Dictionary De - En
De - Es
De - Pt| Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
| VII. Certain bodies can pass through solid walls painted to resemble tunnel entrances; others cannot. This trompe l'oeil inconsistency has baffled generations, but at least it is known that whoever paints an entrance on a wall's surface to trick an opponent will be unable to pursue him into this theoretical space. The painter is flattened against the wall when he attempts to follow into the painting. This is ultimately a problem of art, not of science. VIII. Any violent rearrangement of feline matter is impermanent. Cartoon cats possess even more deaths than the traditional nine lives might comfortably afford. They can be decimated, spliced, splayed, accordion-pleated, spindled, or disassembled, but they cannot be destroyed. After a few moments of blinking self pity, they reinflate, elongate, snap back, or solidify. IX. For every vengeance there is an equal and opposite revengeance. This is the one law of animated cartoon motion that also applies to the physical world at large. For that reason, we need the relief of watching it happen to a duck instead. X. Everything falls faster than an anvil. Examples too numerous to mention from the Roadrunner cartoons. -- Esquire, "O'Donnell's Laws of Cartoon Motion", June 1980 | |
| A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a strings of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little nor too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity. A program should follow the 'Law of Least Astonishment'. What is this law? It is simply that the program should always respond to the user in the way that astonishes him least. A program, no matter how complex, should act as a single unit. The program should be directed by the logic within rather than by outward appearances. If the program fails in these requirements, it will be in a state of disorder and confusion. The only way to correct this is to rewrite the program. -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" | |
| And it should be the law: If you use the word `paradigm' without knowing what the dictionary says it means, you go to jail. No exceptions. -- David Jones | |
| One of the most overlooked advantages to computers is... If they do foul up, there's no law against whacking them around a little. -- Joe Martin | |
| The misnaming of fields of study is so common as to lead to what might be general systems laws. For example, Frank Harary once suggested the law that any field that had the word "science" in its name was guaranteed thereby not to be a science. He would cite as examples Military Science, Library Science, Political Science, Homemaking Science, Social Science, and Computer Science. Discuss the generality of this law, and possible reasons for its predictive power. -- Gerald Weinberg, "An Introduction to General Systems Thinking" | |
| We don't claim Interactive EasyFlow is good for anything -- if you think it is, great, but it's up to you to decide. If Interactive EasyFlow doesn't work: tough. If you lose a million because Interactive EasyFlow messes up, it's you that's out the million, not us. If you don't like this disclaimer: tough. We reserve the right to do the absolute minimum provided by law, up to and including nothing. This is basically the same disclaimer that comes with all software packages, but ours is in plain English and theirs is in legalese. We didn't really want to include any disclaimer at all, but our lawyers insisted. We tried to ignore them but they threatened us with the attack shark at which point we relented. -- Haven Tree Software Limited, "Interactive EasyFlow" | |
| "Don't fear the pen. When in doubt, draw a pretty picture." --Baker's Third Law of Design. | |
| Necessity has no law. -- St. Augustine | |
| Necessity hath no law. -- Oliver Cromwell | |
| "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 | |
| 186,000 Miles per Second. It's not just a good idea. IT'S THE LAW. | |
| 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 | |
| Felson's Law: To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research. | |
| "Once he had one leg in the White House and the nation trembled under his roars. Now he is a tinpot pope in the Coca-Cola belt and a brother to the forlorn pastors who belabor halfwits in galvanized iron tabernacles behind the railroad yards." - H. L. Mencken, writing of William Jennings Bryan, counsel for the supporters of Tennessee's anti-evolution law at the Scopes "Monkey Trial" in 1925. | |
| Mike's Law: For a lumber company employing two men and a cut-off saw, the marginal product of labor for any number of additional workers equals zero until the acquisition of another cut-off saw. Let's not even consider a chainsaw. - Mike Dennison [You could always schedule the saw, though - ed.] | |
| What is tolerance? -- it is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly -- that is the first law of nature. - Voltaire | |
| Parkinson's Law: Work expands to fill the time alloted it. | |
| Karl's version of Parkinson's Law: Work expands to exceed the time alloted it. | |
| "I mean, like, I just read your article in the Yale law recipe, on search and seizure. Man, that was really Out There." "I was so WRECKED when I wrote that..." -- John Lovitz, as ex-Supreme Court nominee Alan Ginsburg, on SNL | |
| Pohl's law: Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it. | |
| Harrisberger's Fourth Law of the Lab: Experience is directly proportional to the amount of equipment ruined. | |
| Captain Penny's Law: You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool mom. | |
| Inadmissible: Not competent to be considered. Said of certain kinds of testimony which juries are supposed to be unfit to be entrusted with, and which judges, therefore, rule out, even of proceedings before themselves alone. Hearsay evidence is inadmissible because the person quoted was unsworn and is not before the court for examination; yet most momentous actions, military, political, commercial and of every other kind, are daily undertaken on hearsay evidence. There is no religion in the world that has any other basis than hearsay evidence. Revelation is hearsay evidence; that the Scriptures are the word of God we have only the testimony of men long dead whose identy is not clearly established and who are not known to have been sworn in any sense. Under the rules of evidence as they now exist in this country, no single assertion in the Bible has in its support any evidence admissible in a court of law... But as records of courts of justice are admissible, it can easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges' decisions based on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value. --Ambrose Bierce | |
| Marriage Ceremony: An incredible metaphysical sham of watching God and the law being dragged into the affairs of your family. -- O. C. Ogilvie | |
| First as to speech. That privilege rests upon the premise that there is no proposition so uniformly acknowledged that it may not be lawfully challenged, questioned, and debated. It need not rest upon the further premise that there are no propositions that are not open to doubt; it is enough, even if there are, that in the end it is worse to suppress dissent than to run the risk of heresy. Hence it has been again and again unconditionally proclaimed that there are no limits to the privilege so far as words seek to affect only the hearers' beliefs and not their conduct. The trouble is that conduct is almost always based upon some belief, and that to change the hearer's belief will generally to some extent change his conduct, and may even evoke conduct that the law forbids. [cf. Learned Hand, The Spirit of Liberty, University of Chicago Press, 1952; The Art and Craft of Judging: The Decisions of Judge Learned Hand, edited and annotated by Hershel Shanks, The MacMillian Company, 1968.] | |
| "And it should be the law: If you use the word `paradigm' without knowing what the dictionary says it means, you go to jail. No exceptions." -- David Jones @ Megatest Corporation | |
| "We dedicated ourselves to a powerful idea -- organic law rather than naked power. There seems to be universal acceptance of that idea in the nation." -- Supreme Court Justice Potter Steart | |
| "The lawgiver, of all beings, most owes the law allegiance. He of all men should behave as though the law compelled him. But it is the universal weakness of mankind that what we are given to administer we presently imagine we own." -- H.G. Wells | |
| Corruption is not the #1 priority of the Police Commissioner. His job is to enforce the law and fight crime. -- P.B.A. President E. J. Kiernan | |
| I have gained this by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law. -- Aristotle | |
| I want to be the white man's brother, not his brother-in-law. -- Martin Luther King, Jr. | |
| 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 | |
| Law stands mute in the midst of arms. -- Marcus Tullius Cicero | |
| Surprise! You are the lucky winner of random I.R.S. Audit! Just type in your name and social security number. Please remember that leaving the room is punishable under law: Name # | |
| The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free. -- Henry David Thoreau | |
| The Minnesota Board of Education voted to consider requiring all students to do some "volunteer work" as a prerequisite to high school graduation. Senator Orrin Hatch said that "capital punishment is our society's recognition of the sanctity of human life." According to the tax bill signed by President Reagan on December 22, 1987, Don Tyson and his sister-in-law Barbara run a "family farm." Their "farm" has 25,000 employees and grosses $1.7 billion a year. But as a "family farm" they get tax breaks that save them $135 million a year. Scott L. Pickard, spokesperson for the Massachusetts Department of Public Works, calls them "ground-mounted confirmatory route markers." You probably call them road signs, but then you don't work in a government agency. It's not "elderly" or "senior citizens" anymore. Now it's "chrono- logically experienced citizens." According to the FAA, the propeller blade didn't break off, it was just a case of "uncontained blade liberation." -- Quarterly Review of Doublespeak (NCTE) | |
| The primary theme of SoupCon is communication. The acronym "LEO" represents the secondary theme: Law Enforcement Officials The overall theme of SoupCon shall be: Avoiding Communication with Law Enforcement Officials -- M. Gallaher | |
| "Ubi non accusator, ibi non judex." (Where there is no police, there is no speed limit.) -- Roman Law, trans. Petr Beckmann (1971) | |
| 186,282 miles per second: It isn't just a good idea, it's the law! | |
| 3rd Law of Computing: Anything that can go wr fortune: Segmentation violation -- Core dumped | |
| A Law of Computer Programming: Make it possible for programmers to write in English and you will find that programmers cannot write in English. | |
| Agnes' Law: Almost everything in life is easier to get into than out of. | |
| Albrecht's Law: Social innovations tend to the level of minimum tolerable well-being. | |
| Anthony's Law of Force: Don't force it; get a larger hammer. | |
| Anthony's Law of the Workshop: Any tool when dropped, will roll into the least accessible corner of the workshop. Corollary: On the way to the corner, any dropped tool will first strike your toes. | |
| Armstrong's Collection Law: If the check is truly in the mail, it is surely made out to someone else. | |
| Baker's First Law of Federal Geometry: A block grant is a solid mass of money surrounded on all sides by governors. | |
| Bilbo's First Law: You cannot count friends that are all packed up in barrels. | |
| Bloom's Seventh Law of Litigation: The judge's jokes are always funny. | |
| Bolub's Fourth Law of Computerdom: Project teams detest weekly progress reporting because it so vividly manifests their lack of progress. | |
| Boob's Law: You always find something in the last place you look. | |
| Booker's Law: An ounce of application is worth a ton of abstraction. | |
| Bower's Law: Talent goes where the action is. | |
| Brady's First Law of Problem Solving: When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more easily by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger have handled this?" | |
| Brook's Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later. | |
| Brooke's Law: Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool discovers something which either abolishes the system or expands it beyond recognition. | |
| Bucy's Law: Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man. | |
| Bureau Termination, Law of: When a government bureau is scheduled to be phased out, the number of employees in that bureau will double within 12 months after the decision is made. | |
| Campbell's Law: Nature abhors a vacuous experimenter. | |
| Captain Penny's Law: You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you Can't Fool Mom. | |
| Cheops' Law: Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget. | |
| Chism's Law of Completion: The amount of time required to complete a government project is precisely equal to the length of time already spent on it. | |
| Chisolm's First Corollary to Murphy's Second Law: When things just can't possibly get any worse, they will. | |
| Cohen's Law: There is no bottom to worse. | |
| Cohn's Law: The more time you spend in reporting on what you are doing, the less time you have to do anything. Stability is achieved when you spend all your time reporting on the nothing you are doing. | |
| Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage. | |
| Consent decree: A document in which a hapless company consents never to commit in the future whatever heinous violations of Federal law it never admitted to in the first place. | |
| Conway's Law: In any organization there will always be one person who knows what is going on. This person must be fired. | |
| Corry's Law: Paper is always strongest at the perforations. | |
| 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. | |
| Cropp's Law: The amount of work done varies inversly with the time spent in the office. | |
| 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. | |
| Cutler Webster's Law: There are two sides to every argument, unless a person is personally involved, in which case there is only one. | |
| Davis' Law of Traffic Density: The density of rush-hour traffic is directly proportional to 1.5 times the amount of extra time you allow to arrive on time. | |
| Dibble's First Law of Sociology: Some do, some don't. | |
| Dow's Law: In a hierarchical organization, the higher the level, the greater the confusion. | |
| Drew's Law of Highway Biology: The first bug to hit a clean windshield lands directly in front of your eyes. | |
| Eagleson's Law: Any code of your own that you haven't looked at for six or more months, might as well have been written by someone else. (Eagleson is an optimist, the real number is more like three weeks.) | |
| Eleventh Law of Acoustics: In a minimum-phase system there is an inextricable link between frequency response, phase response and transient response, as they are all merely transforms of one another. This combined with minimalization of open-loop errors in output amplifiers and correct compensation for non-linear passive crossover network loading can lead to a significant decrease in system resolution lost. However, of course, this all means jack when you listen to Pink Floyd. | |
| Emerson's Law of Contrariness: Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can. Having found them, we shall then hate them for it. | |
| Epperson's law: When a man says it's a silly, childish game, it's probably something his wife can beat him at. | |
| Fifth Law of Applied Terror: If you are given an open-book exam, you will forget your book. Corollary: If you are given a take-home exam, you will forget where you live. | |
| Fifth Law of Procrastination: Procrastination avoids boredom; one never has the feeling that there is nothing important to do. | |
| Finagle's Eighth Law: If an experiment works, something has gone wrong. Finagle's Ninth Law: No matter what results are expected, someone is always willing to fake it. Finagle's Tenth Law: No matter what the result someone is always eager to misinterpret it. Finagle's Eleventh Law: No matter what occurs, someone believes it happened according to his pet theory. | |
| Finagle's First Law: If an experiment works, something has gone wrong. | |
| Finagle's First Law: To study a subject best, understand it thoroughly before you start. Finagle's Second Law: Always keep a record of data -- it indicates you've been working. Finagle's Fourth Law: Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes it worse. Finagle's Fifth Law: Always draw your curves, then plot your readings. Finagle's Sixth Law: Don't believe in miracles -- rely on them. | |
| Finagle's Second Law: No matter what the anticipated result, there will always be someone eager to (a) misinterpret it, (b) fake it, or (c) believe it happened according to his own pet theory. | |
| Finagle's Seventh Law: The perversity of the universe tends toward a maximum. | |
| Finagle's Third Law: In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct, beyond all need of checking, is the mistake Corollaries: (1) Nobody whom you ask for help will see it. (2) The first person who stops by, whose advice you really don't want to hear, will see it immediately. | |
| Finster's Law: A closed mouth gathers no feet. | |
| First Law of Bicycling: No matter which way you ride, it's uphill and against the wind. | |
| First law of debate: Never argue with a fool. People might not know the difference. | |
| First Law of Procrastination: Procrastination shortens the job and places the responsibility for its termination on someone else (i.e., the authority who imposed the deadline). Fifth Law of Procrastination: Procrastination avoids boredom; one never has the feeling that there is nothing important to do. | |
| First Law of Socio-Genetics: Celibacy is not hereditary. | |
| 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. | |
| Flugg's Law: When you need to knock on wood is when you realize that the world is composed of vinyl, naugahyde and aluminum. | |
| Fourth Law of Applied Terror: The night before the English History mid-term, your Biology instructor will assign 200 pages on planaria. Corollary: Every instructor assumes that you have nothing else to do except study for that instructor's course. | |
| Fourth Law of Revision: It is usually impractical to worry beforehand about interferences -- if you have none, someone will make one for you. | |
| Fourth Law of Thermodynamics: If the probability of success is not almost one, it is damn near zero. -- David Ellis | |
| Fudd's First Law of Opposition: Push something hard enough and it will fall over. | |
| Galbraith's Law of Human Nature: Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everybody gets busy on the proof. | |
| Ginsburg's Law: At the precise moment you take off your shoe in a shoe store, your big toe will pop out of your sock to see what's going on. | |
| Glib's Fourth Law of Unreliability: Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the probable cost of errors, or until someone insists on getting some useful work done. | |
| Godwin's Law (prov. [Usenet]): As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups. | |
| Gold's Law: If the shoe fits, it's ugly. | |
| Gordon's first law: If a research project is not worth doing, it is not worth doing well. | |
| Gordon's Law: If you think you have the solution, the question was poorly phrased. | |
| Government's Law: There is an exception to all laws. | |
| Grabel's Law: 2 is not equal to 3 -- not even for large values of 2. | |
| Grandpa Charnock's Law: You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive. [I thought it was when your kids learned to drive. Ed.] | |
| Gray's Law of Programming: `_n+1' trivial tasks are expected to be accomplished in the same time as `_n' tasks. Logg's Rebuttal to Gray's Law: `_n+1' trivial tasks take twice as long as `_n' trivial tasks. | |
| Green's Law of Debate: Anything is possible if you don't know what you're talking about. | |
| Greener's Law: Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel. | |
| Grinnell's Law of Labor Laxity: At all times, for any task, you have not got enough done today. | |
| Gumperson's Law: The probability of a given event occurring is inversely proportional to its desirability. | |
| H. L. Mencken's Law: Those who can -- do. Those who can't -- teach. Martin's Extension: Those who cannot teach -- administrate. | |
| Hacker's Law: The belief that enhanced understanding will necessarily stir a nation to action is one of mankind's oldest illusions. | |
| Harrisberger's Fourth Law of the Lab: Experience is directly proportional to the amount of equipment ruined. | |
| Hartley's First Law: You can lead a horse to water, but if you can get him to float on his back, you've got something. | |
| Heller's Law: The first myth of management is that it exists. Johnson's Corollary: Nobody really knows what is going on anywhere within the organization. | |
| Herth's Law: He who turns the other cheek too far gets it in the neck. | |
| Hlade's Law: If you have a difficult task, give it to a lazy person -- they will find an easier way to do it. | |
| Hoare's Law of Large Problems: Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get out. | |
| Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account. | |
| Howe's Law: Everyone has a scheme that will not work. | |
| Hubbard's Law: Don't take life too seriously; you won't get out of it alive. | |
| Iles's Law: There is always an easier way to do it. When looking directly at the easy way, especially for long periods, you will not see it. Neither will Iles. | |
| Imbesi's Law with Freeman's Extension: In order for something to become clean, something else must become dirty; but you can get everything dirty without getting anything clean. | |
| Iron Law of Distribution: Them that has, gets. | |
| Jenkinson's Law: It won't work. | |
| Jim Nasium's Law: In a large locker room with hundreds of lockers, the few people using the facility at any one time will all have lockers next to each other so that everybody is cramped. | |
| Johnson's First Law: When any mechanical contrivance fails, it will do so at the most inconvenient possible time. | |
| Johnson's law: Systems resemble the organizations that create them. | |
| Jones' First Law: Anyone who makes a significant contribution to any field of endeavor, and stays in that field long enough, becomes an obstruction to its progress -- in direct proportion to the importance of their original contribution. | |
| Jones' Second Law: The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone to blame it on. | |
| Juall's Law on Nice Guys: Nice guys don't always finish last; sometimes they don't finish. Sometimes they don't even get a chance to start! | |
| Kafka's Law: In the fight between you and the world, back the world. -- Franz Kafka, "RS's 1974 Expectation of Days" | |
| Katz' Law: Men and nations will act rationally when all other possibilities have been exhausted. History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives. -- Abba Eban | |
| Kaufman's First Law of Party Physics: Population density is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the keg. | |
| Kaufman's Law: A policy is a restrictive document to prevent a recurrence of a single incident, in which that incident is never mentioned. | |
| Kime's Law for the Reward of Meekness: Turning the other cheek merely ensures two bruised cheeks. | |
| Kington's Law of Perforation: If a straight line of holes is made in a piece of paper, such as a sheet of stamps or a check, that line becomes the strongest part of the paper. | |
| Kinkler's First Law: Responsibility always exceeds authority. Kinkler's Second Law: All the easy problems have been solved. | |
| Kliban's First Law of Dining: Never eat anything bigger than your head. | |
| Knebel's Law: It is now proved beyond doubt that smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics. | |
| Kramer's Law: You can never tell which way the train went by looking at the tracks. | |
| Larkinson's Law: All laws are basically false. | |
| Laura's Law: No child throws up in the bathroom. | |
| Law of Communications: The inevitable result of improved and enlarged communications between different levels in a hierarchy is a vastly increased area of misunderstanding. | |
| Law of Continuity: Experiments should be reproducible. They should all fail the same way. | |
| Law of Procrastination: Procrastination avoids boredom; one never has the feeling that there is nothing important to do. | |
| Law of Selective Gravity: An object will fall so as to do the most damage. Jenning's Corollary: The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet. Law of the Perversity of Nature: You cannot determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter. | |
| Law of the Jungle: He who hesitates is lunch. | |
| Lawyer's Rule: When the law is against you, argue the facts. When the facts are against you, argue the law. When both are against you, call the other lawyer names. | |
| Lee's Law: Mother said there would be days like this, but she never said that there'd be so many! | |
| Lewis's Law of Travel: The first piece of luggage out of the chute doesn't belong to anyone, ever. | |
| Lieberman's Law: Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter since nobody listens. | |
| Linus' Law: There is no heavier burden than a great potential. | |
| Lowery's Law: If it jams -- force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway. | |
| Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology: There's always one more bug. | |
| Maier's Law: If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be disposed of. -- N.R. Maier, "American Psychologist", March 1960 Corollaries: (1) The bigger the theory, the better. (2) The experiment may be considered a success if no more than 50% of the observed measurements must be discarded to obtain a correspondence with the theory. | |
| Main's Law: For every action there is an equal and opposite government program. | |
| Majority, n.: That quality that distinguishes a crime from a law. | |
| Malek's Law: Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way. | |
| Marxist Law of Distribution of Wealth: Shortages will be divided equally among the peasants. | |
| Maryann's Law: You can always find what you're not looking for. | |
| Mason's First Law of Synergism: The one day you'd sell your soul for something, souls are a glut. | |
| Matz's Law: A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking. | |
| May's Law: The quality of correlation is inversly proportional to the density of control. (The fewer the data points, the smoother the curves.) | |
| Meader's Law: Whatever happens to you, it will previously have happened to everyone you know, only more so. | |
| Mencken and Nathan's Fifteenth Law of The Average American: The worst actress in the company is always the manager's wife. | |
| Mencken and Nathan's Ninth Law of The Average American: The quality of a champagne is judged by the amount of noise the cork makes when it is popped. | |
| Mencken and Nathan's Second Law of The Average American: All the postmasters in small towns read all the postcards. | |
| Mencken and Nathan's Sixteenth Law of The Average American: Milking a cow is an operation demanding a special talent that is possessed only by yokels, and no person born in a large city can never hope to acquire it. | |
| Meskimen's Law: There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over. | |
| Miksch's Law: If a string has one end, then it has another end. | |
| Mitchell's Law of Committees: Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are held to discuss it. | |
| Mix's Law: There is nothing more permanent than a temporary building. There is nothing more permanent than a temporary tax. | |
| mixed emotions: Watching your mother-in-law back off a cliff... in your brand new Mercedes. | |
| Morton's Law: If rats are experimented upon, they will develop cancer. | |
| Mosher's Law of Software Engineering: Don't worry if it doesn't work right. If everything did, you'd be out of a job. | |
| Murphy's Law of Research: Enough research will tend to support your theory. | |
| Newton's Law of Gravitation: What goes up must come down. But don't expect it to come down where you can find it. Murphy's Law applies to Newton's. | |
| Newton's Little-Known Seventh Law: A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead. | |
| Nick the Greek's Law of Life: All things considered, life is 9 to 5 against. | |
| Nusbaum's Rule: The more pretentious the corporate name, the smaller the organization. (For instance, the Murphy Center for the Codification of Human and Organizational Law, contrasted to IBM, GM, and AT&T.) | |
| O'Brian's Law: Everything is always done for the wrong reasons. | |
| O'Reilly's Law of the Kitchen: Cleanliness is next to impossible | |
| O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law: Murphy was an optimist. | |
| Ogden's Law: The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch up. | |
| Oliver's Law: Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it. | |
| Olmstead's Law: After all is said and done, a hell of a lot more is said than done. | |
| Osborn's Law: Variables won't; constants aren't. | |
| Parkinson's Fifth Law: If there is a way to delay in important decision, the good bureaucracy, public or private, will find it. | |
| Parkinson's Fourth Law: The number of people in any working group tends to increase regardless of the amount of work to be done. | |
| Paul's Law: In America, it's not how much an item costs, it's how much you save. | |
| Paul's Law: You can't fall off the floor. | |
| Peers's Law: The solution to a problem changes the nature of the problem. | |
| Peter's Law of Substitution: Look after the molehills, and the mountains will look after themselves. Peter's Principle of Success: Get up one time more than you're knocked down. | |
| Pickle's Law: If Congress must do a painful thing, the thing must be done in an odd-number year. | |
| Pohl's law: Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it. | |
| Preudhomme's Law of Window Cleaning: It's on the other side. | |
| Pudder's Law: Anything that begins well will end badly. (Note: The converse of Pudder's law is not true.) | |
| Putt's Law: Technology is dominated by two types of people: Those who understand what they do not manage. Those who manage what they do not understand. | |
| Quigley's Law: Whoever has any authority over you, no matter how small, will atttempt to use it. | |
| Reichel's Law: A body on vacation tends to remain on vacation unless acted upon by an outside force. | |
| Rhode's Law: When any principle, law, tenet, probability, happening, circumstance, or result can in no way be directly, indirectly, empirically, or circuitously proven, derived, implied, inferred, induced, deducted, estimated, or scientifically guessed, it will always for the purpose of convenience, expediency, political advantage, material gain, or personal comfort, or any combination of the above, or none of the above, be unilaterally and unequivocally assumed, proclaimed, and adhered to as absolute truth to be undeniably, universally, immutably, and infinitely so, until such time as it becomes advantageous to assume otherwise, maybe. | |
| Rudin's Law: If there is a wrong way to do something, most people will do it every time. Rudin's Second Law: In a crisis that forces a choice to be made among alternative courses of action, people tend to choose the worst possible course. | |
| Ryan's Law: Make three correct guesses consecutively and you will establish yourself as an expert. | |
| Sattinger's Law: It works better if you plug it in. | |
| Savage's Law of Expediency: You want it bad, you'll get it bad. | |
| Scott's First Law: No matter what goes wrong, it will probably look right. Scott's Second Law: When an error has been detected and corrected, it will be found to have been wrong in the first place. Corollary: After the correction has been found in error, it will be impossible to fit the original quantity back into the equation. | |
| Second Law of Business Meetings: If there are two possible ways to spell a person's name, you will pick the wrong one. Corollary: If there is only one way to spell a name, you will spell it wrong, anyway. | |
| Second Law of Final Exams: In your toughest final -- for the first time all year -- the most distractingly attractive student in the class will sit next to you. | |
| Shedenhelm's Law: All trails have more uphill sections than they have downhill sections. | |
| Shick's Law: There is no problem a good miracle can't solve. | |
| Silverman's Law: If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will. | |
| Simon's Law: Everything put together falls apart sooner or later. | |
| Sodd's Second Law: Sooner or later, the worst possible set of circumstances is bound to occur. | |
| Speer's 1st Law of Proofreading: The visibility of an error is inversely proportional to the number of times you have looked at it. | |
| Steele's Law: There exist tasks which cannot be done by more than ten men or fewer than one hundred. | |
| Stenderup's Law: The sooner you fall behind, the more time you will have to catch up. | |
| Stone's Law: One man's "simple" is another man's "huh?" | |
| Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crud. | |
| The Briggs-Chase Law of Program Development: To determine how long it will take to write and debug a program, take your best estimate, multiply that by two, add one, and convert to the next higher units. | |
| The Law of the Letter: The best way to inspire fresh thoughts is to seal the envelope. | |
| The Second Law of Thermodynamics: If you think things are in a mess now, just wait! -- Jim Warner | |
| The Third Law of Photography: If you did manage to get any good shots, they will be ruined when someone inadvertently opens the darkroom door and all of the dark leaks out. | |
| Thyme's Law: Everything goes wrong at once. | |
| Turnaucka's Law: The attention span of a computer is only as long as its electrical cord. | |
| Tussman's Law: Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come. | |
| Udall's Fourth Law: Any change or reform you make is going to have consequences you don't like. | |
| Unnamed Law: If it happens, it must be possible. | |
| Van Roy's Law: An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys. | |
| Van Roy's Law: Honesty is the best policy - there's less competition. Van Roy's Truism: Life is a whole series of circumstances beyond your control. | |
| Watson's Law: The reliability of machinery is inversely proportional to the number and significance of any persons watching it. | |
| Weiler's Law: Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself. | |
| Weinberg's First Law: Progress is only made on alternate Fridays. | |
| Weinberg's Second Law: If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization. | |
| Weiner's Law of Libraries: There are no answers, only cross references. | |
| Whistler's Law: You never know who is right, but you always know who is in charge. | |
| Whitehead's Law: The obvious answer is always overlooked. | |
| Wiker's Law: Government expands to absorb revenue and then some. | |
| Wilcox's Law: A pat on the back is only a few centimeters from a kick in the pants. | |
| Williams and Holland's Law: If enough data is collected, anything may be proven by statistical methods. | |
| Woodward's Law: A theory is better than its explanation. | |
| Zymurgy's Law of Volunteer Labor: People are always available for work in the past tense. | |
| Overboarding: Overcompensating for fears about the future by plunging headlong into a job or life-style seemingly unrelated to one's previous life interests: i.e., Amway sales, aerobics, the Republican party, a career in law, cults, McJobs.... -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture" | |
| greenrd's law Evey post disparaging someone else's spelling or grammar, or lauding one's own spelling or grammar, will inevitably contain a spelling or grammatical error. -- greenrd in http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2002/4/16/61744/5230?pid=5#6 | |
| The problem with any unwritten law is that you don't know where to go to erase it. -- Glaser and Way | |
| Q: Why is it that the more accuracy you demand from an interpolation function, the more expensive it becomes to compute? A: That's the Law of Spline Demand. | |
| 1.79 x 10^12 furlongs per fortnight -- it's not just a good idea, it's the law! | |
| If A = B and B = C, then A = C, except where void or prohibited by law. -- Roy Santoro | |
| In specifications, Murphy's Law supersedes Ohm's. | |
| "It could be that Walter's horse has wings" does not imply that there is any such animal as Walter's horse, only that there could be; but "Walter's horse is a thing which could have wings" does imply Walter's horse's existence. But the conjunction "Walter's horse exists, and it could be that Walter's horse has wings" still does not imply "Walter's horse is a thing that could have wings", for perhaps it can only be that Walter's horse has wings by Walter having a different horse. Nor does "Walter's horse is a thing which could have wings" conversely imply "It could be that Walter's horse has wings"; for it might be that Walter's horse could only have wings by not being Walter's horse. I would deny, though, that the formula [Necessarily if some x has property P then some x has property P] expresses a logical law, since P(x) could stand for, let us say "x is a better logician than I am", and the statement "It is necessary that if someone is a better logician than I am then someone is a better logician than I am" is false because there need not have been any me. -- A.N. Prior, "Time and Modality" | |
| It is true that if your paperboy throws your paper into the bushes for five straight days it can be explained by Newton's Law of Gravity. But it takes Murphy's law to explain why it is happening to you. | |
| Murphy's Law, that brash proletarian restatement of Godel's Theorem. -- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow" | |
| Nature abhors a hero. For one thing, he violates the law of conservation of energy. For another, how can it be the survival of the fittest when the fittest keeps putting himself in situations where he is most likely to be creamed? -- Solomon Short | |
| The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed from available data. Our authority is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days." Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition seven times seven (49) times as much as the Earth does from the Sun, or fifty times in all. The light we receive from the Moon is one ten-thousandth of the light we receive from the Sun, so we can ignore that. With these data we can compute the temperature of Heaven. The radiation falling on Heaven will heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses fifty times as much heat as the Earth by radiation. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation, (H/E)^4 = 50, where E is the absolute temperature of the earth (~300K), gives H as 798K (525C). The exact temperature of Hell cannot be computed, but it must be less than 444.6C, the temperature at which brimstone or sulphur changes from a liquid to a gas. Revelations 21:8 says "But the fearful, and unbelieving ... shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone." A lake of molten brimstone means that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point, or 444.6C (Above this point it would be a vapor, not a lake.) We have, then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C. -- "Applied Optics", vol. 11, A14, 1972 | |
| There are three schools of magic. One: State a tautology, then ring the changes on its corollaries; that's philosophy. Two: Record many facts. Try to find a pattern. Then make a wrong guess at the next fact; that's science. Three: Be aware that you live in a malevolent Universe controlled by Murphy's Law, sometimes offset by Brewster's Factor; that's engineering. | |
| There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. -- Darwin | |
| TIRED of calculating components of vectors? Displacements along direction of force getting you down? Well, now there's help. Try amazing "Dot-Product", the fast, easy way many professionals have used for years and is now available to YOU through this special offer. Three out of five engineering consultants recommend "Dot-Product" for their clients who use vector products. Mr. Gumbinowitz, mechanical engineer, in a hidden-camera interview... "Dot-Product really works! Calculating Z-axis force components has never been easier." Yes, you too can take advantage of the amazing properties of Dot-Product. Use it to calculate forces, velocities, displacements, and virtually any vector components. How much would you pay for it? But wait, it also calculates the work done in Joules, Ergs, and, yes, even BTU's. Divide Dot-Product by the magnitude of the vectors and it becomes an instant angle calculator! Now, how much would you pay? All this can be yours for the low, low price of $19.95!! But that's not all! If you order before midnight, you'll also get "Famous Numbers of Famous People" as a bonus gift, absolutely free! Yes, you'll get Avogadro's number, Planck's, Euler's, Boltzmann's, and many, many, more!! Call 1-800-DOT-6000. Operators are standing by. That number again... 1-800-DOT-6000. Supplies are limited, so act now. This offer is not available through stores and is void where prohibited by law. | |
| Weinberg, as a young grocery clerk, advised the grocery manager to get rid of rutabagas which nobody ever bought. He did so. "Well, kid, that was a great idea," said the manager. Then he paused and asked the killer question, "NOW what's the least popular vegetable?" Law: Once you eliminate your #1 problem, #2 gets a promotion. -- Gerald Weinberg, "The Secrets of Consulting" | |
| You can not get anything worthwhile done without raising a sweat. -- The First Law Of Thermodynamics What ever you want is going to cost a little more than it is worth. -- The Second Law Of Thermodynamics You can not win the game, and you are not allowed to stop playing. -- The Third Law Of Thermodynamics | |
| Hack placidly amidst the noisy printers and remember what prizes there may be in Science. As fast as possible get a good terminal on a good system. Enter your data clearly but always encrypt your results. And listen to others, even the dull and ignorant, for they may be your customers. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, for they are sales reps. If you compare your outputs with those of others, you may be surprised, for always there will be greater and lesser numbers than you have crunched. Keep others interested in your career, and try not to fumble; it can be a real hassle and could change your fortunes in time. Exercise system control in your experiments, for the world is full of bugs. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for linearity and everywhere papers are full of approximations. Strive for proportionality. Especially, do not faint when it occurs. Neither be cyclical about results; for in the face of all data analysis it is sure to be noticed. Take with a grain of salt the anomalous data points. Gracefully pass them on to the youth at the next desk. Nurture some mutual funds to shield you in times of sudden layoffs. But do not distress yourself with imaginings -- the real bugs are enough to screw you badly. Murphy's Law runs the Universe -- and whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt <Curl>B*n dS = 0. Therefore, grab for a piece of the pie, with whatever proposals you can conceive of to try. With all the crashed disks, skewed data, and broken line printers, you can still have a beautiful secretary. Be linear. Strive to stay employed. -- Technolorata, "Analog" | |
| I always will remember -- I was in no mood to trifle; 'Twas a year ago November -- I got down my trusty rifle I went out to shoot some deer And went out to stalk my prey -- On a morning bright and clear. What a haul I made that day! I went and shot the maximum I tied them to my bumper and The game laws would allow: I drove them home somehow, Two game wardens, seven hunters, Two game wardens, seven hunters, And a cow. And a cow. The Law was very firm, it People ask me how I do it Took away my permit-- And I say, "There's nothin' to it! The worst punishment I ever endured. You just stand there lookin' cute, It turns out there was a reason: And when something moves, you shoot." Cows were out of season, and And there's ten stuffed heads One of the hunters wasn't insured. In my trophy room right now: Two game wardens, seven hunters, And a pure-bred guernsey cow. -- Tom Lehrer, "The Hunting Song" | |
| The net of law is spread so wide, No sinner from its sweep may hide. Its meshes are so fine and strong, They take in every child of wrong. O wondrous web of mystery! Big fish alone escape from thee! -- James Jeffrey Roche | |
| Who to himself is law no law doth need, offends no law, and is a king indeed. -- George Chapman | |
| "You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak For anything tougher than suet; Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak -- Pray, how did you manage to do it?" "In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law, And argued each case with my wife; And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw, Has lasted the rest of my life." "You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose That your eye was as steady as ever; Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose -- What made you so awfully clever?" "I have answered three questions, and that is enough," Said his father. "Don't give yourself airs! Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff? Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!" | |
| Harry is heavily into camping, and every year in the late fall, he makes us all go to Assateague, which is an island on the Atlantic Ocean famous for its wild horses. I realize that the concept of wild horses probably stirs romantic notions in many of you, but this is because you have never met any wild horses in person. In person, they are like enormous hooved rats. They amble up to your camp site, and their attitude is: "We're wild horses. We're going to eat your food, knock down your tent and poop on your shoes. We're protected by federal law, just like Richard Nixon." -- Dave Barry, "Tenting Grandpa Bob" | |
| If a putt passes over the hole without dropping, it is deemed to have dropped. The law of gravity holds that any object attempting to maintain a position in the atmosphere without something to support it must drop. The law of gravity supercedes the law of golf. -- Donald A. Metz | |
| Do not read this fortune under penalty of law. Violators will be prosecuted. (Penal Code sec. 2.3.2 (II.a.)) | |
| Warp 7 -- It's a law we can live with. | |
| Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves. -- From a Slashdot.org post | |
| Jargon Coiner (#4) An irregular feature that aims to give you advance warning of new jargon that we've just made up. * FREE LECTURE: Attempting to explain the concepts of Linux, Open Source software, free software, and gift cultures to someone who is not familiar with them. Made extra difficult if the explainee has been misled by superficial mainstream news articles about the subject. Example: "Eric gave an hour-long free lecture to his mother-in-law after she asked him about this Linux thingy she read about in USA Today." * LEXICON LAZINESS: Filling a fortune file with a list of fake jargon instead of publishing something more substantive (and funny) that would take more effort to write. * FOR(;;)TUNE LOOP: Repeatedly running fortune(6) for cheap entertainment. Example: "During a coffee break, Bob became bored and started a for(;;)tune loop. His boss had to issue a SIGTERM to get him to resume working." | |
| Brief History Of Linux (#3) Lawyers Unite Humanity faced a tremendous setback ca. 1100 A.D., when the first law school was established in Bologna. Ironically, the free exchange of ideas at the law school spurred the law students to invent new ways (patents, trademarks, copyrights) to stifle the free exchange of ideas in other industries. If, at some point in the future, you happen upon a time machine, we here at Humorix (and, indeed, the whole world) implore you to travel back to 1100, track down a law teacher called Irnerius, and prevent him from founding his school using whatever means necessary. Your contribution to humanity will truly make the world (in an alternate timeline) a better place. | |
| Brief History Of Linux (#22) RMS had a horrible, terrible dream set in 2020 in which all of society was held captive by copyright law. In particular, everyone's brain waves were monitored by the US Dept. of Copyrights. If your thoughts referenced a copyrighted idea, you had to pay a royalty. To make it worse, a handful of corporations held fully 99.9% of all intellectual property rights. Coincidentally, Bill Gates experienced a similar dream that same night. To him, however, it was not a horrible, terrible nightmare, but a wonderful utopian vision. The thought of lemmings... er, customers paying a royalty everytime they hummed a copyrighted song in their head or remembered a passage in a book was simply too marvelous for the budding monopolist. RMS, waking up from his nightmare, vowed to fight the oncoming Copyright Nightmare. The GNU Project was born. His plan called for a kernel, compiler, editor, and other tools. Unfortunately, RMS became bogged down with Emacs that the kernel, HURD, was shoved on the back burner. Built with LISP (Lots of Incomprehensible Statements with Parentheses), Emacs became bloated in a way no non-Microsoft program ever has. Indeed, for a short while RMS pretended that Emacs really was the GNU OS kernel. | |
| Brief History Of Linux (#23) Linus Torvalds certainly wasn't the only person to create their own operating system from scratch. Other people working from their leaky basements did create their own systems and now they are sick that they didn't become an Alpha Geek like Torvalds or a Beta Geek like Alan Cox. Linus had one advantage not many else did: Internet access. The world was full of half-implemented-Unix-kernels at the time, but they were sitting isolated on some hacker's hard drive, destined to be destroyed by a hard drive crash. Thankfully that never happened to Linux, mostly because everyone with Net access could download a copy instead of paying shipping charges to receive the code on a huge stack of unreliable floppy disks. Indeed, buried deep within a landfill in Lansing, Michigan sits a stack of still-readable 5-1/4 floppies containing the only known copy of "Windows Killer", a fully functional Unix kernel so elegant, so efficient, so easy-to-use that Ken Thompson himself would be jealous of its design. Unfortunately the author's mother threw out the stack of floppies in a bout of spring cleaning. The 14 year old author's talents were lost forever as his parents sent him to Law School. | |
| Mass Exodus From Hollywood During the past week, over 150 Hollywood actors, musicians, writers, directors, and key grips have quit their day jobs and moved to the Midwest to engage in quieter occupations such as gardening or accounting. All of the these people cite piracy as the reason for giving up their careers. "I simply can't sit by and let my hard work be stolen by some snot nosed punk over the Internet," explained millionaire movie director Steve Bergospiel. "There's absolutely no incentive to create movies if they're going to be transmitted at the speed of light by thousands of infringers. Such criminal acts personally cost me hundreds -- no, thousands -- of dollars. I can't take that kind of fear and abuse anymore." MPAA President Pei Pervue considers the exodus to be proof that Hollywood is waking up to the fact that they are being "held hostage" by copyright infringers. "Without copyright protection and government-backed monopolies on intellectual property, these's absolutely no reason to engage in the creative process. Now the Internet, with its click-and-pirate technology, makes it easy for anybody to flout the law and become a copyright terrorist. With the scales tipped so much in favor of criminals, it's no wonder some of Hollywood's elite have thrown in the towel. What a shame." | |
| As many of you know, I am taking a class here at UNC on Personality. One of the tests to determine personality in our book was so incredibly useful and interesting, I just had to share it. Answer each of the following items "true" or "false" 1. I salivate at the sight of mittens. 2. If I go into the street, I'm apt to be bitten by a horse. 3. Some people never look at me. 4. Spinach makes me feel alone. 5. My sex life is A-okay. 6. When I look down from a high spot, I want to spit. 7. I like to kill mosquitoes. 8. Cousins are not to be trusted. 9. It makes me embarrassed to fall down. 10. I get nauseous from too much roller skating. 11. I think most people would cry to gain a point. 12. I cannot read or write. 13. I am bored by thoughts of death. 14. I become homicidal when people try to reason with me. 15. I would enjoy the work of a chicken flicker. 16. I am never startled by a fish. 17. My mother's uncle was a good man. 18. I don't like it when somebody is rotten. 19. People who break the law are wise guys. 20. I have never gone to pieces over the weekend. | |
| Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends. -- H. L. Mencken | |
| If you want to know how old a man is, ask his brother-in-law. | |
| Oh wearisome condition of humanity! Born under one law, to another bound. -- Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke | |
| What is tolerance? -- it is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly -- that is the first law of nature. -- Voltaire | |
| Linus, Alan - Please apply the following self-explanatory patch. + /* LynuxWorks are politely reminded that removing copyright + notices is an offence under the Copyright Design and + Patents Act 1988, and under equivalent non-UK law in + accordance with the Berne Convention. */ + printk("Portions (C) 2000, 2001 Red Hat, Inc.\n"); - David Woodhouse on linux-kernel | |
| As you point out below, contract law is also involved. Add the DMCA, UCITA, and Bush 2.0 to the mix, and any lawyer who says he actually knows what's legal is lying. - Ian Pilcher on Microsoft "shared source" licensing | |
| Most EULA's are not legal contracts. In civilised countries the right to disassemble is enshrined in law (ironically it comes in Europe from trying to keep car manufacturers from running monopolistic scams not from the software people doing the same) In the USA its a lot less clear. You can find laws explicitly claiming both, and since US law is primarily about who has loads of money, its a bit irrelevant - Alan Cox explaining EULA's on linux-kernel | |
| "90% of everything is crap", Its called Sturgeon's law 8) One of the problems is indeed finding the good bits - Alan Cox | |
| If men are not afraid to die, It is no avail to threaten them with death. If men live in constant fear of dying, And if breaking the law means that a man will be killed, Who will dare to break the law? There is always an official executioner. If you try to take his place, It is like trying to be a master carpenter and cutting wood. If you try to cut wood like a master carpenter, you will only hurt your hand. | |
| <netgod> Feanor: u have no idea of the depth of the stupidty of american law | |
| <Knghtbrd> Europe Passes Pro-spam Law <Knghtbrd> I though only Americans were that fucking stupid => <Espy> apparently americans are quite naive :) | |
| <Crow-> who gives a shit about US law <jim> anyone living in the US. | |
| Lucas' Law: Good will always win, because evil hires the _stupid_ engineers. | |
| Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves. | |
| <Espy> I invoke Espy's law, which states that you all suck :P | |
| A certain old cat had made his home in the alley behind Gabe's bar for some time, subsisting on scraps and occasional handouts from the bartender. One evening, emboldened by hunger, the feline attempted to follow Gabe through the back door. Regrettably, only the his body had made it through when the door slammed shut, severing the cat's tail at its base. This proved too much for the old creature, who looked sadly at Gabe and expired on the spot. Gabe put the carcass back out in the alley and went back to business. The mandatory closing time arrived and Gabe was in the process of locking up after the last customers had gone. Approaching the back door he was startled to see an apparition of the old cat mournfully holding its severed tail out, silently pleading for Gabe to put the tail back on its corpse so that it could go on to the kitty afterworld complete. Gabe shook his head sadly and said to the ghost, "I can't. You know the law -- no retailing spirits after 2:00 AM." | |
| A lawyer named Strange was shopping for a tombstone. After he had made his selection, the stonecutter asked him what inscription he would like on it. "Here lies an honest man and a lawyer," responded the lawyer. "Sorry, but I can't do that," replied the stonecutter. "In this state, it's against the law to bury two people in the same grave. However, I could put ``here lies an honest lawyer'', if that would be okay." "But that won't let people know who it is" protested the lawyer. "Certainly will," retorted the stonecutter. "people will read it and exclaim, "That's Strange!" | |
| According to Arkansas law, Section 4761, Pope's Digest: "No person shall be permitted under any pretext whatever, to come nearer than fifty feet of any door or window of any polling room, from the opening of the polls until the completion of the count and the certification of the returns." | |
| According to Kentucky state law, every person must take a bath at least once a year. | |
| After 35 years, I have finished a comprehensive study of European comparative law. In Germany, under the law, everything is prohibited, except that which is permitted. In France, under the law, everything is permitted, except that which is prohibited. In the Soviet Union, under the law, everything is prohibited, including that which is permitted. And in Italy, under the law, everything is permitted, especially that which is prohibited. -- Newton Minow, Speech to the Association of American Law Schools, 1985 | |
| Atlanta makes it against the law to tie a giraffe to a telephone pole or street lamp. | |
| Between grand theft and a legal fee, there only stands a law degree. | |
| ... but as records of courts and justice are admissible, it can easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges' decisions based on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" | |
| Chicago law prohibits eating in a place that is on fire. | |
| First there was Dial-A-Prayer, then Dial-A-Recipe, and even Dial-A-Footballer. But the south-east Victorian town of Sale has produced one to top them all. Dial-A-Wombat. It all began early yesterday when Sale police received a telephone call: "You won't believe this, and I'm not drunk, but there's a wombat in the phone booth outside the town hall," the caller said. Not firmly convinced about the caller's claim to sobriety, members of the constabulary drove to the scene, expecting to pick up a drunk. But there it was, an annoyed wombat, trapped in a telephone booth. The wombat, determined not to be had the better of again, threw its bulk into the fray. It was eventually lassoed and released in a nearby scrub. Then the officers received another message ... another wombat in another phone booth. There it was: *Another* angry wombat trapped in a telephone booth. The constables took the miffed marsupial into temporary custody and released it, too, in the scrub. But on their way back to the station they happened to pass another telephone booth, and -- you guessed it -- another imprisoned wombat. After some serious detective work, the lads in blue found a suspect, and after questioning, released him to be charged on summons. Their problem ... they cannot find a law against placing wombats in telephone booths. -- "Newcastle Morning Herald", NSW Australia, Aug 1980. | |
| Fortune's Law of the Week (this week, from Kentucky): No female shall appear in a bathing suit at any airport in this State unless she is escorted by two officers or unless she is armed with a club. The provisions of this statute shall not apply to females weighing less than 90 pounds nor exceeding 200 pounds, nor shall it apply to female horses. | |
| Frankfort, Kentucky, makes it against the law to shoot off a policeman's tie. | |
| "Hi, I'm Preston A. Mantis, president of Consumers Retail Law Outlet. As you can see by my suit and the fact that I have all these books of equal height on the shelves behind me, I am a trained legal attorney. Do you have a car or a job? Do you ever walk around? If so, you probably have the makings of an excellent legal case. Although of course every case is different, I would definitely say that based on my experience and training, there's no reason why you shouldn't come out of this thing with at least a cabin cruiser. "Remember, at the Preston A. Mantis Consumers Retail Law Outlet, our motto is: 'It is very difficult to disprove certain kinds of pain.'" -- Dave Barry, "Pain and Suffering" | |
| How do you insult a lawyer? You might as well not even try. Consider: of all the highly trained and educated professions, law is the only one in which the prime lesson is that *winning* is more important than *truth*. Once someone has sunk to that level, what worse can you say about them? | |
| Humor in the Court: Q. What is your brother-in-law's name? A. Borofkin. Q. What's his first name? A. I can't remember. Q. He's been your brother-in-law for years, and you can't remember his first name? A. No. I tell you I'm too excited. (Rising from the witness chair and pointing to Mr. Borofkin.) Nathan, for God's sake, tell them your first name! | |
| I value kindness to human beings first of all, and kindness to animals. I don't respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper, and old men and women warmer in the winter, and happier in the summer. -- Brendan Behan | |
| Idaho state law makes it illegal for a man to give his sweetheart a box of candy weighing less than fifty pounds. | |
| If a man stay away from his wife for seven years, the law presumes the separation to have killed him; yet according to our daily experience, it might well prolong his life. -- Charles Darling, "Scintillae Juris, 1877 | |
| If there were a school for, say, sheet metal workers, that after three years left its graduates as unprepared for their careers as does law school, it would be closed down in a minute, and no doubt by lawyers. -- Michael Levin, "The Socratic Method | |
| In Columbia, Pennsylvania, it is against the law for a pilot to tickle a female flying student under her chin with a feather duster in order to get her attention. | |
| In Lowes Crossroads, Delaware, it is a violation of local law for any pilot or passenger to carry an ice cream cone in their pocket while either flying or waiting to board a plane. | |
| In Pocatello, Idaho, a law passed in 1912 provided that "The carrying of concealed weapons is forbidden, unless same are exhibited to public view." | |
| In Tulsa, Oklahoma, it is against the law to open a soda bottle without the supervision of a licensed engineer. | |
| It is against the law for a monster to enter the corporate limits of Urbana, Illinois. | |
| It is Texas law that when two trains meet each other at a railroad crossing, each shall come to a full stop, and neither shall proceed until the other has gone. | |
| Kansas state law requires pedestrians crossing the highways at night to wear tail lights. | |
| Kirkland, Illinois, law forbids bees to fly over the village or through any of its streets. | |
| Marijuana will be legal some day, because the many law students who now smoke pot will someday become congressmen and legalize it in order to protect themselves. -- Lenny Bruce | |
| Men often believe -- or pretend -- that the "Law" is something sacred, or at least a science -- an unfounded assumption very convenient to governments. | |
| Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. There might be a law against it by that time. | |
| New Hampshire law forbids you to tap your feet, nod your head, or in any way keep time to the music in a tavern, restaurant, or cafe. | |
| Once he had one leg in the White House and the nation trembled under his roars. Now he is a tinpot pope in the Coca-Cola belt and a brother to the forlorn pastors who belabor halfwits in galvanized iron tabernacles behind the railroad yards." -- H.L. Mencken, writing of William Jennings Bryan, counsel for the supporters of Tennessee's anti-evolution law at the Scopes "Monkey Trial" in 1925. | |
| ... Our second completely true news item was sent to me by Mr. H. Boyce Connell Jr. of Atlanta, Ga., where he is involved in a law firm. One thing I like about the South is, folks there care about tradition. If somebody gets handed a name like "H. Boyce," he hangs on to it, puts it on his legal stationery, even passes it to his son, rather than do what a lesser person would do, such as get it changed or kill himself. -- Dave Barry, "This Column is Nothing but the Truth!" | |
| Sho' they got to have it against the law. Shoot, ever'body git high, they wouldn't be nobody git up and feed the chickens. Hee-hee. -- Terry Southern | |
| Some of the most interesting documents from Sweden's middle ages are the old county laws (well, we never had counties but it's the nearest equivalent I can find for "landskap"). These laws were written down sometime in the 13th century, but date back even down into Viking times. The oldest one is the Vastgota law which clearly has pagan influences, thinly covered with some Christian stuff. In this law, we find a page about "lekare", which is the Old Norse word for a performing artist, actor/jester/musician etc. Here is an approximate translation, where I have written "artist" as equivalent of "lekare". "If an artist is beaten, none shall pay fines for it. If an artist is wounded, one such who goes with hurdie-gurdie or travels with fiddle or drum, then the people shall take a wild heifer and bring it out on the hillside. Then they shall shave off all hair from the heifer's tail, and grease the tail. Then the artist shall be given newly greased shoes. Then he shall take hold of the heifer's tail, and a man shall strike it with a sharp whip. If he can hold her, he shall have the animal. If he cannot hold her, he shall endure what he received, shame and wounds." | |
| Texas law forbids anyone to have a pair of pliers in his possession. | |
| The Arkansas legislature passed a law that states that the Arkansas River can rise no higher than to the Main Street bridge in Little Rock. | |
| The District of Columbia has a law forbidding you to exert pressure on a balloon and thereby cause a whistling sound on the streets. | |
| The justifications for drug testing are part of the presently fashionable debate concerning restoring America's "competitiveness." Drugs, it has been revealed, are responsible for rampant absenteeism, reduced output, and poor quality work. But is drug testing in fact rationally related to the resurrection of competitiveness? Will charging the atmosphere of the workplace with the fear of excretory betrayal honestly spur productivity? Much noise has been made about rehabilitating the worker using drugs, but to date the vast majority of programs end with the simple firing or the not hiring of the abuser. This practice may exacerbate, not alleviate, the nation's productivity problem. If economic rehabilitation is the ultimate goal of drug testing, then criteria abandoning the rehabilitation of the drug-using worker is the purest of hypocrisy and the worst of rationalization. -- The concluding paragraph of "Constitutional Law: The Fourth Amendment and Drug Testing in the Workplace," Tim Moore, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, vol. 10, No. 3 (Summer 1987), pp. 762-768. | |
| The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. -- Anatole France | |
| The lawgiver, of all beings, most owes the law allegiance. He of all men should behave as though the law compelled him. But it is the universal weakness of mankind that what we are given to administer we presently imagine we own. -- H.G. Wells | |
| The primary requisite for any new tax law is for it to exempt enough voters to win the next election. | |
| The state law of Pennsylvania prohibits singing in the bathtub. | |
| There is a Massachusetts law requiring all dogs to have their hind legs tied during the month of April. | |
| There is no better way of exercising the imagination than the study of law. No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets truth. -- Jean Giraudoux, "Tiger at the Gates" | |
| Virginia law forbids bathtubs in the house; tubs must be kept in the yard. | |
| We may not like doctors, but at least they doctor. Bankers are not ever popular but at least they bank. Policeman police and undertakers take under. But lawyers do not give us law. We receive not the gladsome light of jurisprudence, but rather precedents, objections, appeals, stays, filings and forms, motions and counter-motions, all at $250 an hour. -- Nolo News, summer 1989 | |
| With Congress, every time they make a joke it's a law; and every time they make a law it's a joke. -- Will Rogers | |
| If men are not afraid to die, it is of no avail to threaten them with death. If men live in constant fear of dying, And if breaking the law means a man will be killed, Who will dare to break the law? There is always an official executioner. If you try to take his place, It is like trying to be a master carpenter and cutting wood. If you try to cut wood like a master carpenter, you will only hurt your hand. -- Tao Te Ching, "Lao Tsu, #74" | |
| Murphy's Law is recursive. Washing your car to make it rain doesn't work. | |
| "Der bestirnte Himmel über mir und das moralische Gesetz in mir" that is "The starry sky above me, and the Moral Law inside me." - The epigraph on Kant's tombstone. | |
| One promising concept that I came up with right away was that you could manufacture personal air bags, then get a law passed requiring that they be installed on congressmen to keep them from taking trips. Let's say your congressman was trying to travel to Paris to do a fact-finding study on how the French government handles diseases transmitted by sherbet. Just when he got to the plane, his mandatory air bag, strapped around his waist, would inflate -- FWWAAAAAAPPPP -- thus rendering him too large to fit through the plane door. It could also be rigged to inflate whenever the congressman proposed a law. ("Mr. Speaker, people ask me, why should October be designated as Cuticle Inspection Month? And I answer that FWWAAAAAAPPPP.") This would save millions of dollars, so I have no doubt that the public would violently support a law requiring airbags on congressmen. The problem is that your potential market is very small: there are only around 500 members of Congress, and some of them, such as House Speaker "Tip" O'Neil, are already too large to fit on normal aircraft. -- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants" | |
| The more pretentious a corporate name, the smaller the organization. (For instance, The Murphy Center for Codification of Human and Organizational Law, contrasted to IBM, GM, AT&T ...) | |
| XVI: In the year 2054, the entire defense budget will purchase just one aircraft. This aircraft will have to be shared by the Air Force and Navy 3-1/2 days each per week except for leap year, when it will be made available to the Marines for the extra day. XVII: Software is like entropy. It is difficult to grasp, weighs nothing, and obeys the Second Law of Thermodynamics, i.e., it always increases. XVIII: It is very expensive to achieve high unreliability. It is not uncommon to increase the cost of an item by a factor of ten for each factor of ten degradation accomplished. XIX: Although most products will soon be too costly to purchase, there will be a thriving market in the sale of books on how to fix them. XX: In any given year, Congress will appropriate the amount of funding approved the prior year plus three-fourths of whatever change the administration requests -- minus 4-percent tax. -- Norman Augustine | |
| The Harvard Law states: Under controlled conditions of light, temperature, humidity, and nutrition, the organism will do as it damn well pleases. -- Larry Wall in <199710161841.LAA13208@wall.org> | |
| Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. -- Aleister Crowley | |
