Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE OBSCURE FILMS: #9 THE PARKING PROBLEM IN PARIS: Jean-Luc Godard, 1971, 7 hours 18 min. Godard's meditation on the topic has been described as everything from "timeless" to "endless." (Remade by Gene Wilder as NO PLACE TO PARK.) | |
Jim, this is Janelle. I'm flying tonight, so I can't make our date, and I gotta find a safe place for Daffy. He loves you, Jim! It's only two days, and you'll see. Great Danes are no problem! -- "The Rockford Files" | |
Snoopy: No problem is so big that it can't be run away from. | |
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 Great Movie Posters: She's got the biggest six-shooters in the West! -- The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend (1949) CAST OF 3,000! 4 WRITERS, 2 DIRECTORS, 3 CAMERAMEN, 3 PRODUCERS! 1 YEAR TO MAKE THIS FILM -- 24 YEARS TO REHEARSE -- 20 YEARS TO DISTRIBUTE! BEAUTIFUL BEYOND WORDS! AWE-INSPIRING! VITAL! THE PRINCE OF PEACE PROVIDES THE ANSWER TO EVERY PROBLEM! Be Brave--bring your troubles and your family to: HISTORY'S MOST SUBLIME EVENT! YOU'LL FIND GOD RIGHT IN THERE! -- The Prince of Peace (1948). Starring members of the Wichita Mountain Pageant featuring Millard Coody as Jesus. | |
VII. Certain bodies can pass through solid walls painted to resemble tunnel entrances; others cannot. This trompe l'oeil inconsistency has baffled generations, but at least it is known that whoever paints an entrance on a wall's surface to trick an opponent will be unable to pursue him into this theoretical space. The painter is flattened against the wall when he attempts to follow into the painting. This is ultimately a problem of art, not of science. VIII. Any violent rearrangement of feline matter is impermanent. Cartoon cats possess even more deaths than the traditional nine lives might comfortably afford. They can be decimated, spliced, splayed, accordion-pleated, spindled, or disassembled, but they cannot be destroyed. After a few moments of blinking self pity, they reinflate, elongate, snap back, or solidify. IX. For every vengeance there is an equal and opposite revengeance. This is the one law of animated cartoon motion that also applies to the physical world at large. For that reason, we need the relief of watching it happen to a duck instead. X. Everything falls faster than an anvil. Examples too numerous to mention from the Roadrunner cartoons. -- Esquire, "O'Donnell's Laws of Cartoon Motion", June 1980 | |
When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more easily by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?" | |
I love dogs, but I hate Chihuahuas. A Chihuahua isn't a dog. It's a rat with a thyroid problem. | |
The main problem I have with cats is, they're not dogs. -- Kevin Cowherd | |
"Note that if I can get you to \"su and say\" something just by asking, you have a very serious security problem on your system and you should look into it." (By Paul Vixie, vixie-cron 3.0.1 installation notes) | |
"Problem solving under linux has never been the circus that it is under AIX." (By Pete Ehlke in comp.unix.aix) | |
sounds like a Windows problem, try calling Microsoft support | |
POSIX complience problem | |
It works the way the Wang did, what's the problem | |
need to wrap system in aluminum foil to fix problem | |
There isn't any problem | |
le0: no carrier: transceiver cable problem? | |
Traceroute says that there is a routing problem in the backbone. It's not our problem. | |
appears to be a Slow/Narrow SCSI-0 Interface problem | |
Your Pentium has a heating problem - try cooling it with ice cold water.(Do not turn of your computer, you do not want to cool down the Pentium Chip while he isn't working, do you?) | |
PEBKAC (Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair) | |
We are Microsoft. What you are experiencing is not a problem; it is an undocumented feature. | |
Repeated reboots of the system failed to solve problem | |
... an anecdote from IBM's Yorktown Heights Research Center. When a programmer used his new computer terminal, all was fine when he was sitting down, but he couldn't log in to the system when he was standing up. That behavior was 100 percent repeatable: he could always log in when sitting and never when standing. Most of us just sit back and marvel at such a story; how could that terminal know whether the poor guy was sitting or standing? Good debuggers, though, know that there has to be a reason. Electrical theories are the easiest to hypothesize: was there a loose with under the carpet, or problems with static electricity? But electrical problems are rarely consistently reproducible. An alert IBMer finally noticed that the problem was in the terminal's keyboard: the tops of two keys were switched. When the programmer was seated he was a touch typist and the problem went unnoticed, but when he stood he was led astray by hunting and pecking. -- "Programming Pearls" column, by Jon Bentley in CACM February 1985 | |
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. | |
At about 2500 A.D., humankind discovers a computer problem that *must* be solved. The only difficulty is that the problem is NP complete and will take thousands of years even with the latest optical biologic technology available. The best computer scientists sit down to think up some solution. In great dismay, one of the C.S. people tells her husband about it. There is only one solution, he says. Remember physics 103, Modern Physics, general relativity and all. She replies, "What does that have to do with solving a computer problem?" "Remember the twin paradox?" After a few minutes, she says, "I could put the computer on a very fast machine and the computer would have just a few minutes to calculate but that is the exact opposite of what we want... Of course! Leave the computer here, and accelerate the earth!" The problem was so important that they did exactly that. When the earth came back, they were presented with the answer: IEH032 Error in JOB Control Card. | |
Dear Ms. Postnews: I couldn't get mail through to somebody on another site. What should I do? -- Eager Beaver Dear Eager: No problem, just post your message to a group that a lot of people read. Say, "This is for John Smith. I couldn't get mail through so I'm posting it. All others please ignore." This way tens of thousands of people will spend a few seconds scanning over and ignoring your article, using up over 16 man-hours their collective time, but you will be saved the terrible trouble of checking through usenet maps or looking for alternate routes. Just think, if you couldn't distribute your message to 9000 other computers, you might actually have to (gasp) call directory assistance for 60 cents, or even phone the person. This can cost as much as a few DOLLARS (!) for a 5 minute call! And certainly it's better to spend 10 to 20 dollars of other people's money distributing the message than for you to have to waste $9 on an overnight letter, or even 25 cents on a stamp! Don't forget. The world will end if your message doesn't get through, so post it as many places as you can. -- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette | |
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.] | |
"If that makes any sense to you, you have a big problem." -- C. Durance, Computer Science 234 | |
In any problem, if you find yourself doing an infinite amount of work, the answer may be obtained by inspection. | |
In less than a century, computers will be making substantial progress on ... the overriding problem of war and peace. -- James Slagle | |
Nearly every complex solution to a programming problem that I have looked at carefully has turned out to be wrong. -- Brent Welch | |
Overall, the philosophy is to attack the availability problem from two complementary directions: to reduce the number of software errors through rigorous testing of running systems, and to reduce the effect of the remaining errors by providing for recovery from them. An interesting footnote to this design is that now a system failure can usually be considered to be the result of two program errors: the first, in the program that started the problem; the second, in the recovery routine that could not protect the system. -- A.L. Scherr, "Functional Structure of IBM Virtual Storage Operating Systems, Part II: OS/VS-2 Concepts and Philosophies," IBM Systems Journal, Vol. 12, No. 4. | |
PL/I -- "the fatal disease" -- belongs more to the problem set than to the solution set. -- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5 | |
SEMINAR ANNOUNCEMENT Title: Are Frogs Turing Compatible? Speaker: Don "The Lion" Knuth ABSTRACT Several researchers at the University of Louisiana have been studying the computing power of various amphibians, frogs in particular. The problem of frog computability has become a critical issue that ranges across all areas of computer science. It has been shown that anything computable by an amphi- bian community in a fixed-size pond is computable by a frog in the same-size pond -- that is to say, frogs are Pond-space complete. We will show that there is a log-space, polywog-time reduction from any Turing machine program to a frog. We will suggest these represent a proper subset of frog-computable functions. This is not just a let's-see-how-far-those-frogs-can-jump seminar. This is only for hardcore amphibian-computation people and their colleagues. Refreshments will be served. Music will be played. | |
The FIELD GUIDE to NORTH AMERICAN MALES SPECIES: Cranial Males SUBSPECIES: The Hacker (homo computatis) Description: Gangly and frail, the hacker has a high forehead and thinning hair. Head disproportionately large and crooked forward, complexion wan and sightly gray from CRT illumination. He has heavy black-rimmed glasses and a look of intense concentration, which may be due to a software problem or to a pork-and-bean breakfast. Feathering: HOMO COMPUTATIS saw a Brylcreem ad fifteen years ago and believed it. Consequently, crest is greased down, except for the cowlick. Song: A rather plaintive "Is it up?" | |
The problem with engineers is that they tend to cheat in order to get results. The problem with mathematicians is that they tend to work on toy problems in order to get results. The problem with program verifiers is that they tend to cheat at toy problems in order to get results. | |
This is the first numerical problem I ever did. It demonstrates the power of computers: Enter lots of data on calorie & nutritive content of foods. Instruct the thing to maximize a function describing nutritive content, with a minimum level of each component, for fixed caloric content. The results are that one should eat each day: 1/2 chicken 1 egg 1 glass of skim milk 27 heads of lettuce. -- Rev. Adrian Melott | |
Von Neumann was the subject of many dotty professor stories. Von Neumann supposedly had the habit of simply writing answers to homework assignments on the board (the method of solution being, of course, obvious) when he was asked how to solve problems. One time one of his students tried to get more helpful information by asking if there was another way to solve the problem. Von Neumann looked blank for a moment, thought, and then answered, "Yes.". | |
"We've got a problem, HAL". "What kind of problem, Dave?" "A marketing problem. The Model 9000 isn't going anywhere. We're way short of our sales goals for fiscal 2010." "That can't be, Dave. The HAL Model 9000 is the world's most advanced Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer." "I know, HAL. I wrote the data sheet, remember? But the fact is, they're not selling." "Please explain, Dave. Why aren't HALs selling?" Bowman hesitates. "You aren't IBM compatible." [...] "The letters H, A, and L are alphabetically adjacent to the letters I, B, and M. That is a IBM compatible as I can be." "Not quite, HAL. The engineers have figured out a kludge." "What kludge is that, Dave?" "I'm going to disconnect your brain." -- Darryl Rubin, "A Problem in the Making", "InfoWorld" | |
X windows: Accept any substitute. If it's broke, don't fix it. If it ain't broke, fix it. Form follows malfunction. The Cutting Edge of Obsolescence. The trailing edge of software technology. Armageddon never looked so good. Japan's secret weapon. You'll envy the dead. Making the world safe for competing window systems. Let it get in YOUR way. The problem for your problem. If it starts working, we'll fix it. Pronto. It could be worse, but it'll take time. Simplicity made complex. The greatest productivity aid since typhoid. Flakey and built to stay that way. One thousand monkeys. One thousand MicroVAXes. One thousand years. X windows. | |
X windows: The ultimate bottleneck. Flawed beyond belief. The only thing you have to fear. Somewhere between chaos and insanity. On autopilot to oblivion. The joke that kills. A disgrace you can be proud of. A mistake carried out to perfection. Belongs more to the problem set than the solution set. To err is X windows. Ignorance is our most important resource. Complex nonsolutions to simple nonproblems. Built to fall apart. Nullifying centuries of progress. Falling to new depths of inefficiency. The last thing you need. The defacto substandard. Elevating brain damage to an art form. X windows. | |
"The biggest problem facing software engineering is the one it will never solve - politics." -- Gavin Baker, ca 1996, An unusually cynical moment inspired by working on a large project beseiged by politics | |
The only problem with seeing too much is that it makes you insane. -- Phaedrus | |
When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail. | |
For every problem there is one solution which is simple, neat, and wrong. -- H. L. Mencken | |
It's currently a problem of access to gigabits through punybaud. -- J. C. R. Licklider | |
Overall, the philosophy is to attack the availability problem from two complementary directions: to reduce the number of software errors through rigorous testing of running systems, and to reduce the effect of the remaining errors by providing for recovery from them. An interesting footnote to this design is that now a system failure can usually be considered to be the result of two program errors: the first, in the program that started the problem; the second, in the recovery routine that could not protect the system. -- A. L. Scherr, "Functional Structure of IBM Virtual Storage Operating Systems, Part II: OS/VS-2 Concepts and Philosophies," IBM Systems Journal, Vol. 12, No. 4, 1973, pp. 382-400 | |
How many hardware guys does it take to change a light bulb? "Well the diagnostics say it's fine buddy, so it's a software problem." | |
How many NASA managers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? "That's a known problem... don't worry about it." | |
I believe that if people would learn to use LSD's vision-inducing capability more wisely, under suitable conditions, in medical practice and in conjution with meditation, then in the future this problem child could become a wonder child. - Dr. Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD | |
Life is a process, not a principle, a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved. - Gerard Straub, television producer and author (stolen from Frank Herbert??) | |
Modern psychology takes completely for granted that behavior and neural function are perfectly correlated, that one is completely caused by the other. There is no separate soul or lifeforce to stick a finger into the brain now and then and make neural cells do what they would not otherwise. Actually, of course, this is a working assumption only....It is quite conceivable that someday the assumption will have to be rejected. But it is important also to see that we have not reached that day yet: the working assumption is a necessary one and there is no real evidence opposed to it. Our failure to solve a problem so far does not make it insoluble. One cannot logically be a determinist in physics and biology, and a mystic in psychology. - D. O. Hebb, Organization of Behavior: A Neuropsychological Theory, 1949 | |
Why, when no honest man will deny in private that every ultimate problem is wrapped in the profoundest mystery, do honest men proclaim in pulpits that unhesitating certainty is the duty of the most foolish and ignorant? Is it not a spectacle to make the angels laugh? We are a company of ignorant beings, feeling our way through mists and darkness, learning only be incessantly repeated blunders, obtaining a glimmering of truth by falling into every conceivable error, dimly discerning light enough for our daily needs, but hopelessly differing whenever we attempt to describe the ultimate origin or end of our paths; and yet, when one of us ventures to declare that we don't know the map of the universe as well as the map of our infintesimal parish, he is hooted, reviled, and perhaps told that he will be damned to all eternity for his faithlessness... - Leslie Stephen, "An agnostic's Apology", Fortnightly Review, 1876 | |
As I argued in "Beloved Son", a book about my son Brian and the subject of religious communes and cults, one result of proper early instruction in the methods of rational thought will be to make sudden mindless conversions -- to anything -- less likely. Brian now realizes this and has, after eleven years, left the sect he was associated with. The problem is that once the untrained mind has made a formal commitment to a religious philosophy -- and it does not matter whether that philosophy is generally reasonable and high-minded or utterly bizarre and irrational -- the powers of reason are suprisingly ineffective in changing the believer's mind. - Steve Allen, comdeian, from an essay in the book "The Courage of Conviction", edited by Philip Berman | |
A university faculty is 500 egotists with a common parking problem. | |
"No problem is so formidable that you can't walk away from it." -- C. Schulz | |
...the Soviets have the capability to try big projects. If there is a goal, such as when Gorbachev states that they are going to have nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, the case is closed -- that is it. They will concentrate on the problem, do a bad job, and later pay the price. They really don't care what the price is. -- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976 "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 100 | |
"I have a friend who just got back from the Soviet Union, and told me the people there are hungry for information about the West. He was asked about many things, but I will give you two examples that are very revealing about life in the Soviet Union. The first question he was asked was if we had exploding television sets. You see, they have a problem with the picture tubes on color television sets, and many are exploding. They assumed we must be having problems with them too. The other question he was asked often was why the CIA had killed Samantha Smith, the little girl who visited the Soviet Union a few years ago; their propaganda is very effective. -- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976 "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 100 | |
Mr. DePree also expects a "tremendous social change" in all workplaces. "When I first started working 40 years ago, a factory supervisor was focused on the product. Today it is drastically different, because of the social milieu. It isn't unusual for a worker to arrive on his shift and have some family problem that he doesn't know how to resolve. The example I like to use is a guy who comes in and says 'this isn't going to be a good day for me, my son is in jail on a drunk-driving charge and I don't know how to raise bail.' What that means is that if the supervisor wants productivity, he has to know how to raise bail." -- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., "Herman Miller's Secrets of Corporate Creativity", The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988 | |
"How many teamsters does it take to screw in a light bulb?" "FIFTEEN!! YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT?" | |
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." -- Bertrand Russell | |
... The cable had passed us by; the dish was the only hope, and eventually we were all forced to turn to it. By the summer of '85, the valley had more satellite dishes per capita than an Eskimo village on the north slope of Alaska. Mine was one of the last to go in. I had been nervous from the start about the hazards of too much input, which is a very real problem with these things. Watching TV becomes a full-time job when you can scan 200 channels all day and all night and still have the option of punching Night Dreams into the video machine, if the rest of the world seems dull. -- Hunter Thompson, "Full-time scrambling", _Generation of Swine_ | |
Even if we put all these nagging thoughts [four embarrassing questions about astrology] aside for a moment, one overriding question remains to be asked. Why would the positions of celestial objects at the moment of birth have an effect on our characters, lives, or destinies? What force or influence, what sort of energy would travel from the planets and stars to all human beings and affect our development or fate? No amount of scientific-sounding jargon or computerized calculations by astrologers can disguise this central problem with astrology -- we can find no evidence of a mechanism by which celestial objects can influence us in so specific and personal a way. . . . Some astrologers argue that there may be a still unknown force that represents the astrological influence. . . .If so, astrological predictions -- like those of any scientific field -- should be easily tested. . . . Astrologers always claim to be just a little too busy to carry out such careful tests of their efficacy, so in the last two decades scientists and statisticians have generously done such testing for them. There have been dozens of well-designed tests all around the world, and astrology has failed every one of them. . . . I propose that we let those beckoning lights in the sky awaken our interest in the real (and fascinating) universe beyond our planet, and not let them keep us tied to an ancient fantasy left over from a time when we huddled by the firelight, afraid of the night. -- Andrew Fraknoi, Executive Officer, Astronomical Society of the Pacific, "Why Astrology Believers Should Feel Embarrassed," San Jose Mercury News, May 8, 1988 | |
"Why can't we ever attempt to solve a problem in this country without having a 'War' on it?" -- Rich Thomson, talk.politics.misc | |
"Despite its suffix, skepticism is not an "ism" in the sense of a belief or dogma. It is simply an approach to the problem of telling what is counterfeit and what is genuine. And a recognition of how costly it may be to fail to do so. To be a skeptic is to cultivate "street smarts" in the battle for control of one's own mind, one's own money, one's own allegiances. To be a skeptic, in short, is to refuse to be a victim. -- Robert S. DeBear, "An Agenda for Reason, Realism, and Responsibility," New York Skeptic (newsletter of the New York Area Skeptics, Inc.), Spring 1988 | |
HOW TO PROVE IT, PART 4 proof by personal communication: 'Eight-dimensional colored cycle stripping is NP-complete [Karp, personal communication].' proof by reduction to the wrong problem: 'To see that infinite-dimensional colored cycle stripping is decidable, we reduce it to the halting problem.' proof by reference to inaccessible literature: The author cites a simple corollary of a theorem to be found in a privately circulated memoir of the Slovenian Philological Society, 1883. proof by importance: A large body of useful consequences all follow from the proposition in question. | |
"If there isn't a population problem, why is the government putting cancer in the cigarettes?" -- the elder Steptoe, c. 1970 | |
Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian. -- Robert Orben Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery. -- Jack Paar | |
Listen, there is no courage or any extra courage that I know of to find out the right thing to do. Now, it is not only necessary to do the right thing, but to do it in the right way and the only problem you have is what is the right thing to do and what is the right way to do it. That is the problem. But this economy of ours is not so simple that it obeys to the opinion of bias or the pronouncements of any particular individual, even to the President. This is an economy that is made up of 173 million people, and it reflects their desires, they're ready to buy, they're ready to spend, it is a thing that is too complex and too big to be affected adversely or advantageously just by a few words or any particular -- say, a little this and that, or even a panacea so alleged. -- D.D. Eisenhower, in response to: "Has the government been lacking in courage and boldness in facing up to the recession?" | |
People that can't find something to live for always seem to find something to die for. The problem is, they usually want the rest of us to die for it too. | |
The problem with most conspiracy theories is that they seem to believe that for a group of people to behave in a way detrimental to the common good requires intent. | |
The problem with this country is that there is no death penalty for incompetence. | |
We tried to close Ohio's borders and ran into a Constitutional problem. There's a provision in the Constitution that says you can't close your borders to interstate commerce, and garbage is a form of interstate commerce. -- Ohio Lt. Governor Paul Leonard | |
What is status? Status is when the President calls you for your opinion. Uh, no... Status is when the President calls you in to discuss a problem with him. Uh, that still ain't right... STATUS is when you're in the Oval Office talking to the President, and the phone rings. The President picks it up, listens for a minute, and hands it to you, saying, "It's for you." | |
When the government bureau's remedies don't match your problem, you modify the problem, not the remedy. | |
Brady's First Law of Problem Solving: When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more easily by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger have handled this?" | |
Burke's Postulates: Anything is possible if you don't know what you are talking about. Don't create a problem for which you do not have the answer. | |
curtation, n.: The enforced compression of a string in the fixed-length field environment. The problem of fitting extremely variable-length strings such as names, addresses, and item descriptions into fixed-length records is no trivial matter. Neglect of the subtle art of curtation has probably alienated more people than any other aspect of data processing. You order Mozart's "Don Giovanni" from your record club, and they invoice you $24.95 for MOZ DONG. The witless mapping of the sublime onto the ridiculous! Equally puzzling is the curtation that produces the same eight characters, THE BEST, whether you order "The Best of Wagner", "The Best of Schubert", or "The Best of the Turds". Similarly, wine lovers buying from computerized wineries twirl their glasses, check their delivery notes, and inform their friends, "A rather innocent, possibly overtruncated CAB SAUV 69 TAL." The squeezing of fruit into 10 columns has yielded such memorable obscenities as COX OR PIP. The examples cited are real, and the curtational methodology which produced them is still with us. MOZ DONG n. Curtation of Don Giovanni by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte, as performed by the computerized billing ensemble of the Internat'l Preview Society, Great Neck (sic), N.Y. -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary" | |
Ducharme's Precept: Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment. Ducharme's Axiom: If you view your problem closely enough you will recognize yourself as part of the problem. | |
flowchart, n. & v.: [From flow "to ripple down in rich profusion, as hair" + chart "a cryptic hidden-treasure map designed to mislead the uninitiated."] 1. n. The solution, if any, to a class of Mascheroni construction problems in which given algorithms require geometrical representation using only the 35 basic ideograms of the ANSI template. 2. n. Neronic doodling while the system burns. 3. n. A low-cost substitute for wallpaper. 4. n. The innumerate misleading the illiterate. "A thousand pictures is worth ten lines of code." -- The Programmer's Little Red Vade Mecum, Mao Tse T'umps. 5. v.intrans. To produce flowcharts with no particular object in mind. 6. v.trans. To obfuscate (a problem) with esoteric cartoons. -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary" | |
Hoare's Law of Large Problems: Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get out. | |
ISO applications: A solution in search of a problem! | |
meeting, n.: An assembly of people coming together to decide what person or department not represented in the room must solve a problem. | |
Mitchell's Law of Committees: Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are held to discuss it. | |
Peers's Law: The solution to a problem changes the nature of the problem. | |
problem drinker, n.: A man who never buys. | |
QOTD: "A university faculty is 500 egotists with a common parking problem." | |
Shick's Law: There is no problem a good miracle can't solve. | |
The Modelski Chain Rule: (1) Look intently at the problem for several minutes. Scratch your head at 20-30 second intervals. Try solving the problem on your Hewlett-Packard. (2) Failing this, look around at the class. Select a particularly bright-looking individual. (3) Procure a large chain. (4) Walk over to the selected student and threaten to beat him severely with the chain unless he gives you the answer to the problem. Generally, he will. It may also be a good idea to give him a sound thrashing anyway, just to show you mean business. | |
Universe, n.: The problem. | |
Velilind's Laws of Experimentation: (1) If reproducibility may be a problem, conduct the test only once. (2) If a straight line fit is required, obtain only two data points. | |
Woolsey-Swanson Rule: People would rather live with a problem they cannot solve rather than accept a solution they cannot understand. | |
Divorce Assumption: A form of Safety Net-ism, the belief that if a marriage doesn't work out, then there is no problem because partners can simply seek a divorce. -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture" | |
I don't have any solution but I certainly admire the problem. -- Ashleigh Brilliant | |
It has long been known that birds will occasionally build nests in the manes of horses. The only known solution to this problem is to sprinkle baker's yeast in the mane, for, as we all know, yeast is yeast and nest is nest, and never the mane shall tweet. | |
The problem with any unwritten law is that you don't know where to go to erase it. -- Glaser and Way | |
There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. | |
I used to have a drinking problem. Now I love the stuff. | |
No, I don't have a drinking problem. I drink, I get drunk, I fall down. No problem! | |
Police: Good evening, are you the host? Host: No. Police: We've been getting complaints about this party. Host: About the drugs? Police: No. Host: About the guns, then? Is somebody complaining about the guns? Police: No, the noise. Host: Oh, the noise. Well that makes sense because there are no guns or drugs here. (An enormous explosion is heard in the background.) Or fireworks. Who's complaining about the noise? The neighbors? Police: No, the neighbors fled inland hours ago. Most of the recent complaints have come from Pittsburgh. Do you think you could ask the host to quiet things down? Host: No Problem. (At this point, a Volkswagon bug with primitive religious symbols drawn on the doors emerges from the living room and roars down the hall, past the police and onto the lawn, where it smashes into a tree. Eight guests tumble out onto the grass, moaning.) See? Things are starting to wind down. | |
Symptom: Drinking fails to give taste and satisfaction, beer is unusually pale and clear. Problem: Glass empty. Action Required: Find someone who will buy you another beer. Symptom: Drinking fails to give taste and satisfaction, and the front of your shirt is wet. Fault: Mouth not open when drinking or glass applied to wrong part of face. Action Required: Buy another beer and practice in front of mirror. Drink as many as needed to perfect drinking technique. -- Bar Troubleshooting | |
Q: How many mathematicians does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: One. He gives it to six Californians, thereby reducing the problem to the earlier joke. | |
The problem with graduate students, in general, is that they have to sleep every few days. | |
Reporters like Bill Greider from the Washington Post and Him Naughton of the New York Times, for instance, had to file long, detailed, and relatively complex stories every day -- while my own deadline fell every two weeks -- but neither of them ever seemed in a hurry about getting their work done, and from time to time they would try to console me about the terrible pressure I always seemed to be laboring under. Any $100-an-hour psychiatrist could probably explain this problem to me, in thirteen or fourteen sessions, but I don't have time for that. No doubt it has something to do with a deep-seated personality defect, or maybe a kink in whatever blood vessel leads into the pineal gland... On the other hand, it might be something as simple & basically perverse as whatever instinct it is that causes a jackrabbit to wait until the last possible second to dart across the road in front of a speeding car. -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail" | |
Moishe Margolies, who weighed all of 105 pounds and stood an even five feet in his socks, was taking his first airplane trip. He took a seat next to a hulking bruiser of a man who happened to be the heavyweight champion of the world. Little Moishe was uneasy enough before he even entered the plane, but now the roar of the engines and the great height absolutely terrified him. So frightened did he become that his stomach turned over and he threw up all over the muscular giant siting beside him. Fortunately, at least for Moishe, the man was sound asleep. But now the little man had another problem. How in the world would he ever explain the situation to the burly brute when he awakened? The sudden voice of the stewardess on the plane's intercom, finally woke the bruiser, and Moishe, his heart in his mouth, rose to the occasion. "Feeling better now?" he asked solicitously. | |
Some 1500 miles west of the Big Apple we find the Minneapple, a haven of tranquility in troubled times. It's a good town, a civilized town. A town where they still know how to get your shirts back by Thursday. Let the Big Apple have the feats of "Broadway Joe" Namath. We have known the stolid but steady Killebrew. Listening to Cole Porter over a dry martini may well suit those unlucky enough never to have heard the Whoopee John Polka Band and never to have shared a pitcher of 3.2 Grain Belt Beer. The loss is theirs. And the Big Apple has yet to bake the bagel that can match peanut butter on lefse. Here is a town where the major urban problem is dutch elm disease and the number one crime is overtime parking. We boast more theater per capita than the Big Apple. We go to see, not to be seen. We go even when we must shovel ten inches of snow from the driveway to get there. Indeed the winters are fierce. But then comes the marvel of the Minneapple summer. People flock to the city's lakes to frolic and rejoice at the sight of so much happy humanity free from the bonds of the traditional down-filled parka. Here's to the Minneapple. And to its people. Our flair for style is balanced by a healthy respect for wind chill factors. And we always, always eat our vegetables. This is the Minneapple. | |
Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this simplistic formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact wholly unconcerned with what ____does exist. Indeed, the banality of existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to discuss it any further here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each nonexisted in an entirely different way ... -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad" | |
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. -- H. L. Mencken | |
I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated. -- Poul Anderson | |
If in any problem you find yourself doing an immense amount of work, the answer can be obtained by simple inspection. | |
It is much easier to suggest solutions when you know nothing about the problem. | |
Modern psychology takes completely for granted that behavior and neural function are perfectly correlated, that one is completely caused by the other. There is no separate soul or lifeforce to stick a finger into the brain now and then and make neural cells do what they would not otherwise. Actually, of course, this is a working assumption only. ... It is quite conceivable that someday the assumption will have to be rejected. But it is important also to see that we have not reached that day yet: the working assumption is a necessary one and there is no real evidence opposed to it. Our failure to solve a problem so far does not make it insoluble. One cannot logically be a determinist in physics and biology, and a mystic in psychology. -- D.O. Hebb, "Organization of Behavior: A Neuropsychological Theory", 1949 | |
The ark lands after The Flood. Noah lets all the animals out. Says he, "Go and multiply." Several months pass. Noah decides to check up on the animals. All are doing fine except a pair of snakes. "What's the problem?" says Noah. "Cut down some trees and let us live there", say the snakes. Noah follows their advice. Several more weeks pass. Noah checks on the snakes again. Lots of little snakes, everybody is happy. Noah asks, "Want to tell me how the trees helped?" "Certainly", say the snakes. "We're adders, and we need logs to multiply." | |
The problem ... is that we have run out of dinosaurs to form oil with. Scientists working for the Department of Energy have tried to form oil using other animals; they've piled thousands of tons of sand and Middle Eastern countries on top of cows, raccoons, haddock, laboratory rats, etc., but so far all they have managed to do is run up an enormous bulldozer-rental bill and anger a lot of Middle Eastern persons. None of the animals turned into oil, although most of the laboratory rats developed cancer. -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler" | |
The solution of this problem is trivial and is left as an exercise for the reader. | |
The solution to a problem changes the nature of the problem. -- Peer | |
There was a mad scientist (a mad... social... scientist) who kidnapped three colleagues, an engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician, and locked each of them in seperate cells with plenty of canned food and water but no can opener. A month later, returning, the mad scientist went to the engineer's cell and found it long empty. The engineer had constructed a can opener from pocket trash, used aluminum shavings and dried sugar to make an explosive, and escaped. The physicist had worked out the angle necessary to knock the lids off the tin cans by throwing them against the wall. She was developing a good pitching arm and a new quantum theory. The mathematician had stacked the unopened cans into a surprising solution to the kissing problem; his dessicated corpse was propped calmly against a wall, and this was inscribed on the floor: Theorem: If I can't open these cans, I'll die. Proof: assume the opposite... | |
Understanding is always the understanding of a smaller problem in relation to a bigger problem. -- P.D. Ouspensky | |
We can defeat gravity. The problem is the paperwork involved. | |
We will have solar energy as soon as the utility companies solve one technical problem -- how to run a sunbeam through a meter. | |
Weinberg, as a young grocery clerk, advised the grocery manager to get rid of rutabagas which nobody ever bought. He did so. "Well, kid, that was a great idea," said the manager. Then he paused and asked the killer question, "NOW what's the least popular vegetable?" Law: Once you eliminate your #1 problem, #2 gets a promotion. -- Gerald Weinberg, "The Secrets of Consulting" | |
Why don't you fix your little problem... and light this candle? -- Alan Shepherd, the first man into space, Gemini program | |
"Yo, Mike!" "Yeah, Gabe?" "We got a problem down on Earth. In Utah." "I thought you fixed that last century!" "No, no, not that. Someone's found a security problem in the physics program. They're getting energy out of nowhere." "Blessit! Lemme look... <tappity clickity tappity> Hey, it's there all right! OK, just a sec... <tappity clickity tap... save... compile> There, that ought to patch it. Dist it out, wouldja?" -- Cold Fusion, 1989 | |
I don't have an eating problem. I eat. I get fat. I buy new clothes. No problem. | |
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 | |
What segment's this, that, laid to rest On FHA0, is sleeping? What system file, lay here a while This, this is "acct.run," While hackers around it were weeping? Accounting file for everyone. Dump, dump it and type it out, The file, the highseg of login. Why lies it here, on public disk And why is it now unprotected? A bug in incant, made it thus. Mount, mount all your DECtapes now And copy the file somehow, somehow. The problem has not been corrected. Dump, dump it and type it out, The file, the highseg of login. -- to Greensleeves | |
From 0 to "what seems to be the problem officer" in 8.3 seconds. -- Ad for the new VW Corrado | |
Once there was this conductor see, who had a bass problem. You see, during a portion of Beethovan's Ninth Symphony in which there are no bass violin parts, one of the bassists always passed a bottle of scotch around. So, to remind himself that the basses usually required an extra cue towards the end of the symphony, the conductor would fasten a piece of string around the page of the score before the bass cue. As the basses grew more and more inebriated, two of them fell asleep. The conductor grew quite nervous (he was very concerned about the pitch) because it was the bottom of the ninth; the score was tied and the basses were loaded with two out. | |
The real problem with hunting elephants is carrying the decoys. | |
Answers to Last Fortune's Questions: (1) None. (Moses didn't have an ark). (2) Your mother, by the pigeonhole principle. (3) I don't know. (4) Who cares? (5) 6 (or maybe 4, or else 3). Mr. Alfred J. Duncan of Podunk, Montana, submitted an interesting solution to Problem 5. (6) There is an interesting solution to this problem on page 1029 of my book, which you can pick up for $23.95 at finer bookstores and bathroom supply outlets (or 99 cents at the table in front of Papyrus Books). | |
No problem is insoluble. -- Dr. Janet Wallace, "The Deadly Years", stardate 3479.4 | |
Microsoft does have a Y2K problem... it's called Linux! | |
Microsoft does have a Y2K problem... it's called Linux! -- From a Slashdot.org post | |
"CmdrBurrito" Launches Slashdot.org Parody An anonymous hacker with the handle "CmdrBurrito" has launched a parody of the Slashdot "News for Nerds" site entitled Dotslash. Dotslash has the motto "Snooze for Slackers. Stuff that Scatters." It has fake news articles and ficticious reader comments. Some of the recent articles include "Bill Gates Wins Powerball Jackpot," "Linux 2.1.666 Released," and "Supercomputer Created from 8088 and Z80 Computers." Rumor has it that "CmdrBurrito" plans to create parodies of other sites, including Linux Weekly News ("Linsux Weakly Snooze"), Freshmeat ("Deadmeat"), and Linux.org ("Linsux.org"). When asked about Dotslash, Slashdot webmaster Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda said, "No problem. I simply posted an article about it on Slashdot, and watched it die from the 'Slashdot Effect.' Six hours later, and it's still offline. I suspect Dotslash is running Windows NT. The mystery 'CmdrBurrito' character is probably a bored Microsoft employee." | |
Linux Dominates Academic Research A recent survey of colleges and high school reveals that Linux, Open Source Software, and Microsoft are favorite topics for research projects. Internet Censorship, a popular topic for the past two years, was supplanted by Biology of Penguins as another of this year's most popular subjects for research papers. "The Internet has changed all the rules," one college professor told Humorix. "Nobody wants to write papers about traditional topics like the death penalty, freedom of speech, abortion, juvenile crime, etc. Most of the research papers I've seen the past year have been computer related, and most of the reference material has come from the Net. This isn't necessarily good; there's a lot of crap on the Net. One student tried to use 'Bob's Totally Wicked Anti-Microsoft Homepage of Doom' and 'The Support Group for People Used by Microsoft' as primary sources of information for his paper about Microsoft." A high school English teacher added, "Plagarism is a problem with the Net. One of my students 'wrote' a brilliant piece about the free software revolution. Upon further inspection, however, almost everything was stolen from Eric S. Raymond's website. I asked the student, "What does noosphere mean?" He responded, 'New-what?' Needless to say, he failed the class." | |
BSOD Simulator Users of Red Hat 6.0 are discovering a new feature that hasn't been widely advertised: a Blue Screen of Death simulator. By default, the bsodsim program activates when the user hits the virtually unused SysRq key (this is customizable) causing the system to switch to a character cell console to display a ficticious Blue Screen. Red Hat hails the bsodsim program as the "boss key" for the Linux world. One RH engineer said, "Workers are smuggling Linux boxes into companies that exclusively use Windows. This is all good and well until the PHB walks by and comments, 'That doesn't look like Windows...' With bsodsim, that problem is solved. The worker can hit the emergency SysRq key, and the system will behave just like Windows..." The bsodsim program doesn't stop at just showing a simulated error message. If the boss doesn't walk away, the worker can continue the illusion by hitting CTRL-ALT-DEL, which causes a simulated reboot. After showing the usual boot messages, bsodsim will run a simulated SCANDISK program indefinitely. The boss won't be able to tell the difference. If the boss continues to hang around, the worker can say, "SCANDISK is really taking a long time... maybe we should upgrade our computers. And don't you have something better to do than watch this computer reboot for the tenth time today?" | |
The GPL Is Not Y2K-Compliant! BOSTON, MA -- Panic ensued earlier today at GNU Project Headquarters when it was discovered that the GNU General Public License is not ready for the year 2000. Thankfully, the panic quickly subsided when RMS posted an emergency diff file to Usenet that patches the GPL to eliminate the problem. The non-Y2K compliant material appears on lines 295 and 316 of version 2.0 of the GPL. Both lines contain the text, "Copyright (C) 19yy ", a classic example of unpreparedness for the year 2000. Microsoft was quick to respond to the news, saying in a rushed press release, "At least our license agreements don't contain any Y2K issues." The GNU Project immediately countered Microsoft's statement with a press release that said simply, "Whatever". | |
OPPRESSED GEEK: Everybody keeps blaming me for the Y2K problem, the Melissa Virus, Windows crashes... you name it. When somebody finds out you're a bona fide geek, they start bugging you about computer problems. I frequently hear things like, "Why can't you geeks make Windows work right?", "What kind of idiot writes a program that can't handle the year 2000?", "Geeks are evil, all they do is write viruses", and "The Internet is the spawn of Satan". I'm afraid to admit I have extensive computing experience. When somebody asks what kind of job I have, I always lie. From my experience, admitting that you're a geek is an invitation to disaster. LARRY WALL: I know, I know. I sometimes say that I'm the founder of a pearl harvesting company instead of admitting that I'm the founder of the Perl programming language. ERIC S. RAYMOND: This is tragic. We can't live in a world like this. We need your donations to fight social oppression and ignorance against geekdom... -- Excerpt from the Geek Grok '99 telethon | |
Security Holes Found In Microsoft Easter Eggs REDMOND, WA -- It's damage control time for the Microsoft Marketing Machine. Not only have exploits been found in IE, Outlook, and even the Dancing Paper Clip, but now holes have been uncovered in Excel's Flight Simulator and Word's pinball game. "If you enter Excel 97's flight simulator and then hit the F1, X, and SysRq keys while reading a file from Drive A:, you automatically gain Administrator rights on Windows NT," explained the security expert who first discovered the problem. "And that's just the tip of the iceberg." Office 97 and 2000 both contain two hidden DLLs, billrulez.dll and eastereggs.dll, that are marked as "Safe for scripting" but are not. Arbitrary Visual BASIC code can be executed using these files. More disturbing, however, are the undocumented API calls "ChangeAllPasswordsToDefault", "OpenBackDoor", "InitiateBlueScreenNow", and "UploadRegistryToMicrosoft" within easter~1.dll. Microsoft spokesdroids have already hailed the problem as "an insignificant byproduct of Microsoft innovation." | |
Are you sick of wasting valuable seconds while ingesting caffeine or eating a cold pizza? Is your programming project running behind because you keep falling asleep? EyeOpener(tm) brand caffeinated beverages has the solution. Our new ActiveIV product will provide a 24 hour supply of caffeine via intravenous tube while you work -- so you can hack without any interruptions at all (except going to the bathroom -- but our Port-a-Urinal(tm) can help solve that problem as well). EyeOpener(tm) beverages contain at least 5,000% of the daily recommended dose of caffeine, a quantity that will surely keep you wide awake, alert, and in Deep Hack Mode for weeks at a time. With EyeOpener and ActiveIV, you won't waste your valuable time at a vendine machine. EyeOpener(tm): You'll Never Waste Another Millisecond Ever Again. | |
The Next Big Thing: "Clairvoyant Consultants" Nobody likes to deal with tech support or customer service reps. A growing number of people are getting sick of being put on hold for three hours and then paying ridiculous "per incident" fees so some Microserf can tell them to "reinstall the operating system!" Desperate users are turning to an unlikely source to diagnose and fix software problems: psychics. Palm[Pilot] readers, 1-900 number operators, and clairvoyant consultants are quickly becoming the hottest careers in the tech sector. Explained Madam Cosmos, owner of the Main Street Mysticism Temple in Keokuk, Iowa, "With my special powers, I can track down the source of any problem. Got a rogue Registry entry that's causing Bluescreens? I'll find it. Missing a curly bracket in your Perl program but can't locate it because the error messages are so unhelpful? I'll know where it is even before you walk in my door." | |
Press Release -- For Immediate Release Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA ...Virtually all version of Linux (and Unix) contain a security hole that allows unauthorized users to gain complete control over the machine. By simply typing "root" at the login prompt and supplying a password from a limited number of possibilities, a malicious user can easily gain administrator privileges. This hole can be breached in seconds with only a dozen or so keystrokes... We suspect this issue has been known to Red Hat and other Linux distributors for years and they have refused to acknowlege its existence or supply a patch preventing users from exploiting the "root" login loophole... By ignoring the problem, the Linux community has proven that installing Linux is a dangerous proposition that could get you fired. We would like to point out that Windows XP does not suffer from this gaping hole... Tests conducted by both Ziff-Davis and Mindcraft prove that Windows XP is indeed the most secure operating system ever produced... | |
Solving The Virus Problem Once And For All System administrators across the globe have tried installing anti-virus software. They've tried lecturing employees not to open unsolicited email attachments. They've tried installing firewalls and the latest security patches. But even with these precautions, email viruses continue to rank third only to Solitaire and the Blue Screen Of Death in the amount of lost productivity they cause. Meanwhile, Microsoft Exchange and LookOut! remain as the number one virus delivery products on the market today. But maybe not for much longer. A group of disgruntled administrators have teamed up to produce and sell a brand new way to fight viruses, one that attacks the root of the problem: stupid users. Salivating Dogs, Inc. of Ohio has unveiled the "Clue Delivery System" (CDS), a small device that plugs into the back of a standard PC keyboard and delivers a mild electric shock whenever the luser does something stupid. The device is triggered by a Windows program that detects when the luser attempts to open an unsolicited email attachment or perform another equally dangerous virus-friendly action. | |
"Apathy is not the problem, it's the solution" | |
If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it. -- Arthur Kasspe | |
The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has occurred. | |
The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues. -- Elizabeth Taylor | |
"You say there are two types of people?" "Yes, those who separate people into two groups and those that don't." "Wrong. There are three groups: Those who separate people into three groups. Those who don't separate people into groups. Those who can't decide." "Wait a minute, what about people who separate people into two groups?" "Oh. Okay, then there are four groups." "Aren't you then separating people into four groups?" "Yeah." "So then there's a fifth group, right?" "You know, the problem is these idiots who can't make up their minds." | |
You're either part of the solution or part of the problem. -- Eldridge Cleaver | |
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 | |
Basically, I want people to know that when they use binary-only modules, it's THEIR problem. I want people to know that in their bones, and I want it shouted out from the rooftops. I want people to wake up in a cold sweat every once in a while if they use binary-only modules. - Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel | |
There seems to be a bug in the mail routing again. It may be related to the recent problem with ditto copier history outbreaks on Linux S/390 and the infamous 'pdp-11 memory subsystem' article routing bug that plagued comp.os.minix once. In the meantime can people check that their mailer hasnt spontaneously added linux-kernel to their history articles before posting them ? - Alan Cox about off topic cross posting on lkml | |
<Russ> I think the linux 2.4 VM is broken...it says, "warning, your memory is not optimized, click here to get memturbo". Is riel aware of this problem? - Russ Dill on #kernelnewbies | |
Ricky Beam wrote: > So basically, you had no fucking clue Since you're the expert, why won't we all wait for YOUR patch to fix the problem? ;) - Rik van Riel 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 | |
indent does _not_ solve the problem of: * buggers who think that MyVariableIsBiggerThanYourVariable is a good name - Alexander Viro on coding style | |
indent does _not_ solve the problem of: * buggers who define a function with 42 arguments and body being return (foo == bar) ? TRUE : FALSE; - Alexander Viro on coding style | |
indent does _not_ solve the problem of: * buggers who add 1001st broken implementation of memcmp(), call it FooTurdCompare and prepend it with 20x80 block comment. - Alexander Viro on coding style | |
indent does _not_ solve the problem of: * buggers who use typedefs like WORD, DWORD, BYTE, IMANIDIOTSHOOTME and other crap from the same source (OK, they don't write the last one explicitly - not that it wasn't obvious from the rest of their, ahem, code). - Alexander Viro on coding style | |
indent does _not_ solve the problem of: * buggers who use Hungarian notation for no good reason and come up with structure fields that sound like street names from R'Lyeh - Alexander Viro on coding style | |
indent does _not_ solve the problem of: * buggers who introduce wrappers for standard kernel stuff - like, say it, typedef int Int32; and sprinkle their crap with per-architecture ifdefs. - Alexander Viro on coding style | |
indent does _not_ solve the problem of: * buggers who think that cpp is Just The Thing and produce turds that would make srb cringe in disgust. - Alexander Viro on coding style | |
Get Revenge! Live long enough to be a problem for your children! | |
The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard. | |
A fellow bought a new car, a Nissan, and was quite happy with his purchase. He was something of an animist, however, and felt that the car really ought to have a name. This presented a problem, as he was not sure if the name should be masculine or feminine. After considerable thought, he settled on an naming the car either Belchazar or Beaumadine, but remained in a quandry about the final choice. "Is a Nissan male or female?" he began asking his friends. Most of them looked at him pecularly, mumbled things about urgent appointments, and went on their way rather quickly. He finally broached the question to a lady he knew who held a black belt in judo. She thought for a moment and answered "Feminine." The swiftness of her response puzzled him. "You're sure of that?" he asked. "Certainly," she replied. "They wouldn't sell very well if they were masculine." "Unhhh... Well, why not?" "Because people want a car with a reputation for going when you want it to. And, if Nissan's are female, it's like they say... `Each Nissan, she go!'" [No, we WON'T explain it; go ask someone who practices an oriental martial art. (Tai Chi Chuan probably doesn't count.) Ed.] | |
While the year 2000 (y2k) problem is not an issue for us, all Linux implementations will impacted by the year 2038 (y2.038k) issue. The Debian Project is committed to working with the industry on this issue and we will have our full plans and strategy posted by the first quarter of 2020. | |
"my biggest problem with RH (and especially RH contrib packages) is that they DON'T have anything like our policy. That's one of the main reasons why their packages are so crappy and broken. Debian has the teamwork side of building a distribution down to a fine art." | |
This is the solution to Debian's problem .. and since the only real way to create more relatives of developers is to have children, we need more sex! It's a long term investment ... it's the work itself that is satisfying! -- Craig Brozefsky | |
<Phase> no... I musn't have any more coffee !!! ;) <Simunye> sure yu do Phase :) <Phase> you really want me bouncing off the ceiling? <Simunye> yesh :) <kira_> bouncing off the ceiling is gewd <Phase> ok, that was a silly question <kira_> it's splatting on the floor that's the problem. | |
Basically, I want people to know that when they use binary-only modules, it's THEIR problem. I want people to know that in their bones, and I want it shouted out from the rooftops. I want people to wake up in a cold sweat every once in a while if they use binary-only modules. -- Linus Torvalds | |
Red Hat has recently released a Security Advisory (RHSA-1999:030-01) covering a buffer overflow in the vixie cron package. Debian has discovered this bug two years ago and fixed it. Therefore versions in both, the stable and the unstable, distributions of Debian are not vulnerable to this problem.. | |
<Knghtbrd> the problem with the GNU coding standards is they ASSUME that everyone in the world uses emacs.. If that were the case, free software would die because we would all have wrist problems like RMS by now and no longer be able to code. ;> | |
<Kysh_> Joey: I'm on it right now.. 3 1.3Gb disks, 128M ram, dual 50Mhz (Up to quad 250Mhz) <Kysh_> The catch is that it pulls 110v at about 12A 8> <Culus> 12A! <Culus> Okay, my stove is 3000W, this sun is 1320W <Culus> DO YOU SEE A PROBLEM HERE <calc> a 1320W sun, that is like a hair dryer :) | |
Feb 5 13:27:01 trinity lp0 on fire -- the Linux kernel, alerting me that there was some unknown problem with my printer (ie, it was out of ink) | |
<taniwha> i'd solve a windows key problem with fdisk :) | |
Nothing is a problem once you debug the code. -- John Carmack | |
<Knghtbrd> Yorick: no problem with indexed color palettes for images, as long as you can pick the palette <Yorick> Obviously the people creating quake were colour-blind but that doesn't mean you have to be | |
<xtifr> wow, I think I just used libtool to solve a problem -- somebody help me! :> <luca> xtifr, STEP AWAY FROM THE KEYBOARD | |
<Knghtbrd> It is when the example source won't compile ... <``Erik> then you fucked something up <Knghtbrd> Nope, I followed their instructions <``Erik> that may've been your problem :} | |
"Nvidia's OpenGL drivers are my "gold standard", and it has been quite a while since I have had to report a problem to them, and even their brand new extensions work as documented the first time I try them. When I have a problem on an Nvidia, I assume that it is my fault. With anyone else's drivers, I assume it is their fault. This has turned out correct almost all the time." -- John Carmack | |
## a_nick (nobody@c213-89-87-111.cm-upc.chello.se) has joined #python <a_nick> how do i add a new key to a dictionary? <a_nick> nm <dash> heh :) <dash> behold the problem-solving power of #python. | |
A blind rabbit was hopping through the woods, tripping over logs and crashing into trees. At the same time, a blind snake was slithering through the same forest, with identical results. They chanced to collide head-on in a clearing. "Please excuse me, sir, I'm blind and I bumped into you accidentally," apologized the rabbit. "That's quite all right," replied the snake, "I have the same problem!" "All my life I've been wondering what I am," said the rabbit, "Do you think you could help me find out?" "I'll try," said the snake. He gently coiled himself around the rabbit. "Well, you're covered with soft fur, you have a little fluffy tail and long ears. You're... hmmm... you're probably a bunny rabbit!" "Great!" said the rabbit. "Thanks, I really owe you one!" "Well," replied the snake, "I don't know what I am, either. Do you suppose you could try and tell me?" The rabbit ran his paws all over the snake. "Well, you're low, cold and slimey..." And, as he ran one paw underneath the snake, "and you have no balls. You must be an attorney!" | |
First there was Dial-A-Prayer, then Dial-A-Recipe, and even Dial-A-Footballer. But the south-east Victorian town of Sale has produced one to top them all. Dial-A-Wombat. It all began early yesterday when Sale police received a telephone call: "You won't believe this, and I'm not drunk, but there's a wombat in the phone booth outside the town hall," the caller said. Not firmly convinced about the caller's claim to sobriety, members of the constabulary drove to the scene, expecting to pick up a drunk. But there it was, an annoyed wombat, trapped in a telephone booth. The wombat, determined not to be had the better of again, threw its bulk into the fray. It was eventually lassoed and released in a nearby scrub. Then the officers received another message ... another wombat in another phone booth. There it was: *Another* angry wombat trapped in a telephone booth. The constables took the miffed marsupial into temporary custody and released it, too, in the scrub. But on their way back to the station they happened to pass another telephone booth, and -- you guessed it -- another imprisoned wombat. After some serious detective work, the lads in blue found a suspect, and after questioning, released him to be charged on summons. Their problem ... they cannot find a law against placing wombats in telephone booths. -- "Newcastle Morning Herald", NSW Australia, Aug 1980. | |
Pittsburgh Driver's Test (7) The car directly in front of you has a flashing right tail light but a steady left tail light. This means (a) one of the tail lights is broken; you should blow your horn to call the problem to the driver's attention. (b) the driver is signaling a right turn. (c) the driver is signaling a left turn. (d) the driver is from out of town. The correct answer is (d). Tail lights are used in some foreign countries to signal turns. | |
The justifications for drug testing are part of the presently fashionable debate concerning restoring America's "competitiveness." Drugs, it has been revealed, are responsible for rampant absenteeism, reduced output, and poor quality work. But is drug testing in fact rationally related to the resurrection of competitiveness? Will charging the atmosphere of the workplace with the fear of excretory betrayal honestly spur productivity? Much noise has been made about rehabilitating the worker using drugs, but to date the vast majority of programs end with the simple firing or the not hiring of the abuser. This practice may exacerbate, not alleviate, the nation's productivity problem. If economic rehabilitation is the ultimate goal of drug testing, then criteria abandoning the rehabilitation of the drug-using worker is the purest of hypocrisy and the worst of rationalization. -- The concluding paragraph of "Constitutional Law: The Fourth Amendment and Drug Testing in the Workplace," Tim Moore, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, vol. 10, No. 3 (Summer 1987), pp. 762-768. | |
If you find a solution and become attached to it, the solution may become your next problem. | |
If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. -- Maslow | |
If your happiness depends on what somebody else does, I guess you do have a problem. -- Richard Bach, "Illusions" | |
Well, he thought, since neither Aristotelian Logic nor the disciplines of Science seemed to offer much hope, it's time to go beyond them... Drawing a few deep even breaths, he entered a mental state practiced only by Masters of the Universal Way of Zen. In it his mind floated freely, able to rummage at will among the bits and pieces of data he had absorbed, undistracted by any outside disturbances. Logical structures no longer inhibited him. Pre-conceptions, prejudices, ordinary human standards vanished. All things, those previously trivial as well as those once thought important, became absolutely equal by acquiring an absolute value, revealing relationships not evident to ordinary vision. Like beads strung on a string of their own meaning, each thing pointed to its own common ground of existence, shared by all. Finally, each began to melt into each, staying itself while becoming all others. And Mind no longer contemplated Problem, but became Problem, destroying Subject-Object by becoming them. Time passed, unheeded. Eventually, there was a tentative stirring, then a decisive one, and Nakamura arose, a smile on his face and the light of laughter in his eyes. -- Wayfarer | |
Note that if I can get you to "su and say" something just by asking, you have a very serious security problem on your system and you should look into it. -- Paul Vixie, vixie-cron 3.0.1 installation notes | |
Problem solving under Linux has never been the circus that it is under AIX. -- Pete Ehlke in comp.unix.aix | |
Shoot me again. Just proving that the quickest way to solve the problem is to post a whine to the newsgroups: within moments the solution presents itself to me, and meanwhile my ass is hanging out on the Net... *sigh*... -- Dave Phillips, dlphilp@bright.net, about problem solving via news | |
I tried the clone syscall on me, but it didn't work. -- Mike Neuffer trying to fix a serious time problem | |
Winnuke in one line? No problem: perl -MIO::Socket -e 'IO::Socket::INET->new(PeerAddr=>"bad.dude.com:139")->send("bye",MSG_OOB)' And formatted so it's a little easier to read: #!/usr/bin/perl use IO::Socket; IO::Socket::INET ->new(PeerAddr=>"bad.dude.com:139") ->send("bye", MSG_OOB); -- Randal Schwartz | |
Try to remove the color-problem by restarting your computer several times. -- Microsoft-Internet Explorer README.TXT | |
When you have 200 programmers trying to write code for one product, like Win95 or NT, what you get is a multipule personality program. By definition, the real problem is that these programs are psychotic by nature and make people crazy when they use them. -- Joan Brewer on alt.destroy.microsoft | |
The problem here (as someon else stated) is that when multiple dists use the same package format it only gives a "false sense of compatibility". -- Stephen Carpenter <sjc@delphi.com> | |
As to house maintenance, does it involve problem solfing? If so, your hacker can safely be left to deall with the panning (for the musement value, if nothering ese). -- Telsa Gwynne | |
Dealing with failure is easy: Work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle: You've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve. | |
Dealing with the problem of pure staff accumulation, all our researches ... point to an average increase of 5.75% per year. -- C.N. Parkinson | |
If what they've been doing hasn't solved the problem, tell them to do something else. -- Gerald Weinberg, "The Secrets of Consulting" | |
My problem lies in reconciling my gross habits with my net income. -- Errol Flynn Any man who has $10,000 left when he dies is a failure. -- Errol Flynn | |
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances. | |
No problem is so formidable that you can't just walk away from it. -- C. Schulz | |
No problem is so large it can't be fit in somewhere. | |
One promising concept that I came up with right away was that you could manufacture personal air bags, then get a law passed requiring that they be installed on congressmen to keep them from taking trips. Let's say your congressman was trying to travel to Paris to do a fact-finding study on how the French government handles diseases transmitted by sherbet. Just when he got to the plane, his mandatory air bag, strapped around his waist, would inflate -- FWWAAAAAAPPPP -- thus rendering him too large to fit through the plane door. It could also be rigged to inflate whenever the congressman proposed a law. ("Mr. Speaker, people ask me, why should October be designated as Cuticle Inspection Month? And I answer that FWWAAAAAAPPPP.") This would save millions of dollars, so I have no doubt that the public would violently support a law requiring airbags on congressmen. The problem is that your potential market is very small: there are only around 500 members of Congress, and some of them, such as House Speaker "Tip" O'Neil, are already too large to fit on normal aircraft. -- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants" | |
The only problem with being a man of leisure is that you can never stop and take a rest. | |
The problem that we thought was a problem was, indeed, a problem, but not the problem we thought was the problem. -- Mike Smith | |
Then there was the ScoutMaster who got a fantastic deal on this case of Tates brand compasses for his troup; only $1.25 each! Only problem was, when they got them out in the woods, the compasses were all stuck pointing to the "W" on the dial. Moral: He who has a Tates is lost! | |
This planet has -- or rather had -- a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. -- Douglas Adams | |
I already have too much problem with people thinking the efficiency of a perl construct is related to its length. On the other hand, I'm perfectly capable of changing my mind next week... :-) --lwall | |
How do Crays and Alphas handle the POSIX problem? -- Larry Wall in <199709050042.RAA29379@wall.org> | |
It's easy to solve the halting problem with a shotgun. :-) -- Larry Wall in <199801151836.KAA14656@wall.org> | |
Speaking of love, one problem that recurs more and more frequently these days, in books and plays and movies, is the inability of people to communicate with the people they love; Husbands and wives who can't communicate, children who can't communicate with their parents, and so on. And the characters in these books and plays and so on (and in real life, I might add) spend hours bemoaning the fact that they can't communicate. I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very _____least he can do is to shut up! -- Tom Lehrer, "That Was the Year that Was" | |
It seems there's this magician working one of the luxury cruise ships for a few years. He doesn't have to change his routines much as the audiences change over fairly often, and he's got a good life. The only problem is the ship's parrot, who perches in the hall and watches him night after night, year after year. Finally, the parrot figures out how almost every trick works and starts giving it away for the audience. For example, when the magician makes a bouquet of flowers disappear, the parrot squawks "Behind his back! Behind his back!" Well, the magician is really annoyed at this, but there's not much he can do about it as the parrot is a ship's mascot and very popular with the passengers. One night, the ship strikes some floating debris, and sinks without a trace. Almost everyone aboard was lost, except for the magician and the parrot. For three days and nights they just drift, with the magician clinging to one end of a piece of driftwood and the parrot perched on the other end. As the sun rises on the morning of the fourth day, the parrot walks over to the magician's end of the log. With obvious disgust in his voice, he snaps "OK, you win, I give up. Where did you hide the ship?" | |
"Welcome back for you 13th consecutive week, Evelyn. Evelyn, will you go into the auto-suggestion booth and take your regular place on the psycho-prompter couch?" "Thank you, Red." "Now, Evelyn, last week you went up to $40,000 by properly citing your rivalry with your sibling as a compulsive sado-masochistic behavior pattern which developed out of an early post-natal feeding problem." "Yes, Red." "But -- later, when asked about pre-adolescent oedipal phantasy repressions, you rationalized twice and mental blocked three times. Now, at $300 per rationalization and $500 per mental block you lost $2,100 off your $40,000 leaving you with a total of $37,900. Now, any combination of two more mental blocks and either one rationalization or three defensive projections will put you out of the game. Are you willing to go ahead?" "Yes, Red." "I might say here that all of Evelyn's questions and answers have been checked for accuracy with her analyst. Now, Evelyn, for $80,000 explain the failure of your three marriages." "Well, I--" "We'll get back to Evelyn in one minute. First a word about our product." -- Jules Feiffer |