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Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) by Linux fortune

The Usenet news is out of date
As part of an ongoing effort to keep you, the Fortune reader, abreast of
the valuable information the daily crosses the USENET, Fortune presents:

News articles that answer *your* questions, #1:

        Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
        Subject: how do I run C code received from sources
        Keywords: C sources
        Distribution: na

        I do not know how to run the C programs that are posted in the
        sources newsgroup.  I save the files, edit them to remove the
        headers, and change the mode so that they are executable, but I
        cannot get them to run.  (I have never written a C program before.)

        Must they be compiled?  With what compiler?  How do I do this?  If
        I compile them, is an object code file generated or must I generate
        it explicitly with the > character?  Is there something else that
        must be done?
Dear Emily:
        I collected replies to an article I wrote, and now it's time to
summarize.  What should I do?
                -- Editor

Dear Editor:
        Simply concatenate all the articles together into a big file and post
that.  On USENET, this is known as a summary.  It lets people read all the
replies without annoying newsreaders getting in the way.  Do the same when
summarizing a vote.
                -- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
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
"Every group has a couple of experts.  And every group has at least one
idiot.  Thus are balance and harmony (and discord) maintained.  It's
sometimes hard to remember this in the bulk of the flamewars that all
of the hassle and pain is generally caused by one or two highly-motivated,
caustic twits."
                -- Chuq Von Rospach, about Usenet
"One basic notion underlying Usenet is that it is a cooperative."

Having been on USENET for going on ten years, I disagree with this.
The basic notion underlying USENET is the flame.
                -- Chuq Von Rospach
Unix is a lot more complicated (than CP/M) of course -- the typical Unix
hacker can never remember what the PRINT command is called this week --
but when it gets right down to it, Unix is a glorified video game.
People don't do serious work on Unix systems; they send jokes around the
world on USENET or write adventure games and research papers.
                -- E. Post
                "Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal", Datamation, 7/83
USENET would be a better laboratory if there were more labor and less oratory.
                -- Elizabeth Haley
"The triumph of libertarian anarchy is nearly (in historical terms) at
hand... *if* we can keep the Left from selling us into slavery and the
Right from blowing us up for, say, the next twenty years."
-- Eric Rayman, usenet guy, about nanotechnology
A good USENET motto would be:
a. "Together, a strong community."
b. "Computers R Us."
c. "I'm sick of programming, I think I'll just screw around for a while on
     company time."
-- A Sane Man
"What a wonder is USENET; such wholesale production of conjecture from
such a trifling investment in fact."
-- Carl S. Gutekunst
--
-- uunet!sugar!karl  | "We've been following your progress with considerable
-- karl@sugar.uu.net |  interest, not to say contempt."  -- Zaphod Beeblebrox IV
-- Usenet BBS (713) 438-5018



th-th-th-th-That's all, folks!

----------- cut here, don't forget to strip junk at the end, too -------------
"Psychoanalysis??  I thought this was a nude rap session!!!"
-- Zippy
>One basic notion underlying Usenet is that it is a cooperative.

Having been on USENET for going on ten years, I disagree with this.
The basic notion underlying USENET is the flame.
-- Chuq Von Rospach, chuq@Apple.COM
"Every group has a couple of experts.  And every group has at least one idiot.
Thus are balance and harmony (and discord) maintained.  It's sometimes hard
to remember this in the bulk of the flamewars that all of the hassle and
pain is generally caused by one or two highly-motivated, caustic twits."
-- Chuq Von Rospach, chuq@apple.com, about Usenet
                     THE "FUN WITH USENET" MANIFESTO
Very little happens on Usenet without some sort of response from some other
reader.  Fun With Usenet postings are no exception.  Since there are some who
might question the rationale of some of the excerpts included therein, I have
written up a list of guidelines that sum up the philosophy behind these
postings.

        One.  I never cut out words in the middle of a quote without a VERY
good reason, and I never cut them out without including ellipses.  For
instance, "I am not a goob" might become "I am ... a goob", but that's too
mundane to bother with.  "I'm flame proof" might (and has) become
"I'm ...a... p...oof" but that's REALLY stretching it.

        Two.  If I cut words off the beginning or end of a quote, I don't
put ellipses, but neither do I capitalize something that wasn't capitalized
before the cut. "I don't think that the Church of Ubizmo is a wonderful
place" would turn into "the Church of Ubizmo is a wonderful place".  Imagine
the posting as a tape-recording of the poster's thoughts.  If I can set
up the quote via fast-forwarding and stopping the tape, and without splicing,
I don't put ellipses in.  And by the way, I love using this mechanism for
turning things around.  If you think something stinks, say so - don't say you
don't think it's wonderful.   ...
-- D. J. McCarthy (dmccart@cadape.UUCP)
"Remember, extremism in the nondefense of moderation is not a virtue."
-- Peter Neumann, about usenet
Godwin's Law (prov.  [Usenet]):
        As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a
        comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a
        tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is
        over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost
        whatever argument was in progress.  Godwin's Law thus guarantees
        the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups.
Stallman's Latest Proclamation

Richard M. Stallman doesn't want you to say "Windows" anymore. He is now
advocating that people call this OS by its real name:
Microsoft-Xerox-Apple-Windows. This proclamation comes on the heels of his
controversial stand that Linux should be called GNU/Linux. RMS explained in a
Usenet posting, "Calling Microsoft's OS 'Windows' is a grave inaccuracy. Xerox
and Apple both contributed significant ideas and innovations to this OS. Why
should Microsoft get all the credit?"

RMS also hinted that people shouldn't refer to Microsoft's web browser as IE.
"It should really be called Microsoft-Spyglass-Mosaic-Internet-Explorer. Again,
how much credit does Microsoft really deserve for this product? Much of the
base code was licensed from Spyglass."

Many industry pundits are less than thrilled about RMS' proclamation. The
editor of Windows Magazine exclaimed, "What?!?! Yeah, we'll rename our magazine
Microsoft-Xerox-Apple-Windows Magazine. That just rolls off the tongue!" A
Ziff-Davis columnist noted, "Think of all the wasted space this would cause. If
we spelled out everything like this, we'd have headlines like, 'Microsoft
Releases Service Pack 5 for Microsoft-Xerox-Apple-Windows Neutered Technology
4.0' Clearly this is unacceptable."
Linux Drinking Game (Abridged)

With a group of friends, take turns reading articles about Linux from popular
media sources (Ziff-Davis AnchorDesk is recommended) or postings on Usenet (try
alt.fan.bill-gates). If the author says one of the things below, take a drink.
Continue until everyone involved is plastered.

- Linux will never go mainstream
- Any platform that can't run Microsoft Office [or some other Microsoft
  "solution"] sucks
- Linux is hard to install
- Linux tech support is lacking
- No one ever got fired for choosing Microsoft
- Any OS with a command line interface is primitive
- Microsoft is an innovative company
- Could you get fired for choosing Linux?
- Linux was created by a bunch of snot-nosed 14 year old hackers with acne and
  no life
- Security through obscurity is the way to go
- Linus and Unix are 70s technology while NT is 90s technology
- All Linux software must be released under the GPL
- Linux is a great piece of shareware
The Movement Formerly Known As Open Source

The battle over the Open Source trademark is heating up.  Software in the
Public Interest and the Open Source Initiative both hold competing claims to
the trademark.  In order to put an end to the infighting, a group of free
software advocates have founded the Association for the Movement Formerly
Known as Open Source (AMFKOS)

One AMFKOS founder said, "I find it ironic that a trademark representing free
software is itself proprietary.  This situation must change.  We propose that
the free software movement adopt another name besides 'Open Source'.
Hopefully then we can all Get-Back-To-Coding(tm) instead of fighting over
Bruce Perens' and Eric Raymond's egos."

Rumor has it that Richard Stallman plans to mount a campaign to
promote the phrase "GNU/Free Software" in place of "Open Source".
In addition, the terms "Ajar Source", "Unlocked Source", "Nude Source",
"Unclosed Source", and "Just-Type-make Software" have all
been proposed by various Usenet or Slashdot posters.
Attack of the Tuxissa Virus

What started out as a prank posting to comp.os.linux.advocacy yesterday has
turned into one of the most significant viruses in computing history.
The creator of the virus, who goes by the moniker "Anonymous Longhair",
modified the Melissa virus to install Linux on infected machines.

"It's a work of art," one Linux advocate told Humorix after he looked
through the Tuxissa virus source code.  "This virus goes well beyond the
feeble troublemaking of Melissa.  It actually configures a UMSDOS partition
on the user's hard drive and then downloads and installs a stripped-down
version of Slackware Linux."

The email message that the virus is attached to has the subject "Important
Message About Windows Security".  The text of the body says, "I want to let
you know about some security problems I've uncovered in Windows 95/98/NT,
Office 95/97, and Outlook. It's critically important that you protect your
system against these attacks.  Visit these sites for more information..."
The rest of the message contains 42 links to sites about Linux and free
software.

Details on how the virus started are a bit sketchy.  The "Anonymous
Longhair" who created it only posted it to Usenet as an early April Fool's
gag, demonstrating how easy it would be to mount a "Linux revolution".
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".
Treaty of Helsinki Signed

HELSINKI, FINLAND -- A cease-fire in the flame war between Linux and
FreeBSD has been reached. A group of two dozen Linux and FreeBSD zealots
met in Helsinki to ratify a treaty bringing a temporary end to the hostile
fighting between both camps. "Today is a good day for peace," one observer
noted. "Now both sides can lay down their keyboards and quit flaming the
opposing side on Usenet and Slashdot."

The cease-fire is a response to the sudden increase in fighting that has
occured over the past two weeks. The Slashdot server became a victim of
the cross-fire this week when thousands of Anonymous Cowards and Geek
Zealots posted inflammatory comments that amounted to, "My OS is better
than your OS!" Many nerds, suffering withdrawl symptoms when the Slashdot
site slowed to a crawl, demanded that the bickering stop.

"I can't take it anymore! It takes two minutes to download the Slashdot
homepage -- assuming the site is actually online. I must have my 'News for
Nerds' now! The fighting must stop," one Anonymous Coward ranted.
Brief History Of Linux (#14)
Military Intelligence: Not an oxymoron in 1969

It was the Department Of Defense that commissioned the ARPANET in 1969, a
rare example of the US military breaking away from its official motto,
"The Leading Edge Of Yesterday's Technology(tm)".

In the years leading up to 1969, packet switching technology had evolved
enough to make the ARPANET possible. Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc.
received the ARPA contract in 1968 for packet switching "Interface Message
Processors". US Senator Edward Kennedy, always on the ball, sent a
telegram to BBN praising them for their non-denominational "Interfaith"
Message Processors, an act unsurpassed by elected representatives until Al
Gore invented the Internet years later.

While ARPANET started with only four nodes in 1969, it evolved rapidly.
Email was first used in 1971; by 1975 the first mailing list, MsgGroup,
was created by Steve Walker when he sent a "First post!"  messages to it.
In 1979 all productive use of ARPANET ceased when USENET and the first MUD
were created. In 1983, when the network surpassed 1,000 hosts, a study
showed that 90.4% of all traffic was devoted to email and USENET flame wars.
Brief History Of Linux (#20)
Linux is born

Linus' superhuman programming talent produced, within a year, a full
operating system that rivaled Minix. The first official announcement on
comp.os.minix came October 5th, in which Linus wrote these famous words:

   Do you pine for the nice days of minix-1.1, when men were men and wrote
   their own device drivers? Do you want to cut your teeth on an operating
   system that will achieve world domination within 15 years? Want to get
   rich quick by the end of the century by taking money from hordes of
   venture capitalists and clueless Wall Street suits? Need to get even
   with Bill Gates but don't know what to do except throw cream pies at
   him? Then this post might just be for you :-)

Linux (which was known as "Lindows", "Freax", and "Billsux" for short
periods in 1991) hit the bigtime on January 5, 1992 (exactly one year
after Linus wasn't hit by a bus) when version 0.12 was released under the
GNU GPL. Linus called his creation a "better Minix than Minix"; the famous
Linus vs. Tanenbaum flamewar erupted soon thereafter on January 29th and
injured several Usenet bystanders.
Sorry about off-topic.  I thought I was posting to Usenet.

        - William Park on linux-kernel
Go not unto the Usenet for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (and
quite a few things that just have nothing at all to do with the question).
        -- seen in a .sig somewhere
No guarantee of accuracy or completeness!
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