Dictionary De - En
De - Es
De - Pt| Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
| The nice thing about Windows is - It does not just crash, it displays a dialog box and lets you press 'OK' first. (Arno Schaefer's .sig) | |
| "... all the good computer designs are bootlegged; the formally planned products, if they are built at all, are dogs!" -- David E. Lundstrom, "A Few Good Men From Univac", MIT Press, 1987 | |
| TeX is potentially the most significant invention in typesetting in this century. It introduces a standard language for computer typography, and in terms of importance could rank near the introduction of the Gutenberg press. -- Gordon Bell | |
| People are very flexible and learn to adjust to strange surroundings -- they can become accustomed to read Lisp and Fortran programs, for example. - Leon Sterling and Ehud Shapiro, Art of Prolog, MIT Press | |
| "...all the good computer designs are bootlegged; the formally planned products, if they are built at all, are dogs!" -- David E. Lundstrom, "A Few Good Men From Univac", MIT Press, 1987 | |
| "...I could accept this openness, glasnost, perestroika, or whatever you want to call it if they did these things: abolish the one party system; open the Soviet frontier and allow Soviet people to travel freely; allow the Soviet people to have real free enterprise; allow Western businessmen to do business there, and permit freedom of speech and of the press. But so far, the whole country is like a concentration camp. The barbed wire on the fence around the Soviet Union is to keep people inside, in the dark. This openness that you are seeing, all these changes, are cosmetic and they have been designed to impress shortsighted, naive, sometimes stupid Western leaders. These leaders gush over Gorbachev, hoping to do business with the Soviet Union or appease it. He will say: "Yes, we can do business!" This while his military machine in Afghanistan has killed over a million people out of a population of 17 million. Can you imagine that? -- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976 "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 110 | |
| "Pseudocode can be used to some extent to aid the maintenance process. However, pseudocode that is highly detailed - approaching the level of detail of the code itself - is not of much use as maintenance documentation. Such detailed documentation has to be maintained almost as much as the code, thus doubling the maintenance burden. Furthermore, since such voluminous pseudocode is too distracting to be kept in the listing itself, it must be kept in a separate folder. The result: Since pseudocode - unlike real code - doesn't have to be maintained, no one will maintain it. It will soon become out of date and everyone will ignore it. (Once, I did an informal survey of 42 shops that used pseudocode. Of those 42, 0 [zero!], found that it had any value as maintenance documentation." --Meilir Page-Jones, "The Practical Guide to Structured Design", Yourdon Press (c) 1988 | |
| First as to speech. That privilege rests upon the premise that there is no proposition so uniformly acknowledged that it may not be lawfully challenged, questioned, and debated. It need not rest upon the further premise that there are no propositions that are not open to doubt; it is enough, even if there are, that in the end it is worse to suppress dissent than to run the risk of heresy. Hence it has been again and again unconditionally proclaimed that there are no limits to the privilege so far as words seek to affect only the hearers' beliefs and not their conduct. The trouble is that conduct is almost always based upon some belief, and that to change the hearer's belief will generally to some extent change his conduct, and may even evoke conduct that the law forbids. [cf. Learned Hand, The Spirit of Liberty, University of Chicago Press, 1952; The Art and Craft of Judging: The Decisions of Judge Learned Hand, edited and annotated by Hershel Shanks, The MacMillian Company, 1968.] | |
| Astrology is the sheerest hokum. This pseudoscience has been around since the day of the Chaldeans and Babylonians. It is as phony as numerology, phrenology, palmistry, alchemy, the reading of tea leaves, and the practice of divination by the entrails of a goat. No serious person will buy the notion that our lives are influenced individually by the movement of distant planets. This is the sawdust blarney of the carnival midway. -- James J. Kilpatrick, Universal Press Syndicate | |
| Freedom of the press is for those who happen to own one. | |
| It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it is. If you don't, it's its. Then too, it's hers. It isn't her's. It isn't our's either. It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs. -- Oxford University Press, Edpress News | |
| If I were to walk on water, the press would say I'm only doing it because I can't swim. -- Bob Stanfield | |
| People who are funny and smart and return phone calls get much better press than people who are just funny and smart. -- Howard Simons, "The Washington Post" | |
| The most important service rendered by the press is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust. | |
| The only qualities for real success in journalism are ratlike cunning, a plausible manner and a little literary ability. The capacity to steal other people's ideas and phrases ... is also invaluable. -- Nicolas Tomalin, "Stop the Press, I Want to Get On" | |
| Although written many years ago, Lady Chatterley's Lover has just been reissued by the Grove Press, and this pictorial account of the day-to-day life of an English gamekeeper is full of considerable interest to outdoor minded readers, as it contains many passages on pheasant-raising, the apprehending of poachers, ways to control vermin, and other chores and duties of the professional gamekeeper. Unfortunately, one is obliged to wade through many pages of extraneous material in order to discover and savour those sidelights on the management of a midland shooting estate, and in this reviewer's opinion the book cannot take the place of J. R. Miller's "Practical Gamekeeping." -- Ed Zern, "Field and Stream" (Nov. 1959) | |
| Failed Attempts To Break Records In September 1978 Mr. Terry Gripton, of Stafford, failed to break the world shouting record by two and a half decibels. "I am not surprised he failed," his wife said afterwards. "He's really a very quiet man and doesn't even shout at me." In August of the same year Mr. Paul Anthony failed to break the record for continuous organ playing by 387 hours. His attempt at the Golden Fish Fry Restaurant in Manchester ended after 36 hours 10 minutes, when he was accused of disturbing the peace. "People complained I was too noisy," he said. In January 1976 Mr. Barry McQueen failed to walk backwards across the Menai Bridge playing the bagpipes. "It was raining heavily and my drone got waterlogged," he said. A TV cameraman thwarted Mr. Bob Specas' attempt to topple 100,000 dominoes at the Manhattan Center, New York on 9 June 1978. 97,500 dominoes had been set up when he dropped his press badge and set them off. -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures" | |
| I realize that today you have a number of top female athletes such as Martina Navratilova who can run like deer and bench-press Chevrolet trucks. But to be brutally frank, women as a group have a long way to go before they reach the level of intensity and dedication to sports that enables men to be such incredible jerks about it. -- Dave Barry, "Sports is a Drag" | |
| You go slow, be gentle. It's no one-way street -- you know how you feel and that's all. It's how the girl feels too. Don't press. If the girl feels anything for you at all, you'll know. -- Kirk, "Charlie X", stardate 1535.8 | |
| Windows NT - Insert wallet into Drive A: and press any key to empty. | |
| The nice thing about Windows is - It does not just crash, it displays a dialog box and lets you press 'OK' first. | |
| Statements recently seen on Slashdot: "The Internet interprets advertising as damage and routes around it." "Accept risk. Accept responsibility. Put a lawyer out of business." "A beowulf cluster of Cisco routers? Isn't that the Internet?" "Geeks aren't interested in politics because government doesn't double its efficiency and speed once every 18 months." "Windows 98 hasn't crashed for me once in over a year, either. Oh, wait, I haven't booted it in over a year." "For more than 4 generations the IT Professionals were the guardians of quality and stability in software. Before the dark times. Before Microsoft..." "You can tell how desperate they are by counting the number of times they say 'innovate' in their press releases." | |
| The rules of editing press releases are: 1. Identify the crucial elements of the story. 2. Omit at least one of them. -- From a Slashdot.org post. We can only guess whether Microsoft uses this policy or not. | |
| Linux Rally Held in Pennsylvania HARRISBURG, PA -- Thousands of Linux advocates gathered at the Pennsylvania state capitol building earlier today. They were protesting the state's recent three year deal with Microsoft to install Windows NT on all state computer systems. "Whatever pointy haired boss made this deal ought to be shot on sight," one protestor exclaimed. "Windows NT is a piece of [expletive] compared to Linux. The taxpayers of Pennsylvania are going to be sorry three years from now when this 'deal' concludes. The state has sold its soul to Satan [Bill Gates]." Brief hostilities broke out when a group of police officers armed with riot gear descended on the protestors. After the police threatened to use tear gas, the protestors threw thousands of Linux CDs at them. Once the supply of CDs was depleted, the protest became peaceful again. "I saw several policemen pick up Linux CDs and put them in their pockets," one protestor noted. The protest broke up a few minutes later once it was realized that the state legislature wasn't in session. "We may have wasted our time today," one advocate said, "But we'll be back later." State and Microsoft officials were unavailable for comment at press time. How typical. | |
| Microsoft Open Source Solitaire REDMOND, WA -- In a first attempt at "embrace-and-extend" of open source software, Microsoft will release its popular Solitaire and FreeCell games as open source under the MILA (Microsoft Innovative License Agreement). According to a Microsoft press release, the Visual C++ source code for the two games will be available from the Microsoft website "in the first quarter" (no year was specified). Industry pundits hail the move as revolutionary. "Microsoft's release of its most popular Windows feature as open source software demonstrates just how innovative the company really is. The DoJ is clearly barking up the wrong tree," wrote one Ziff-Davis flunkie. One executive at a large company said, "Freely available source code is the best idea Microsoft has ever invented." One Linux developer told Humorix, "Let's just hope some fool doesn't try to port this thing to Linux. Imagine the havoc that could ensue if a bunch of core Linux contributors downloaded Solitaire and became addicted to it. It would be a disaster! Linux and open source development would grind to a halt while the hackers wasted their time playing Solitaire or FreeCell. 'Just one more game...' they would say." | |
| 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". | |
| Microsoft Mandatory Survey (#7) Customers who want to upgrade to Windows 98 Second Edition must now fill out a Microsoft survey online before they can order the bugfix/upgrade. Question 7: What new features would you like to see in Windows 2000? A. A marquee on the taskbar that automatically scrolls the latest headlines from MSNBC and Microsoft Press Pass B. Content filtration software for Internet Explorer that will prevent my children from accessing dangerous propaganda about Linux. C. A new card game; I've spent over 10,000 hours playing Solitaire during my free time at work and I'm starting to get bored with it D. A screensaver depicting cream pies being thrown at Janet Reno, Joel Klien, David Boies, Ralpha Nader, Orrin Hatch, Linus Torvalds, Richard M. Stallman, and other conspirators out to destroy Microsoft E. A Reinstall Wizard that helps me reinstall a fresh copy of Windows to fix Registry corruptions and other known issues | |
| Jargon Coiner (#10) An irregular feature that aims to give you advance warning of new jargon that we've just made up. * HOBTOB (Hanging Out By The O'Reilly Books): Seeking free Linux technical support at a bookstore by waiting near the computer books for a geek to come by and then casually asking them for help. * MOOLA (Marketing Officially Organizes Linux Adoptance): A press release issued by a Dot Com (or Dot Con?) heralding their "support" for Linux (i.e. "BigPortal.com adopts Linux as their official operating system by adding five Linux-related links to their BigDirectory"); used to inflate their stock price and rake in moola even though none of their employees have ever used Linux and don't really care. * KARMA KOLLECTOR: Slashdot user who treats the acquisition of "karma" as a game; often has a detailed strategy on how to sucker moderators into raising the score of their posts (i.e. posting a comment with a title like "Microsoft Sucks!!! (Score 3, Insightful)" or using "Only a fool would moderate this down" as a signature). See also "Karma Whore". | |
| Please please please don't use Word, It really makes you look absurd! The Dancing Paper Clip is crappy, Use something else and be more happy! -- Protests shouted at a PR firm that issued a Linux press release obviously created with Microsoft Word. | |
| Don't get too ecstatic, we all know what's going to happen next. This so-called trial is rigged, just like wrestling and boxing. Microsoft is the Don King of the software industry... they control who wins. I've been told that if you call Microsoft's legal department hotline, you get a recorded messages that says, "For the verdicts of past Microsoft court cases, press 1. For the verdicts of future Microsoft court cases, press 2..." -- Anonymous Coward's response to Judge Jackson's harsh Findings Of Fact against Microsoft | |
| Is Linux A Finnish Conspiracy? WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF CORRUPTION -- According to a report recently issued by the NSA (No Such Agency), Finland is now considered a national economic and security risk. "We don't trust the Finns... software written by these people could potentially contain backdoors that could undermine domestic security," the report states. In response to the news, US Senator Fatcatte (R-WA) has proposed a bill, the It's For The Children Act of 2000, that would ban all software written by native-born Finns. "It's time we take the Finnish threat seriously," Fatcatte said at a press conference. "Not only is Finn software a threat to domestic tranquility, but it could radically alter the computer industry, costing us thousands of jobs... and, more importantly, billions in tax revenue. We must prevent the Finns from subverting our economy with so-called 'open-source software'." He then asked, "Is anybody thinking of the children of programmers who will become unemployed when Finnish software overruns the country?" | |
| Microsoft Fights Linux -- By Contributing Kernel Patches If you can't beat 'em, join 'em... and then destory 'em. That seems to be the new Microsoft strategy for dealing with Linux. Instead of fighting a FUD or patent war, Microsoft operatives are doing something totally out of character: they are contributing patches for the Linux kernel and other programs. Don't worry, Microsoft is still evil. It's all part of a massive denial of service attack against Linus Torvalds designed to bring kernel development to a standstill. By sending over 10,000 patches per minute by email to Linus and other top kernel hackers, Microsoft has exposed Linux's Achilles heel. "I can't believe this is happening!" one stressed-out kernel hacker said at a press conference on IRC. "If this goes on, we may have to conduct kernel development over some other network protocol, like avian carriers... Aw crap, there's smoke coming from my email server! Ahh... it can't handle the load!" At this point the developer cut off and we haven't heard from him since. At first Linus was unsure where the deluge of patches was coming from. But when he saw one patch to replace kernel panics with bluescreens, the source was pretty obvious. "Oh, and the fact that all of the patches are covered by Microsoft's GPL [Grossly Private License] was a dead giveaway, too," | |
| Bill Gates Sends Out Desperate Plea For Help REDMOND -- In a shocking development, Chief Bloatware Architect Bill Gates admitted today that Microsoft is in severe financial difficulty and desperately needs donations to stay afloat through the next month. "The dismal state of the economy, the lackluster sales of Windows ME, and the pending anti-trust lawsuit have placed significant financial stress on Microsoft," Gates said at a press conference. "We can't continue to develop and maintain our innovative solutions without financial contributions from users like you." The company spent the remaining $10,000 in its coffers to send out letters to registered Windows users pleading for donations. "For just pennies a day, you can help support the world's most innovative company in its quest to discover the cure for the Blue Screen of Death," the letter announces. "Or you can help fund research and development into improving the security of our products against such sinister forces as script kiddies, crackers, and Linux freaks." | |
| 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... | |
| A pretty foot is one of the greatest gifts of nature... please send me your last pair of shoes, already worn out in dancing... so I can have something of yours to press against my heart. -- Goethe | |
| If you just try long enough and hard enough, you can always manage to boot yourself in the posterior. -- A.J. Liebling, "The Press" | |
| <theoddone33> What's this message on my screen, <theoddone33> so blue, so blue, what could it mean? <theoddone33> Could you, would you press Delete, <theoddone33> Ctrl and Alt and then repeat. | |
| <|Rain|> I *love* SWB!! <|Rain|> Or, press 5 to speak to a representitive.. <|Rain|> *5* <|Rain|> You are being transferred, please hold... <|Rain|> ... <|Rain|> ... <|Rain|> We're sorry, this number can not be completed as dialed. <|Rain|> Please check the number and try again. | |
| [District Attorneys] learn in District Attorney School that there are two sure-fire ways to get a lot of favorable publicity: (1) Go down and raid all the lockers in the local high school and confiscate 53 marijuana cigarettes and put them in a pile and hold a press conference where you announce that they have a street value of $850 million. These raids never fail, because ALL high schools, including brand-new, never-used ones, have at least 53 marijuana cigarettes in the lockers. As far as anyone can tell, the locker factory puts them there. (2) Raid an "adult book store" and hold a press conference where you announce you are charging the owner with 850 counts of being a piece of human sleaze. This also never fails, because you always get a conviction. A juror at a pornography trial is not about to state for the record that he finds nothing obscene about a movie where actors engage in sexual activities with live snakes and a fire extinguisher. He is going to convict the bookstore owner, and vote for the death penalty just to make sure nobody gets the wrong impression. -- Dave Barry, "Pornography" | |
| NEVER RESPOND TO CRITICAL PRESS. IT IS A GAME YOU CAN ONLY LOSE, AND IT MAKES US LOOK BAD. -- Bruce Perens | |
| Between 1950 and 1952, a bored weatherman, stationed north of Hudson Bay, left a monument that neither government nor time can eradicate. Using a bulldozer abandoned by the Air Force, he spent two years and great effort pushing boulders into a single word. It can be seen from 10,000 feet, silhouetted against the snow. Government officials exchanged memos full of circumlocutions (no Latin equivalent exists) but failed to word an appropriation bill for the destruction of this cairn, that wouldn't alert the press and embarrass both Parliament and Party. It stands today, a monument to human spirit. If life exists on other planets, this may be the first message received from us. -- The Realist, November, 1964. | |
| NEW YORK-- Kraft Foods, Inc. announced today that its board of directors unanimously rejected the $11 billion takeover bid by Philip Morris and Co. A Kraft spokesman stated in a press conference that the offer was rejected because the $90-per-share bid did not reflect the true value of the company. Wall Street insiders, however, tell quite a different story. Apparently, the Kraft board of directors had all but signed the takeover agreement when they learned of Philip Morris' marketing plans for one of their major Middle East subsidiaries. To a person, the board voted to reject the bid when they discovered that the tobacco giant intended to reorganize Israeli Cheddar, Ltd., and name the new company Cheeses of Nazareth. | |
| The departing division general manager met a last time with his young successor and gave him three envelopes. "My predecessor did this for me, and I'll pass the tradition along to you," he said. "At the first sign of trouble, open the first envelope. Any further difficulties, open the second envelope. Then, if problems continue, open the third envelope. Good luck." The new manager returned to his office and tossed the envelopes into a drawer. Six months later, costs soared and earnings plummeted. Shaken, the young man opened the first envelope, which said, "Blame it all on me." The next day, he held a press conference and did just that. The crisis passed. Six months later, sales dropped precipitously. The beleagured manager opened the second envelope. It said, "Reorganize." He held another press conference, announcing that the division would be restructured. The crisis passed. A year later, everything went wrong at once and the manager was blamed for all of it. The harried executive closed his office door, sank into his chair, and opened the third envelope. "Prepare three envelopes..." it said. | |
| The birds are singing, the flowers are budding, and it is time for Miss Manners to tell young lovers to stop necking in public. It's not that Miss Manners is immune to romance. Miss Manners has been known to squeeze a gentleman's arm while being helped over a curb, and, in her wild youth, even to press a dainty slipper against a foot or two under the dinner table. Miss Manners also believes that the sight of people strolling hand in hand or arm in arm or arm in hand dresses up a city considerably more than the more familiar sight of people shaking umbrellas at one another. What Miss Manners objects to is the kind of activity that frightens the horses on the street... | |
