Idiot : Dictionary / Wörterbuch (BEOLINGUS, TU Chemnitz)

Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English)	by Linux fortune

"I'm an idiot.. At least this one [bug] took about 5 minutes to find.." (Linus Torvalds in response to a bug report.) > I'm an idiot.. At least this [bug] took about 5 minutes to find.. Disquieting ... (Gonzalo Tornaria in response to Linus Torvalds's mailing about a kernel bug.) > I'm an idiot.. At least this [bug] took about 5 minutes to find.. We need to find some new terms to describe the rest of us mere mortals then. (Craig Schlenter in response to Linus Torvalds's mailing about a kernel bug.) > I'm an idiot.. At least this [bug] took about 5 minutes to find.. Surely, Linus is talking about the kind of idiocy that others aspire to :-). (Bruce Perens in response to Linus Torvalds's mailing about a kernel bug.)
Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
A sheet of paper crossed my desk the other day and as I read it, realization of a basic truth came over me. So simple! So obvious we couldn't see it. John Knivlen, Chairman of Polamar Repeater Club, an amateur radio group, had discovered how IC circuits work. He says that smoke is the thing that makes ICs work because every time you let the smoke out of an IC circuit, it stops working. He claims to have verified this with thorough testing. I was flabbergasted! Of course! Smoke makes all things electrical work. Remember the last time smoke escaped from your Lucas voltage regulator Didn't it quit working? I sat and smiled like an idiot as more of the truth dawned. It's the wiring harness that carries the smoke from one device to another in your Mini, MG or Jag. And when the harness springs a leak, it lets the smoke out of everything at once, and then nothing works. The starter motor requires large quantities of smoke to operate properly, and that's why the wire going to it is so large. Feeling very smug, I continued to expand my hypothesis. Why are Lucas electronics more likely to leak than say Bosch? Hmmm... Aha!!! Lucas is British, and all things British leak! British convertible tops leak water, British engines leak oil, British displacer units leak hydrostatic fluid, and I might add Brititsh tires leak air, and the British defense unit leaks secrets... so naturally British electronics leak smoke. -- Jack Banton, PCC Automotive Electrical School [Ummm ... IC circuits? Integrated circuit circuits?]
Brian Kernighan has an automobile which he helped design. Unlike most automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gauge, nor any of the numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver. Rather, if the driver makes any mistake, a giant "?" lights up in the center of the dashboard. "The experienced driver", he says, "will usually know what's wrong."
"Every group has a couple of experts. And every group has at least one idiot. Thus are balance and harmony (and discord) maintained. It's sometimes hard to remember this in the bulk of the flamewars that all of the hassle and pain is generally caused by one or two highly-motivated, caustic twits." -- Chuq Von Rospach, about Usenet
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #10: SIMPLE SIMPLE is an acronym for Sheer Idiot's Monopurpose Programming Language Environment. This language, developed at the Hanover College for Technological Misfits, was designed to make it impossible to write code with errors in it. The statements are, therefore, confined to BEGIN, END and STOP. No matter how you arrange the statements, you can't make a syntax error. Programs written in SIMPLE do nothing useful. Thus they achieve the results of programs written in other languages without the tedious, frustrating process of testing and debugging.
Laugh and the world thinks you're an idiot.
One evening Mr. Rudolph Block, of New York, found himself seated at dinner alongside Mr. Percival Pollard, the distinguished critic. "Mr. Pollard," said he, "my book, _The Biography of a Dead Cow_, is published anonymously, but you can hardly be ignorant of its authorship. Yet in reviewing it you speak of it as the work of the Idiot of the Century. Do you think that fair criticism?" "I am very sorry, sir," replied the critic, amiably, "but it did not occur to me that you really might not wish the public to know who wrote it." -- Ambrose Bierce
"Every group has a couple of experts. And every group has at least one idiot. Thus are balance and harmony (and discord) maintained. It's sometimes hard to remember this in the bulk of the flamewars that all of the hassle and pain is generally caused by one or two highly-motivated, caustic twits." -- Chuq Von Rospach, chuq@apple.com, about Usenet
Fog Lamps, n.: Excessively (often obnoxiously) bright lamps mounted on the fronts of automobiles; used on dry, clear nights to indicate that the driver's brain is in a fog. See also "Idiot Lights".
idiot box, n.: The part of the envelope that tells a person where to place the stamp when they can't quite figure it out for themselves. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
Idiot, n.: A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
user, n.: The word computer professionals use when they mean "idiot." -- Dave Barry, "Claw Your Way to the Top" [I always thought "computer professional" was the phrase hackers used when they meant "idiot." Ed.]
To generalize is to be an idiot. -- William Blake
I have defined the hundred per cent American as ninety-nine per cent an idiot. -- George Bernard Shaw
The, uh, snowy mountains are like really cold, eh? And the, um, plains stretch out like my moms girdle, eh? There's lotsa beers and doughnuts for everyone, eh? So the last one to be peaceful and everything is a big idiot, Eh? So shut yer face up and dry yer mucklucks by the fire, eh? And dream about girls with their high beams on, eh? They may be cold, but that's okay! Beer's better that way! Eh? -- A, like, Tribute to the Great White North, eh? Beauty!
Show me a good loser in professional sports and I'll show you an idiot. Show me a good sportsman and I'll show you a player I'm looking to trade. -- Leo Durocher
Intel Inside, Idiot Outside.
Bill Gates to his broker: "You idiot, I said $150 million on SNAPPLE!!!"
Examples of the output generated when running commonly typed commands under YODIX, the new Unix-like operating system for Star Wars fans (Submitted by Dave Finton): # pwd Know you not where you are. Show you I shall. # uptime When 900 years you be, look this good you will not. # cd /win95 Once you start down the Dark Path, forever will it dominate your destiny! # winnuke 192.168.1.0 That, my friend, will lead you to the dark side. Help you I will not. # rm -rf / Idiot you are. Yeeesss. # shutdown -h now Luke... there is... another... Sky... walker...
OPPRESSED GEEK: Everybody keeps blaming me for the Y2K problem, the Melissa Virus, Windows crashes... you name it. When somebody finds out you're a bona fide geek, they start bugging you about computer problems. I frequently hear things like, "Why can't you geeks make Windows work right?", "What kind of idiot writes a program that can't handle the year 2000?", "Geeks are evil, all they do is write viruses", and "The Internet is the spawn of Satan". I'm afraid to admit I have extensive computing experience. When somebody asks what kind of job I have, I always lie. From my experience, admitting that you're a geek is an invitation to disaster. LARRY WALL: I know, I know. I sometimes say that I'm the founder of a pearl harvesting company instead of admitting that I'm the founder of the Perl programming language. ERIC S. RAYMOND: This is tragic. We can't live in a world like this. We need your donations to fight social oppression and ignorance against geekdom... -- Excerpt from the Geek Grok '99 telethon
If Microsoft uses the breakup as an opportunity to port Office, and its infernal Dancing Paper Clip, to my Linux operating system, heads will fly! I'll track down that idiot who created Clippit and sic a killer penguin on him! -- Linus Torvalds, when asked by Humorix for his reaction to the proposed Microsoft two-way split
Unobfuscated Perl (#1) A rogue group of Perl hackers has presented a plan to add a "use really_goddamn_strict" pragma that would enforce readability and UNobfuscation. With this pragma in force, the Perl compiler might say: * Warning: Program contains zero comments. You've probably never seen or used one before; they begin with a # symbol. Please start using them or else a representative from the nearest Perl Mongers group will come to your house and beat you over the head with a cluestick. * Warning: Program uses a cute trick at line 125 that might make sense in C. But this isn't C! * Warning: Code at line 412 indicates that programmer is an idiot. Please correct error between chair and monitor. * Warning: While There's More Than One Way To Do It, your method at line 523 is particularly stupid. Please try again.
Class-Action Lawsuit Filed Against Linus Torvalds SILLYCON VALLEY -- Nearly 130 former system administrators have filed suit against Linus Torvalds in which they claim Linux cost them their jobs. Recently several companies migrated from Windows to Linux, increasing their productivity but decreasing the need for a large staff of tech workers, prompting a wave of layoffs. "The good old days when it required five full-time system administrators to maintain a Microsoft Exchange server are history, all because of that cancer known as Linux," explained the lead litigant in the lawsuit. "It all started two years ago when some pimply-faced idiot down in Accounting decided to smuggle in a Linux box to automate some of his work. Before long every tech-savvy person in Accounting, Billing, and Sales was secretly using Linux." "That's when the troubles started. Productivity soared. Downtime was limited to an average of three milliseconds per day. Macro viruses ceased to spread. It was horrible! The entire IT staff was replaced by one part-time bearded wonder, who was able to administrate the entire Linux network! Due to the layoffs, I'm now sitting in a homeless shelter with little hope to find work. Nobody wants to hire an MCSE anymore!"
Richard B. Johnson wrote: > The 'C' language can order structure members anyway it wants. You are an idiot. - Rusty Russell on linux-kernel
> ScanMail for Microsoft Exchange has detected virus-infected attachment(s). > Warning to sender. ScanMail detected a virus in an email attachment you sent. You are an idiot! You have deleted a correctly-written important shell-script. You, again, are an IDIOT, IDIOT, IDIOT, IDIOT, creep. - Richard B. Johnson on linux-kernel
Since this database is not used for profit, and since entire works are not published, it falls under fair use, as we understand it. However, if any half-assed idiot decides to make a profit off of this, they will need to double check it all... -- Notes included with the default fortunes database
Technology is a constand battle between manufacturers producing bigger and more idiot-proof systems and nature producing bigger and better idiots. -- Slashdot signature
> I'm an idiot.. At least this [bug] took about 5 minutes to find.. Disquieting ... -- Gonzalo Tornaria in response to Linus Torvalds's
> I'm an idiot.. At least this [bug] took about 5 minutes to find.. We need to find some new terms to describe the rest of us mere mortals then. -- Craig Schlenter in response to Linus Torvalds's
> I'm an idiot.. At least this [bug] took about 5 minutes to find.. Surely, Linus is talking about the kind of idiocy that others aspire to :-). -- Bruce Perens in response to Linus Torvalds's
> Linux is not user-friendly. It _is_ user-friendly. It is not ignorant-friendly and idiot-friendly. -- Seen somewhere on the net
The new Linux anthem will be "He's an idiot, but he's ok", as performed by Monthy Python. You'd better start practicing. -- Linus Torvalds, announcing another kernel patch
Make it idiot-proof, and someone will breed a better idiot. -- Oliver Elphick
... a thing called Ethics, whose nature was confusing but if you had it you were a High-Class Realtor and if you hadn't you were a shyster, a piker and a fly-by-night. These virtues awakened Confidence and enabled you to handle Bigger Propositions. But they didn't imply that you were to be impractical and refuse to take twice the value for a house if a buyer was such an idiot that he didn't force you down on the asking price. -- Sinclair Lewis, "Babbitt"
It's possible that I'm just an idiot, and don't recognize a sleepy slavemaster when I see one. -- Larry Wall in <199708040319.UAA16213@wall.org>
The New England Journal of Medicine reports that 9 out of 10 doctors agree that 1 out of 10 doctors is an idiot.