Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
Art is either plagiarism or revolution. -- Paul Gauguin | |
The Least Successful Collector Betsy Baker played a central role in the history of collecting. She was employed as a servant in the house of John Warburton (1682-1759) who had amassed a fine collection of 58 first edition plays, including most of the works of Shakespeare. One day Warburton returned home to find 55 of them charred beyond legibility. Betsy had either burned them or used them as pie bottoms. The remaining three folios are now in the British Museum. The only comparable literary figure was the maid who in 1835 burned the manuscript of the first volume of Thomas Carlyle's "The Hisory of the French Revolution", thinking it was wastepaper. -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures" | |
IBM Advanced Systems Group -- a bunch of mindless jerks, who'll be first against the wall when the revolution comes... -- with regrets to D. Adams | |
"Come on over here, baby, I want to do a thing with you." - A Cop, arresting a non-groovy person after the revolution, Firesign Theater | |
The Middle East is certainly the nexus of turmoil for a long time to come -- with shifting players, but the same game: upheaval. I think we will be confronting militant Islam -- particularly fallout from the Iranian revolution -- and religion will once more, as it has in our own more distant past -- play a role at least as standard-bearer in death and mayhem. - Bobby R. Inman, Admiral, USN, Retired, former director of Naval Intelligence, vice director of the DIA, former director of the NSA, deputy director of Central Intelligence, former chairman and CEO of MCC. | |
I think for the most part that the readership here uses the c-word in a similar fashion. I don't think anybody really believes in a new, revolution- ary literature --- I think they use `cyberpunk' as a term of convenience to discuss the common stylistic elements in a small subset of recent sf books. -- Jeff G. Bone | |
History has much to say on following the proper procedures. From a history of the Mexican revolution: "Hidalgo was later defeated at Guadalajara. The rebel army was captured on its way through the mountains. All were courtmartialed and shot, except Hidalgo, because he was a priest. He was handed over to the bishop of Durango who excommunicated him and returned him to the army where he was then executed." | |
The revolution will not be televised. | |
When the revolution comes, count your change. | |
Novinson's Revolutionary Discovery: When comes the revolution, things will be different -- not better, just different. | |
Revolution, n.: A form of government abroad. | |
Revolution, n.: In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment. -- Ambrose Bierce | |
In 1967, the Soviet Government minted a beautiful silver ruble with Lenin in a very familiar pose -- arms raised above him, leading the country to revolution. But, it was clear to everybody, that if you looked at it from behind, it was clear that Lenin was pointing to 11:00, when the Vodka shops opened, and was actually saying, "Comrades, forward to the Vodka shops. It became fashionable, when one wanted to have a drink, to take out the ruble and say, "Oh my goodness, Comrades, Lenin tells me we should go. | |
Q: How many Marxists does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: None: The light bulb contains the seeds of its own revolution. | |
So as your consumer electronics adviser, I am advising you to donate your current VCR to a grate resident, who will laugh sardonically and hurl it into a dumpster. Then I want you to go out and purchase a vast array of 8-millimeter video equipment. ... OK! Got everything? Well, *too bad, sucker*, because while you were gone the electronics industry came up with an even newer format that makes your 8-millimeter VCR look as technologically advanced as toenail dirt. This format is called "3.5 hectare" and it will not be made available until it is outmoded, sometime early next week, by a format called "Elroy", so *order yours now*. -- Dave Barry, "No Surrender in the Electronics Revolution" | |
The Encyclopaedia Galactica defines a robot as a mechanical apparatus designed to do the work of a man. The marketing division of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines a robot as 'Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun To Be With'. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as 'a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes', with a footnote to effect that the editors would welcome applications from anyone interested in taking over the post of robotics correspondent. Curiously enough, an edition of the Encyclopaedia Galactica that had the good fortune to fall through a time warp from a thousand years in the future defined the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as 'a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came'. -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" | |
During the American Revolution, a Britisher tried to raid a farm. He stumbled across a rock on the ground and fell, whereupon an agressive Rhode Island Red hopped on top. Seeing this, the farmer commented, "Chicken catch a Tory!" | |
Has anyone realized that the purpose of the fortune cookie program is to defuse project tensions? When did you ever see a cheerful cookie, a non-cynical, or even an informative cookie? Perhaps inadvertently, we have a channel for our aggressions. This still begs the question of whether the cookie releases the pressure or only serves to blunt the warning signs. Long live the revolution! Have a nice day. | |
The Information Revolution will be fought on the command line. -- From a Slashdot.org post | |
Open Source Beer Revolution Yesterday, Red Hat introduced an 'open source' beer called Red Brew. The recipes for making the beer are available for free over the Net, and microbrewery kits are available at low cost from Red Hat. Says a Red Hat spokesman, "With the proliferation of free (open source) software, it was only a matter of time before open source beer became reality. After all, the only thing hackers like more than free software is free beer!" Following the Red Hat annoucement, other companies are racing to launch their own beer 'distribution'. Caldera is developing an OpenBrew beer. Meanwhile, Patrick Volkerding is working on a SlackBeer distribution, and DebianBrew is expected soon. Traditional breweries and beer distributors are not thrilled about open source beer. "This is ludicrous! People want beer that comes from time-tested, secret recipes -- not beer from recipes invented overnight! Open source is a fad," a spokesman for Buddwizzer Beer, Inc. said. In addition, other beverage distributors are nervous. "First open source beer, and soon open source soft drinks! Before we know it, we'll have RedCoke and SlackPepsi! This open source plague must be stopped before it eats into our bottom line! Don't quote me on that last sentence," the CEO of Croak-a-Cola said. | |
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." | |
Attack of the Tuxissa Virus What started out as a prank posting to comp.os.linux.advocacy yesterday has turned into one of the most significant viruses in computing history. The creator of the virus, who goes by the moniker "Anonymous Longhair", modified the Melissa virus to install Linux on infected machines. "It's a work of art," one Linux advocate told Humorix after he looked through the Tuxissa virus source code. "This virus goes well beyond the feeble troublemaking of Melissa. It actually configures a UMSDOS partition on the user's hard drive and then downloads and installs a stripped-down version of Slackware Linux." The email message that the virus is attached to has the subject "Important Message About Windows Security". The text of the body says, "I want to let you know about some security problems I've uncovered in Windows 95/98/NT, Office 95/97, and Outlook. It's critically important that you protect your system against these attacks. Visit these sites for more information..." The rest of the message contains 42 links to sites about Linux and free software. Details on how the virus started are a bit sketchy. The "Anonymous Longhair" who created it only posted it to Usenet as an early April Fool's gag, demonstrating how easy it would be to mount a "Linux revolution". | |
Top Ten Differences If Thomas Jefferson Behaved Like Eric Raymond During the American Revolution 2. The preamble to the Constitution would say, "We the pragmatists of the Open States of America, in order to foster the production of higher quality tea and tobacco..." 5. The phrases "the right to bear arms shall not be infringed" and "Geeks With Guns" would be plastered throughout the O.S.A. Constitution. 9. Instead of Congress, the "Open States Institute" board of directors would make all of the national legislative decisions. 10. Raymond, New Hampshire would be the home of the O.S.A. capitol. | |
Will Silicon Valley Become A Ghost Town? Back in the 80s, businessmen hoped that computers would usher in a paperless office. Now in the 00s, businessmen are hoping that paper will usher in a computerless office. "We've lost more productivity this last decade to shoddy software," explained Mr. Lou Dight, the author of the bestselling book, "The Dotless Revolution". "By getting rid of computers and their infernal crashes, bluescreens, and worst of all, Solitaire, the US gross domestic product will soar by 20% over the next decade. It's time to banish Microsoft crapware from our corporate offices." Lou Dight is the champion of a new trend in corporate America towards the return of pen-and-paper, solar calculators, old IBM typewriters, and even slide rules. If "dotcom" was the buzzword of the 90s, "dotless" is the buzzword of the 21st Century. | |
I was born in a Hostess Cupcake factory before the sexual revolution! |