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Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) by Linux fortune

Why am I so soft in the middle when the rest of my life is so hard?
                -- Paul Simon
Yeah, that's me, Tracer Bullet.  I've got eight slugs in me.  One's lead,
the rest bourbon.  The drink packs a wallop, and I pack a revolver.  I'm
a private eye.
                -- "Calvin & Hobbes"
Dogs just don't seem to be able to tell the difference between important people
and the rest of us.
"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.)
The mainframe needs to rest.  It's getting old, you know.
Always do right.  This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
                -- Mark Twain
===  ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE  ========================

There has been some confusion concerning MAPCAR.
        (DEFUN MAPCAR (&FUNCTIONAL FCN &EVAL &REST LISTS)
                (PROG (V P LP)
                (SETQ P (LOCF V))
        L        (SETQ LP LISTS)
                (%START-FUNCTION-CALL FCN T (LENGTH LISTS) NIL)
        L1        (OR LP (GO L2))
                (AND (NULL (CAR LP)) (RETURN V))
                (%PUSH (CAAR LP))
                (RPLACA LP (CDAR LP))
                (SETQ LP (CDR LP))
                (GO L1)
        L2        (%FINISH-FUNCTION-CALL FCN T (LENGTH LISTS) NIL)
                (SETQ LP (%POP))
                (RPLACD P (SETQ P (NCONS LP)))
                (GO L)))
We hope this clears up the many questions we've had about it.
God made machine language; all the rest is the work of man.
Norbert Weiner was the subject of many dotty professor stories.  Weiner was, in
fact, very absent minded.  The following story is told about him: when they
moved from Cambridge to Newton his wife, knowing that he would be absolutely
useless on the move, packed him off to MIT while she directed the move.  Since
she was certain that he would forget that they had moved and where they had
moved to, she wrote down the new address on a piece of paper, and gave it to
him.  Naturally, in the course of the day, an insight occurred to him.  He
reached in his pocket, found a piece of paper on which he furiously scribbled
some notes, thought it over, decided there was a fallacy in his idea, and
threw the piece of paper away.  At the end of the day he went home (to the
old address in Cambridge, of course).  When he got there he realized that they
had moved, that he had no idea where they had moved to, and that the piece of
paper with the address was long gone.  Fortunately inspiration struck.  There
was a young girl on the street and he conceived the idea of asking her where
he had moved to, saying, "Excuse me, perhaps you know me.  I'm Norbert Weiner
and we've just moved.  Would you know where we've moved to?"  To which the
young girl replied, "Yes, Daddy, Mommy thought you would forget."
        The capper to the story is that I asked his daughter (the girl in the
story) about the truth of the story, many years later.  She said that it wasn't
quite true -- that he never forgot who his children were!  The rest of it,
however, was pretty close to what actually happened...
                -- Richard Harter
The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its capacity
-- the rest is overhead for the operating system.
Today is the first day of the rest of your lossage.
Nothing in progression can rest on its original plan.  We may as well think of
rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant.  -- Edmund Burke
A lot of the stuff I do is so minimal, and it's designed to be minimal.
The smallness of it is what's attractive.  It's weird, 'cause it's so
intellectually lame.  It's hard to see me doing that for the rest of
my life.  But at the same time, it's what I do best.
- Chris Elliot, writer and performer on "Late Night with David Letterman"
There are two kinds of egotists: 1) Those who admit it  2) The rest of us
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.]
... The cable had passed us by; the dish was the only hope, and eventually
we were all forced to turn to it.  By the summer of '85, the valley had more
satellite dishes per capita than an Eskimo village on the north slope of
Alaska.

Mine was one of the last to go in.  I had been nervous from the start about
the hazards of too much input, which is a very real problem with these
things.  Watching TV becomes a full-time job when you can scan 200 channels
all day and all night and still have the option of punching Night Dreams
into the video machine, if the rest of the world seems dull.
-- Hunter Thompson, "Full-time scrambling", _Generation of Swine_
With the news that Nancy Reagan has referred to an astrologer when planning
her husband's schedule, and reports of Californians evacuating Los Angeles
on the strength of a prediction from a sixteenth-century physician and
astrologer Michel de Notredame, the image of the U.S. as a scientific and
technological nation has taking a bit of a battering lately.  Sadly, such
happenings cannot be dismissed as passing fancies.  They are manifestations
of a well-established "anti-science" tendency in the U.S. which, ultimately,
could threaten the country's position as a technological power. . . .  The
manifest widespread desire to reject rationality and substitute a series
of quasirandom beliefs in order to understand the universe does not augur
well for a nation deeply concerned about its ability to compete with its
industrial equals.  To the degree that it reflects the thinking of a
significant section of the public, this point of view encourages ignorance
of and, indeed, contempt for science and for rational methods of approaching
truth. . . . It is becoming clear that if the U.S. does not pick itself up
soon and devote some effort to educating the young effectively, its hope of
maintaining a semblance of leadership in the world may rest, paradoxically,
with a new wave of technically interested and trained immigrants who do not
suffer from the anti-science disease rampant in an apparently decaying society.
-- Physicist Tony Feinberg, in "New Scientist," May 19, 1988
"I prefer rogues to imbeciles, because they sometimes take a rest."
-- Alexandre Dumas (fils)
"Science makes godlike -- it is all over with priests and gods when man becomes
scientific.  Moral:  science is the forbidden as such -- it alone is
forbidden.  Science is the *first* sin, the *original* sin.  *This alone is
morality.* ``Thou shalt not know'' -- the rest follows."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
"Marriage is low down, but you spend the rest of your life paying for it."
-- Baskins
My experience with government is when things are non-controversial, beautifully
co-ordinated and all the rest, it must be that not much is going on.
                -- J.F. Kennedy
People that can't find something to live for always seem to find something to
die for.  The problem is, they usually want the rest of us to die for it too.
Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen
at all.  The conscientious historian will correct these defects.
                -- Herodotus
I do not patronize poor, ill educated, or disenfranchised people by
exempting them from the same critical examination I feel free to
direct toward the rest of society, however much I might champion the
same minority or disadvantaged group in the forums of that society.
                -- James Moffitt
Gerrold's Laws of Infernal Dynamics:
        (1) An object in motion will always be headed in the wrong direction.
        (2) An object at rest will always be in the wrong place.
        (3) The energy required to change either one of these states
           will always be more than you wish to expend, but never so
           much as to make the task totally impossible.
McEwan's Rule of Relative Importance:
        When traveling with a herd of elephants, don't be the first to
        lie down and rest.
vacation, n.:
        A two-week binge of rest and relaxation so intense that
        it takes another 50 weeks of your restrained workaday
        life-style to recuperate.
My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my
life there.
Shirley MacLaine died today in a freak psychic collision today.  Two freaks
in a van  [Oh no!!  It's the Copyright Police!!]  Her aura-charred body was
laid to rest after a eulogy by Jackie Collins, fellow member of SAFE [Society
of Asinine Flake Entertainers].  Excerpted from some of his more quotable
comments:

        "Truly a woman of the times.  These times, those times..."
        "A Renaissance woman.  Why in 1432..."
        "A man for all seasons.  Really..."

After the ceremony, Shirley thanked her mourners and explained how delightful
it was to "get it together" again, presumably referring to having her now dead
body join her long dead brain.
Standing on head makes smile of frown, but rest of face also upside down.
Take what you can use and let the rest go by.
                -- Ken Kesey
The day after tomorrow is the third day of the rest of your life.
The last person who said that (God rest his soul) lived to regret it.
Q:        How many members of the U.S.S. Enterprise does it take to change a
        light bulb?
A:        Seven.  Scotty has to report to Captain Kirk that the light bulb in
        the Engineering Section is getting dim, at which point Kirk will send
        Bones to pronounce the bulb dead (although he'll immediately claim
        that he's a doctor, not an electrician).  Scotty, after checking
        around, realizes that they have no more new light bulbs, and complains
        that he "canna" see in the dark.  Kirk will make an emergency stop at
        the next uncharted planet, Alpha Regula IV, to procure a light bulb
        from the natives, who, are friendly, but seem to be hiding something.
        Kirk, Spock, Bones, Yeoman Rand and two red shirt security officers
        beam down to the planet, where the two security officers are promply
        killed by the natives, and the rest of the landing party is captured.
        As something begins to develop between the Captain and Yeoman Rand,
        Scotty, back in orbit, is attacked by a Klingon destroyer and must
        warp out of orbit.  Although badly outgunned, he cripples the Klingon
        and races back to the planet in order to rescue Kirk et. al. who have
        just saved the natives' from an awful fate and, as a reward, been
        given all light bulbs they can carry.  The new bulb is then inserted
        and the Enterprise continues on its five year mission.
The USA is so enormous, and so numerous are its schools, colleges and religious
seminaries, many devoted to special religious beliefs ranging from the
unorthodox to the dotty, that we can hardly wonder at its yielding a more
bounteous harvest of gobbledegook than the rest of the world put together.
                -- Sir Peter Medawar
Minnesota --
        home of the blonde hair and blue ears.
        mosquito supplier to the free world.
        come fall in love with a loon.
        where visitors turn blue with envy.
        one day it's warm, the rest of the year it's cold.
        land of many cultures -- mostly throat.
        where the elite meet sleet.
        glove it or leave it.
        many are cold, but few are frozen.
        land of the ski and home of the crazed.
        land of 10,000 Petersons.
New York is real.  The rest is done with mirrors.
At any given moment, an arrow must be either where it is or where it is
not.  But obviously it cannot be where it is not.  And if it is where
it is, that is equivalent to saying that it is at rest.
                -- Zeno's paradox of the moving (still?) arrow
The meek shall inherit the earth; the rest of us will go to the stars.
The meek shall inherit the earth; the rest of us, the Universe.
The purpose of Physics 7A is to make the engineers realize that they're
not perfect, and to make the rest of the people realize that they're not
engineers.
How many hors d'oeuvres you are allowed to take off a tray being carried by
a waiter at a nice party?
        Two, but there are ways around it, depending on the style of the hors
d'oeuvre.  If they're those little pastry things where you can't tell what's
inside, you take one, bite off about two-thirds of it, then say:  "This is
cheese!  I hate cheese!"  Then you put the rest of it back on the tray and
bite another one and go, "Darn it!  Another cheese!" and so on.
                -- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette"
A little word of doubtful number,
A foe to rest and peaceful slumber.
If you add an "s" to this,
Great is the metamorphosis.
Plural is plural now no more,
And sweet what bitter was before.
What am I?
Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold.
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the presence in the room he said,
"What writest thou?"  The vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord,
Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord."
"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay not so,"
Replied the angel.  Abou spoke more low,
But cheerly still; and said, "I pray thee then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow-men."
The angel wrote, and vanished.  The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,
And lo!  Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.
                -- James Henry Leigh Hunt, "Abou Ben Adhem"
And did those feet, in ancient times,
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the Holy Lamb of God
In England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon these crowded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spears!  O clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I shall not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword rest in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.
                -- William Blake, "Jerusalem"
Christmas time is here, by Golly;        Kill the turkeys, ducks and chickens;
Disapproval would be folly;                Mix the punch, drag out the Dickens;
Deck the halls with hunks of holly;        Even though the prospect sickens,
Fill the cup and don't say when...        Brother, here we go again.

On Christmas day, you can't get sore;        Relations sparing no expense'll,
Your fellow man you must adore;                Send some useless old utensil,
There's time to rob him all the more,        Or a matching pen and pencil,
The other three hundred and sixty-four!        Just the thing I need... how nice.

It doesn't matter how sincere                Hark The Herald-Tribune sings,
It is, nor how heartfelt the spirit;        Advertising wondrous things.
Sentiment will not endear it;                God Rest Ye Merry Merchants,
What's important is... the price.        May you make the Yuletide pay.
                                        Angels We Have Heard On High,
Let the raucous sleighbells jingle;        Tell us to go out and buy.
Hail our dear old friend, Kris Kringle,        Sooooo...
Driving his reindeer across the sky,
Don't stand underneath when they fly by!
                -- Tom Lehrer
Endless the world's turn, endless the sun's spinning
Endless the quest;
I turn again, back to my own beginning,
And here, find rest.
Fifteen men on a dead man's chest,
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest,
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
                -- Stevenson, "Treasure Island"
God rest ye CS students now,                The bearings on the drum are gone,
Let nothing you dismay.                        The disk is wobbling, too.
The VAX is down and won't be up,        We've found a bug in Lisp, and Algol
Until the first of May.                        Can't tell false from true.
The program that was due this morn,        And now we find that we can't get
Won't be postponed, they say.                At Berkeley's 4.2.
(chorus)                                (chorus)

We've just received a call from DEC,        And now some cheery news for you,
They'll send without delay                The network's also dead,
A monitor called RSuX                        We'll have to print your files on
It takes nine hundred K.                The line printer instead.
The staff committed suicide,                The turnaround time's nineteen weeks.
We'll bury them today.                        And only cards are read.
(chorus)                                (chorus)

And now we'd like to say to you                CHORUS:        Oh, tidings of comfort and joy,
Before we go away,                                Comfort and joy,
We hope the news we've brought to you                Oh, tidings of comfort and joy.
Won't ruin your whole day.
You've got another program due, tomorrow, by the way.
(chorus)
                -- to God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
Got a wife and kids in Baltimore Jack,
I went out for a ride and never came back.
Like a river that don't know where it's flowing,
I took a wrong turn and I just kept going.

        Everybody's got a hungry heart.
        Everybody's got a hungry heart.
        Lay down your money and you play your part,
        Everybody's got a hungry heart.

I met her in a Kingstown bar,
We fell in love, I knew it had to end.
We took what we had and we ripped it apart,
Now here I am down in Kingstown again.

Everybody needs a place to rest,
Everybody wants to have a home.
Don't make no difference what nobody says,
Ain't nobody likes to be alone.
                -- Bruce Springsteen, "Hungry Heart"
...his disciples lead him in; he just does the rest.
                -- The Who, "Tommy"
"I thought that you said you were 20 years old!"
"As a programmer, yes," she replied,
"And you claimed to be very near two meters tall!"
"You said you were blonde, but you lied!"
Oh, she was a hacker and he was one, too,
They had so much in common, you'd say.
They exchanged jokes and poems, and clever new hacks,
And prompts that were cute or risque'.
He sent her a picture of his brother Sam,
She sent one from some past high school day,
And it might have gone on for the rest of their lives,
If they hadn't met in L.A.
"Your beard is an armpit," she said in disgust.
He answered, "Your armpit's a beard!"
And they chorused: "I think I could stand all the rest
If you were not so totally weird!"
If she had not said what he wanted to hear,
And he had not done just the same,
They'd have been far more honest, and never have met,
And would not have had fun with the game.
                -- Judith Schrier, "Face to Face After Six Months of
                Electronic Mail"
Roland was a warrior, from the land of the midnight sun,
With a Thompson gun for hire, fighting to be done.
The deal was made in Denmark, on a dark and stormy day,
So he set out for Biafra, to join the bloody fray.
Through sixty-six and seven, they fought the Congo war,
With their fingers on their triggers, knee deep in gore.
Days and nights they battled, the Bantu to their knees,
They killed to earn their living, and to help out the Congolese.
        Roland the Thompson gunner...
His comrades fought beside him, Van Owen and the rest,
But of all the Thompson gunners, Roland was the best.
So the C.I.A decided, they wanted Roland dead,
That son-of-a-bitch Van Owen, blew off Roland's head.
        Roland the headless Thompson gunner...
Roland searched the continent, for the man who'd done him in.
He found him in Mombasa, in a bar room drinking gin,
Roland aimed his Thompson gun, he didn't say a word,
But he blew Van Owen's body from there to Johannesburg.
The eternal Thompson gunner, still wandering through the night,
Now it's ten years later, but he stills keeps up the fight.
In Ireland, in Lebanon, in Palestine, in Berkeley,
Patty Hearst... heard the burst... of Roland's Thompson gun, and bought it.
                -- Warren Zevon, "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner"
There's amnesia in a hangknot,
And comfort in the ax,
But the simple way of poison will make your nerves relax.
        There's surcease in a gunshot,
        And sleep that comes from racks,
        But a handy draft of poison avoids the harshest tax.
You find rest on the hot squat,
Or gas can give you pax,
But the closest corner chemist has peace in packaged stacks.
        There's refuge in the church lot
        When you tire of facing facts,
        And the smoothest route is poison prescribed by kindly quacks.
Chorus:        With an *ugh!* and a groan, and a kick of the heels,
        Death comes quiet, or it comes with squeals --
        But the pleasantest place to find your end
        Is a cup of cheer from the hand of a friend.
                -- Jubal Harshaw, "One For The Road"
There's little in taking or giving,
        There's little in water or wine:
This living, this living, this living,
        Was never a project of mine.
Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is
        The gain of the one at the top,
For art is a form of catharsis,
        And love is a permanent flop,
And work is the province of cattle,
        And rest's for a clam in a shell,
So I'm thinking of throwing the battle --
        Would you kindly direct me to hell?
                -- Dorothy Parker
They told me you had proven it                When they discovered our results
        About a month before.                        Their hair began to curl
The proof was valid, more or less        Instead of understanding it
        But rather less than more.                We'd run the thing through PRL.

He sent them word that we would try        Don't tell a soul about all this
        To pass where they had failed                For it must ever be
And after we were done, to them                A secret, kept from all the rest
        The new proof would be mailed.                Between yourself and me.

My notion was to start again
        Ignoring all they'd done
We quickly turned it into code
        To see if it would run.
"Thirty days hath Septober,
April, June, and no wonder.
all the rest have peanut butter
except my father who wears red suspenders."
We've tried each spinning space mote
And reckoned its true worth:
Take us back again to the homes of men
On the cool, green hills of Earth.

The arching sky is calling
Spacemen back to their trade.
All hands!  Standby!  Free falling!
And the lights below us fade.
Out ride the sons of Terra,
Far drives the thundering jet,
Up leaps the race of Earthmen,
Out, far, and onward yet--

We pray for one last landing
On the globe that gave us birth;
Let us rest our eyes on the fleecy skies
And the cool, green hills of Earth.
                -- Robert A. Heinlein, 1941
Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends!
We're so glad you could attend, come inside, come inside!
There behind the glass there's a real blade of grass,
Be careful as you pass, move along, move along.
Come inside, the show's about to start,
Guaranteed to blow your head apart.
Rest assured, you'll get your money's worth,
Greatest show, in heaven, hell or earth!
You gotta see the show!  It's a dynamo!
You gotta see the show!  It's rock 'n' roll!
                -- ELP, "Karn Evil 9" (1st Impression, Part 2)
What segment's this, that, laid to rest
On FHA0, is sleeping?
What system file, lay here a while        This, this is "acct.run,"
While hackers around it were weeping?        Accounting file for everyone.
                                        Dump, dump it and type it out,
                                        The file, the highseg of login.
Why lies it here, on public disk
And why is it now unprotected?
A bug in incant, made it thus.                Mount, mount all your DECtapes now
And copy the file somehow, somehow.        The problem has not been corrected.
                                        Dump, dump it and type it out,
                                        The file, the highseg of login.
                -- to Greensleeves
When you get what you want in your struggle for self
And the world makes you king for a day,
Just go to a mirror and look at yourself
And see what that man has to say.
        For it isn't your father or mother or wife
        Whose judgement upon you must pass;
        The fellow whose verdict counts most in your life
        Is the one staring back from the glass.
Some people may think you a straight-shootin' chum
And call you a wonderful guy,
But the man in the glass says you're only a bum
If you can't look him straight in the eye.
        He's the fellow to please, never mind all the rest,
        For he's with you clear up to the end,
        And you've passed your most dangerous, difficult test
        If the man in the glass is your friend.
You may fool the whole world down the pathway of life
And get pats on the back as you pass,
But your final reward will be heartaches and tears
If you've cheated the man in the glass.
Whether weary or unweary, O man, do not rest,
Do not cease your single-handed struggle.
Go on, do not rest.
                -- An old Gujarati hymn
"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!"
This life is yours.  Some of it was given to you; the rest, you made yourself.
Today is the first day of the rest of the mess.
Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
Tuesday is the Wednesday of the rest of your life.
        If you do your best the rest of the way, that takes care of
everything. When we get to October 2, we'll add up the wins, and then
we'll either all go into the playoffs, or we'll all go home and play golf.
        Both those things sound pretty good to me.
                -- Sparky Anderson
On my planet, to rest is to rest -- to cease using energy.  To me, it
is quite illogical to run up and down on green grass, using energy,
instead of saving it.
                -- Spock, "Shore Leave", stardate 3025.2
A large spider in an old house built a beautiful web in which to catch flies.
Every time a fly landed on the web and was entangled in it the spider devoured
him, so that when another fly came along he would think the web was a safe and
quiet place in which to rest.  One day a fairly intelligent fly buzzed around
above the web so long without lighting that the spider appeared and said,
"Come on down."  But the fly was too clever for him and said, "I never light
where I don't see other flies and I don't see any other flies in your house."
So he flew away until he came to a place where there were a great many other
flies.  He was about to settle down among them when a bee buzzed up and said,
"Hold it, stupid, that's flypaper.  All those flies are trapped."  "Don't be
silly," said the fly, "they're dancing."  So he settled down and became stuck
to the flypaper with all the other flies.

Moral:  There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.
                -- James Thurber, "The Fairly Intelligent Fly"
Like you,  I am frequently haunted by profound questions related to man's
place in the Scheme of Things.  Here are just a few:

        Q -- Is there life after death?
        A -- Definitely.  I speak from personal experience here.  On New
Year's Eve, 1970, I drank a full pitcher of a drink called "Black Russian",
then crawled out on the lawn and died within a matter of minutes, which was
fine with me because I had come to realize that if I had lived I would have
spent the rest of my life in the grip of the most excruciatingly painful
headache.  Thanks to the miracle of modern orange juice, I was brought back
to life several days later, but in the interim I was definitely dead.  I
guess my main impression of the afterlife is that it isn't so bad as long
as you keep the television turned down and don't try to eat any solid foods.
                -- Dave Barry
"Of course, in Perl culture, almost nothis is prohibited. My feeling is that the rest of the world already has plenty of perfectly good prohibitions, so why invent more?"

  -- Larry Wall (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
Missouri Town Changes Name to 'Linux'

LINUX, MO -- The small Missouri town of Linn, county seat of Osage County,
announced yesterday that it will be henceforth called 'Linux'. Mayor Bob Farrow
said, "Linn needed something to put it on the map. A few weeks ago my daughter
mentioned that she installed Linux on her computer and how great she thought it
was. I thought to myself, 'Self, changing the town's name to 'Linux' could be
an opportunity to attract attention -- and money -- to our town. We could even
hold a Linux Convention at the community center.' So I approached the city
council about the idea, and they loved it. The rest is history."

Farrow's daughter is organizing the Linux Linux User Group. She hopes to be
able to hold a Linux Convention this fall. "The Linn, er, Linux community
center probably won't be big enough, we'll probably have to hold it in nearby
Jefferson City," she said.

The mayor does have one reservation. "How the hell do you pronounce Linux?" One
of the mayor's contenders in the next election, Mr. Noah Morals, says he will
start an ad campaign calling Bob Farrow "the Incumbent Liar of LIE-nucks".
Needless to say, the mayor usually pronounces Linux as "LIH-nucks".
Mad Programmer Commits Suicide

KENNETT, MO -- For two years Doug Carter toiled away in his basement computer
lab working on his own 'Dougnix' operating system. Apparently he was sick of
Windows 95 so he decided to create his own OS, based loosely on Unix. He had
developed his own 'DougUI' window manager, Doug++ compiler, DougFS filesystem,
and other integrated tools.

All was going well until last week when he hooked his computer up to the
Internet for the first time. It was then that he stumbled on to www.linux.org.
Reports are sketchy about what happened next. We do know he committed suicide
days after, leaving behind a rambling suicide note. Part of the note says:

"I've wasted the past two years of my life... Wasted... Gone... Forever...
Never return to. [illegible] Why did I bother creating my own OS... when Linux
is exactly what I needed!?!?!?! If I had only known about Linux! Why someone
didn't tell me? [illegible] Wasted! Aggghhh!" [The rest of the note is filled
with incomprehensible assembly language ramblings.]
Linux Infiltrates Windows NT Demo

SILICON VALLEY, CA -- Attendees at the Microsoft ActiveDemo Conference held
this week in San Jose were greeted by a pleasant surprise yesterday: Linux.
Somehow a group of Linux enthusiasts were able to replace a Windows NT box with
a Linux box right before the "ActiveDemo" of Windows NT 5 beta. "I have no clue
how they were able to pull off this prank," a Microserf spokesman said. "Rest
assured, Microsoft will do everything to investigate and prosecute the Linux
nuts who did this. Our bottom line must be protected."

Bill Gates said, "I was showing off the new features in Windows NT 5 when I
noticed something odd about the demo computer. It didn't crash. Plus, the font
used on the screen wasn't MS San Serif -- trust me, I know. My suspicions were
confirmed when, instead of the "Flying Windows" screensaver, a "Don't Fear the
Penguins" screensaver appeared. The audience laughed and applauded for five
straight minutes. It was so embarrasing -- even more so than the pie incident.

One attendee said, "Wow! This Linux is cool -- it didn't crash once during the
entire demo! I'd like to see NT do that." Another asked, "You guys got any
Linux CDs? I want one. Forget about vaporware NT." Yet another remarked, "I
didn't know it was possible to hack Linux to make it look like NT. I can
install Linux on my company's computers without my boss knowing!"
Attack of the Tuxissa Virus

What started out as a prank posting to comp.os.linux.advocacy yesterday has
turned into one of the most significant viruses in computing history.
The creator of the virus, who goes by the moniker "Anonymous Longhair",
modified the Melissa virus to install Linux on infected machines.

"It's a work of art," one Linux advocate told Humorix after he looked
through the Tuxissa virus source code.  "This virus goes well beyond the
feeble troublemaking of Melissa.  It actually configures a UMSDOS partition
on the user's hard drive and then downloads and installs a stripped-down
version of Slackware Linux."

The email message that the virus is attached to has the subject "Important
Message About Windows Security".  The text of the body says, "I want to let
you know about some security problems I've uncovered in Windows 95/98/NT,
Office 95/97, and Outlook. It's critically important that you protect your
system against these attacks.  Visit these sites for more information..."
The rest of the message contains 42 links to sites about Linux and free
software.

Details on how the virus started are a bit sketchy.  The "Anonymous
Longhair" who created it only posted it to Usenet as an early April Fool's
gag, demonstrating how easy it would be to mount a "Linux revolution".
New Linux Companies Hope To Get Rich Quick (#4)

The buzz surrounding Linux and Open Source during 1999 has produced a
large number of billionnaires. However, people who weren't employed by Red
Hat or VA Linux, or who didn't receive The Letter, are still poor. The
visionaries at The IPO Factory want to change all that.

As the name suggests, this company helps other businesses get off the
ground, secure investments from Venture Capitalists, and eventually hold
an IPO that exits the stratosphere. "You can think of us as meta-VCs," the
IPO Factory's founder said. "You provide the idea... and we do the rest.
If your company doesn't hold a successful IPO, you get your money back,
guaranteed!" He added quickly, "Of course, if you do undergo a billion
dollar IPO, we get to keep 25% of your stock."

The company's first customer, LinuxOne, has been a failure. "From now on
we're only going to service clients that actually have a viable product,"
an IPO Factory salesperson admitted. "Oh, and we've learned our lesson:
it's not a good idea to cut-and-paste large sections from Red Hat's S-1
filing."
Brief History Of Linux (#13)
Wanted: Eunuchs programmers

Everything you know about the creation of the Unix operating system is
wrong. We have uncovered the truth: Unix was a conspiracy hatched by
Ritchie and Thompson to thwart the AT&T monopoly that they worked for. The
system, code-named EUNUCHS (Electronic UNtrustworthy User-Condemning
Horrible System), was horribly conceived, just as they had planned.

The OS, quickly renamed to a more respectable "Unix", was adopted first by
Ma Bell's Patent Department and then by the rest of the monopoly. AT&T saw
an inexpensive, multi-user, portable operating system that it had all
rights to; the authors, however, saw a horrible, multi-crashing system
that the Evil Ma Bell Empire would become hopelessly dependent on. AT&T
would go bankrupt trying to maintain the system and eventually collapse.

That didn't happen. Ritchie and Thompson were too talented to create a
crappy operating system; no matter how hard they tried the system was too
good. Their last ditch effort to sabotage the system by recoding it
obfuscated C was unsuccessful. Before long Unix spread outside of Bell
Labs and their conspiracy collapsed.
Brief History Of Linux (#24)
Linus Torvalds quotes from his interview in "LinuxNews" (October 1992):

"I doubt Linux will be here to stay, and maybe Hurd is the wave of the
future (and maybe not)..."

"I'm most certainly going to continue to support it, until it either dies
out or merges with something else. That doesn't necessarily mean I'll make
weekly patches for the rest of my life, but hopefully they won't be needed
as much when things stabilize." [If only he knew what he was getting into.]

"World domination? No, I'm not interested in that. Galactic domination, on
the other hand..."

"Several people have already wondered if Linux should adopt a logo or
mascot. Somebody even suggested a penguin for some strange reason, which I
don't particularly like: how is a flightless bird supposed to represent an
operating system? Well, it might work okay for Microsoft or even Minix..."

"I would give Andy Tanenbaum a big fat 'F'."
A person who has nothing looks at all there is and wants something.
A person who has something looks at all there is and wants all the rest.
Higgins:        Doolittle, you're either an honest man or a rogue.
Doolittle:        A little of both, Guv'nor.  Like the rest of us, a
                little of both.
                -- Shaw, "Pygmalion"
I got vision, and the rest of the world wears bifocals.
                -- Butch Cassidy
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
                -- Alexandre Dumas, fils
No. Sell the card to a windows user buy a cheap taiwanese mass market ethernet  and spend the rest on the faster CPU. I bet that is more cost effective for
DES performance..

        - Alan Cox not recommending NICs with built-in crypto engines
The last time I looked, Solaris and AIX and all the rest of the "scalable"
systems were absolute pigs on smaller hardware, and the "scalability" in
them often translates into "we scale linearly to many CPU's by being
really bad even on one".

        - Linus Torvalds
indent does _not_ solve the problem of:
        * buggers who use typedefs like WORD, DWORD, BYTE, IMANIDIOTSHOOTME
        and other crap from the same source (OK, they don't write the last one
        explicitly - not that it wasn't obvious from the rest of their,
        ahem, code).

        - Alexander Viro on coding style
Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness.
All can know good as good only because there is evil.
Therefore having and not having arise together.
Difficult and easy complement each other.
Long and short contrast each other:
High and low rest upon each other;
Voice and sound harmonize each other;
Front and back follow one another.
Therefore the sage goes about doing nothing, teaching no-talking.
The ten thousand things rise and fall without cease,
Creating, yet not.
Working, yet not taking credit.
Work is done, then forgotten.
Therefore it lasts forever.
All men will come to him who keeps to the one,
For there lie rest and happiness and peace.

Passersby may stop for music and good food,
But a description of the Tao
Seems without substance or flavor.
It cannot be seen, it cannot be heard,
And yet it cannot be exhausted.
<gecko> Hmm... I wonder what else seperates Debian from the rest of the
        Linux distributions.
<Knghtbrd> gecko - We Don't Suck
<gecko> Knghtbrd:  you don't say that when addressing a bunch of people
        FROM those distros
<Knghtbrd> gecko - point.
* wolfie ponders how many debianites it takes to screw in a lightbulb
<Viiru> wolfie: Somewhere around 600? One screw's the bulb, and the rest
        flame him for doing it wrong.
<part> wolfie: is the bulb free software?
<Tv> Can we vote on whether to screw it or not?
I suppose some of the variation between Boston drivers and the rest of the
country is due to the progressive Massachusetts Driver Education Manual which
I happen to have in my top desk drawer.  Some of the Tips for Better Driving
are worth considering, to wit:

[110.13]:
       "When traveling on a one-way street, stay to the right, so as not
        to interfere with oncoming traffic."

[22.17b]:
       "Learning to change lanes takes time and patience.  The best
        recommendation that can be made is to go to a Celtics [basketball]
        game; study the fast break and then go out and practice it
        on the highway."

[41.16]:
       "Never bump a baby carriage out of a crosswalk unless the kid's really
        asking for it."
I suppose some of the variation between Boston drivers and the rest of the
country is due to the progressive Massachusetts Driver Education Manual which
I happen to have in my top desk drawer.  Some of the Tips for Better Driving
are worth considering, to wit:

[131.16d]:
       "Directional signals are generally not used except during vehicle
        inspection; however, a left-turn signal is appropriate when making
        a U-turn on a divided highway."

[96.7b]:
       "When paying tolls, remember that it is necessary to release the
        quarter a full 3 seconds before passing the basket if you are
        traveling more than 60 MPH."

[110.13]:
       "When traveling on a one-way street, stay to the right, so as not
        to interfere with oncoming traffic."
I suppose some of the variation between Boston drivers and the rest of the
country is due to the progressive Massachusetts Driver Education Manual which
I happen to have in my top desk drawer.  Some of the Tips for Better Driving
are worth considering, to wit:

[173.15b]:
        "When competing for a section of road or a parking space, remember
        that the vehicle in need of the most body work has the right-of-way."

[141.2a]:
       "Although it is altogether possible to fit a 6' car into a 6'
        parking space, it is hardly ever possible to fit a 6' car into
        a 5' parking space."

[105.31]:
       "Teenage drivers believe that they are immortal, and drive accordingly.
        Nevertheless, you should avoid the temptation to prove them wrong."
When alerted to an intrusion by tinkling glass or otherwise, 1) Calm
yourself 2) Identify the intruder 3) If hostile, kill him.

Step number 3 is of particular importance.  If you leave the guy alive
out of misguided softheartedness, he will repay your generosity of spirit
by suing you for causing his subsequent paraplegia and seek to force you
to support him for the rest of his rotten life.  In court he will plead
that he was depressed because society had failed him, and that he was
looking for Mother Teresa for comfort and to offer his services to the
poor.  In that lawsuit, you will lose.  If, on the other hand, you kill
him, the most that you can expect is that a relative will bring a wrongful
death action. You will have two advantages: first, there be only your
story; forget Mother Teresa.  Second, even if you lose, how much could
the bum's life be worth anyway?  A Lot less than 50 years worth of
paralysis.  Don't play George Bush and Saddam Hussein.  Finish the job.
        -- G. Gordon Liddy's "Forbes" column on personal security
At the end of your life there'll be a good rest, and no further activities
are scheduled.
The only happiness lies in reason; all the rest of the world is dismal.
The highest reason, however, I see in the work of the artist, and he may
experience it as such.  Happiness lies in the swiftness of feeling and
thinking: all the rest of the world is slow, gradual and stupid.  Whoever
could feel the course of a light ray would be very happy, for it is very
swift.  Thinking of oneself gives little happiness.  If, however, one feels
much happiness in this, it is because at bottom one is not thinking of
oneself but of one's ideal.  This is far, and only the swift shall reach
it and are delighted.
                -- Nietzsche
> 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
Only wimps use tape backup: _real_ men just upload their important stuff
on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it ;)
        -- Linus Torvalds, about his failing hard drive on linux.cs.helsinki.fi
REST:
P:      Linus Torvalds
S:      Buried alive in email
        -- from /usr/src/linux/MAINTAINERS
Everybody but Sam had signed up for a new company pension plan that
called for a small employee contribution.  The company was paying all
the rest.  Unfortunately, 100% employee participation was needed;
otherwise the plan was off.  Sam's boss and his fellow workers pleaded
and cajoled, but to no avail.  Sam said the plan would never pay off.
Finally the company president called Sam into his office.
        "Sam," he said, "here's a copy of the new pension plan and here's
a pen.  I want you to sign the papers.  I'm sorry, but if you don't sign,
you're fired.  As of right now."
        Sam signed the papers immediately.
        "Now," said the president, "would you mind telling me why you
couldn't have signed earlier?"
        "Well, sir," replied Sam, "nobody explained it to me quite so
clearly before."
In the middle of a wide field is a pot of gold.  100 feet to the north stands
a smart manager.  100 feet to the south stands a dumb manager.  100 feet to
the east is the Easter Bunny, and 100 feet to the west is Santa Claus.

Q:        Who gets to the pot of gold first?
A:        The dumb manager.  All the rest are myths.
The idle man does not know what it is to enjoy rest.
The only problem with being a man of leisure is that you can never stop
and take a rest.
There are many times when you want it to ignore the rest of the string just
like atof() does.  Oddly enough, Perl calls atof().  How convenient.  :-)
             -- Larry Wall in <1991Jun24.231628.14446@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov>
A distraught patient phoned her doctor's office.  "Was it true," the woman
inquired, "that the medication the doctor had prescribed was for the rest
of her life?"
        She was told that it was.  There was just a moment of silence before
the woman proceeded bravely on.  "Well, I'm wondering, then, how serious my
condition is.  This prescription is marked `NO REFILLS'".
After his legs had been broken in an accident, Mr. Miller sued for damages,
claming that he was crippled and would have to spend the rest of his life
in a wheelchair.  Although the insurance-company doctor testified that his
bones had healed properly and that he was fully capable  of walking, the
judge decided for the plaintiff and awarded him $500,000.
        When he was wheeled into the insurance office to collect his check,
Miller was confronted by several executives.  "You're not getting away with
this, Miller," one said.  "We're going to watch you day and night.  If you
take a single step, you'll not only repay the damages but stand trial for
perjury.  Here's the money.  What do you intend to do with it?"
        "My wife and I are going to travel," Miller replied.  "We'll go to
Stockholm, Berlin, Rome, Athens and, finally, to a place called Lourdes --
where, gentlemen, you'll see yourselves one hell of a miracle."
We have the flu.  I don't know if this particular strain has an official
name, but if it does, it must be something like "Martian Death Flu".  You
may have had it yourself.  The main symptom is that you wish you had another
setting on your electric blanket, up past "HIGH", that said "ELECTROCUTION".
        Another symptom is that you cease brushing your teeth, because (a)
your teeth hurt, and (b) you lack the strength.  Midway through the brushing
process, you'd have to lie down in front of the sink to rest for a couple
of hours, and rivulets of toothpaste foam would dribble sideways out of your
mouth, eventually hardening into crusty little toothpaste stalagmites that
would bond your head permanently to the bathroom floor, which is how the
police would find you.
        You know the kind of flu I'm talking about.
                -- Dave Barry, "Molecular Homicide"
No guarantee of accuracy or completeness!
©TU Chemnitz, 2006-2024
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