Dictionary De - En
De - Es
De - Pt| Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
| The best definition of a gentleman is a man who can play the accordion -- but doesn't. -- Tom Crichton | |
| Heuristics are bug ridden by definition. If they didn't have bugs, then they'd be algorithms. | |
| If you ever want to have a lot of fun, I recommend that you go off and program an imbedded system. The salient characteristic of an imbedded system is that it cannot be allowed to get into a state from which only direct intervention will suffice to remove it. An imbedded system can't permanently trust anything it hears from the outside world. It must sniff around, adapt, consider, sniff around, and adapt again. I'm not talking about ordinary modular programming carefulness here. No. Programming an imbedded system calls for undiluted raging maniacal paranoia. For example, our ethernet front ends need to know what network number they are on so that they can address and route PUPs properly. How do you find out what your network number is? Easy, you ask a gateway. Gateways are required by definition to know their correct network numbers. Once you've got your network number, you start using it and before you can blink you've got it wired into fifteen different sockets spread all over creation. Now what happens when the panic-stricken operator realizes he was running the wrong version of the gateway which was giving out the wrong network number? Never supposed to happen. Tough. Supposing that your software discovers that the gateway is now giving out a different network number than before, what's it supposed to do about it? This is not discussed in the protocol document. Never supposed to happen. Tough. I think you get my drift. | |
| "The fundamental principle of science, the definition almost, is this: the sole test of the validity of any idea is experiment." -- Richard P. Feynman | |
| Johnny Carson's Definition: The smallest interval of time known to man is that which occurs in Manhattan between the traffic signal turning green and the taxi driver behind you blowing his horn. | |
| Magnet, n.: Something acted upon by magnetism. Magnetism, n.: Something acting upon a magnet. The two definition immediately foregoing are condensed from the works of one thousand eminent scientists, who have illuminated the subject with a great white light, to the inexpressible advancement of human knowledge. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" | |
| Viking, n.: 1. Daring Scandinavian seafarers, explorers, adventurers, entrepreneurs world-famous for their aggressive, nautical import business, highly leveraged takeovers and blue eyes. 2. Bloodthirsty sea pirates who ravaged northern Europe beginning in the 9th century. Hagar's note: The first definition is much preferred; the second is used only by malcontents, the envious, and disgruntled owners of waterfront property. | |
| When asked the definition of "pi": The Mathematician: Pi is the number expressing the relationship between the circumference of a circle and its diameter. The Physicist: Pi is 3.1415927, plus or minus 0.000000005. The Engineer: Pi is about 3. | |
| A definition of teaching: casting fake pearls before real swine. -- Bill Cain, "Stand Up Tragedy" | |
| I heard a definition of an intellectual, that I thought was very interesting: a man who takes more words than are necessary to tell more than he knows. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower | |
| In California, Bill Honig, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, said he thought the general public should have a voice in defining what an excellent teacher should know. "I would not leave the definition of math," Dr. Honig said, "up to the mathematicians." -- The New York Times, October 22, 1985 | |
| To be happy one must be a) well fed, unhounded by sordid cares, at ease in Zion, b) full of a comfortable feeling of superiority to the masses of one's fellow men, and c) delicately and unceasingly amused according to one's taste. It is my contention that, if this definition be accepted, there is no country in the world wherein a man constituted as I am -- a man of my peculiar weaknesses, vanities, appetites, and aversions -- can be so happy as he can be in the United States. Going further, I lay down the doctrine that it is a sheer physical impossibility for such a man to live in the United States and not be happy. -- H.L. Mencken, "On Being An American" | |
| "A fractal is by definition a set for which the Hausdorff Besicovitch dimension strictly exceeds the topological dimension." -- Mandelbrot, "The Fractal Geometry of Nature" | |
| "Force is but might," the teacher said-- "That definition's just." The boy said naught but thought instead, Remembering his pounded head: "Force is not might but must!" | |
| What do I consider a reasonable person to be? I'd say a reasonable person is one who accepts that we are all human and therefore fallible, and takes that into account when dealing with others. Implicit in this definition is the belief that it is the right and the responsibility of each person to live his or her own life as he or she sees fit, to respect this right in others, and to demand the assumption of this responsibility by others. | |
| 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 | |
| When you have 200 programmers trying to write code for one product, like Win95 or NT, what you get is a multipule personality program. By definition, the real problem is that these programs are psychotic by nature and make people crazy when they use them. -- Joan Brewer on alt.destroy.microsoft | |
| As someone pointed out, you could have an attribute that says "optimize the heck out of this routine", and your definition of heck would be a parameter to the optimizer. -- Larry Wall in <199709081854.LAA20830@wall.org> | |
