DEEn Dictionary De - En
DeEs De - Es
DePt De - Pt
 Vocabulary trainer

Spec. subjects Grammar Abbreviations Random search Preferences
Search in Sprachauswahl
Search for:
Mini search box
 
Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) by Linux fortune

A young man wrote to Mozart and said:

Q: "Herr Mozart, I am thinking of writing symphonies. Can you give me any
   suggestions as to how to get started?"
A: "A symphony is a very complex musical form, perhaps you should begin with
   some simple lieder and work your way up to a symphony."
Q: "But Herr Mozart, you were writing symphonies when you were 8 years old."
A: "But I never asked anybody how."
Around the turn of this century, a composer named Camille Saint-Saens wrote
a satirical zoological-fantasy called "Le Carnaval des Animaux."  Aside from
one movement of this piece, "The Swan", Saint-Saens didn't allow this work
to be published or even performed until a year had elapsed after his death.
(He died in 1921.)
        Most of us know the "Swan" movement rather well, with its smooth,
flowing cello melody against a calm background; but I've been having this
fantasy...
        What if he had written this piece with lyrics, as a song to be sung?
And, further, what if he had accompanied this song with a musical saw?  (This
instrument really does exist, often played by percussionists!)  Then the
piece would be better known as:
        SAINT-SAENS' SAW SONG "SWAN"!
As a goatherd learns his trade by goat, so a writer learns his trade by wrote.
George Bernard Shaw once sent two tickets to the opening night of one of
his plays to Winston Churchill with the following note:
        "Bring a friend, if you have one."

Churchill wrote back, returning the two tickets and excused himself as he
had a previous engagement.  He also attached the following:
        "Please send me two tickets for the next night, if there is one."
If it were thought that anything I wrote was influenced by Robert Frost,
I would take that particular work of mine, shred it, and flush it down
the toilet, hoping not to clog the pipes.  A more sententious, holding-
forth old bore who expected every hero-worshiping adenoidal little twerp
of a student-poet to hang on to his every word I never saw.
                -- James Dickey
The Worst Musical Trio
        There are few bad musicians who have a chance to give a recital at
a famous concert hall while still learning the rudiments of their
instrument.  This happened about thirty years ago to the son of a Rumanian
gentleman who was owed a personal favour by Georges Enesco, the celebrated
violinist.  Enesco agreed to give lessons to the son who was quite
unhampered by great musical talent.
        Three years later the boy's father insisted that he give a public
concert.  "His aunt said that nobody plays the violin better than he does.
A cousin heard him the other day and screamed with enthusiasm."  Although
Enesco feared the consequences, he arranged a recital at the Salle Gaveau
in Paris.  However, nobody bought a ticket since the soloist was unknown.
        "Then you must accompany him on the piano," said the boy's father,
"and it will be a sell out."
        Reluctantly, Enesco agreed and it was.  On the night an excited
audience gathered.  Before the concert began Enesco became nervous and
asked for someone to turn his pages.
        In the audience was Alfred Cortot, the brilliant pianist, who
volunteered and made his way to the stage.
        The soloist was of uniformly low standard and next morning the
music critic of Le Figaro wrote: "There was a strange concert at the Salle
Gaveau last night.  The man whom we adore when he plays the violin played
the piano.  Another whom we adore when he plays the piano turned the pages.
But the man who should have turned the pages played the violin."
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
`When you say "I wrote a program that crashed Windows", people just stare at
you blankly and say "Hey, I got those with the system, *for free*".'
(By Linus Torvalds)
Well, anyway, I was reading this James Bond book, and right away I realized
that like most books, it had too many words.  The plot was the same one that
all James Bond books have: An evil person tries to blow up the world, but
James Bond kills him and his henchmen and makes love to several attractive
women.  There, that's it: 24 words.  But the guy who wrote the book took
*thousands* of words to say it.
        Or consider "The Brothers Karamazov", by the famous Russian alcoholic
Fyodor Dostoyevsky.  It's about these two brothers who kill their father.
Or maybe only one of them kills the father.  It's impossible to tell because
what they mostly do is talk for nearly a thousand pages.  If all Russians talk
as much as the Karamazovs did, I don't see how they found time to become a
major world power.
        I'm told that Dostoyevsky wrote "The Brothers Karamazov" to raise
the question of whether there is a God.  So why didn't he just come right
out and say: "Is there a God? It sure beats the heck out of me."
        Other famous works could easily have been summarized in a few words:

* "Moby Dick" -- Don't mess around with large whales because they symbolize
  nature and will kill you.
* "A Tale of Two Cities" -- French people are crazy.
                -- Dave Barry
        A manager was about to be fired, but a programmer who worked for him
invented a new program that became popular and sold well.  As a result, the
manager retained his job.
        The manager tried to give the programmer a bonus, but the programmer
refused it, saying, "I wrote the program because I though it was an interesting
concept, and thus I expect no reward."
        The manager, upon hearing this, remarked, "This programmer, though he
holds a position of small esteem, understands well the proper duty of an
employee.  Lets promote him to the exalted position of management consultant!"
        But when told this, the programmer once more refused, saying, "I exist
so that I can program.  If I were promoted, I would do nothing but waste
everyone's time.  Can I go now?  I have a program that I'm working on."
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
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
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs,
then the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.
Norbert Weiner was the subject of many dotty professor stories.  Weiner was, in
fact, very absent minded.  The following story is told about him: when they
moved from Cambridge to Newton his wife, knowing that he would be absolutely
useless on the move, packed him off to MIT while she directed the move.  Since
she was certain that he would forget that they had moved and where they had
moved to, she wrote down the new address on a piece of paper, and gave it to
him.  Naturally, in the course of the day, an insight occurred to him.  He
reached in his pocket, found a piece of paper on which he furiously scribbled
some notes, thought it over, decided there was a fallacy in his idea, and
threw the piece of paper away.  At the end of the day he went home (to the
old address in Cambridge, of course).  When he got there he realized that they
had moved, that he had no idea where they had moved to, and that the piece of
paper with the address was long gone.  Fortunately inspiration struck.  There
was a young girl on the street and he conceived the idea of asking her where
he had moved to, saying, "Excuse me, perhaps you know me.  I'm Norbert Weiner
and we've just moved.  Would you know where we've moved to?"  To which the
young girl replied, "Yes, Daddy, Mommy thought you would forget."
        The capper to the story is that I asked his daughter (the girl in the
story) about the truth of the story, many years later.  She said that it wasn't
quite true -- that he never forgot who his children were!  The rest of it,
however, was pretty close to what actually happened...
                -- Richard Harter
        There once was a master programmer who wrote unstructured programs.
A novice programmer, seeking to imitate him, also began to write unstructured
programs.  When the novice asked the master to evaluate his progress, the
master criticized him for writing unstructured programs, saying: "What is
appropriate for the master is not appropriate for the novice.  You must
understand the Tao before transcending structure."
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
        "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:
        You'd better sit down.
        Don't laugh.  It could be YOUR thesis project.
        Why do it right when you can do it wrong?
        Live the nightmare.
        Our bugs run faster.
        When it absolutely, positively HAS to crash overnight.
        There ARE no rules.
        You'll wish we were kidding.
        Everything you never wanted in a window system.  And more.
        Dissatisfaction guaranteed.
        There's got to be a better way.
        The next best thing to keypunching.
        Leave the thrashing to us.
        We wrote the book on core dumps.
        Even your dog won't like it.
        More than enough rope.
        Garbage at your fingertips.

Incompatibility.  Shoddiness.  Uselessness.
        X windows.
Regarding astral projection, Woody Allen once wrote, "This is not a bad way
to travel, although there is usually a half-hour wait for luggage."
"I mean, like, I just read your article in the Yale law recipe, on search and
seizure.  Man, that was really Out There."
   "I was so WRECKED when I wrote that..."
-- John Lovitz, as ex-Supreme Court nominee Alan Ginsburg, on SNL
One evening Mr. Rudolph Block, of New York, found himself seated at dinner
alongside Mr. Percival Pollard, the distinguished critic.
   "Mr. Pollard," said he, "my book, _The Biography of a Dead Cow_, is
published anonymously, but you can hardly be ignorant of its authorship.
Yet in reviewing it you speak of it as the work of the Idiot of the Century.
Do you think that fair criticism?"
   "I am very sorry, sir," replied the critic, amiably, "but it did not
occur to me that you really might not wish the public to know who wrote it."
-- Ambrose Bierce
If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, Jolt Cola
would be a Fortune-500 company.

If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, you'd be
able to buy a nice little colonial split-level at Babbages for $34.95.

If programmers wrote programs the way builders build buildings, we'd still
be using autocoder and running compile decks.

-- Peter da Silva and Karl Lehenbauer, a different perspective
Bug, n.:
        An aspect of a computer program which exists because the
        programmer was thinking about Jumbo Jacks or stock options when s/he
        wrote the program.

Fortunately, the second-to-last bug has just been fixed.
                -- Ray Simard
Weinberg's Second Law:
        If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs,
        then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold.
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the presence in the room he said,
"What writest thou?"  The vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord,
Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord."
"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay not so,"
Replied the angel.  Abou spoke more low,
But cheerly still; and said, "I pray thee then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow-men."
The angel wrote, and vanished.  The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,
And lo!  Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.
                -- James Henry Leigh Hunt, "Abou Ben Adhem"
I gave my love an Apple, that had no core;
I gave my love a building, that had no floor;
I wrote my love a program, that had no end;
I gave my love an upgrade, with no cryin'.

How can there be an Apple, that has no core?
How can there be a building, that has no floor?
How can there be a program, that has no end?
How can there be an upgrade, with no cryin'?

An Apple's MOS memory don't use no core!
A building that's perfect, it has no flaw!
A program with GOTOs, it has no end!
I lied about the upgrade, with no cryin'!
I never saw a purple cow
I never hope to see one
But I can tell you anyhow
I'd rather see than be one.
                -- Gellett Burgess

I've never seen a purple cow
I never hope to see one
But from the milk we're getting now
There certainly must be one
                -- Odgen Nash

Ah, yes, I wrote "The Purple Cow"  
I'm sorry now I wrote it
But I can tell you anyhow
I'll kill you if you quote it.
                -- Gellett Burgess, many years later
If researchers wrote nursery rhymes...

Little Miss Muffet sat on her gluteal region,
Eating components of soured milk.
On at least one occasion,
        along came an arachnid and sat down beside her,
Or at least in her vicinity,
And caused her to feel an overwhelming, but not paralyzing, fear,
Which motivated the patient to leave the area rather quickly.
                -- Ann Melugin Williams
Just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone,
Suzanne, the plans they made put an end to you,
I went out this morning and I wrote down this song,
Just can't remember who to send it to...

Oh, I've seen fire and I've seen rain,
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end,
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend,
But I always thought that I'd see you again.
Thought I'd see you one more time again.
                -- James Taylor, "Fire and Rain"
Once there was a little nerd who loved to read your mail,
And then yank back the i-access times to get hackers off his tail,
And once as he finished reading from the secretary's spool,
He wrote a rude rejection to her boyfriend (how uncool!)
And this as delivermail did work and he ran his backfstat,
He heard an awful crackling like rat fritters in hot fat,
And hard errors brought the system down 'fore he could even shout!
        And the bio bug'll bring yours down too, ef you don't watch out!
And once they was a little flake who'd prowl through the uulog,
And when he went to his blit that night to play at being god,
The ops all heard him holler, and they to the console dashed,
But when they did a ps -ut they found the system crashed!
Oh, the wizards adb'd the dumps and did the system trace,
And worked on the file system 'til the disk head was hot paste,
But all they ever found was this:  "panic: never doubt",
        And the bio bug'll crash your box too, ef you don't watch out!
When the day is done and the moon comes out,
And you hear the printer whining and the rk's seems to count,
When the other desks are empty and their terminals glassy grey,
And the load is only 1.6 and you wonder if it'll stay,
You must mind the file protections and not snoop around,
        Or the bio bug'll getcha and bring the system down!
One bright Sunday morning, in the shadows of the steeple,
By the Relief Office, I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there whistling,
This land was made for you and me.

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back,
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking, I saw a sign there,
And on the sign it said: "No Trespassing."
But on the other side, it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.
                -- Woody Guthrie, "This Land Is Your Land" (verses 4, 6, 7)
        [If you ever wondered why Arlo was so anti-establishment when his dad
         wrote such wonderful patriotic songs, the answer is that you haven't
         heard all of Woody's songs]
One day,
A mad meta-poet,
With nothing to say,
Wrote a mad meta-poem
That started: "One day,
A mad meta-poet,
With nothing to say,
Wrote a mad meta-poem
That started: "One day,
[...]
sort of close".
Were the words that the poet,
Finally chose,
To bring his mad poem,
To some sort of close".
Were the words that the poet,
Finally chose,
To bring his mad poem,
To some sort of close".
                The Worst Lines of Verse
For a start, we can rule out James Grainger's promising line:
        "Come, muse, let us sing of rats."
Grainger (1721-67) did not have the courage of his convictions and deleted
these words on discovering that his listeners dissolved into spontaneous
laughter the instant they were read out.
        No such reluctance afflicted Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833-70) who was
inspired by the subject of war.
        "Flash! flash! bang! bang! and we blazed away,
        And the grey roof reddened and rang;
        Flash! flash! and I felt his bullet flay
        The tip of my ear.  Flash! bang!"
By contrast, Cheshire cheese provoked John Armstrong (1709-79):
        "... that which Cestria sends, tenacious paste of solid milk..."
While John Bidlake was guided by a compassion for vegetables:
        "The sluggard carrot sleeps his day in bed,
        The crippled pea alone that cannot stand."
George Crabbe (1754-1832) wrote:
        "And I was ask'd and authorized to go
        To seek the firm of Clutterbuck and Co."
William Balmford explored the possibilities of religious verse:
        "So 'tis with Christians, Nature being weak
        While in this world, are liable to leak."
And William Wordsworth showed that he could do it if he really tried when
describing a pond:
        "I've measured it from side to side;
        Tis three feet long and two feet wide."
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
"You are old, Father William," the young man said,
        "All your papers these days look the same;
Those William's would be better unread --
        Do these facts never fill you with shame?"

"In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
        "I wrote wonderful papers galore;
But the great reputation I found that I'd won,
        Made it pointless to think any more."
When you say "I wrote a program that crashed Windows", people just stare at
you blankly and say "Hey, I got those with the system, *for free*".
  
   -- Linus Torvalds
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."
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."
Excerpts From The First Annual Nerd Bowl (#6)

JOHN SPLADDEN: We're back. The players have assumed their positions and
are ready to answer computer-related questions posed by referree Eric S.
Raymond. Let's listen in...

RAYMOND: Okay, men, you know the rules... And now here's the first
question: Who is the most respected, sexy, gifted, and talented spokesmen
for the Open Source movement? [Bzzz] Taco Boy, you buzzed in first.

ROB MALDA: The answer is me.

RAYMOND: No, you egomaniacal billionaire. Anybody else want to answer?
[Bzzz] Yes, Alan Cox?

ALAN COX: Well, duh, the answer has to be Eric Raymond.

RAYMOND: Correct! That answer is worth 10 million points.

ROB MALDA: Protest! Who wrote these questions?!
Brief History Of Linux (#16)
Closed source, opened wallets

In 1976 Bill Gates wrote the famous letter to Altair hobbyists accusing
them of "stealing software" and "preventing good software from being
written". We must assume Bill's statement was true, because no good
software was being written at Micro-soft.

Bill Gates did not innovate the concept of charging megabucks for
software, but he was the first to make megabucks from peddling commercial
software.
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.
Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself
or not.  Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has
a beginning and an end.  Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of bed, and
Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm.
                -- Tom Robbins
Alan Cox  <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:
>
> Running with page aging convinces me that 2.2.19 we need to sort some
> of the vm issues out badly, and make it faster than 2.4test 8)

Ahh.. The challenge is out!

You and me. Mano a mano.

                Linus
Alan Cox wrote:
> RFC1122 also requires that your protocol stack SHOULD be able to leap tall
> buldings at a single bound of course...

And, of course my protocol stack does :) It is also a floor wax, AND a
dessert topping!-)

        - Rick Jones trying to sell his protocol stack
Alan Cox wrote:
> In theory however i2o is a standard and all i2o works alike. In practice i2o
> is a pseudo standard and nobody seems to interpret the spec the same way, the
> implementations all tend to have bugs and the hardware sometimes does too.

That's a pretty good description of standards in general, at least
when it comes to hardware :-)

        - Jens Axboe's interpretation of standards
David Brownell wrote:
> AMD told me I'd need an NDA to learn their workaround, and I've not
> pursued it. (Does anyone already know what kind of NDA they use?)

It varies depending on the info. They may well be able to sort out a sane
NDA with you. If they dont want to then I guess it would be best if the
ohci driver printing a message explaining the component has an undocumented
errata fix, gave AMD's phone number and refused to load..

        - Alan Cox
Richard B. Johnson wrote:
> The 'C' language can order structure members anyway it wants.

You are an idiot.

        - Rusty Russell on linux-kernel
Alan Olsen wrote:
> things correctly they have enhanced Wake-on-LAN to allow you to do
> things like reset the machine, update the BIOS and such by sending
> magic packets which are interpreted by the network card. Or maybe I am

Normally 'sending magic packets resets the machine' is considered a feature
reported to bugtraq. The alert stuff I have seen is more akin to sending SNMP
traps for things like people opening the lid, or fan failure

        - Alan Cox on linux-kernel
Steve Underwood wrote:
> Dave Miller wrote:
> > alterity wrote:
> > > Haven't seen a post for sometime from the usually prolific Mr Cox.
> > > What's the gossip?
> >
> > They needed some help from him to position Mir for it's
> > final descent.
>
> Strange. I thought his key skill was stopping things from crashing!

This crash was inevitable, he's just making sure the disks get
sync'd.

        - Dave Miller on linux-kernel
Andries Brouwer wrote:
> Linux is unreliable.
> That is bad.

Since your definition of reliability is a mathematical abstraction requiring
infinite storage why don't you start by inventing infinitely large SDRAM
chips, then get back to us ?

        - Alan Cox
Dennis wrote:
> whatever you do dont buy a gigabit card with a small buffer and 32bits.
> 32bits isnt enough to do gigabit, even with a large buffer.

Never underestimate what will come out of Taiwan in massive quantities
:)

        - Jeff Garzik about gigabit ethernet cards on linux-kernel
Bruno Avila wrote:
>        I can't find this anywhere. What is the version of the tools to
> compile linux kernel 0.0.0.1 (../Historic)? And where can i find them?  

Well, first you have to find a good source of obsidean, a couple of sharp
rocks, and some flint...

        - Alan Olsen on linux-kernel
David Wagner wrote:
> Is this a bad coding?

Yes. Not to mention side effects, it's just plain ugly. Anyone who invents
identifiers of _that_ level of ugliness should be forced to read them
aloud for a week or so, until somebody will shoot him out of mercy.
Out of curiosity: who was the author? It looks unusually nasty, even for
SGI.

        - Al Viro on coding style
Richard B. Johnson wrote:
> It's a "tomorrow" thing. Ten hours it too long to stare at a
> screen.

Sissy!

        - Jens Axboe on linux-kernel
Linus Torvalds wrote:
> It should be a case of "Just plug in a new kernel, and suddenly your
> existing filesystem just allows you to do more! 20% more for the same
> price! AND we'll throw in this useful ginzu knife for just 4.95 for  
> shipping and handling. Absolutely free!"

...Linus demonstrates why American culture is a bad influence on you.

        - Jeff Garzik on linux-kernel
Linus Torvalds wrote:
> Ehh.. Telling people "don't do that" simply doesn't work. Not if they can
> do it easily anyway. Things really don't get fixed unless people have a
> certain pain-level to induce it to get fixed.

Umm... How about the following:  you hit delete on patches that introduce
new ioctls, I help to provide required level of pain.  Deal?

        - Al Viro on linux-kernel
James Simmons wrote:
> Crap can work. Given enough thrust pigs will fly, but it's not necessary a
> good idea.                                 [ Alexander Viro on linux-kernel ]

Watch the attributions.

With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine.
However, this is not necessarily a good idea.
It is hard to be sure where they are going to land,
and it could be dangerous sitting under them as they fly overhead.
        From RFC1925, R Callon, 1996.

        - Al Viro on linux-kernel
Linus Torvalds wrote:
> Or are they just trying to strongarm the move to the horrid ACPI tables?

They are certainly involved in the latter but whether this is related  or
a seperate evil empire scheme is open to question

        - Alan Cox on linux-kernel
Alan Cox wrote:
> Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > And quite frankly, if your disk can push 50MB/s through a 1kB
> > non-contiguous filesystem, then my name is Bugs Bunny.
>
> Hi Bugs 8), previously Frodo Rabbit, .. I think you watch too much kids tv
> 8)

Three kids will do that to you. Some day, you too will be there.

        - Linus Torvalds and Alan Cox on linux-kernel
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
Russell King wrote:
> I'll look into it, produce a patch, but I'm not a VM hacker.

You know what a pte is so you're a VM hacker ;-)

        - Daniel Phillips on linux-kernel
Linus Torvalds wrote:
> How the h*ll did you happen to actually notice this?

Some combination of blind luck, curiosity, pride, and Obsessive
Compulsive Disorder...

        - John Byrne on linux-kernel
Eric Biederman wrote:
> That added to the fact that last time someone ran the numbers linux
> was considerably faster than the BSD for mm type operations when not
> swapping.  And this is the common case.

"Linux VM works wonderfully when nobody is using it"

        - Alan Cox on linux-kernel
Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
> (infact I never had a single report), but well we'll verify that in

Richard, is that you?  What had you done with real Andrea?

        - Al Viro trying to beat two people with one cluebat
HP LaserJetIII wrote:
> How to turn off faucet?
>
Now that's a good one! Somebody's mucking with my print-server.
Sorry. I'm gonna get my gun....

        - Richard Johnson on linux-kernel
Chris Rumpf wrote:
> I would like to join this mailing list.

you want all of us to give you a call saying you're welcome ??

        - elko@home.nl on linux-kernel
On Mon, 5 Nov 2001, Martin Dalecki wrote:
> Every BASTARD out there telling the world, that parsing ASCII formatted
> files

What was your username, again?

        - Alexander Viro in BOFH mode on linux-kernel
Tim Schmielau wrote:
> the appended patch enables 32 bit linux boxes to display more than
> 497.1 days of uptime. No user land application changes are needed.

Thank you for doing this labor of love -

I will let you know how it goes sometime
after March 23, 2003 -

        - J Sloan on linux-kernel
Alexander Viro wrote:
> You mean that you are unable to read any of the core kernel source?
> That would explain a lot...

Were you born rude, or did you have to practice it?

        - Richard Gooch on linux-kernel
Alexander Viro wrote:
> Al, -><- close to setting up a Linux Kernel Hall of Shame - one with names of
> wankers (both individual and coprorat ones) responsible, their code and
> commentary on said code...

Please, please, please, I'm begging you, please do this.  It's the only way
people learn quickly.  Being nice is great, but nothing works faster than
a cold shower of public humiliation :-)

        - Larry McVoy on linux-kernel
Davide Libenzi wrote:
> It's not easy to get this right anyway.

Balancing the pull and push mechanisms in the scheduler while trying
to predict the future?  "Not easy" is an excellent description.

        - Rusty Russell on linux-kernel
Daniel Phillips wrote:
> Hi Dana,
>
> Are you still interested in signing up for a kernel project?  I've got a good
> one I think would be perfect for you.

Hey Dana,

I have a long list of projects you can work on, too.  Let me know.

        Jeff

;-)

        - Jeff Garzik on linux-kernel
<Diziet> Fuck, I can't compile the damn thing and I wrote it !
<tausq>         if (cb) ((cb->obj)->*(cb->ui_func))();
<knghtbrd> tausq: who the HELL wrote that ?
<tausq> me :)
* knghtbrd flogs tausq
At ebb tide I wrote a line upon the sand, and gave it all my heart and all
my soul.  At flood tide I returned to read what I had inscribed and found my
ignorance upon the shore.
                -- Kahlil Gibran
When you say "I wrote a program that crashed Windows", people just stare at
you blankly and say "Hey, I got those with the system, *for free*".
        -- Linus Torvalds
When you say 'I wrote a program that crashed Windows', people just stare at
you blankly and say 'Hey, I got those with the system, *for free*'.
        -- Linus Torvalds
This is a scsi driver, scraes the shit out of me, therefore I tapdanced
and wrote a unix clone around it (C) by linus
        -- Somewhere in the kernel tree
> Alan Cox wrote:
[..]

No I didnt.  Someone else wrote that.  Please keep attributions
straight.
        -- From linux-kernel
Alan Cox wrote:
>> On any procmail new enough not to be full of security holes you set
>Brain on, Imeant majordomo of course 8)
You got me worried there for a brief (very brief) moment :-).
        -- Stephen R. van den Berg (AKA BuGless)
Some people manage by the book, even though they don't know who wrote the
book or even what book.
No guarantee of accuracy or completeness!
©TU Chemnitz, 2006-2024
Your feedback:
Ad partners