Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
Build a system that even a fool can use and only a fool will want to use it. | |
Fellow programmer, greetings! You are reading a letter which will bring you luck and good fortune. Just mail (or UUCP) ten copies of this letter to ten of your friends. Before you make the copies, send a chip or other bit of hardware, and 100 lines of 'C' code to the first person on the list given at the bottom of this letter. Then delete their name and add yours to the bottom of the list. Don't break the chain! Make the copy within 48 hours. Gerald R. of San Diego failed to send out his ten copies and woke the next morning to find his job description changed to "COBOL programmer." Fred A. of New York sent out his ten copies and within a month had enough hardware and software to build a Cray dedicated to playing Zork. Martha H. of Chicago laughed at this letter and broke the chain. Shortly thereafter, a fire broke out in her terminal and she now spends her days writing documentation for IBM PC's. Don't break the chain! Send out your ten copies today! For example, if \thinmskip = 3mu, this makes \thickmskip = 6mu. But if you also want to use \skip12 for horizontal glue, whether in math mode or not, the amount of skipping will be in points (e.g., 6pt). The rule is that glue in math mode varies with the size only when it is an \mskip; when moving between an mskip and ordinary skip, the conversion factor 1mu=1pt is always used. The meaning of '\mskip\skip12' and '\baselineskip=\the\thickmskip' should be clear. -- Donald Knuth, TeX 82 -- Comparison with TeX80 | |
It is a very humbling experience to make a multimillion-dollar mistake, but it is also very memorable. I vividly recall the night we decided how to organize the actual writing of external specifications for OS/360. The manager of architecture, the manager of control program implementation, and I were threshing out the plan, schedule, and division of responsibilities. The architecture manager had 10 good men. He asserted that they could write the specifications and do it right. It would take ten months, three more than the schedule allowed. The control program manager had 150 men. He asserted that they could prepare the specifications, with the architecture team coordinating; it would be well-done and practical, and he could do it on schedule. Furthermore, if the architecture team did it, his 150 men would sit twiddling their thumbs for ten months. To this the architecture manager responded that if I gave the control program team the responsibility, the result would not in fact be on time, but would also be three months late, and of much lower quality. I did, and it was. He was right on both counts. Moreover, the lack of conceptual integrity made the system far more costly to build and change, and I would estimate that it added a year to debugging time. -- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month" | |
It took 300 years to build and by the time it was 10% built, everyone knew it would be a total disaster. But by then the investment was so big they felt compelled to go on. Since its completion, it has cost a fortune to maintain and is still in danger of collapsing. There are at present no plans to replace it, since it was never really needed in the first place. I expect every installation has its own pet software which is analogous to the above. -- K.E. Iverson, on the Leaning Tower of Pisa | |
The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it. | |
The work [of software development] is becoming far easier (i.e. the tools we're using work at a higher level, more removed from machine, peripheral and operating system imperatives) than it was twenty years ago, and because of this, knowledge of the internals of a system may become less accessible. We may be able to dig deeper holes, but unless we know how to build taller ladders, we had best hope that it does not rain much. -- Paul Licker | |
To say that UNIX is doomed is pretty rabid, OS/2 will certainly play a role, but you don't build a hundred million instructions per second multiprocessor micro and then try to run it on OS/2. I mean, get serious. -- William Zachmann, International Data Corp | |
Trying to be happy is like trying to build a machine for which the only specification is that it should run noiselessly. | |
Unix Express: All passenger bring a piece of the aeroplane and a box of tools with them to the airport. They gather on the tarmac, arguing constantly about what kind of plane they want to build and how to put it together. Eventually, the passengers split into groups and build several different aircraft, but give them all the same name. Some passengers actually reach their destinations. All passengers believe they got there. | |
Digital computers are themselves more complex than most things people build: They hyave very large numbers of states. This makes conceiving, describing, and testing them hard. Software systems have orders-of-magnitude more states than computers do. - Fred Brooks, Jr. | |
It is a very humbling experience to make a multimillion-dollar mistake, but it is also very memorable. I vividly recall the night we decided how to organize the actual writing of external specifications for OS/360. The manager of architecture, the manager of control program implementation, and I were threshing out the plan, schedule, and division of responsibilities. The architecture manager had 10 good men. He asserted that they could write the specifications and do it right. It would take ten months, three more than the schedule allowed. The control program manager had 150 men. He asserted that they could prepare the specifications, with the architecture team coordinating; it would be well-done and practical, and he could do it on schedule. Futhermore, if the architecture team did it, his 150 men would sit twiddling their thumbs for ten months. To this the architecture manager responded that if I gave the control program team the responsibility, the result would not in fact be on time, but would also be three months late, and of much lower quality. I did, and it was. He was right on both counts. Moreover, the lack of conceptual integrity made the system far more costly to build and change, and I would estimate that it added a year to debugging time. - Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month" | |
"Today's robots are very primitive, capable of understanding only a few simple instructions such as 'go left', 'go right', and 'build car'." --John Sladek | |
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 | |
Our congratulations go to a Burlington Vermont civilian employee of the local Army National Guard base. He recently received a substational cash award from our government for inventing a device for optical scanning. His device reportedly will save the government more than $6 million a year by replacing a more expensive helicopter maintenance tool with his own, home-made, hand-held model. Not suprisingly, we also have a couple of money-saving ideas that we submit to the Pentagon free of charge: (a) Don't kill anybody. (b) Don't build things that do. (c) And don't pay other people to kill anybody. We expect annual savings to be in the billions. -- Sojourners | |
Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river. -- Nikita Khrushchev | |
What does it take for Americans to do great things; to go to the moon, to win wars, to dig canals linking oceans, to build railroads across a continent? In independent thought about this question, Neil Armstrong and I concluded that it takes a coincidence of four conditions, or in Neil's view, the simultaneous peaking of four of the many cycles of American life. First, a base of technology must exist from which to do the thing to be done. Second, a period of national uneasiness about America's place in the scheme of human activities must exist. Third, some catalytic event must occur that focuses the national attention upon the direction to proceed. Finally, an articulate and wise leader must sense these first three conditions and put forth with words and action the great thing to be accomplished. The motivation of young Americans to do what needs to be done flows from such a coincidence of conditions. ... The Thomas Jeffersons, The Teddy Roosevelts, The John Kennedys appear. We must begin to create the tools of leadership which they, and their young frontiersmen, will require to lead us onward and upward. -- Dr. Harrison H. Schmidt | |
Shaw's Principle: Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it. | |
It has long been known that birds will occasionally build nests in the manes of horses. The only known solution to this problem is to sprinkle baker's yeast in the mane, for, as we all know, yeast is yeast and nest is nest, and never the mane shall tweet. | |
The best case: Get salary from America, build a house in England, live with a Japanese wife, and eat Chinese food. Pretty good case: Get salary from England, build a house in America, live with a Chinese wife, and eat Japanese food. The worst case: Get salary from China, build a house in Japan, live with a British wife, and eat American food. --Bungei Shunju, a popular Japanese magazine | |
An architect's first work is apt to be spare and clean. He knows he doesn't know what he's doing, so he does it carefully and with great restraint. As he designs the first work, frill after frill and embellishment after embellishment occur to him. These get stored away to be used "next time." Sooner or later the first system is finished, and the architect, with firm confidence and a demonstrated mastery of that class of systems, is ready to build a second system. This second is the most dangerous system a man ever designs. When he does his third and later ones, his prior experiences will confirm each other as to the general characteristics of such systems, and their differences will identify those parts of his experience that are particular and not generalizable. The general tendency is to over-design the second system, using all the ideas and frills that were cautiously sidetracked on the first one. The result, as Ovid says, is a "big pile." -- Frederick Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month" | |
Here is a simple experiment that will teach you an important electrical lesson: On a cool, dry day, scuff your feet along a carpet, then reach your hand into a friend's mouth and touch one of his dental fillings. Did you notice how your friend twitched violently and cried out in pain? This teaches us that electricity can be a very powerful force, but we must never use it to hurt others unless we need to learn an important electrical lesson. It also teaches us how an electrical circuit works. When you scuffed your feet, you picked up batches of "electrons", which are very small objects that carpet manufacturers weave into carpets so they will attract dirt. The electrons travel through your bloodstream and collect in your finger, where they form a spark that leaps to your friend's filling, then travels down to his feet and back into the carpet, thus completing the circuit. Amazing Electronic Fact: If you scuffed your feet long enough without touching anything, you would build up so many electrons that your finger would explode! But this is nothing to worry about unless you have carpeting. -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?" | |
I myself have dreamed up a structure intermediate between Dyson spheres and planets. Build a ring 93 million miles in radius -- one Earth orbit -- around the sun. If we have the mass of Jupiter to work with, and if we make it a thousand miles wide, we get a thickness of about a thousand feet for the base. And it has advantages. The Ringworld will be much sturdier than a Dyson sphere. We can spin it on its axis for gravity. A rotation speed of 770 m/s will give us a gravity of one Earth normal. We wouldn't even need to roof it over. Place walls one thousand miles high at each edge, facing the sun. Very little air will leak over the edges. Lord knows the thing is roomy enough. With three million times the surface area of the Earth, it will be some time before anyone complains of the crowding. -- Larry Niven, "Ringworld" | |
Scientists are people who build the Brooklyn Bridge and then buy it. -- William Buckley | |
The goal of science is to build better mousetraps. The goal of nature is to build better mice. | |
With all the fancy scientists in the world, why can't they just once build a nuclear balm? | |
After a while you learn the subtle difference Between holding a hand and chaining a soul, And you learn that love doesn't mean security, And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts And presents aren't promises And you begin to accept your defeats With your head up and your eyes open, With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child, And you learn to build all your roads On today because tomorrow's ground Is too uncertain. And futures have A way of falling down in midflight, After a while you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much. So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting For someone to bring you flowers. And you learn that you really can endure... That you really are strong, And you really do have worth And you learn and learn With every goodbye you learn. -- Veronic Shoffstall, "Comes the Dawn" | |
...and report cards I was always afraid to show Mama'd come to school and as I'd sit there softly cryin' Teacher'd say he's just not tryin' Got a good head if he'd apply it but you know yourself it's always somewhere else I'd build me a castle with dragons and kings and I'd ride off with them As I stood by my window and looked out on those Brooklyn roads -- Neil Diamond, "Brooklyn Roads" | |
I knew Leo G. Carrol Was over a barrel When Tarantula took to the hills. ["Lick it!"] And I really got hot When I saw Jeanette Scott Fight a triffid that spits poison and kills. Science fiction, double feature Doctor X will build a creature. See androids fighting Brad and Janet Anne Francis stars in Forbidden Planet Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh At the late night, double feature, picture show. -- The Rocky Horror Picture Show | |
No one likes us. I don't know why. We may not be perfect, We give them money, But heaven knows we try. But are they grateful? But all around, No, they're spiteful, Even our old friends put us down. And they're hateful. Let's drop the big one, They don't respect us, And see what happens. So let's surprise them We'll drop the big one, And pulverize 'em. Asia's crowded, Europe's too old, Africa is far too hot, We'll save Australia. And Canada's too cold. Don't wanna hurt no kangaroos. And South America stole our name We'll build an All-American amusement Let's drop the big one, park there-- There'll be no one left to blame us. They got surfin', too! Boom! goes London, And Boom! Paree. More room for you, Oh, how peaceful it'll be! And more room for me, We'll set everybody free! And every city, You'll wear a Japanese kimono, babe; The whole world round, There'll be Italian shoes for me! Will just be another American town. They all hate us anyhow, So, let's drop the big one now. Let's drop the big one now! -- Randy Newman, "Drop the Big One" | |
To everything there is a season, a time for every pupose under heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; A time to plant, and a time to pluck what is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; A time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; A time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones; A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to gain, and a time to lose; A time to keep, and a time to throw away; A time to tear, and a time to sew; A time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; A time of war, and a time of peace. Ecclesiastes 3:1-9 | |
"Oh, he [a big dog] hunts with papa," she said. "He says Don Carlos [the dog] is good for almost every kind of game. He went duck hunting one time and did real well at it. Then Papa bought some ducks, not wild ducks but, you know, farm ducks. And it got Don Carlos all mixed up. Since the ducks were always around the yard with nobody shooting at them he knew he wasn't supposed to kill them, but he had to do something. So one morning last spring, when the ground was still soft, he took all the ducks and buried them." "What do you mean, buried them?" "Oh, he didn't hurt them. He dug little holes all over the yard and picked up the ducks in his mouth and put them in the holes. Then he covered them up with mud except for their heads. He did thirteen ducks that way and was digging a hole for another one when Tony found him. We talked about it for a long time. Papa said Don Carlos was afraid the ducks might run away, and since he didn't know how to build a cage he put them in holes. He's a smart dog." -- R. Bradford, "Red Sky At Morning" | |
What Did Santa Claus Bring You In 1999? (#1) LINUS TORVALDS: Santa didn't bring me anything, but Tim O'Reilly just gave me a large sum of money to publish my new book, "Linus Torvalds' Official Guide To Receiving Fame, Fortune, and Hot Babes By Producing Your Own Unix-Like Operating System In Only 10 Years". ORDINARY LINUX HACKER: I kept hinting to my friends and family that I wanted to build my own Beowulf Cluster. My grandmother got mixed up and gave me a copy of "Beowulf's Chocolate Cluster Cookbook". I like chocolate, but I would've preferred silicon. LINUX LONGHAIR: My friends sent me a two-year subscription to several Ziff-Davis publications, much to my dislike. I don't want to read Jesse Berst's rants against Linux, or John Dvorak's spiels about how great Windows 2000 is. Still, I suppose this isn't so bad. Ziff-Davis glossy paper makes an excellent lining for fireplaces. | |
New Linux Companies Hope To Get Rich Quick (#1) Adopt-A-Beowulf: the latest company to hop the Linux bandwagon as it tramples down Wall Street. Every geek dreams of owning their own Beowulf supercomputer. Very few people (except for dotcom billionnaires) can afford to build one, but the folks at Adopt-a-Beowulf can provide the next best thing: a virtual beowulf. For US$49.95, you can "adopt" your own 256-node Beowulf cluster. You won't own it, or even get to see it in person, but you will receive photos of the cluster, a monthly newsletter about its operation, and a limited shell account on it. The company hopes to branch out into other fields. Some slated products include Adopt-A-Penguin, Lease-A-Camel (for Perl mongers), and Adopt-A-Distro (in which your name will be used as the code-name for a beta release of a major Linux distribution or other Open Source project). | |
Brief History Of Linux (#10) The AnyQuack Computer One electronic machine, Colossus, was used by the British in World War II to decode Nazi transmissions. The code-breakers were quite successful in their mission, except for the tiny detail that nobody knew how to read German. They had decoded unreadable messages into... unreadable messages. Two years later in 1945, a group of professors and students at the Univ. of Pennsylvania were discussing computing theory. An argument ensued, in which one professor yelled, "Any quack can build an electronic computer! The real challenge is building one that doesn't crash every five minutes." One graduate student, J. Presper Eckert, Jr., responded, "I'm any quack! I'll take you up on that challenge. I'll build a device that can calculate 1,000 digits of pi in one hour... without crashing!" Several professors laughed; "Such high-speed calculations are beyond our level of technology." Eckert and his friends did build such a device. As a joke, he called the machine "AnyQuack", which eventually became ENIAC -- ENIAC's Not Intended As Crashware, the first known example of a self-referential acronym. | |
Brief History Of Linux (#26) On the surface, Transmeta was a secretive startup that hired Linus Torvalds in 1996 as their Alpha Geek to help develop some kind of microprocessor. Linus, everyone found out later, was actually hired as part of a low-budget yet high-yield publicity stunt. While other dotcoms were burning millions on glitzy marketing campaigns nobody remembers and Superbowl ads displayed while jocks went to the bathroom, Transmeta was spending only pocket change on marketing. Most of that pocket change went towards hosting the Transmeta website (the one that wasn't there yet) which, incidentally, contained more original content and received more visitors than the typical dotcom portal. Microsoft relies on vaporware and certain ahem stipends given to journalists in order to generate buzz and hype for new products, but Transmeta only needed Non-Disclosure Agreements and the Personality Cult of Linus to build up its buzz. When the secret was finally unveiled, the Slashdot crowd was all excited about low-power mobile processors and code-morphing algorithms -- for a couple days. Then everyone yawned and went back to playing Quake. It's still not entirely clear when Transmeta is actually supposed to start selling something. | |
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. | |
<tik-tok> Hi all, I'm having problems with my 2.2.19 kernel build I'm trying to create my ramdisk and I get the following error message "All your loopback devices are in use!" can anyone help? <phillips> All your loopback devices are belong to us! - Daniel Phillips on #kernelnewbies | |
<Overfiend> Don't come crying to me about your "30 minute compiles"!! I have to build X uphill both ways! In the snow! With bare feet! And we didn't have compilers! We had to translate the C code to mnemonics OURSELVES! <Overfiend> And I was 18 before we even had assemblers! | |
<Knghtbrd> Overfiend - BTW, after we've discovered X takes all of 1.4 GIGS to build, are you willing admit that X is bloatware? => <Overfiend> KB: there is a 16 1/2 minute gap in my answer <acf> knghtbrd: evidence exists that X is only the *2nd* worst windowing system ;) | |
<BenC> -include ../../debian/el33t.h <BenC> sendmail build...strange header name :) <isildur> hahaha * netgod laffs <netgod> BenC: can u tell i used to maintain sendmail? :P <BenC> heh :) | |
<knghtbrd> Solver_: add users who should be messing with sound to group audio.. Make sure the devices are all group audio (ls -l /dev/dsp will give you the fastest indication if it's probably set right) and build a kernel with sound support for your card <knghtbrd> OR optionally install alsa source and build modules for that with make-kpkg <knghtbrd> OR (not recommended) get and install evil OSS/Linux evil non-free evil binary only evil drivers---but those are evil. And did I mention that it's not recommended? | |
<doogie> Culus: my bug with openssh appears to be fixed in 2.5.2, but master runs 2.3.0 <Culus> Don't even start <doogie> I just did. <Culus> You guys are going to drive me to build a huge giant robot and destroy all of texas, aren't you? | |
A priest asked: What is Fate, Master? And the Master answered: It is that which gives a beast of burden its reason for existence. It is that which men in former times had to bear upon their backs. It is that which has caused nations to build byways from City to City upon which carts and coaches pass, and alongside which inns have come to be built to stave off Hunger, Thirst and Weariness. And that is Fate? said the priest. Fate... I thought you said Freight, responded the Master. That's all right, said the priest. I wanted to know what Freight was too. -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit" | |
> NE-2000 clone. Pentium optimizing gcc (pentium gcc pl8 I think). ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Build a kernel with the proper gcc. Reports with a non standard compiler are useless. -- Alan Cox | |
> I thing you're missing the capability of Makefiles. It takes several _hours_ to do `make' a second time on my machine with the latest glibc sources (and no files are recompiled a second time). I think I'll remove `build' after changing one file if I want to recompile it. -- Juan Cespedes <cespedes@debian.org> | |
Several years ago, some smart businessmen had an idea: Why not build a big store where a do-it-yourselfer could get everything he needed at reasonable prices? Then they decided, nah, the hell with that, let's build a home center. And before long home centers were springing up like crabgrass all over the United States. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw" | |
Some people have a great ambition: to build something that will last, at least until they've finished building it. | |
They are fools that think that wealth or women or strong drink or even drugs can buy the most in effort out of the soul of a man. These things offer pale pleasures compared to that which is greatest of them all, that task which demands from him more than his utmost strength, that absorbs him, bone and sinew and brain and hope and fear and dreams -- and still calls for more. They are fools that think otherwise. No great effort was ever bought. No painting, no music, no poem, no cathedral in stone, no church, no state was ever raised into being for payment of any kind. No parthenon, no Thermopylae was ever built or fought for pay or glory; no Bukhara sacked, or China ground beneath Mongol heel, for loot or power alone. The payment for doing these things was itself the doing of them. To wield onself -- to use oneself as a tool in one's own hand -- and so to make or break that which no one else can build or ruin -- THAT is the greatest pleasure known to man! To one who has felt the chisel in his hand and set free the angel prisoned in the marble block, or to one who has felt sword in hand and set homeless the soul that a moment before lived in the body of his mortal enemy -- to those both come alike the taste of that rare food spread only for demons or for gods." -- Gordon R. Dickson, "Soldier Ask Not" | |
To save a single life is better than to build a seven story pagoda. | |
XI: If the Earth could be made to rotate twice as fast, managers would get twice as much done. If the Earth could be made to rotate twenty times as fast, everyone else would get twice as much done since all the managers would fly off. XII: It costs a lot to build bad products. XIII: There are many highly successful businesses in the United States. There are also many highly paid executives. The policy is not to intermingle the two. XIV: After the year 2015, there will be no airplane crashes. There will be no takeoffs either, because electronics will occupy 100 percent of every airplane's weight. XV: The last 10 percent of performance generates one-third of the cost and two-thirds of the problems. -- Norman Augustine | |
: And it goes against the grain of building small tools. Innocent, Your Honor. Perl users build small tools all day long. -- Larry Wall in <1992Aug26.184221.29627@netlabs.com> | |
Neurotics build castles in the sky, Psychotics live in them, And psychiatrists collect the rent. |