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Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) by Linux fortune

For myself, I can only say that I am astonished and somewhat terrified at
the results of this evening's experiments.  Astonished at the wonderful
power you have developed, and terrified at the thought that so much hideous
and bad music may be put on record forever.
                -- Sir Arthur Sullivan, message to Edison, 1888
God save us from a bad neighbor and a beginner on the fiddle.
I've got a very bad feeling about this.
                -- Han Solo
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"
There are two jazz musicians who are great buddies.  They hang out and play
together for years, virtually inseparable.  Unfortunately, one of them is
struck by a truck and killed.  About a week later his friend wakes up in
the middle of the night with a start because he can feel a presence in the
room.  He calls out, "Who's there?  Who's there?  What's going on?"
        "It's me -- Bob," replies a faraway voice.
        Excitedly he sits up in bed.  "Bob!  Bob!  Is that you?  Where are
you?"
        "Well," says the voice, "I'm in heaven now."
        "Heaven!  You're in heaven!  That's wonderful!  What's it like?"
        "It's great, man.  I gotta tell you, I'm jamming up here every day.
I'm playing with Bird, and 'Trane, and Count Basie drops in all the time!
Man it is smokin'!"
        "Oh, wow!" says his friend. "That sounds fantastic, tell me more,
tell me more!"
        "Let me put it this way," continues the voice.  "There's good news
and bad news.  The good news is that these guys are in top form.  I mean
I have *never* heard them sound better.  They are *wailing* up here."
        "The bad news is that God has this girlfriend that sings..."
We're constantly being bombarded by insulting and humiliating music, which
people are making for you the way they make those Wonder Bread products.
Just as food can be bad for your system, music can be bad for your spirtual
and emotional feelings.  It might taste good or clever, but in the long run,
it's not going to do anything for you.
                -- Bob Dylan, "LA Times", September 5, 1984
"If you don't want your dog to have bad breath, do what I do:  Pour a little
Lavoris in the toilet."
                -- Jay Leno
/*
* 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)                                  
"MSDOS didn't get as bad as it is overnight -- it took over ten years
of careful development."
(By dmeggins@aix1.uottawa.ca)
Sigh.  I like to think it's just the Linux people who want to be on
the "leading edge" so bad they walk right off the precipice.
(Craig E. Groeschel)
"...Unix, MS-DOS, and Windows NT (also known as the Good, the Bad, and
the Ugly)."
(By Matt Welsh)
bad ether in the cables
Your Flux Capacitor has gone bad.
Bad user karma.
Bad cafeteria food landed all the sysadmins in the hospital.
error: one bad user found in front of screen
Awash with unfocused desire, Everett twisted the lobe of his one remaining
ear and felt the presence of somebody else behind him, which caused terror
to push through his nervous system like a flash flood roaring down the
mid-fork of the Feather River before the completion of the Oroville Dam
in 1959.
                -- Grand Panjandrum's Special Award, 1984 Bulwer-Lytton
                   bad fiction contest.
Delores breezed along the surface of her life like a flat stone forever
skipping along smooth water, rippling reality sporadically but oblivious
to it consistently, until she finally lost momentum, sank, and due to an
overdose of flouride as a child which caused her to suffer from chronic
apathy, doomed herself to lie forever on the floor of her life as useless
as an appendix and as lonely as a five-hundred pound barbell in a
steroid-free fitness center.
                -- Winning sentence, 1990 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
It is right that he too should have his little chronicle, his memories,
his reason, and be able to recognize the good in the bad, the bad in the
worst, and so grow gently old all down the unchanging days and die one
day like any other day, only shorter.
                -- Samuel Beckett, "Malone Dies"
Like an expensive sports car, fine-tuned and well-built, Portia was sleek,
shapely, and gorgeous, her red jumpsuit moulding her body, which was as warm
as seatcovers in July, her hair as dark as new tires, her eyes flashing like
bright hubcaps, and her lips as dewy as the beads of fresh rain on the hood;
she was a woman driven -- fueled by a single accelerant -- and she needed a
man, a man who wouldn't shift from his views, a man to steer her along the
right road: a man like Alf Romeo.
                -- Rachel Sheeley, winner

The hair ball blocking the drain of the shower reminded Laura she would never
see her little dog Pritzi again.
                -- Claudia Fields, runner-up

It could have been an organically based disturbance of the brain -- perhaps a
tumor or a metabolic deficiency -- but after a thorough neurological exam it
was determined that Byron was simply a jerk.
                -- Jeff Jahnke, runner-up

Winners in the 7th Annual Bulwer-Lytton Bad Writing Contest.  The contest is
named after the author of the immortal lines:  "It was a dark and stormy
night."  The object of the contest is to write the opening sentence of the
worst possible novel.
Sheriff Chameleotoptor sighed with an air of weary sadness, and then
turned to Doppelgutt and said 'The Senator must really have been on a
bender this time -- he left a party in Cleveland, Ohio, at 11:30 last
night, and they found his car this morning in the smokestack of a British
aircraft carrier in the Formosa Straits.'
                -- Grand Panjandrum's Special Award, 1985 Bulwer-Lytton
                   bad fiction contest.
The bone-chilling scream split the warm summer night in two, the first
half being before the scream when it was fairly balmy and calm and
pleasant, the second half still balmy and quite pleasant for those who
hadn't heard the scream at all, but not calm or balmy or even very nice
for those who did hear the scream, discounting the little period of time
during the actual scream itself when your ears might have been hearing it
but your brain wasn't reacting yet to let you know.
                -- Winning sentence, 1986 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
The Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest is held ever year at San Jose State
Univ.  by Professor Scott Rice.  It is held in memory of Edward George
Earle Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), a rather prolific and popular (in his
time) novelist.  He is best known today for having written "The Last
Days of Pompeii."

Whenever Snoopy starts typing his novel from the top of his doghouse,
beginning "It was a dark and stormy night..." he is borrowing from Lord
Bulwer-Lytton.  This was the line that opened his novel, "Paul Clifford,"
written in 1830.  The full line reveals why it is so bad:

        It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents -- except
        at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of
        wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene
        lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty
        flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
The camel died quite suddenly on the second day, and Selena fretted
sullenly and, buffing her already impeccable nails -- not for the first
time since the journey begain -- pondered snidely if this would dissolve
into a vignette of minor inconveniences like all the other holidays spent
with Basil.
                -- Winning sentence, 1983 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
The countdown had stalled at 'T' minus 69 seconds when Desiree, the first
female ape to go up in space, winked at me slyly and pouted her thick,
rubbery lips unmistakably -- the first of many such advances during what
would prove to be the longest, and most memorable, space voyage of my
career.
                -- Winning sentence, 1985 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
The lovely woman-child Kaa was mercilessly chained to the cruel post of
the warrior-chief Beast, with his barbarian tribe now stacking wood at
her nubile feet, when the strong clear voice of the poetic and heroic
Handsomas roared, 'Flick your Bic, crisp that chick, and you'll feel my
steel through your last meal!'
                -- Winning sentence, 1984 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
The notes blatted skyward as they rose over the Canada geese, feathered
rumps mooning the day, webbed appendages frantically pedaling unseen
bicycles in their search for sustenance, driven by cruel Nature's maxim,
'Ya wanna eat, ya gotta work,' and at last I knew Pittsburgh.
                -- Winning sentence, 1987 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
We were young and our happiness dazzled us with its strength.  But there was
also a terrible betrayal that lay within me like a Merle Haggard song at a
French restaurant. [...]
        I could not tell the girl about the woman of the tollway, of her milk
white BMW and her Jordache smile.  There had been a fight.  I had punched her
boyfriend, who fought the mechanical bulls.  Everyone told him, "You ride the
bull, senor.  You do not fight it."  But he was lean and tough like a bad
rib-eye and he fought the bull.  And then he fought me.  And when we finished
there were no winners, just men doing what men must do. [...]
        "Stop the car," the girl said.
        There was a look of terrible sadness in her eyes.  She knew about the
woman of the tollway.  I knew not how.  I started to speak, but she raised an
arm and spoke with a quiet and peace I will never forget.
        "I do not ask for whom's the tollway belle," she said, "the tollway
belle's for thee."
        The next morning our youth was a memory, and our happiness was a lie.
Life is like a bad margarita with good tequila, I thought as I poured whiskey
onto my granola and faced a new day.
                -- Peter Applebome, International Imitation Hemingway
                   Competition
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
But this has taken us far afield from interface, which is not a bad
place to be, since I particularly want to move ahead to the kludge.
Why do people have so much trouble understanding the kludge?  What
is a kludge, after all, but not enough K's, not enough ROM's, not
enough RAM's, poor quality interface and too few bytes to go around?
Have I explained yet about the bytes?
VMS-F-PDGERS, pudding between the ears
Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and
when it is bad, it is better than nothing.
                -- Dick Brandon
Not only is UNIX dead, it's starting to smell really bad.
                -- Rob Pike
"The bad reputation UNIX has gotten is totally undeserved, laid on by people
who don't understand, who have not gotten in there and tried anything."
                -- Jim Joyce, owner of Jim Joyce's UNIX Bookstore
        The FIELD GUIDE to NORTH AMERICAN MALES

SPECIES:        Cranial Males
SUBSPECIES:        The Hacker (homo computatis)
Courtship & Mating:
        Due to extreme deprivation, HOMO COMPUTATIS maintains a near perpetual
        state of sexual readiness.  Courtship behavior alternates between
        awkward shyness and abrupt advances.  When he finally mates, he
        chooses a female engineer with an unblinking stare, a tight mouth, and
        a complete collection of Campbell's soup-can recipes.
Track:
        Trash cans full of pale green and white perforated paper and old
        copies of the Allen-Bradley catalog.
Comments:
        Extremely fond of bad puns and jokes that need long explanations.
                                UNIX Trix

For those of you in the reseller business, here is a helpful tip that will
save your support staff a few hours of precious time.  Before you send your
next machine out to an untrained client, change the permissions on /etc/passwd
to 666 and make sure there is a copy somewhere on the disk.  Now when they
forget the root password, you can easily login as an ordinary user and correct
the damage.  Having a bootable tape (for larger machines) is not a bad idea
either.  If you need some help, give us a call.
                -- CommUNIXque 1:1, ASCAR Business Systems
[We] use bad software and bad machines for the wrong things.
                -- R.W. Hamming
X windows:
        We will dump no core before its time.
        One good crash deserves another.
        A bad idea whose time has come.  And gone.
        We make excuses.
        It didn't even look good on paper.
        You laugh now, but you'll be laughing harder later!
        A new concept in abuser interfaces.
        How can something get so bad, so quickly?
        It could happen to you.
        The art of incompetence.
        You have nothing to lose but your lunch.
        When uselessness just isn't enough.
        More than a mere hindrance.  It's a whole new barrier!
        When you can't afford to be right.
        And you thought we couldn't make it worse.

If it works, it isn't X windows.
He who laughs has not yet heard the bad news.
                -- Bertolt Brecht
It is bad luck to be superstitious.
                -- Andrew W. Mathis
Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
None love the bearer of bad news.
                -- Sophocles
Often things ARE as bad as they seem!
The worst is enemy of the bad.
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've got a bad feeling about this.
If science were explained to the average person in a way that is accessible
and exciting, there would be no room for pseudoscience.  But there is a kind
of Gresham's Law by which in popular culture the bad science drives out the
good.  And for this I think we have to blame, first, the scientific community
ourselves for not doing a better job of popularizing science, and second, the
media, which are in this respect almost uniformly dreadful.  Every newspaper
in America has a daily astrology column.  How many have even a weekly
astronomy column?  And I believe it is also the fault of the educational
system.  We do not teach how to think.  This is a very serious failure that
may even, in a world rigged with 60,000 nuclear weapons, compromise the human
future.
- Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 12, Fall 87
Repel them.  Repel them.  Induce them to relinquish the spheroid.
- Indiana University fans' chant for their perennially bad football team
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one,
an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
- Edmund Burke
To downgrade the human mind is bad theology.
- C. K. Chesterton
I judge a religion as being good or bad based on whether its adherents
become better people as a result of practicing it.
- Joe Mullally, computer salesman
How long does it take a DEC field service engineer to change a lightbulb?

It depends on how many bad ones he brought with him.
The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only
opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts
at rational thinking.  Not by accident does Genesis 3 make the father of
knowledge a serpent -- slimy, sneaking and abominable.  Since the earliest
days the church as an organization has thrown itself violently against every
effort to liberate the body and mind of man.  It has been, at all times and
everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad
laws, bad social theories, bad institutions.  It was, for centuries, an
apologist for slavery, as it was the apologist for the divine right of kings.
- H. L. Mencken
"Yes, and I feel bad about rendering their useless carci into dogfood..."
-- Badger comics
"Where humor is concerned there are no standards -- no one can say what is
good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
...the Soviets have the capability to try big projects.  If there is a goal,
such as when Gorbachev states that they are going to have nuclear-powered
aircraft carriers, the case is closed -- that is it.  They will concentrate
on the problem, do a bad job, and later pay the price.  They really don't
care what the price is.
-- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976
   "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 100
"Nine years of ballet, asshole."
-- Shelly Long, to the bad guy after making a jump over a gorge that he
   couldn't quite, in "Outrageous Fortune"
"Your butt is mine."
-- Michael Jackson, Bad
"Is this foreplay?"
   "No, this is Nuke Strike.  Foreplay has lousy graphics.  Beat me again."
-- Duckert, in "Bad Rubber," Albedo #0 (comics)
If this is a service economy, why is the service so bad?
Work was impossible.  The geeks had broken my spirit.  They had done too
many things wrong.  It was never like this for Mencken.  He lived like
a Prussian gambler -- sweating worse than Bryan on some nights and drunker
than Judas on others.  It was all a dehumanized nightmare...and these
raddled cretins have the gall to complain about my deadlines.
-- Hunter Thompson, "Bad Nerves in Fat City", _Generation of Swine_
"If you don't want your dog to have bad breath, do what I do:  Pour a little
Lavoris in the toilet."
-- Comedian Jay Leno
"The bad reputation UNIX has gotten is totally undeserved, laid on by people
who don't understand, who have not gotten in there and tried anything."
-- Jim Joyce, former computer science lecturer at the University of California
A group of politicians deciding to dump a President because his morals
are bad is like the Mafia getting together to bump off the Godfather for
not going to church on Sunday.
                -- Russell Baker
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures.
                -- Daniel Webster
All bad precedents began as justifiable measures.
                -- Gaius Julius Caesar, quoted in "The Conspiracy of
                   Catiline", by Sallust
I wish a robot would get elected president.  That way, when he came to town,
we could all take a shot at him and not feel too bad.
                -- Jack Handley
If Patrick Henry thought that taxation without representation was bad,
he should see how bad it is with representation.
There never was a good war or a bad peace.
                -- B. Franklin
They're giving bank robbing a bad name.
                -- John Dillinger, on Bonnie and Clyde
        Will Rogers, having paid too much income tax one year, tried in
vain to claim a rebate.  His numerous letters and queries remained
unanswered.  Eventually the form for the next year's return arrived.  In
the section marked "DEDUCTIONS," Rogers listed: "Bad debt, US Government
-- $40,000."
You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice,
bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.
                -- Aristophanes
Alone, adj.:
        In bad company.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
brain-damaged, generalization of "Honeywell Brain Damage" (HBD), a
theoretical disease invented to explain certain utter cretinisms in
Multics, adj:
        Obviously wrong; cretinous; demented.  There is an implication
        that the person responsible must have suffered brain damage,
        because he/she should have known better.  Calling something
        brain-damaged is bad; it also implies it is unusable.
Carson's Consolation:
        Nothing is ever a complete failure.
        It can always be used as a bad example.
cerebral atrophy, n:
        The phenomena which occurs as brain cells become weak and sick, and
impair the brain's performance.  An abundance of these "bad" cells can cause
symptoms related to senility, apathy, depression, and overall poor academic
performance.  A certain small number of brain cells will deteriorate due to
everday activity, but large amounts are weakened by intense mental effort
and the assimilation of difficult concepts.  Many college students become
victims of this dread disorder due to poor habits such as overstudying.

cerebral darwinism, n:
        The theory that the effects of cerebral atrophy can be reversed
through the purging action of heavy alcohol consumption.  Large amounts of
alcohol cause many brain cells to perish due to oxygen deprivation.  Through
the process of natural selection, the weak and sick brain cells will die
first, leaving only the healthy cells.  This wonderful process leaves the
imbiber with a healthier, more vibrant brain, and increases mental capacity.
Thus, the devastating effects of cerebral atrophy are reversed, and academic
performance actually increases beyond previous levels.
Crenna's Law of Political Accountability:
        If you are the first to know about something bad, you are going to be
        held responsible for acting on it, regardless of your formal duties.
Cruickshank's Law of Committees:
        If a committee is allowed to discuss a bad idea long enough, it
        will inevitably decide to implement the idea simply because so
        much work has already been done on it.
Etymology, n.:
        Some early etymological scholars came up with derivations that
        were hard for the public to believe.  The term "etymology" was formed
        from the Latin "etus" ("eaten"), the root "mal" ("bad"), and "logy"
        ("study of").  It meant "the study of things that are hard to swallow."
                -- Mike Kellen
Flon's Law:
        There is not now, and never will be, a language in
        which it is the least bit difficult to write bad programs.
Male, n.:
        A member of the unconsidered, or negligible sex.  The male of the
        human race is commonly known to the female as Mere Man.  The genus
        has two varieties:  good providers and bad providers.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Optimism, n.:
        The belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, good,
        bad, and everything right that is wrong.  It is held with greatest
        tenacity by those accustomed to falling into adversity, and most
        acceptably expounded with the grin that apes a smile.  Being a blind
        faith, it is inaccessible to the light of disproof -- an intellectual
        disorder, yielding to no treatment but death.  It is hereditary, but
        not contagious.
Savage's Law of Expediency:
        You want it bad, you'll get it bad.
Shannon's Observation:
        Nothing is so frustrating as a bad situation that is beginning to
        improve.
Slick's Three Laws of the Universe:
        (1)  Nothing in the known universe travels faster than a bad check.
        (2)  A quarter-ounce of chocolate = four pounds of fat.
        (3)  There are two types of dirt:  the dark kind, which is
            attracted to light objects, and the light kind, which is
            attracted to dark objects.
TCP/IP Slang Glossary, #1:

Gong, n: Medieval term for privy, or what pased for them in that era.
Today used whimsically to describe the aftermath of a bogon attack. Think
of our community as the Galapagos of the English language.

"Vogons may read you bad poetry, but bogons make you study obsolete RFCs."
                -- Dave Mills
BAD CRAZINESS, MAN!!!
Believe everything you hear about the world; nothing is too impossibly bad.
                -- Honor'e de Balzac
        "I'm dying," he croaked.
        "My experiment was a success," the chemist retorted .
        "You can't really train a beagle," he dogmatized.
        "That's no beagle, it's a mongrel," she muttered.
        "The fire is going out," he bellowed.
        "Bad marksmanship," the hunter groused.
        "You ought to see a psychiatrist," he reminded me.
        "You snake," she rattled.
        "Someone's at the door," she chimed.
        "Company's coming," she guessed.
        "Dawn came too soon," she mourned.
        "I think I'll end it all," Sue sighed.
        "I ordered chocolate, not vanilla," I screamed.
        "Your embroidery is sloppy," she needled cruelly.
        "Where did you get this meat?" he bridled hoarsely.
                -- Gyles Brandreth, "The Joy of Lex"
If God is One, what is bad?
                -- Charles Manson
Lost interest?  It's so bad I've lost apathy.
A book is the work of a mind, doing its work in the way that a mind deems
best.  That's dangerous.  Is the work of some mere individual mind likely to
serve the aims of collectively accepted compromises, which are known in the
schools as 'standards'?  Any mind that would audaciously put itself forth to
work all alone is surely a bad example for the students, and probably, if
not downright antisocial, at least a little off-center, self-indulgent,
elitist.  ... It's just good pedagogy, therefore, to stay away from such
stuff, and use instead, if film-strips and rap-sessions must be
supplemented, 'texts,' selected, or prepared, or adapted, by real
professionals.  Those texts are called 'reading material.'  They are the
academic equivalent of the 'listening material' that fills waiting-rooms,
and the 'eating material' that you can buy in thousands of convenient eating
resource centers along the roads.
                -- The Underground Grammarian
        A reader reports that when the patient died, the attending doctor
recorded the following on the patient's chart:  "Patient failed to fulfill
his wellness potential."
        Another doctor reports that in a recent issue of the *American Journal
of Family Practice* fleas were called "hematophagous arthropod vectors."
        A reader reports that the Army calls them "vertically deployed anti-
personnel devices."  You probably call them bombs.
        At McClellan Air Force base in Sacramento, California, civilian
mechanics were placed on "non-duty, non-pay status."  That is, they were fired.
        After taking the trip of a lifetime, our reader sent his twelve rolls
of film to Kodak for developing (or "processing," as Kodak likes to call it)
only to receive the following notice:  "We must report that during the handling
of your twelve 35mm Kodachrome slide orders, the films were involved in an
unusual laboratory experience."  The use of the passive is a particularly nice
touch, don't you think?  Nobody did anything to the films; they just had a bad
experience.  Of course our reader can always go back to Tibet and take his
pictures all over again, using the twelve replacement rolls Kodak so generously
sent him.
                -- Quarterly Review of Doublespeak (NCTE)
It has long been an article of our folklore that too much knowledge or skill,
or especially consummate expertise, is a bad thing.  It dehumanizes those who
achieve it, and makes difficult their commerce with just plain folks, in whom
good old common sense has not been obliterated by mere book learning or fancy
notions.  This popular delusion flourishes now more than ever, for we are all
infected with it in the schools, where educationists have elevated it from
folklore to Article of Belief.  It enhances their self-esteem and lightens
their labors by providing theoretical justification for deciding that
appreciation, or even simple awareness, is more to be prized than knowledge,
and relating (to self and others), more than skill, in which minimum
competence will be quite enough.
                -- The Underground Grammarian
Princeton's taste is sweet like a strawberry tart.  Harvard's is a subtle
taste, like whiskey, coffee, or tobacco.  It may even be a bad habit, for
all I know.
                -- Prof. J.H. Finley '25
The Tree of Learning bears the noblest fruit, but noble fruit tastes bad.
A New Way of Taking Pills
        A physician one night in Wisconsin being disturbed by a burglar, and
having no ball or shot for his pistol, noiselessly loaded the weapon with
small, hard pills, and gave the intruder a "prescription" which he thinks
will go far towards curing the rascal of a very bad ailment.
                -- Nevada Morning Transcript, January 30, 1861
        Here is the fact of the week, maybe even the fact of the month.
According to probably reliable sources, the Coca-Cola people are experiencing
severe marketing anxiety in China.
        The words "Coca-Cola" translate into Chinese as either (depending
on the inflection) "wax-fattened mare" or "bite the wax tadpole".
        Bite the wax tadpole.
        There is a sort of rough justice, is there not?
        The trouble with this fact, as lovely as it is, is that it's hard
to get a whole column out of it. I'd like to teach the world to bite a wax
tadpole.  Coke -- it's the real wax-fattened mare.  Not bad, but broad
satiric vistas do not open up.
                -- John Carrol, The San Francisco Chronicle
Going the speed of light is bad for your age.
In the course of reading Hadamard's "The Psychology of Invention in the
Mathematical Field", I have come across evidence supporting a fact
which we coffee achievers have long appreciated:  no really creative,
intelligent thought is possible without a good cup of coffee.  On page
14, Hadamard is discussing Poincare's theory of fuchsian groups and
fuchsian functions, which he describes as "... one of his greatest
discoveries, the first which consecrated his glory ..."  Hadamard refers
to Poincare having had a "... sleepless night which initiated all that
memorable work ..." and gives the following, very revealing quote:

        "One evening, contrary to my custom, I drank black coffee and
        could not sleep.  Ideas rose in crowds;  I felt them collide
        until pairs interlocked, so to speak, making a stable
        combination."

Too bad drinking black coffee was contrary to his custom.  Maybe he
could really have amounted to something as a coffee achiever.
Logic is a pretty flower that smells bad.
        My message is not that biological determinists were bad scientists or
even that they were always wrong.  Rather, I believe that science must be
understood as a social phenomenon, a gutsy, human enterprise, not the work of
robots programmed to collect pure information.  I also present this view as
an upbeat for science, not as a gloomy epitaph for a noble hope sacrificed on
the alter of human limitations.
        I believe that a factual reality exists and that science, though often
in an obtuse and erratic manner, can learn about it.  Galileo was not shown
the instruments of torture in an abstract debate about lunar motion.  He had
threatened the Church's conventional argument for social and doctrinal
stability:  the static world order with planets circling about a central
earth, priests subordinate to the Pope and serfs to their lord.  But the
Church soon made its peace with Galileo's cosmology.  They had no choice; the
earth really does revolve about the sun.
                -- S.J. Gould, "The Mismeasure of Man"
Neutrinos have bad breadth.
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"
Pete:        Waiter, this meat is bad.
Waiter:        Who told you?
Pete:        A little swallow.
        To lose weight, eat less; to gain weight, eat more; if you merely
wish to maintain, do whatever you were doing.
        The Bronx diet is a legitimate system of food therapy showing that
food SHOULD be used a crutch and which food could be the most effective in
promoting spiritual and emotional satisfaction.  For the first time, an
eater could instantly grasp the connection between relieving depression and
Mallomars, and understand why a lover's quarrel isn't so bad if there's a
pint of ice cream nearby.
                -- Richard Smith, "The Bronx Diet"
A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.
                -- William Blake
        better !pout !cry
        better watchout
        lpr why
        santa claus < north pole > town

        cat /etc/passwd > list
        ncheck list
        ncheck list
        cat list | grep naughty > nogiftlist
        cat list | grep nice > giftlist
        santa claus < north pole > town

        who | grep sleeping
        who | grep awake
        who | grep bad || good
        for (goodness sake) {
                be good
        }
Five names that I can hardly stand to hear,
Including yours and mine and one more chimp who isn't here,
I can see the ladies talking how the times is gettin' hard,
And that fearsome excavation on Magnolia boulevard,
Yes, I'm goin' insane,
And I'm laughing at the frozen rain,
Well, I'm so alone, honey when they gonna send me home?
        Bad sneakers and a pina colada my friend,
        Stopping on the avenue by Radio City, with a
        Transistor and a large sum of money to spend...
You fellah, you tearin' up the street,
You wear that white tuxedo, how you gonna beat the heat,
Do you take me for a fool, do you think that I don't see,
That ditch out in the Valley that they're diggin' just for me,
Yes, and goin' insane,
You know I'm laughin' at the frozen rain,
Feel like I'm so alone, honey when they gonna send me home?
(chorus)
                -- Bad Sneakers, "Steely Dan"
I have lots of things in my pockets;
None of them is worth anything.
Sociopolitical whines aside,
Gan you give me, gratis, free,
The price of half a gallon
Of Gallo extra bad
And most of the bus fare home.
I see a bad moon rising.
I see trouble on the way.
I see earthquakes and lightnin'
I see bad times today.
Don't go 'round tonight,
It's bound to take your life.
There's a bad moon on the rise.
                -- J. C. Fogerty, "Bad Moon Rising"
K:        Cobalt's metal, hard and shining;
        Cobol's wordy and confining;
        KOBOLDS topple when you strike them;
        Don't feel bad, it's hard to like them.
                -- The Roguelet's ABC
Of all the words of witch's doom
There's none so bad as which and whom.
The man who kills both which and whom
Will be enshrined in our Who's Whom.
                -- Fletcher Knebel
So, you better watch out!
You better not cry!
You better not pout!
I'm telling you why,
Santa Claus is coming, to town.

He knows when you've been sleeping,
He know when you're awake.
He knows if you've been bad or good,
He has ties with the CIA.
So...
The good (I am convinced, for one)
Is but the bad one leaves undone.
Once your reputation's done
You can live a life of fun.
                -- Wilhelm Busch
The Worst American Poet
        Julia Moore, "the Sweet Singer of Michigan" (1847-1920) was so bad that
Mark Twain said her first book gave him joy for 20 years.
        Her verse was mainly concerned with violent death -- the great fire
of Chicago and the yellow fever epidemic proved natural subjects for her pen.
        Whether death was by drowning, by fits or by runaway sleigh, the
formula was the same:
                Have you heard of the dreadful fate
                Of Mr. P.P. Bliss and wife?
                Of their death I will relate,
                And also others lost their life
                (in the) Ashbula Bridge disaster,
                Where so many people died.
        Even if you started out reasonably healthy in one of Julia's poems,
the chances are that after a few stanzas you would be at the bottom of a
river or struck by lightning.  A critic of the day said she was "worse than
a Gatling gun" and in one slim volume counted 21 killed and 9 wounded.
        Incredibly, some newspapers were critical of her work, even
suggesting that the sweet singer was "semi-literate".  Her reply was
forthright: "The Editors that has spoken in this scandalous manner have went
beyond reason."  She added that "literary work is very difficult to do".
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
There are bad times just around the corner,
There are dark clouds hurtling through the sky
        And it's no good whining
        About a silver lining
For we know from experience that they won't roll by...
                -- Noel Coward
There was a little girl
Who had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good, she was very, very good
And when she was bad, she was very, very popular.
                -- Max Miller, "The Max Miller Blue Book"
Well, I don't know where they come from but they sure do come,
I hope they comin' for me!
And I don't know how they do it but they sure do it good,
I hope they doin' it for free!
They give me cat scratch fever... cat scratch fever!
First time that I got it I was just ten years old,
Got it from the kitty next door...
I went to see the doctor and he gave me the cure,
I think I got it some more!
Got a bad scratch fever...
                -- Ted Nugent, "Cat Scratch Fever"
When my fist clenches crack it open,
Before I use it and lose my cool.
When I smile tell me some bad news,
Before I laugh and act like a fool.

And if I swallow anything evil,
Put you finger down my throat.
And if I shiver please give me a blanket,
Keep me warm let me wear your coat

No one knows what it's like to be the bad man,
        to be the sad man.
Behind blue eyes.
No one knows what its like to be hated,
        to be fated,
To telling only lies.
                        -- The Who
Where, oh, where, are you tonight?
Why did you leave me here all alone?
I searched the world over, and I thought I'd found true love.
You met another, and *PPHHHLLLBBBBTTT*, you wuz gone.

Gloom, despair and agony on me.
Deep dark depression, excessive misery.
If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all.
Oh, gloom, despair and agony on me.
                -- Hee Haw
While walking down a crowded
City street the other day,
I heard a little urchin
To a comrade turn and say,
"Say, Chimmey, lemme tell youse,
I'd be happy as a clam
If only I was de feller dat
Me mudder t'inks I am.

"She t'inks I am a wonder,                My friends, be yours a life of toil
An' she knows her little lad                Or undiluted joy,
Could never mix wit' nuttin'                You can learn a wholesome lesson
Dat was ugly, mean or bad.                From that small, untutored boy.
Oh, lot o' times I sit and t'ink        Don't aim to be an earthly saint
How nice, 'twould be, gee whiz!                With eyes fixed on a star:
If a feller was de feller                Just try to be the fellow that
Dat his mudder t'inks he is."                Your mother thinks you are.
                -- Will S. Adkin, "If I Only Was the Fellow"
"You are old," said the youth, "and your programs don't run,
        And there isn't one language you like;
Yet of useful suggestions for help you have none --
        Have you thought about taking a hike?"

"Since I never write programs," his father replied,
        "Every language looks equally bad;
Yet the people keep paying to read all my books
        And don't realize that they've been had."
A [golf] ball hitting a tree shall be deemed not to have hit the tree.
Hitting a tree is simply bad luck and has no place in a scientific game.
The player should estimate the distance the ball would have traveled if it
had not hit the tree and play the ball from there, preferably atop a nice
firm tuft of grass.
                -- Donald A. Metz
If some day we are defeated, well, war has its fortunes, good and bad.
                -- Commander Kor, "Errand of Mercy", stardate 3201.7
"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a
lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad
move." - The Book just racapping what happened in the last
book.
"`I am so amazingly cool you could keep a side of meat in
me for a month. I am so hip I have difficulty seeing over
my pelvis.'"

- Zaphod being cool.
"Arthur's consciousness approached his body as from a great
distance, and reluctantly. It had had some bad times in
there. Slowly, nervously, it entered and settled down into
its accustomed position.
Arthur sat up.
`Where am I?' he said.
`Lord's Cricket Ground,' said Ford.
`Fine,' said Arthur, and his consciousness stepped out
again for a quick breather. His body flopped back on the
grass."

- Arthur coping with his return to Earth as best as he
could.
"`A curse,' said Slartibartfast, `which will engulf the
Galaxy in fire and destruction, and possibly bring the
Universe to a premature doom. I mean it,' he added.
`Sounds like a bad time,' said Ford, `with luck I'll be
drunk enough not to notice.'"

- Ford ensuring everyone knew where his priorities lay.
"`What's been happening here?' he demanded.
`Oh just the nicest things, sir, just the nicest things.
can I sit on your lap please?'"
"`Colin, I am going to abandon you to your fate.'
`I'm so happy.'"
"`It will be very, very nasty for you, and that's just too
bad. Got it?'
`I gurgle with pleasure.'"

- Ford and Colin the robot.
I cannot overemphasize the importance of good grammar.

What a crock.  I could easily overemphasize the importance of good
grammar.  For example, I could say: "Bad grammar is the leading cause
of slow, painful death in North America," or "Without good grammar, the
United States would have lost World War II."
                -- Dave Barry, "An Utterly Absurd Look at Grammar"
Like you,  I am frequently haunted by profound questions related to man's
place in the Scheme of Things.  Here are just a few:

        Q -- Is there life after death?
        A -- Definitely.  I speak from personal experience here.  On New
Year's Eve, 1970, I drank a full pitcher of a drink called "Black Russian",
then crawled out on the lawn and died within a matter of minutes, which was
fine with me because I had come to realize that if I had lived I would have
spent the rest of my life in the grip of the most excruciatingly painful
headache.  Thanks to the miracle of modern orange juice, I was brought back
to life several days later, but in the interim I was definitely dead.  I
guess my main impression of the afterlife is that it isn't so bad as long
as you keep the television turned down and don't try to eat any solid foods.
                -- Dave Barry
TOO BAD YOU CAN'T BUY a voodoo globe so that you could make the earth spin
real fast and freak everybody out.
                -- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
Where humor is concerned there are no standards -- no one can say what
is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.
                -- John Kenneth Galbraith
"So right now the only vendor that does such a stupid thing is Microsoft."

  -- Linus Torvalds on bad file system interface design. (Open Sources , 1999 O'Reilly and Associates.)
  Evil isn't all bad.
MS-DOS didn't get as bad as it is overnight -- it took over ten years
of careful development
Linux, DOS, Windows NT -- The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Tux Penguin Beanie Baby Sales Skyrocket

Two weeks ago Ty released a 'Tux the Penguin' Beanie Baby. Sales of the stuffed
toy have exceeded expectations. All 100,000 of them have been sold, and it will
be another week before more can be produced and distributed. Tux is now the one
of the most valuable Beanie Babies, with some stores selling remaining ones for
over $500.

Tux's strong sales constrast sharply with Ty's other computer-related Beanie
Baby, 'Billy the Billionaire'. "Billy's sales are dismal. Except for the 2,000
that Bill Gates bought for himself and his daughter Jennifer, Billy has been a
failure. People just aren't responsive to toys that represent greedy,
capitalistic billionaires with bad haircuts," a member of the Church of Beanie
Baby Collecting said.

Ty is considering releasing other Beanie Babies similar to Tux. Some
possibities include 'Steve the Apple Worm' and 'Wilbur the Gimp'.
"Computer-related Beanie Babies are selling extremely well," a Ty spokesman
said. "I don't understand why people are obsessed with these stupid stuffed
toys. But as long as they're making me lots of money, I don't care! Oops...
Please don't quote me on that."
When Computers Crash

HOLLYWOOD -- The FOX TV Network has announced a new series of "reality
shows" to be aired over the summer. The series, "When Computers Crash",
will consist of five hour-long shows documenting the aftermath of serious
computer crashes, failures, and other problems. This show comes on the
heels of other FOX reality shows such as "World's Funniest Antitrust Trial
Bloopers", "When Stupid TV Network Executives Create Bad Show Ideas", and
"When Lame Fortune Files Poke Fun At FOX Reality Shows"...

To coincide with the series, FOX will sponsor a publicity gimmick called
"Crash & Win!" Contest participants will download a free Windows 9x/NT
program that keeps track of the number of Blue Screens, Illegal
Operations, or other fatal errors that force a reboot. When a crash
occurs, the program will log it in an encrypted database, which will be
periodically uploaded to the "FOX Crash & Win!" server.

Prizes such as a "Deciphering Windows Error Messages for Dummies" book, a
1999 Ford "Gasguzzler" Sport Utility Vehicle, or a lifetime supply of
stress relief medication will be awarded to participants based on the
number of crashes they log.
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.
Brief History Of Linux (#17)
If only Gary had been sober

When Micro-soft moved to Seattle in 1979, most of its revenue came from
sales of BASIC, a horrible language so dependant on GOTOs that spaghetti
looked more orderly than its code did. (BASIC has ruined more promising
programmers than anything else, prompting its original inventor Dartmouth
University to issue a public apology in 1986.)

However, by 1981 BASIC hit the backburner to what is now considered the
luckiest break in the history of computing: MS-DOS. (We use the term
"break" because MS-DOS was and always will be broken.) IBM was developing
a 16-bit "personal computer" and desperately needed an OS to drive it.

Their first choice was Gary Kildall's CP/M, but IBM never struck a deal
with him. We've discovered the true reason: Kildall was drunk at the time
the IBM representatives went to talk with him. A sober man would not have
insulted the reps, calling their employer an "Incredibly Bad Monopoly" and
referring to their new IBM-PC as an "Idealistically Backwards
Microcomputer for People without Clues". Needless to say, Gary "I Lost The
Deal Of The Century" Kildall was not sober.
Bill Gates Receives Slap On Wrist; Carpal Tunnel Flares Up

The phrase "slap on the wrist" usually signifies an extremely minor
punishment received for a crime. In Bill Gates' case, the punishment set
forth in the tentative settlement with the Department Of Justice hasn't
been quite so minor. After receiving a slap on the wrist from the DOJ,
Bill Gates' is now suffering from a bad case of carpal tunnel syndrome.

"Mr. Gates was slapped on the left wrist earlier today by a DOJ lawyer,"
said the chief surgeon of the mini-hospital enclosed within the Gates
Mansion. "Now he can't move that hand without extreme pain. It's obvious
that years of sitting in front of a computer plotting world domination has
caused his hands and nerves to become fragile and vulnerable to even the
slightest touch."

The Department of Justice proclaimed that the incident has vindicated
their actions. Explained the lawyer who delivered the punishment, "We've
been accused of selling out to Microsoft. We've been criticized for giving
up even though we've already won the game. But that's all wrong. It's
quite clear that the slap-on-the-wrist punishment has been anything but a
slap on the wrist. We won this case and Microsoft lost. So there!"
Jon Splatz's Movie Review: "Lord of the Pings"

I've never walked out on a movie before. When I pay $9.50 to see a movie
(plus $16.50 for snacks), I'm going to sit through every single minute no
matter how awful. The resolve to get my money's worth allowed me to watch
Jar Jar Binks without even flinching last year.

But I couldn't make it through "Lord of the Pings". This movie contains a
scene that is so appalling, so despicable, so vile, so terrible, so
crappy, and so gut-wrenching that I simply had to get up, run out of the
theater, and puke in the nearest restroom. It was just that bad.

The whole thing is completely ruined by a scene that takes place only 52
seconds into the flick. Brace yourself: big letters appear on screen that
say "An AOL/Time Warner Production".

...

Because this film is brought to you by the letters A-O-L-T-W, I must give
it an F-minus even though I've only seen 53 seconds of it.
A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head.  The
green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that
grew in the ears themselvse, stuck out on either side like turn signals
indicating two directions at once.  Full, pursed lips protruded beneath the
bushy black moustache and, at their corners, sank into little folds filled
with disapproval and potato chip crumbs.  In the shadow under the green visor
of the cap Ignatius J. Reilly's supercilious blue and yellow eyes looked down
upon the other people waiting under the clock at the D.H. Holmes department
store, studying the crowd of people for signs of bad taste in dress.  Several
of the outfits, Ignatius noticed, were new enough and expensive enough to be
properly considered offenses against taste and decency.  Possession of
anything new or expensive only reflected a person's lack of theology and
geometry; it could even cast doubts upon one's soul.
                -- John Kennedy Toole, "Confederacy of Dunces"
Any man who hates dogs and babies can't be all bad.
                -- Leo Rosten, on W.C. Fields
Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink
that they may live.
                -- Socrates
Confession is good for the soul, but bad for the career.
Confessions may be good for the soul, but they are bad for the reputation.
                -- Lord Thomas Dewar
Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad
example.
                -- La Rouchefoucauld
Good judgement comes from experience.  Experience comes from bad judgement.
                -- Jim Horning
Growing old isn't bad when you consider the alternatives.
                -- Maurice Chevalier
Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.
                -- Francis Bacon
I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know
how bad I am.
                -- Samuel Johnson
If the weather is extremely bad, church attendance will be down.  If
the weather is extremely good, church attendance will be down.  If the
bulletin covers are in short supply, however, church attendance will
exceed all expectations.
                -- Reverend Chichester
If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it.
                -- Arthur Kasspe
If you're careful enough, nothing bad or good will ever happen to you.
It is equally bad when one speeds on the guest unwilling to go, and when he
holds back one who is hastening.  Rather one should befriend the guest who
is there, but speed him when he wishes.
                -- Homer, "The Odyssey"

        [Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when
         referring to scheduling.]
It may be bad manners to talk with your mouth full, but it isn't too
good either if you speak when your head is empty.
It seemed the world was divided into good and bad people.  The good ones slept
better... while the bad ones seemed to enjoy the waking hours much more.
                -- Woody Allen, "Side Effects"
It's bad enough that life is a rat-race, but why do the rats always have to win?
It's hard not to like a man of many qualities, even if most of them are bad.
Many people feel that they deserve some kind of recognition for all the
bad things they haven't done.
Old men are fond of giving good advice to console themselves for their
inability to set a bad example.
                -- La Rochefoucauld, "Maxims"
People need good lies.  There are too many bad ones.
                -- Bokonon, "Cat's Cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
The difference between a good haircut and a bad one is seven days.
There are no great men, buster.  There are only men.
                -- Elaine Stewart, "The Bad and the Beautiful"
There are two types of people in this world, good and bad.  The good
sleep better, but the bad seem to enjoy the waking hours much more.
                -- Woody Allen
There's a fine line between courage and foolishness.  Too bad it's not a fence.
You know it's going to be a bad day when you want to put on the clothes
you wore home from the party and there aren't any.
"THIS time it really is fixed. I mean, how many times can we
get it wrong? At some point, we just have to run out of really
bad ideas.."

        - Linus Torvalds"
"Thanks, and THIS time it really is fixed. I mean, how many times can we
get it wrong? At some point, we just have to run out of really bad ideas.."

        - Linus Torvalds
"I would suggest you to read through the following book and files:
        * Kernighan & Pike, "The Practice of Programming"
        * Documentation/CodingStyle
        * drivers/net/aironet4500_proc.c
and consider, erm, discrepancies. On the second thought, reading K&R
might also be useful. IOW, no offense, but your C is bad beyond belief."

         - Al Viro
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
I have a simple rule in life: If I don't understand something, it must be bad.

        - Linus Torvalds
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
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
        What the guy was doing was having a bad case of optical rectitus.
That would be typical of a "reseller" (AKA Salesman).  Most would not
even have a CLUE that the cards were based on the tulip chipset / driver.

        - Michael Warf on linux-kernel
Drivers are a more complex issue. I'm not opposed to binary only drivers,
providing its easy to tell they are there and dump all bug reports about them.
Freedom generally includes the right to give up freedom. I'll tell people its
a bad idea but once they get caught, well it was their right to do so...

        - Alan Cox on linux-kernel
The last time I looked, Solaris and AIX and all the rest of the "scalable"
systems were absolute pigs on smaller hardware, and the "scalability" in
them often translates into "we scale linearly to many CPU's by being
really bad even on one".

        - Linus Torvalds
A good walker leaves no tracks;
A good speaker makes no slips;
A good reckoner needs no tally.
A good door needs no lock,
Yet no one can open it.
Good binding requires no knots,
Yet no one can loosen it.

Therefore the sage takes care of all men
And abandons no one.
He takes care of all things
And abandons nothing.

This is called "following the light."

What is a good man?
A teacher of a bad man.
What is a bad man?
A good man's charge.
If the teacher is not respected,
And the student not cared for,
Confusion will arise, however clever one is.
This is the crux of mystery.
Tao is source of the ten thousand things.
It is the treasure of the good man, and the refuge of the bad.
Sweet words can buy honor;
Good deeds can gain respect.
If a man is bad, do not abandon him.
Therefore on the day the emperor is crowned,
Or the three officers of state installed,
Do not send a gift of jade and a team of four horses,
But remain still and offer the Tao.
Why does everyone like the Tao so much at first?
Isn't it because you find what you seek and are forgiven when you sin?
Therefore this is the greatest treasure of the universe.
A little kid went up to Santa and asked him, "Santa, you know when I'm bad
right?"  And Santa says, "Yes, I do."  The little kid then asks, "And you
know when I'm sleeping?" To which Santa replies, "Every minute." So the
little kid then says, "Well, if you know when I'm bad and when I'm good,
then how come you don't know what I want for Christmas?"
Are you a parent?  Do you sometimes find yourself unsure as to what to
say in those awkward situations?  Worry no more...

        Are you sure you're telling the truth?  Think hard.
        Does it make you happy to know you're sending me to an early grave?
        If all your friends jumped off the cliff, would you jump too?
        Do you feel bad?  How do you think I feel?
        Aren't you ashamed of yourself?
        Don't you know any better?
        How could you be so stupid?
        If that's the worst pain you'll ever feel, you should be thankful.
        You can't fool me.  I know what you're thinking.
        If you can't say anything nice, say nothing at all.
Are you a parent?  Do you sometimes find yourself unsure as to what to
say in those awkward situations?  Worry no more...

        Do as I say, not as I do.
        Do me a favour and don't tell me about it.  I don't want to know.
        What did you do *this* time?
        If it didn't taste bad, it wouldn't be good for you.
        When I was your age...
        I won't love you if you keep doing that.
        Think of all the starving children in India.
        If there's one thing I hate, it's a liar.
        I'm going to kill you.
        Way to go, clumsy.
        If you don't like it, you can lump it.
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"
<Overfiend> partycle: I seriously do need a vacation from this package.
            I actually had a DREAM about introducing a stupid new bug
            into xbase-preinst last night.  That's a Bad Sign.
* aj thinks Kb^Zzz ought to pick different things to dream about than
   general resolutions and policy changes.
<Kb^Zzz> aj - tell me about it, this is a Bad Sign
* m2 stares at the monitor... it looks like a hamburger...
<Knghtbrd> m2 - that's a bad sign
<Wordplay> You measure your vibrators in "characters per second"?  I have
           bad news for you, c90, you've been masturbating with a
           dot-matrix printer.
<knghtbrd> it's too bad most ancient unices are y2k compliant
<|Rain|> too bad?
<|Rain|> why, because people won't upgrade until 2038?
It's as BAD as you think, and they ARE out to get you.
<doogie> there is one bad thing about having a cell phone.
<doogie> I can be reached at any time. :|
<wmono> that's why I leave mine off at all times. ;>
<Knghtbrd> it's too bad most old unices turned out y2k compliant
<Knghtbrd> because it means people will STILL BE RUNNING THEM in 30 years
           =p
<Knghtbrd> it would have been so much nicer if y2k effectively killed off
           hpux, aix, sunos, etc  ;>
<Espy> Knghtbrd: since when are PH-UX, aches, and solartus "old"?
* knghtbrd is each day more convinced that most C++ coders don't know what
           the hell they're doing, which is why C++ has such a bad rap
<Culus> kb: Most C coders don't know what they are doing, it just makes it
        easier to hide :P
<Culus> see for instance, proftpd :P
<Dr^Nick> SGI_Multitexture is bad voodoo now
<Dr^Nick> ARB is good voodoo
<witten> no, voodoo rush is bad voodoo :)
All good ideas look like bad ideas to those who are losers.
        -- Dilbert
Diogenes went to look for an honest lawyer. "How's it going?", someone
asked him, after a few days.
        "Not too bad", replied Diogenes. "I still have my lantern."
We should realize that a city is better off with bad laws, so long as they
remain fixed, then with good laws that are constantly being altered, that
the lack of learning combined with sound common sense is more helpful than
the kind of cleverness that gets out of hand, and that as a general rule,
states are better governed by the man in the street than by intellectuals.
These are the sort of people who want to appear wiser than the laws, who
want to get their own way in every general discussion, because they feel that
they cannot show off their intelligence in matters of greater importance, and
who, as a result, very often bring ruin on their country.
                -- Cleon, Thucydides, III, 37 translation by Rex Warner
                        Chapter 1

The story so far:

        In the beginning the Universe was created.  This has made a lot
of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
                -- Douglas Adams, HHGG #2, (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe).
Destiny is a good thing to accept when it's going your way. When it isn't,
don't call it destiny; call it injustice, treachery, or simple bad luck.
                -- Joseph Heller, "God Knows"
If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I would not pass it around.
Trouble creates a capacity to handle it.  I don't say embrace trouble; that's
as bad as treating it as an enemy.  But I do say meet it as a friend, for
you'll see a lot of it and you had better be on speaking terms with it.
                -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
If you wait long enough, it will go away... after having done its damage.
If it was bad, it will be back.
Nothing is ever a total loss; it can always serve as a bad example.
Reality is bad enough, why should I tell the truth?
                -- Patrick Sky
Since everything in life is but an experience perfect in being what it is,
having nothing to do with good or bad, acceptance or rejection, one may well
burst out in laughter.
                -- Long Chen Pa
No people are all bad, just as none are all good.
Tecumseh, (Shawnee) to his nephew Spemica Lawba 1790
C:\> WIN
Bad command or filename

C:\> LOSE
Loading Microsoft Windows ...
/*
* 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
...Unix, MS-DOS, and Windows NT (also known as the Good, the Bad, and
the Ugly).
        -- Matt Welsh
Sigh.  I like to think it's just the Linux people who want to be on
the "leading edge" so bad they walk right off the precipice.
        -- Craig E. Groeschel
MSDOS didn't get as bad as it is overnight -- it took over ten years
of careful development.
        -- dmeggins@aix1.uottawa.ca
panic("Foooooooood fight!");
        -- In the kernel source aha1542.c, after detecting a bad segment list
Excusing bad programming is a shooting offence, no matter _what_ the
circumstances.
        -- Linus Torvalds, to the linux-kernel list
One of the things that hamper Linux's climb to world domination is the
shortage of bad Computer Role Playing Games, or CRaPGs. No operating system
can be considered respectable without one.
        -- Brian O'Donnell, odonnllb@tcd.ie
NEVER RESPOND TO CRITICAL PRESS.  IT IS A GAME YOU CAN ONLY LOSE, AND IT
MAKES US LOOK BAD.
        -- Bruce Perens
Winnuke in one line?  No problem:
perl -MIO::Socket -e 'IO::Socket::INET->new(PeerAddr=>"bad.dude.com:139")->send("bye",MSG_OOB)'

And formatted so it's a little easier to read:

        #!/usr/bin/perl
        use IO::Socket;
        IO::Socket::INET
                ->new(PeerAddr=>"bad.dude.com:139")
                ->send("bye", MSG_OOB);

        -- Randal Schwartz
<Overfiend> partycle: I seriously do need a vacation from this
            package.  I actually had a DREAM about introducing a
            stupid new bug into xbase-preinst last night.  That's a
            Bad Sign.
        -- Seen on #Debian shortly before the release of Debian 2.0
        Exxon's 'Universe of Energy' tends to the peculiar rather than the
humorous ... After [an incomprehensible film montage about wind and sun and
rain and strip mines and] two or three minutes of mechanical confusion, the
seats locomote through a short tunnel filled with clock-work dinosaurs.
The dinosaurs are depicted without accuracy and too close to your face.
        "One of the few real novelties at Epcot is the use of smell to
aggravate illusions.  Of course, no one knows what dinosaurs smelled like,
but Exxon has decided they smelled bad.
        "At the other end of Dino Ditch ... there's a final, very addled
message about facing challengehood tomorrow-wise.  I dozed off during this,
but the import seems to be that dinosaurs don't have anything to do with
energy policy and neither do you."
                -- P.J. O'Rourke, "Holidays in Hell"
Lend money to a bad debtor and he will hate you.
Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny.
                -- Frank Hubbard
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
Besides, including <std_ice_cubes.h> is a fatal error on machines that
don't have it yet.  Bad language design, there...  :-)
             -- Larry Wall in <1991Aug22.220929.6857@netlabs.com>
If I don't document something, it's usually either for a good reason,
or a bad reason.  In this case it's a good reason.  :-)
             -- Larry Wall in <1992Jan17.005405.16806@netlabs.com>
Unix weanies are as bad at this as anyone.
             -- Larry Wall in <199702111730.JAA28598@wall.org>
        "I'll tell you what I know, then," he decided.  "The pin I'm wearing
means I'm a member of the IA.  That's Inamorati Anonymous.  An inamorato is
somebody in love.  That's the worst addiction of all."
        "Somebody is about to fall in love," Oedipa said, "you go sit with
them, or something?"
        "Right.  The whole idea is to get where you don't need it.  I was
lucky.  I kicked it young.  But there are sixty-year-old men, believe it or
not, and women even older, who might wake up in the night screaming."
        "You hold meetings, then, like the AA?"
        "No, of course not.  You get a phone number, an answering service
you can call.  Nobody knows anybody else's name; just the number in case
it gets so bad you can't handle it alone.  We're isolates, Arnold.  Meetings
would destroy the whole point of it."
                -- Thomas Pynchon, "The Crying of Lot 49"
I want the presidency so bad I can already taste the hors d'oeuvres.
My nose feels like a bad Ronald Reagan movie ...
        Talking Pinhead Blues:
Oh, I LOST my ``HELLO KITTY'' DOLL and I get BAD reception on channel
    TWENTY-SIX!!

Th'HOSTESS FACTORY is closin' down and I just heard ZASU PITTS has been
    DEAD for YEARS..  (sniff)

My PLATFORM SHOE collection was CHEWED up by th' dog, ALEXANDER HAIG
    won't let me take a SHOWER 'til Easter ... (snurf)

So I went to the kitchen, but WALNUT PANELING whup me upside mah HAID!!
    (on no, no, no..  Heh, heh)
There's a little picture of ED MCMAHON doing BAD THINGS to JOAN RIVERS
in a $200,000 MALIBU BEACH HOUSE!!
        "These are DARK TIMES for all mankind's HIGHEST VALUES!"
        "These are DARK TIMES for FREEDOM and PROSPERITY!"
        "These are GREAT TIMES to put your money on BAD GUY to kick the CRAP
out of MEGATON MAN!"
Yow!  Did something bad happen or am I in a drive-in movie??
Yow!  Now I get to think about all the BAD THINGS I did to a BOWLING
BALL when I was in JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL!
A doctor calls his patient to give him the results of his tests.  "I have
some bad news," says the doctor, "and some worse news."  The bad news is
that you only have six weeks to live."
        "Oh, no," says the patient.  "What could possibly be worse than that?"
        "Well," the doctor replies, "I've been trying to reach you since
last Monday."
At the hospital, a doctor is training an intern on how to announce bad news
to the patients.  The doctor tells the intern "This man in 305 is going to
die in six months.  Go in and tell him."  The intern boldly walks into the
room, over to the man's bedisde and tells him "Seems like you're gonna die!"
The man has a heart attack and is rushed into surgery on the spot.  The doctor
grabs the intern and screams at him, "What!?!? are you some kind of moron?
You've got to take it easy, work your way up to the subject.  Now this man in
213 has about a week to live.  Go in and tell him, but, gently, you hear me,
gently!"
        The intern goes softly into the room, humming to himself, cheerily
opens the drapes to let the sun in, walks over to the man's bedside, fluffs
his pillow and wishes him a "Good morning!"  "Wonderful day, no?  Say...
guess who's going to die soon!"
Happiness is good health and a bad memory.
                -- Ingrid Bergman
No guarantee of accuracy or completeness!
©TU Chemnitz, 2006-2024
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