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Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) by Linux fortune

A yawn is a silent shout.
                -- G.K. Chesterton
        The big problem with pornography is defining it.  You can't just
say it's pictures of people naked.  For example, you have these
primitive African tribes that exist by chasing the wildebeest on foot,
and they have to go around largely naked, because, as the old tribal
saying goes: "N'wam k'honi soit qui mali," which means, "If you think
you can catch a wildebeest in this climate and wear clothes at the same
time, then I have some beach front property in the desert region of
Northern Mali that you may be interested in."
        So it's not considered pornographic when National Geographic
publishes color photographs of these people hunting the wildebeest
naked, or pounding one rock onto another rock for some primitive reason
naked, or whatever.  But if National Geographic were to publish an
article entitled "The Girls of the California Junior College System
Hunt the Wildebeest Naked," some people would call it pornography.  But
others would not.  And still others, such as the Spectacularly Rev.
Jerry Falwell, would get upset about seeing the wildebeest naked.
                -- Dave Barry, "Pornography"
The difference between waltzes and disco is mostly one of volume.
                -- T.K.
"Well, that was a piece of cake, eh K-9?"

"Piece of cake, Master?  Radial slice of baked confection ... coefficient of
relevance to Key of Time: zero."
                -- Dr. Who
Almost anything derogatory you could say about today's software design
would be accurate.
                -- K.E. Iverson
But this has taken us far afield from interface, which is not a bad
place to be, since I particularly want to move ahead to the kludge.
Why do people have so much trouble understanding the kludge?  What
is a kludge, after all, but not enough K's, not enough ROM's, not
enough RAM's, poor quality interface and too few bytes to go around?
Have I explained yet about the bytes?
[It is] best to confuse only one issue at a time.
                -- K&R
        It took 300 years to build and by the time it was 10% built,
everyone knew it would be a total disaster. But by then the investment
was so big they felt compelled to go on. Since its completion, it has
cost a fortune to maintain and is still in danger of collapsing.
        There are at present no plans to replace it, since it was never
really needed in the first place.
        I expect every installation has its own pet software which is
analogous to the above.
                -- K.E. Iverson, on the Leaning Tower of Pisa
The beer-cooled computer does not harm the ozone layer.
                -- John M. Ford, a.k.a. Dr. Mike

        [If I can read my notes from the Ask Dr. Mike session at Baycon, I
         believe he added that the beer-cooled computer uses "Forget Only
         Memory".  Ed.]
Welcome to boggle - do you want instructions?

D    G    G    O

O    Y    A    N

A    D    B    T

K    I    S    P
Enter words:
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You k'n hide de fier, but w'at you gwine do wid de smoke?
                -- Joel Chandler Harris, proverbs of Uncle Remus
To downgrade the human mind is bad theology.
- C. K. Chesterton
There is a time in the tides of men,
Which, taken at its flood, leads on to success.
On the other hand, don't count on it.
- T. K. Lawson
It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything upon
insufficient evidence.
- W. K. Clifford, British philosopher, circa 1876
The history of the rise of Christianity has everything to do with politics,
culture, and human frailties and nothing to do with supernatural manipulation
of events.  Had divine intervention been the guiding force, surely two
millennia after the birth of Jesus he would not have a world where there
are more Muslims than Catholics, more Hindus than Protestants, and more
nontheists than Catholics and Protestants combined.
-- John K. Naland, "The First Easter", Free Inquiry magazine, Vol. 8, No. 2
"...Local prohibitions cannot block advances in military and commercial
technology... Democratic movements for local restraint can only restrain
the world's democracies, not the world as a whole."
-- K. Eric Drexler
"One thing they don't tell you about doing experimental physics is that
sometimes you must work under adverse conditions... like a state of sheer
terror."
-- W. K. Hartmann
"My country, right or wrong" is a thing that no patriot would think
of saying, except in a desperate case.  It is like saying "My mother,
drunk or sober."
                -- G.K. Chesterton, "The Defendant"
The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man
really clever who has not found that he is stupid.
                -- Gilbert K. Chesterson
Thieves respect property; they merely wish the property to become
their property that they may more perfectly respect it.
                -- G.K. Chesterton, "The Man Who Was Thursday"
Under capitalism, man exploits man.  Under communism, it's just the opposite.
                -- J.K. Galbraith
Brontosaurus Principle:
        Organizations can grow faster than their brains can manage them
        in relation to their environment and to their own physiology:  when
        this occurs, they are an endangered species.
                -- Thomas K. Connellan
economics, n.:
        Economics is the study of the value and meaning of J.K. Galbraith.
                -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
Lemma:  All horses are the same color.
Proof (by induction):
        Case n = 1: In a set with only one horse, it is obvious that all
        horses in that set are the same color.
        Case n = k: Suppose you have a set of k+1 horses.  Pull one of these
        horses out of the set, so that you have k horses.  Suppose that all
        of these horses are the same color.  Now put back the horse that you
        took out, and pull out a different one.  Suppose that all of the k
        horses now in the set are the same color.  Then the set of k+1 horses
        are all the same color.  We have k true => k+1 true; therefore all
        horses are the same color.
Theorem: All horses have an infinite number of legs.
Proof (by intimidation):
        Everyone would agree that all horses have an even number of legs.  It
        is also well-known that horses have forelegs in front and two legs in
        back.  4 + 2 = 6 legs, which is certainly an odd number of legs for a
        horse to have!  Now the only number that is both even and odd is
        infinity; therefore all horses have an infinite number of legs.
        However, suppose that there is a horse somewhere that does not have an
        infinite number of legs.  Well, that would be a horse of a different
        color; and by the Lemma, it doesn't exist.
Theorem: All positive integers are equal.
Proof: Sufficient to show that for any two positive integers, A and B, A = B.
        Further, it is sufficient to show that for all N > 0, if A and B
        (positive integers) satisfy (MAX(A, B) = N) then A = B.

Proceed by induction:
        If N = 1, then A and B, being positive integers, must both be 1.
        So A = B.

Assume that the theorem is true for some value k.  Take A and B with
        MAX(A, B) = k+1.  Then  MAX((A-1), (B-1)) = k.  And hence
        (A-1) = (B-1).  Consequently, A = B.
A prediction is worth twenty explanations.
                -- K. Brecher
O.K., fine.
I don't drink, I don't like it, it makes me feel too good.
                -- K. Coates
The search for the perfect martini is a fraud.  The perfect martini is
a belt of gin from the bottle; anything else is the decadent trappings
of civilization.
                -- T.K.
         A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling
                          by Mark Twain

        For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped
to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer
be part of the alphabet.  The only kase in which "c" would be retained
would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later.  Year 2
might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the
same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with
"i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
        Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear
with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12
or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.
Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi
ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz
ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
        Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud
hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
Ignorance is never out of style.  It was in fashion yesterday, it is the
rage today, and it will set the pace tomorrow.
                -- Franklin K. Dane
The sunlights differ, but there is only one darkness.
                -- Ursula K. LeGuin, "The Dispossessed"
It's not hard to admit errors that are [only] cosmetically wrong.
                -- J.K. Galbraith
One thing they don't tell you about doing experimental physics is that
sometimes you must work under adverse conditions... like a state of sheer
terror.
                -- W.K. Hartmann
Solutions are obvious if one only has the optical power to observe them
over the horizon.
                -- K.A. Arsdall
With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand
miles closer to globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules, and
still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no
such thing as progress.
                -- Ransom K. Ferm
There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the
man who eats Grape-Nuts on principle.
                -- G.K. Chesterton
A is for awk, which runs like a snail, and
B is for biff, which reads all your mail.
C is for cc, as hackers recall, while
D is for dd, the command that does all.
E is for emacs, which rebinds your keys, and
F is for fsck, which rebuilds your trees.
G is for grep, a clever detective, while
H is for halt, which may seem defective.
I is for indent, which rarely amuses, and
J is for join, which nobody uses.
K is for kill, which makes you the boss, while
L is for lex, which is missing from DOS.
M is for more, from which less was begot, and
N is for nice, which it really is not.
O is for od, which prints out things nice, while
P is for passwd, which reads in strings twice.
Q is for quota, a Berkeley-type fable, and
R is for ranlib, for sorting ar table.
S is for spell, which attempts to belittle, while
T is for true, which does very little.
U is for uniq, which is used after sort, and
V is for vi, which is hard to abort.
W is for whoami, which tells you your name, while
X is, well, X, of dubious fame.
Y is for yes, which makes an impression, and
Z is for zcat, which handles compression.
                -- THE ABC'S OF UNIX
God rest ye CS students now,                The bearings on the drum are gone,
Let nothing you dismay.                        The disk is wobbling, too.
The VAX is down and won't be up,        We've found a bug in Lisp, and Algol
Until the first of May.                        Can't tell false from true.
The program that was due this morn,        And now we find that we can't get
Won't be postponed, they say.                At Berkeley's 4.2.
(chorus)                                (chorus)

We've just received a call from DEC,        And now some cheery news for you,
They'll send without delay                The network's also dead,
A monitor called RSuX                        We'll have to print your files on
It takes nine hundred K.                The line printer instead.
The staff committed suicide,                The turnaround time's nineteen weeks.
We'll bury them today.                        And only cards are read.
(chorus)                                (chorus)

And now we'd like to say to you                CHORUS:        Oh, tidings of comfort and joy,
Before we go away,                                Comfort and joy,
We hope the news we've brought to you                Oh, tidings of comfort and joy.
Won't ruin your whole day.
You've got another program due, tomorrow, by the way.
(chorus)
                -- to God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
K:        Cobalt's metal, hard and shining;
        Cobol's wordy and confining;
        KOBOLDS topple when you strike them;
        Don't feel bad, it's hard to like them.
                -- The Roguelet's ABC
Now it's time to say goodbye
To all our company...
M-I-C        (see you next week!)
K-E-Y        (Why?  Because we LIKE you!)
M-O-U-S-E.
Oh, give me a locus where the gravitons focus
        Where the three-body problem is solved,
        Where the microwaves play down at three degrees K,
        And the cold virus never evolved.                        (chorus)
We eat algea pie, our vacuum is high,
        Our ball bearings are perfectly round.
        Our horizon is curved, our warheads are MIRVed,
        And a kilogram weighs half a pound.                        (chorus)
If we run out of space for our burgeoning race
        No more Lebensraum left for the Mensch
        When we're ready to start, we can take Mars apart,
        If we just find a big enough wrench.                        (chorus)
I'm sick of this place, it's just McDonald's in space,
        And living up here is a bore.
        Tell the shiggies, "Don't cry," they can kiss me goodbye
        'Cause I'm moving next week to L4!                        (chorus)

CHORUS:        Home, home on LaGrange,
        Where the space debris always collects,
        We possess, so it seems, two of Man's greatest dreams:
        Solar power and zero-gee sex.
                -- to Home on the Range
You will find me drinking gin
In the lowest kind of inn,
Because I am a rigid Vegetarian.
                -- G.K. Chesterton
(aikamuotojen käyttö aikamatkustuksessa)
"You can arrive (mayan arivan on-when) for any sitting you
like without prior (late fore-when) reservation because you
can book retrospectively, as it were when you return to
your own time. (you can have on-book haventa forewhen
presooning returningwenta retrohome.) "
Windows found - Remove? (Y)es (S)ure (F)ine (O)K
Actual Snippet of Windows Source Code!  Honest!

NOTE: The following snippet of the Windows 95 source code was sent to us via
'unofficial' channels.  Don't tell anyone you saw this!  We really don't
feel like being visited by the Microsoft Intellectual Property Police.

void BusyLoop()
/* Do nothing loop to kill CPU cycles; added at the
   request of Intel */
{
DisplayRandomSubliminalMessage();
for( int i = 0; i < BIG_INT; i++ )
  for( int j = 0; j < BIG_INT; j++ )
   for( int k = 0; k < BIG_INT; k++ )
    for( int l = 0; l < BIG_INT; l++ )
     if( STACK_SPACE_PERCENTAGE_FREE > .05 )
     /* There's plenty of stack space left -- let's
        eat up some more CPU cycles, recursively! */
      BusyLoop();
}
The Socioeconomic Group Formerly Known As "Geeks"

Nobody wants to be called a "geek" anymore. The label, once worn proudly by
members of the tech community as a symbol of their separation from mainstream
society, is now suddenly out of style.

It all started last week when some clueless PR firm released a list of the
"Top 100 Geeks", including such anti-geeks as Bill Gates, Janet Reno, Paul
Allen, and Jeff "One-Click" Bezos. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported
that businessmen in South Korea are striving for the "Geek Chic" image by
dressing like Bill Gates.

Now that the Chief Bloatware Architect has been identified as a "geek",
everybody else has bailed ship. Still undecided on a new label, the community
now calls itself the S.E.G.K.A.G. (SocioEconomic Group formerly Known As
Geeks).

"I cannot tolerate belonging to the same subculture as Bill Gates!" explained
one former geek. "If that manifestation of evil is called a 'geek', then so be
it. I am now officially a nerd."
However, never daunted, I will cope with adversity in my traditional
manner ... sulking and nausea.
                -- Tom K. Ryan
I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.
                -- G.K. Chesterton
It is always the best policy to tell the truth, unless, of course,
you are an exceptionally good liar.
                -- Jerome K. Jerome
It is generally agreed that "Hello" is an appropriate greeting because
if you entered a room and said "Goodbye," it could confuse a lot of people.
                -- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"
Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue.
                -- J.K. Galbraith
The full potentialities of human fury cannot be reached until a friend
of both parties tactfully interferes.
                -- G.K. Chesterton
"I would suggest you to read through the following book and files:
        * Kernighan & Pike, "The Practice of Programming"
        * Documentation/CodingStyle
        * drivers/net/aironet4500_proc.c
and consider, erm, discrepancies. On the second thought, reading K&R
might also be useful. IOW, no offense, but your C is bad beyond belief."

         - Al Viro
"Please see the posting on l-k today "[NEW DRIVER] New user space serial port"
which does just what you want.  Just-in-time kernel development has arrived."

        - Andreas Dilger
<klak> I need some help, I upgraded my kernel and on a reboot I get this error
          message kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k binfmt-464c, errno
          = 8 can anyone help?
<spinoli> from /usr/include/asm/errno.h
<spinoli> #define ENOEXEC          8      /* Exec format error */
<spinoli> not that that necessarily tells you much ;)

        - from #kernelnewbies
So the current heuristic provably sucks. We have cold hard numbers, and
quite frankly, Al, there is very very little point in arguing against
numbers. It's silly. "Gimme an S, gimme a U, gimme a C, gimme a K -
S-U-C-K". The current one sucks.

        - Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel
<Mongoose> knghtbrd: and the meek shall inherit k-mart
Humor in the Court:
Q.  And lastly, Gary, all your responses must be oral.  O.K.? What school do
    you go to?
A.  Oral.
Q.  How old are you?
A.  Oral.
        In "King Henry VI, Part II," Shakespeare has Dick Butcher suggest to
his fellow anti-establishment rabble-rousers, "The first thing we do, let's
kill all the lawyers."  That action may be extreme but a similar sentiment
was expressed by Thomas K. Connellan, president of The Management Group, Inc.
Speaking to business executives in Chicago and quoted in Automotive News,
Connellan attributed a measure of America's falling productivity to an excess
of attorneys and accountants, and a dearth of production experts.  Lawyers
and accountants "do not make the economic pie any bigger; they only figure
out how the pie gets divided.  Neither profession provides any added value
to product."
        According to Connellan, the highly productive Japanese society has
10 lawyers and 30 accountants per 100,000 population.  The U.S. has 200
lawyers and 700 accountants.  This suggests that "the U.S. proportion of
pie-bakers and pie-dividers is way out of whack."  Could Dick Butcher have
been an efficiency expert?
                -- Motor Trend, May 1983
Coincidences are spiritual puns.
                -- G.K. Chesterton
Mohandas K. Gandhi often changed his mind publicly.  An aide once asked him
how he could so freely contradict this week what he had said just last week.
The great man replied that it was because this week he knew better.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away".
                -- Philip K. Dick
What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
                -- Ursula K. LeGuin
Die TeX-Artikel [..] aber doch inzwischen wohl nicht mehr an den
Fingern zweier Hände abzählbar (außer vielleicht von Informatikern,
die bekanntlich mit den Fingern bis 1023 zählen können.
        -- Anselm Lingnau
If a thing's worth doing, it is worth doing badly.
                -- G.K. Chesterton
Receiving a million dollars tax free will make you feel better than
being flat broke and having a stomach ache.
                -- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"
The annual meeting of the "You Have To Listen To Experience" Club is now in
session.  Our Achievement Awards this year are in the fields of publishing,
advertising and industry.  For best consistent contribution in the field of
publishing our award goes to editor, R.L.K., [...] for his unrivalled alle-
giance without variation to the statement: "Personally I'd love to do it,
we'd ALL love to do it.  But we're not going to do it.  It's not the kind of
book our house knows how to handle."  Our superior performance award in the
field of advertising goes to media executive, E.L.M., [...] for the continu-
ally creative use of the old favorite: "I think what you've got here could be
very exciting.  Why not give it one more try based on the approach I've out-
lined and see if you can come up with something fresh."  Our final award for
courageous holding action in the field of industry goes to supervisor, R.S.,
[...] for her unyielding grip on "I don't care if they fire me, I've been
arguing for a new approach for YEARS but are we SURE that this is the right
time--"  I would like to conclude this meeting with a verse written specially
for our prospectus by our founding president fifty years ago -- and now, as
then, fully expressive of the emotion most close to all our hearts --
        Treat freshness as a youthful quirk,
                And dare not stray to ideas new,
        For if t'were tried they might e'en work
                And for a living what woulds't we do?
The King and his advisor are overlooking the battle field:

King:                "How goes the battle plan?"
Advisor:        "See those little black specks running to the right?"
K:        "Yes."
A:        "Those are their guys. And all those little red specks running
        to the left are our guys. Then when they collide we wait till
        the dust clears."
K:        "And?"
A:        "If there are more red specks left than black specks, we win."
K:        "But what about the ^#!!$% battle plan?"
A:        "So far, it seems to be going according to specks."
Bondage maybe, discipline never!
                -- T.K.
Love is like the measles; we all have to go through it.
                -- Jerome K. Jerome
Well, O.K.  I'll compromise with my principles because of EXISTENTIAL DESPAIR!
        If I kiss you, that is an psychological interaction.
        On the other hand, if I hit you over the head with a brick,
that is also a psychological interaction.
        The difference is that one is friendly and the other is not
so friendly.
        The crucial point is if you can tell which is which.
                -- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"
No guarantee of accuracy or completeness!
©TU Chemnitz, 2006-2024
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