you're installing an instant bug that's easily fixed. Whoopee. -- Larry Wall in <199710050130.SAA04762@wall.org> |