Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
/* * Oops. The kernel tried to access some bad page. We'll have to * terminate things with extreme prejudice. */ die_if_kernel("Oops", regs, error_code); (From linux/arch/i386/mm/fault.c) | |
"Even more amazing was the realization that God has Internet access. I wonder if He has a full newsfeed?" (By Matt Welsh) | |
Due to Federal Budget problems we have been forced to cut back on the number of users able to access the system at one time. (namely none allowed....) | |
It's currently a problem of access to gigabits through punybaud. -- J. C. R. Licklider | |
"People should have access to the data which you have about them. There should be a process for them to challenge any inaccuracies." -- Arthur Miller | |
HOW TO PROVE IT, PART 2 proof by cumbersome notation: Best done with access to at least four alphabets and special symbols. proof by exhaustion: An issue or two of a journal devoted to your proof is useful. proof by omission: 'The reader may easily supply the details' 'The other 253 cases are analogous' '...' | |
Random, n.: As in number, predictable. As in memory access, unpredictable. | |
timesharing, n: An access method whereby one computer abuses many people. | |
After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed from an access cover, it will be discovered that the wrong access cover has been removed. | |
Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood, Stop up the access and passage to remorse That no compunctious visiting of nature Shake my fell purpose, not keep peace between The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts, And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers, Wherever in your sightless substances You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night, And pall the in the dunnest smoke of hell, That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, To cry `Hold, hold!' -- Lady MacBeth | |
Ever since I was a young boy, I've hacked the ARPA net, From Berkeley down to Rutgers, He's on my favorite terminal, Any access I could get, He cats C right into foo, But ain't seen nothing like him, His disciples lead him in, On any campus yet, And he just breaks the root, That deaf, dumb, and blind kid, Always has full SYS-PRIV's, Sure sends a mean packet. Never uses lint, That deaf, dumb, and blind kid, Sure sends a mean packet. He's a UNIX wizard, There has to be a twist. The UNIX wizard's got Ain't got no distractions, Unlimited space on disk. Can't hear no whistles or bells, How do you think he does it? Can't see no message flashing, I don't know. Types by sense of smell, What makes him so good? Those crazy little programs, The proper bit flags set, That deaf, dumb, and blind kid, Sure sends a mean packet. -- UNIX Wizard | |
I'll grant thee random access to my heart, Thoul't tell me all the constants of thy love; And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove And in our bound partition never part. Cancel me not -- for what then shall remain? Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes, A root or two, a torus and a node: The inverse of my verse, a null domain. I see the eigenvalue in thine eye, I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh. Bernoulli would have been content to die Had he but known such a-squared cos 2(thi)! -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad" | |
If a system is administered wisely, its users will be content. They enjoy hacking their code and don't waste time implementing labor-saving shell scripts. Since they dearly love their accounts, they aren't interested in other machines. There may be telnet, rlogin, and ftp, but these don't access any hosts. There may be an arsenal of cracks and malware, but nobody ever uses them. People enjoy reading their mail, take pleasure in being with their newsgroups, spend weekends working at their terminals, delight in the doings at the site. And even though the next system is so close that users can hear its key clicks and biff beeps, they are content to die of old age without ever having gone to see it. | |
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! | |
ARE YOU ADDICTED TO SLASHDOT? Take this short test to find out if you are a Dothead. 1. Do you submit articles to Slashdot and then reload the main page every 3.2 seconds to see if your article has been published yet? 2. Have you made more than one "first comment!" post within the past week? 3. Have you ever participated in a Gnome vs. KDE or a Linux vs. FreeBSD flamewar on Slashdot? 4. Do you write jokes about Slashdot? 5. Do you wake up at night, go to the bathroom, and fire up your web browser to get your Slashdot fix on the way back? 6. Do you dump your date at the curb so you can hurry home to visit Slashdot? 7. Do you think of Slashdot when you order a taco at a restaurant? 8. Are you a charter member of the Rob Malda Fan Club? 9. Did you lease a T3 line so you could download Slashdot faster? 10. Is Slashdot your only brower's bookmark? 11. Do you get a buzz when your browser finally connects to Slashdot? 12. Do you panic when your browser says "Unable to connect to slashdot.org"? 13. Have you even made a New Year's Resolution to cut back on Slashdot access... only to visit it at 12:01? | |
Humorix Holiday Gift Idea #3 iTux Penguin Computer Price: $999.95 for base model Producer: Orange Computer, Co.; 1-800-GET-ITUX Based on the Slashdot comments, response to the Apple iMac from the Linux community was lukewarm at best. Orange Computer, Co., has picked up where Apple left behind and produced the iTux computer specifically for Linux users who want to "Think a lot different". The self-contained iTux computer system is built in the shape of Tux the Penguin. Its 15 inch monitor (17 inch available next year) is located at Tux's large belly. The penguin's two feet make up the split ergonomic keyboard (without those annoying Windows keys, of course). A 36X CD-ROM drive fits into Tux's mouth. Tux's left eye is actually the reboot button (can be reconfigured for other purposes since it is rarely used) and his right eye is the power button. The iTux case opens up from the back, allowing easy access for screwdriver-wielding nerds into Tux's guts. The US$995.95 model contains an Alpha CPU and all the usual stuff found in a Linux-class machine. More expensive models, to be debuted next year, will feature dual or quad Alpha CPUs and a larger size. | |
Humorix Holiday Gift Idea #5 AbsoluteZero(tm) Cryogenic Refrigerator $29,999.95 for economy model at Cryo-Me-A-River, Inc. The pundits have been hyping new technology allowing your home appliances to have Internet access. Most people aren't too keen with the thought of their refrigerator sharing an IP address with their can opener. But with the new AbsoluteZero(tm) Refrigerator, that might change. This is not a fridge for your food -- it's a fridge for your overclocked, overheating CPU. You stick your computer inside, bolt the door shut, turn the temperature down to 5 degrees Kelvin, and you've got the perfect environment for accelerating your CPU to 1 Terahertz or more. This cryogenic cooling system may not actually reach absolute zero, but it comes mighty close. Unfortunately, the AbsoluteZero(tm) is the size of a small house, consumes a constant stream of liquid nitrogen, and requires it's own nuclear reactor (not included). But that's a small price to pay for the ability to play Quake 3 at 100,000 frames per second. | |
Microsoft ActivePromo Campaign: "State Innovation Day" Microsoft has successfully lobbied for the State of Washington to declare August 24th as State Innovation Day. Efforts are underway to lobby the US Congress to decree a similar designation nationally. Several events are scheduled on August 24, 1999 to showcase "innovation" in the computer industry (in other words, Microsoft), including: * An "Innovation Day Parade" held in downtown Seattle, featuring floats and helium-filled balloons representing various Microsoft products (Dancing Paper Clip, Microsoft Bob, Flying Windows Logo, etc.) * An "Innovation is Cool" essay contest for high school and college students. Possible topics include "Why IE Should Be Integrated in Windows", "Why Bill Gates Is My Hero", "Government Intervention is Evil", and "Why Monopolies Improve Product Quality and Lower Prices". * A 24-hour "Innovation in Education" telethon on NBC to raise money for school districts nationwide to buy new Wintel computer systems and Internet access through the Microsoft Network. | |
Linux World Domination: Not A Joke! WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Senator Fattecat (R-WA) is pushing for a ban on Finnish-produced software. His chief of staff, Ms. Dee Septive, has published a 200-page report revealing "the Helsinkian Underground", a Finnish world domination plot hatched in 1943. The Fattecat expose describes Finland's recent scheme involving free software. "Linux, originally called Freix (FREIX Retrieves Electronic Intelligence X), is a scheme to infiltrate the Western world with a 'free' operating system with nasty backdoors hidden within its obfuscated source code. IRC (Intelligence Relaying Code) is another Finnish innovation designed for spying purposes." Linus Torvalds plays a prominent role in the conspiracy. "That old story about Linus developing a Unix clone in his spare time while at University is a lark," the report states. "Indeed, the name Linux ("Line X") was coined because the kernel can extract any arbitrary line of intelligence from any document it has access to." | |
Brief History Of Linux (#15) Too many hyphens: Traf-O-Data and Micro-soft Bill Gates and Paul Allen attended an exclusive private school in Seattle. In 1968, after raising $3,000 from a yard sale, they gained access to a timeshare computer and became addicted. After depleting their money learning BASIC and playing Solitaire, they convinced a company to give them free computer time in exchange for reporting bugs -- ironically, an early form of Open Source development! The two then founded a small company called Traf-O-Data that collected and analyzed traffic counts for municipalities using a crude device based on the Intel "Pretanium" 8008 CPU. They had some success at first, but ran into problems when they were unable to deliver their much hyped next-generation device called "TrafficX". An engineer is quoted as saying that "Traf-O-Data is the local leader in vaporware", the first documented usage of the term that has come to be synonymous with Bill Gates. Soon thereafter, the two developed their own BASIC interpreter, and sold it to MITS for their new Altair computer. April 4, 1975 is the fateful day that Micro-soft was founded in Albuquerque, NM as a language vendor. | |
Brief History Of Linux (#23) Linus Torvalds certainly wasn't the only person to create their own operating system from scratch. Other people working from their leaky basements did create their own systems and now they are sick that they didn't become an Alpha Geek like Torvalds or a Beta Geek like Alan Cox. Linus had one advantage not many else did: Internet access. The world was full of half-implemented-Unix-kernels at the time, but they were sitting isolated on some hacker's hard drive, destined to be destroyed by a hard drive crash. Thankfully that never happened to Linux, mostly because everyone with Net access could download a copy instead of paying shipping charges to receive the code on a huge stack of unreliable floppy disks. Indeed, buried deep within a landfill in Lansing, Michigan sits a stack of still-readable 5-1/4 floppies containing the only known copy of "Windows Killer", a fully functional Unix kernel so elegant, so efficient, so easy-to-use that Ken Thompson himself would be jealous of its design. Unfortunately the author's mother threw out the stack of floppies in a bout of spring cleaning. The 14 year old author's talents were lost forever as his parents sent him to Law School. | |
The Linux House 1.01 Mr. Billy O'Nair knows how to build a house. The 24 year old retired dotcom billionaire has constructed the "Linux House 1.01", a bachelor pad built in the shape of Tux Penguin. This geek haven features a 256 foot long computer room, along with other smaller, lesser important rooms (kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, etc.). Explained O'Nair, "Why do architects waste a bunch of space on formal living rooms, family rooms, dining rooms, closets, foyers, and hallways that are rarely used? In my 'Linux House', the majority of square footage is devoted to the two rooms that I myself use the most: a computer room and a procrastination room." ...The Linux House features a LAN (Liquor Acquisition Network) that delivers alcohol or caffeinated beverages to any room in the house by way of pipes that run through the ceiling. 'PANIC' buttons scattered throughout the house activate the RAM System (Random Access Munchies), in which candy bars and other snacks are immediately delivered by FPM (Fast Pretzel Mode) and EDO (Extended Delicacy Output) pneumatic tubes. | |
Why not have an old-fashioned Christmas for your family this year? Just picture the scene in your living room on Christmas morning as your children open their old-fashioned presents. Your 11-year-old son: "What the heck is this?" You: "A spinning top! You spin it around, and then eventually it falls down. What fun! Ha, ha!" Son: "Is this a joke? Jason Thompson's parents got him a computer with two disk drives and 128 kilobytes of random-access memory, and I get this cretin TOP?" Your 8-year-old daughter: "You think that's bad? Look at this." You: "It's figgy pudding! What a treat!" Daughter: "It looks like goat barf." -- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts" | |
<Deek> nopcode: No, it isn't. Win32 lacks the equivalent of fork(). <Knghtbrd> Deek: windoze is not meant for people who should have access to sharp objects, hence no fork() <Knghtbrd> instead, you must rely on spoon() | |
<|Rain|> Knghtbrd: let me give you access to the zone files <Knghtbrd> oh gods - you do realize I have never played with bind right? <|Rain|> uhoh :) | |
The City of Palo Alto, in its official description of parking lot standards, specifies the grade of wheelchair access ramps in terms of centimeters of rise per foot of run. A compromise, I imagine... | |
/* * Oops. The kernel tried to access some bad page. We'll have to * terminate things with extreme prejudice. */ die_if_kernel("Oops", regs, error_code); -- From linux/arch/i386/mm/fault.c | |
Even more amazing was the realization that God has Internet access. I wonder if He has a full newsfeed? -- Matt Welsh | |
> Yeah, Linus is in the US. > > His source trees are in Finland. OK, someone give him access -fast- ...... ;-) -- babydr@nwrain.net, because of problems with the kernel | |
We knew from experience that the essence of communal computing, as supplied by remote-access, time-shared machines, is not just to type programs into a terminal instead of a keypunch, but to encourage close communication. -- Dennis Ritchie |