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De - Pt| Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
| 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. | |
| What the hell is it good for? -- Robert Lloyd (engineer of the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM), to colleagues who insisted that the microprocessor was the wave of the future, c. 1968 | |
| A serious public debate about the validity of astrology? A serious believer in the White House? Two of them? Give me a break. What stifled my laughter is that the image fits. Reagan has always exhibited a fey indifference toward science. Facts, like numbers, roll off his back. And we've all come to accept it. This time it was stargazing that became a serious issue....Not that long ago, it was Reagan's support of Creationism....Creationists actually got equal time with evolutionists. The public was supposed to be open-minded to the claims of paleontologists and fundamentalists, as if the two were scientific colleagues....It has been clear for a long time that the president is averse to science...In general, these attitudes fall onto friendly American turf....But at the outer edges, this skepticism about science easily turns into a kind of naive acceptance of nonscience, or even nonsense. The same people who doubt experts can also believe any quackery, from the benefits of laetrile to eye of newt to the movment of planets. We lose the capacity to make rational -- scientific -- judgments. It's all the same. -- Ellen Goodman, The Boston Globe Newspaper Company-Washington Post Writers Group | |
| 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... | |
| Linux Distro To Include Pre-Installed Security Holes Proactive Synergy Paradigm, the Linux distro targeted at Pointy Haired Bosses, will now include built-in security flaws to better compete with Microsoft programs. "The sheer popularity of Windows, Outlook, and IIS clearly shows that people demand security holes large enough to drive a truck through," said Mr. Bert Dill of P.S.P. Inc. "We're going to do our best to offer what the consumer wants. Just as Microsoft stole ideas from Apple during the 1980's, we're stealing ideas from Microsoft today." Future releases of Proactive Synergy Linux will feature "LookOut! 1.0", a mail reader that automatically executes (with root privileges) e-mail attachments coded in Perl, JavaScript, Python, and Visual Basic. "Hey, if it works for Microsoft, it can work for us," boasted Mr. Dill. "Now PHBs won't have to stick with Windows in order to have their confidential files secretly emailed to their colleagues by a worm. Better yet, this capability allows viruses to automagically delete unnecessary files to save disk space without wasting the PHB's valuable time. | |
| The `loner' may be respected, but he is always resented by his colleagues, for he seems to be passing a critical judgment on them, when he may be simply making a limiting statement about himself. -- Sidney Harris | |
