Chain : Dictionary / Wörterbuch (BEOLINGUS, TU Chemnitz)

Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English)	by Linux fortune

SCSI Chain overterminated
Secretary sent chain letter to all 5000 employees.
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
Proposed Additions to the PDP-11 Instruction Set: DC Divide and Conquer DMPK Destroy Memory Protect Key DO Divide and Overflow EMPC Emulate Pocket Calculator EPI Execute Programmer Immediately EROS Erase Read Only Storage EXCE Execute Customer Engineer HCF Halt and Catch Fire IBP Insert Bug and Proceed INSQSW Insert into queue somewhere (for FINO queues [First in never out]) PBC Print and Break Chain PDSK Punch Disk
"It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top." - Hunter S. Thompson
"We are not endeavoring to chain the future but to free the present. ... We are the advocates of inquiry, investigation, and thought. ... It is grander to think and investigate for yourself than to repeat a creed. ... I look for the day when reason, throned upon the world's brains, shall be the King of Kings and the God of Gods. -- Robert G. Ingersoll
"The chain which can be yanked is not the eternal chain." -- G. Fitch
It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top. -- Hunter S. Thompson
pension: A federally insured chain letter.
Reception area, n.: The purgatory where office visitors are condemned to spend innumerable hours reading dog-eared back issues of trade magazines like Modern Plastics, Chain Saw Age, and Chicken World, while the receptionist blithely reads her own trade magazine -- Cosmopolitan.
The Modelski Chain Rule: (1) Look intently at the problem for several minutes. Scratch your head at 20-30 second intervals. Try solving the problem on your Hewlett-Packard. (2) Failing this, look around at the class. Select a particularly bright-looking individual. (3) Procure a large chain. (4) Walk over to the selected student and threaten to beat him severely with the chain unless he gives you the answer to the problem. Generally, he will. It may also be a good idea to give him a sound thrashing anyway, just to show you mean business.
Come, let us hasten to a higher plane, Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn, Their indices bedecked from one to _n, Commingled in an endless Markov chain! -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
"No program is perfect," They said with a shrug. "The customer's happy-- What's one little bug?" But he was determined, Then change two, then three more, The others went home. As year followed year. He dug out the flow chart And strangers would comment, Deserted, alone. "Is that guy still here?" Night passed into morning. He died at the console The room was cluttered Of hunger and thirst With core dumps, source listings. Next day he was buried "I'm close," he muttered. Face down, nine edge first. Chain smoking, cold coffee, And his wife through her tears Logic, deduction. Accepted his fate. "I've got it!" he cried, Said "He's not really gone, "Just change one instruction." He's just working late." -- The Perfect Programmer
Tyger, Tyger, burning bright Where the hammer? Where the chain? In the forests of the night, In what furnace was thy brain? What immortal hand or eye What the anvil? What dread grasp Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? Dare its deadly terrors clasp? Burnt in distant deeps or skies When the stars threw down their spears The cruel fire of thine eyes? And water'd heaven with their tears On what wings dare he aspire? Dare he laugh his work to see? What the hand dare seize the fire? Dare he who made the lamb make thee? And what shoulder & what art Tyger, Tyger, burning bright Could twist the sinews of they heart? In the forests of the night, And when thy heart began to beat What immortal hand or eye What dread hand & what dread feet Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? Could fetch it from the furnace deep And in thy horrid ribs dare steep In the well of sanguine woe? In what clay & in what mould Were thy eyes of fury roll'd? -- William Blake, "The Tyger"
The man on tops walks a lonely street; the "chain" of command is often a noose.
Microsoft ActivePromo Campaign: "Match Vaporware & Win!" Microsoft's PR masterminds are planning a massive marketing campaign, code-named "ActivePromo 2000", to promote the upcoming release of Windows 2000 (scheduled for February 2001). This marketing campaign will include a "Match Vaporware & Win!" promotion. Microsoft will team up with a major fast-food chain (McDonalds, probably, since it has the largest market share, but Burger King is another possibility) for a special Windows 2000 promotion. With every combo meal purchase, the customer will receive a game token containing a date on it. If the official release of Windows 2000 is on that date, the customer can redeem the token for a variety of prizes -- ranging from a "lifetime supply" of Windows upgrades, to 25,000 shares of Microsoft stock.
"The chain which can be yanked is not the eternal chain." -- G. Fitch
Watch Rincewind. Look at him. Scrawny, like most wizards, and clad in a dark red robe on which a few mystic sigils were embroidered in tarnished sequins. Some might have taken him for a mere apprentice enchanter who had run away from his master out of defiance, boredom, fear and a lingering taste for heterosexuality. Yet around his neck was a chain bearing the bronze octagon that marked him as an alumnus of Unseen University, the high school of magic whose time-and-space transcendent campus is never precisely Here or There. Graduates were usually destined for mageship at least, but Rincewind--after an unfortunate event--had left knowing only one spell and made a living of sorts around the town by capitalizing on an innate gift for languages. He avoided work as a rule, but had a quickness of wit that put his acquaintances in mind of a bright rodent. -- Terry Pratchett, "The Colour of Magic"