Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
Although it is still a truism in industry that "no one was ever fired for buying IBM," Bill O'Neil, the chief technology officer at Drexel Burnham Lambert, says he knows for a fact that someone has been fired for just that reason. He knows it because he fired the guy. "He made a bad decision, and what it came down to was, 'Well, I bought it because I figured it was safe to buy IBM,'" Mr. O'Neil says. "I said, 'No. Wrong. Game over. Next contestant, please.'" -- The Wall Street Journal, December 6, 1989 | |
"Paul Lynde to block..." -- a contestant on "Hollywood Squares" | |
As Easy As /usr/src/linux Wiping the sweat from his brow, the contestant diligently continues to recite, "'i' equals 'NR' underscore 'TASKS' semicolon newline 'p' equals ampersand 'task' bracket 'NR' underscore 'TASKS' close-bracket semicolon newline while parens minus minus 'i' parens brace if parens star minus..." Bzzzt! One of the judges says, "You missed an exclamation point. Ten point penalty for that error." The contestant realizes it's all over. He had spent 500 hours memorizing the source code to the Linux 0.01 kernel and then blew it all by forgetting one stupid ASCII character in sched.c. Welcome to the First Annual Linux Kernel Memorization Contest in New Haven, Connecticut, where the stakes are high and the frustration is simply unbearable. Linuxer longhairs from all over the globe have descended on the Offramp Motel to show off their memorization skills in front of a crowd of... dozens. "Those math freaks can memorize PI and other irrational constants all they want. I'll stick with the Linux 0.01 kernel source code thank you very much," said Bob Notmyrealname, the organizer of the event. % |