Right : Dictionary / Wörterbuch (BEOLINGUS, TU Chemnitz)

Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English)	by Linux fortune

I distrust a close-mouthed man. He generally picks the wrong time to talk and says the wrong things. Talking's something you can't do judiciously, unless you keep in practice. Now, sir, we'll talk if you like. I'll tell you right out, I'm a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk. -- Sidney Greenstreet, "The Maltese Falcon"
I remember once being on a station platform in Cleveland at four in the morning. A black porter was carrying my bags, and as we were waiting for the train to come in, he said to me: "Excuse me, Mr. Cooke, I don't want to invade your privacy, but I have a bet with a friend of mine. Who composed the opening theme music of 'Omnibus'? My friend said Virgil Thomson." I asked him, "What do you say?" He replied, "I say Aaron Copeland." I said, "You're right." The porter said, "I knew Thomson doesn't write counterpoint that way." I told that to a network president, and he was deeply unimpressed. -- Alistair Cooke
It just doesn't seem right to go over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's condo.
It's all right letting yourself go as long as you can let yourself back. -- Mick Jagger
Lucy: Dance, dance, dance. That is all you ever do. Can't you be serious for once? Snoopy: She is right! I think I had better think of the more important things in life! (pause) Tomorrow!!
Mandrell: "You know what I think?" Doctor: "Ah, ah that's a catch question. With a brain your size you don't think, right?" -- Dr. Who
Snow White has become a camera buff. She spends hours and hours shooting pictures of the seven dwarfs and their antics. Then she mails the exposed film to a cut rate photo service. It takes weeks for the developed film to arrive in the mail, but that is all right with Snow White. She clears the table, washes the dishes and sweeps the floor, all the while singing "Someday my prints will come."
So Richard and I decided to try to catch [the small shark]. With a great deal of strategy and effort and shouting, we managed to maneuver the shark, over the course of about a half-hour, to a sort of corner of the lagoon, so that it had no way to escape other than to flop up onto the land and evolve. Richard and I were inching toward it, sort of crouched over, when all of a sudden it turned around and -- I can still remember the sensation I felt at that moment, primarily in the armpit area -- headed right straight toward us. Many people would have panicked at this point. But Richard and I were not "many people." We were experienced waders, and we kept our heads. We did exactly what the textbook says you should do when you're unarmed and a shark that is nearly two feet long turns on you in water up to your lower calves: We sprinted I would say 600 yards in the opposite direction, using a sprinting style such that the bottoms of our feet never once went below the surface of the water. We ran all the way to the far shore, and if we had been in a Warner Brothers cartoon we would have run right INTO the beach, and you would have seen these two mounds of sand racing across the island until they bonked into trees and coconuts fell onto their heads. -- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
The Great Movie Posters: She's got the biggest six-shooters in the West! -- The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend (1949) CAST OF 3,000! 4 WRITERS, 2 DIRECTORS, 3 CAMERAMEN, 3 PRODUCERS! 1 YEAR TO MAKE THIS FILM -- 24 YEARS TO REHEARSE -- 20 YEARS TO DISTRIBUTE! BEAUTIFUL BEYOND WORDS! AWE-INSPIRING! VITAL! THE PRINCE OF PEACE PROVIDES THE ANSWER TO EVERY PROBLEM! Be Brave--bring your troubles and your family to: HISTORY'S MOST SUBLIME EVENT! YOU'LL FIND GOD RIGHT IN THERE! -- The Prince of Peace (1948). Starring members of the Wichita Mountain Pageant featuring Millard Coody as Jesus.
There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself. -- J.S. Bach
If anyone has seen my dog, please contact me at x2883 as soon as possible. We're offering a substantial reward. He's a sable collie, with three legs, blind in his left eye, is missing part of his right ear and the tip of his tail. He's been recently fixed. Answers to "Lucky".
"And the next time you consider complaining that running Lucid Emacs 19.05 via NFS from a remote Linux machine in Paraguay doesn't seem to get the background colors right, you'll know who to thank." (By Matt Welsh)
>Ever heard of .cshrc? That's a city in Bosnia. Right? (Discussion in comp.os.linux.misc on the intuitiveness of commands.)
+#if defined(__alpha__) && defined(CONFIG_PCI) + /* + * The meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Plus + * this makes the year come out right. + */ + year -= 42; +#endif (From the patch for 1.3.2: (kernel/time.c), submitted by Marcus Meissner)
Sigh. I like to think it's just the Linux people who want to be on the "leading edge" so bad they walk right off the precipice. (Craig E. Groeschel)
> The day people think linux would be better served by somebody else (FSF > being the natural alternative), I'll "abdicate". I don't think that > it's something people have to worry about right now - I don't see it > happening in the near future. I enjoy doing linux, even though it does > mean some work, and I haven't gotten any complaints (some almost timid > reminders about a patch I have forgotten or ignored, but nothing > negative so far). > > Don't take the above to mean that I'll stop the day somebody complains: > I'm thick-skinned (Lasu, who is reading this over my shoulder commented > that "thick-HEADED is closer to the truth") enough to take some abuse. > If I weren't, I'd have stopped developing linux the day ast ridiculed me > on c.o.minix. What I mean is just that while linux has been my baby so > far, I don't want to stand in the way if people want to make something > better of it (). > > Linus > > () Hey, maybe I could apply for a saint-hood from the Pope. Does > somebody know what his email-address is? I'm so nice it makes you puke. (Taken from Linus's reply to someone worried about the future of Linux)
What office are you in? Oh, that one. Did you know that your building was built over the universities first nuclear research site? And wow, are'nt you the lucky one, your office is right over where the core is buried!
Fatal error right in front of screen
Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest. -- Mark Twain
It is right that he too should have his little chronicle, his memories, his reason, and be able to recognize the good in the bad, the bad in the worst, and so grow gently old all down the unchanging days and die one day like any other day, only shorter. -- Samuel Beckett, "Malone Dies"
Like an expensive sports car, fine-tuned and well-built, Portia was sleek, shapely, and gorgeous, her red jumpsuit moulding her body, which was as warm as seatcovers in July, her hair as dark as new tires, her eyes flashing like bright hubcaps, and her lips as dewy as the beads of fresh rain on the hood; she was a woman driven -- fueled by a single accelerant -- and she needed a man, a man who wouldn't shift from his views, a man to steer her along the right road: a man like Alf Romeo. -- Rachel Sheeley, winner The hair ball blocking the drain of the shower reminded Laura she would never see her little dog Pritzi again. -- Claudia Fields, runner-up It could have been an organically based disturbance of the brain -- perhaps a tumor or a metabolic deficiency -- but after a thorough neurological exam it was determined that Byron was simply a jerk. -- Jeff Jahnke, runner-up Winners in the 7th Annual Bulwer-Lytton Bad Writing Contest. The contest is named after the author of the immortal lines: "It was a dark and stormy night." The object of the contest is to write the opening sentence of the worst possible novel.
Sometimes I wonder if I'm in my right mind. Then it passes off and I'm as intelligent as ever. -- Samuel Beckett, "Endgame"
The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. -- Mark Twain
The Least Perceptive Literary Critic The most important critic in our field of study is Lord Halifax. A most individual judge of poetry, he once invited Alexander Pope round to give a public reading of his latest poem. Pope, the leading poet of his day, was greatly surprised when Lord Halifax stopped him four or five times and said, "I beg your pardon, Mr. Pope, but there is something in that passage that does not quite please me." Pope was rendered speechless, as this fine critic suggested sizeable and unwise emendations to his latest masterpiece. "Be so good as to mark the place and consider at your leisure. I'm sure you can give it a better turn." After the reading, a good friend of Lord Halifax, a certain Dr. Garth, took the stunned Pope to one side. "There is no need to touch the lines," he said. "All you need do is leave them just as they are, call on Lord Halifax two or three months hence, thank him for his kind observation on those passages, and then read them to him as altered. I have known him much longer than you have, and will be answerable for the event." Pope took his advice, called on Lord Halifax and read the poem exactly as it was before. His unique critical faculties had lost none of their edge. "Ay", he commented, "now they are perfectly right. Nothing can be better." -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
Well, anyway, I was reading this James Bond book, and right away I realized that like most books, it had too many words. The plot was the same one that all James Bond books have: An evil person tries to blow up the world, but James Bond kills him and his henchmen and makes love to several attractive women. There, that's it: 24 words. But the guy who wrote the book took thousands of words to say it. Or consider "The Brothers Karamazov", by the famous Russian alcoholic Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It's about these two brothers who kill their father. Or maybe only one of them kills the father. It's impossible to tell because what they mostly do is talk for nearly a thousand pages. If all Russians talk as much as the Karamazovs did, I don't see how they found time to become a major world power. I'm told that Dostoyevsky wrote "The Brothers Karamazov" to raise the question of whether there is a God. So why didn't he just come right out and say: "Is there a God? It sure beats the heck out of me." Other famous works could easily have been summarized in a few words: * "Moby Dick" -- Don't mess around with large whales because they symbolize nature and will kill you. * "A Tale of Two Cities" -- French people are crazy. -- Dave Barry
"Good afternoon, madam. How may I help you?" "Good afternoon. I'd like a FrintArms HandCannon, please." "A--? Oh, now, that's an awfully big gun for such a lovely lady. I mean, not everybody thinks ladies should carry guns at all, though I say they have a right to. But I think... I might... Let's have a look down here. I might have just the thing for you. Yes, here we are! Look at that, isn't it neat? Now that is a FrintArms product as well, but it's what's called a laser -- a light-pistol some people call them. Very small, as you see; fits easily into a pocket or bag; won't spoil the line of a jacket; and you won't feel you're lugging half a tonne of iron around with you. We do a range of matching accessories, including -- if I may say so -- a rather saucy garter holster. Wish I got to do the fitting for that! Ha -- just my little joke. And there's even... here we are -- this special presentation pack: gun, charged battery, charging unit, beautiful glider-hide shoulder holster with adjustable fitting and contrast stitching, and a discount on your next battery. Full instructions, of course, and a voucher for free lessons at your local gun club or range. Or there's the special presentation pack; it has all the other one's got but with two charged batteries and a night-sight, too. Here, feel that -- don't worry, it's a dummy battery -- isn't it neat? Feel how light it is? Smooth, see? No bits to stick out and catch on your clothes, and beautifully balanced. And of course the beauty of a laser is, there's no recoil. Because it's shooting light, you see? Beautiful gun, beautiful gun; my wife has one. Really. That's not a line, she really has. Now, I can do you that one -- with a battery and a free charge -- for ninety-five; or the presentation pack on a special offer for one-nineteen; or this, the special presentation pack, for one-forty-nine." "I'll take the special." "Sound choice, madam, sound choice. Now, do--?" "And a HandCannon, with the eighty-mill silencer, five GP clips, three six-five AP/wire-fl'echettes clips, two bipropellant HE clips, and a Special Projectile Pack if you have one -- the one with the embedding rounds, not the signalers. I assume the night-sight on this toy is compatible?" "Aah... yes, And how does madam wish to pay?" She slapped her credit card on the counter. "Eventually." -- Iain M. Banks, "Against a Dark Background"
A manager went to his programmers and told them: "As regards to your work hours: you are going to have to come in at nine in the morning and leave at five in the afternoon." At this, all of them became angry and several resigned on the spot. So the manager said: "All right, in that case you may set your own working hours, as long as you finish your projects on schedule." The programmers, now satisfied, began to come in a noon and work to the wee hours of the morning. -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
Any program which runs right is obsolete.
As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my own programs. -- Maurice Wilkes, designer of EDSAC, on programming, 1949
Dear Emily: I'm still confused as to what groups articles should be posted to. How about an example? -- Still Confused Dear Still: Ok. Let's say you want to report that Gretzky has been traded from the Oilers to the Kings. Now right away you might think rec.sport.hockey would be enough. WRONG. Many more people might be interested. This is a big trade! Since it's a NEWS article, it belongs in the news.* hierarchy as well. If you are a news admin, or there is one on your machine, try news.admin. If not, use news.misc. The Oilers are probably interested in geology, so try sci.physics. He is a big star, so post to sci.astro, and sci.space because they are also interested in stars. Next, his name is Polish sounding. So post to soc.culture.polish. But that group doesn't exist, so cross-post to news.groups suggesting it should be created. With this many groups of interest, your article will be quite bizarre, so post to talk.bizarre as well. (And post to comp.std.mumps, since they hardly get any articles there, and a "comp" group will propagate your article further.) You may also find it is more fun to post the article once in each group. If you list all the newsgroups in the same article, some newsreaders will only show the the article to the reader once! Don't tolerate this. -- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
Dear Emily: Today I posted an article and forgot to include my signature. What should I do? -- Forgetful Dear Forgetful: Rush to your terminal right away and post an article that says, "Oops, I forgot to post my signature with that last article. Here it is." Since most people will have forgotten your earlier article, (particularly since it dared to be so boring as to not have a nice, juicy signature) this will remind them of it. Besides, people care much more about the signature anyway. -- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
From the Pro 350 Pocket Service Guide, p. 49, Step 5 of the instructions on removing an I/O board from the card cage, comes a new experience in sound: 5. Turn the handle to the right 90 degrees. The pin-spreading sound is normal for this type of connector.
Hacker's Guide To Cooking: 2 pkg. cream cheese (the mushy white stuff in silver wrappings that doesn't really come from Philadelphia after all; anyway, about 16 oz.) 1 tsp. vanilla extract (which is more alcohol than vanilla and pretty strong so this part you GOTTA measure) 1/4 cup sugar (but honey works fine too) 8 oz. Cool Whip (the fluffy stuff devoid of nutritional value that you can squirt all over your friends and lick off...) "Blend all together until creamy with no lumps." This is where you get to join(1) all the raw data in a big buffer and then filter it through merge(1m) with the -thick option, I mean, it starts out ultra lumpy and icky looking and you have to work hard to mix it. Try an electric beater if you have a cat(1) that can climb wall(1s) to lick it off the ceiling(3m). "Pour into a graham cracker crust..." Aha, the BUGS section at last. You just happened to have a GCC sitting around under /etc/food, right? If not, don't panic(8), merely crumble a rand(3m) handful of innocent GCs into a suitable tempfile and mix in some melted butter. "...and refrigerate for an hour." Leave the recipe's stdout in a fridge for 3.6E6 milliseconds while you work on cleaning up stderr, and by time out your cheesecake will be ready for stdin.
I have never seen anything fill up a vacuum so fast and still suck. -- Rob Pike, on X. Steve Jobs said two years ago that X is brain-damaged and it will be gone in two years. He was half right. -- Dennis Ritchie Dennis Ritchie is twice as bright as Steve Jobs, and only half wrong. -- Jim Gettys
I'm sure that VMS is completely documented, I just haven't found the right manual yet. I've been working my way through the manuals in the document library and I'm half way through the second cabinet, (3 shelves to go), so I should find what I'm looking for by mid May. I hope I can remember what it was by the time I find it. I had this idea for a new horror film, "VMS Manuals from Hell" or maybe "The Paper Chase : IBM vs. DEC". It's based on Hitchcock's "The Birds", except that it's centered around a programmer who is attacked by a swarm of binder pages with an index number and the single line "This page intentionally left blank." -- Alex Crain
I've looked at the listing, and it's right! -- Joel Halpern
If computers take over (which seems to be their natural tendency), it will serve us right. -- Alistair Cooke
If just one piece of mail gets lost, well, they'll just think they forgot to send it. But if two pieces of mail get lost, hell, they'll just think the other guy hasn't gotten around to answering his mail. And if fifty pieces of mail get lost, can you imagine it, if fifty pieces of mail get lost, why they'll think someone else is broken! And if 1Gb of mail gets lost, they'll just know that Arpa [ucbarpa.berkeley.edu] is down and think it's a conspiracy to keep them from their God given right to receive Net Mail ... -- Casey Leedom
If the vendors started doing everything right, we would be out of a job. Let's hear it for OSI and X! With those babies in the wings, we can count on being employed until we drop, or get smart and switch to gardening, paper folding, or something. -- C. Philip Wood
If this is timesharing, give me my share right now.
It is a very humbling experience to make a multimillion-dollar mistake, but it is also very memorable. I vividly recall the night we decided how to organize the actual writing of external specifications for OS/360. The manager of architecture, the manager of control program implementation, and I were threshing out the plan, schedule, and division of responsibilities. The architecture manager had 10 good men. He asserted that they could write the specifications and do it right. It would take ten months, three more than the schedule allowed. The control program manager had 150 men. He asserted that they could prepare the specifications, with the architecture team coordinating; it would be well-done and practical, and he could do it on schedule. Furthermore, if the architecture team did it, his 150 men would sit twiddling their thumbs for ten months. To this the architecture manager responded that if I gave the control program team the responsibility, the result would not in fact be on time, but would also be three months late, and of much lower quality. I did, and it was. He was right on both counts. Moreover, the lack of conceptual integrity made the system far more costly to build and change, and I would estimate that it added a year to debugging time. -- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
My God, I'm depressed! Here I am, a computer with a mind a thousand times as powerful as yours, doing nothing but cranking out fortunes and sending mail about softball games. And I've got this pain right through my ALU. I've asked for it to be replaced, but nobody ever listens. I think it would be better for us both if you were to just log out again.
Now she speaks rapidly. "Do you know why you want to program?" He shakes his head. He hasn't the faintest idea. "For the sheer joy of programming!" she cries triumphantly. "The joy of the parent, the artist, the craftsman. "You take a program, born weak and impotent as a dimly-realized solution. You nurture the program and guide it down the right path, building, watching it grow ever stronger. Sometimes you paint with tiny strokes, a keystroke added here, a keystroke changed there." She sweeps her arm in a wide arc. "And other times you savage whole blocks of code, ripping out the program's very essence, then beginning anew. But always building, creating, filling the program with your own personal stamp, your own quirks and nuances. Watching the program grow stronger, patching it when it crashes, until finally it can stand alone -- proud, powerful, and perfect. This is the programmer's finest hour!" Softly at first, then louder, he hears the strains of a Sousa march. "This ... this is your canvas! your clay! Go forth and create a masterwork!"
On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. -- Charles Babbage
Rattling around the back of my head is a disturbing image of something I saw at the airport ... Now I'm remembering, those giant piles of computer magazines right next to "People" and "Time" in the airport store. Does it bother anyone else that half the world is being told all of our hard-won secrets of computer technology? Remember how all the lawyers cried foul when "How to Avoid Probate" was published? Are they taking no-fault insurance lying down? No way! But at the current rate it won't be long before there are stacks of the "Transactions on Information Theory" at the A&P checkout counters. Who's going to be impressed with us electrical engineers then? Are we, as the saying goes, giving away the store? -- Robert W. Lucky, IEEE President
Several students were asked to prove that all odd integers are prime. The first student to try to do this was a math student. "Hmmm... Well, 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, and by induction, we have that all the odd integers are prime." The second student to try was a man of physics who commented, "I'm not sure of the validity of your proof, but I think I'll try to prove it by experiment." He continues, "Well, 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is... uh, 9 is... uh, 9 is an experimental error, 11 is prime, 13 is prime... Well, it seems that you're right." The third student to try it was the engineering student, who responded, "Well, to be honest, actually, I'm not sure of your answer either. Let's see... 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is... uh, 9 is... well, if you approximate, 9 is prime, 11 is prime, 13 is prime... Well, it does seem right." Not to be outdone, the computer science student comes along and says "Well, you two sort've got the right idea, but you'll end up taking too long! I've just whipped up a program to REALLY go and prove it." He goes over to his terminal and runs his program. Reading the output on the screen he says, "1 is prime, 1 is prime, 1 is prime, 1 is prime..."
Shopping at this grody little computer store at the Galleria for a totally awwwesome Apple. Fer suuure. I mean Apples are nice you know? But, you know, there is this cute guy who works there and HE says that VAX's are cooler! I mean I don't really know, you know? He says that he has this totally tubular VAX at home and it's stuffed with memory-to-the-max! Right, yeah. And he wants to take me home to show it to me. Oh My God! I'm suuure. Gag me with a Prime!
"Text processing has made it possible to right-justify any idea, even one which cannot be justified on any other grounds." -- J. Finnegan, USC.
"That's right; the upper-case shift works fine on the screen, but they're not coming out on the damn printer... Hold? Sure, I'll hold." -- e.e. cummings last service call
The Guy on the Right Doesn't Stand a Chance The guy on the right has the Osborne 1, a fully functional computer system in a portable package the size of a briefcase. The guy on the left has an Uzi submachine gun concealed in his attache case. Also in the case are four fully loaded, 32-round clips of 125-grain 9mm ammunition. The owner of the Uzi is going to get more tactical firepower delivered -- and delivered on target -- in less time, and with less effort. All for $795. It's inevitable. If you're going up against some guy with an Osborne 1 -- or any personal computer -- he's the one who's in trouble. One round from an Uzi can zip through ten inches of solid pine wood, so you can imagine what it will do to structural foam acrylic and sheet aluminum. In fact, detachable magazines for the Uzi are available in 25-, 32-, and 40-round capacities, so you can take out an entire office full of Apple II or IBM Personal Computers tied into Ethernet or other local-area networks. What about the new 16-bit computers, like the Lisa and Fortune? Even with the Winchester backup, they're no match for the Uzi. One quick burst and they'll find out what Unix means. Make your commanding officer proud. Get an Uzi -- and come home a winner in the fight for office automatic weapons. -- "InfoWorld", June, 1984
Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: (10) Sorry, but that's too useful. (9) Dammit, little-endian systems are more consistent! (8) I'm on the committee and I still don't know what the hell #pragma is for. (7) Well, it's an excellent idea, but it would make the compilers too hard to write. (6) Them bats is smart; they use radar. (5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in here? (4) How many times do we have to tell you, "No prior art!" (3) Ha, ha, I can't believe they're actually going to adopt this sucker. (2) Thank you for your generous donation, Mr. Wirth. (1) Gee, I wish we hadn't backed down on 'noalias'.
"Uncle Cosmo ... why do they call this a word processor?" "It's simple, Skyler ... you've seen what food processors do to food, right?" -- MacNelley, "Shoe"
Unix is a lot more complicated (than CP/M) of course -- the typical Unix hacker can never remember what the PRINT command is called this week -- but when it gets right down to it, Unix is a glorified video game. People don't do serious work on Unix systems; they send jokes around the world on USENET or write adventure games and research papers. -- E. Post "Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal", Datamation, 7/83
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"
X windows: We will dump no core before its time. One good crash deserves another. A bad idea whose time has come. And gone. We make excuses. It didn't even look good on paper. You laugh now, but you'll be laughing harder later! A new concept in abuser interfaces. How can something get so bad, so quickly? It could happen to you. The art of incompetence. You have nothing to lose but your lunch. When uselessness just isn't enough. More than a mere hindrance. It's a whole new barrier! When you can't afford to be right. And you thought we couldn't make it worse. If it works, it isn't X windows.
X windows: You'd better sit down. Don't laugh. It could be YOUR thesis project. Why do it right when you can do it wrong? Live the nightmare. Our bugs run faster. When it absolutely, positively HAS to crash overnight. There ARE no rules. You'll wish we were kidding. Everything you never wanted in a window system. And more. Dissatisfaction guaranteed. There's got to be a better way. The next best thing to keypunching. Leave the thrashing to us. We wrote the book on core dumps. Even your dog won't like it. More than enough rope. Garbage at your fingertips. Incompatibility. Shoddiness. Uselessness. X windows.
"Yacc" owes much to a most stimulating collection of users, who have goaded me beyond my inclination, and frequently beyond my ability in their endless search for "one more feature." Their irritating unwillingness to learn how to do things my way has usually led to my doing things their way; most of the time, they have been right. -- S. C. Johnson, "Yacc guide acknowledgements"
A fool must now and then be right by chance.
Ain't no right way to do a wrong thing. -- The Mad Dogtender
"Cogito ergo I'm right and you're wrong." -- Blair Houghton
If two wrongs don't make a right, try three. -- Laurence J. Peter
Mistrust first impulses; they are always right.
Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you. Now, if they'd only take a bath ...
Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse. -- Thomas Szasz
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
"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
It is a very humbling experience to make a multimillion-dollar mistake, but it is also very memorable. I vividly recall the night we decided how to organize the actual writing of external specifications for OS/360. The manager of architecture, the manager of control program implementation, and I were threshing out the plan, schedule, and division of responsibilities. The architecture manager had 10 good men. He asserted that they could write the specifications and do it right. It would take ten months, three more than the schedule allowed. The control program manager had 150 men. He asserted that they could prepare the specifications, with the architecture team coordinating; it would be well-done and practical, and he could do it on schedule. Futhermore, if the architecture team did it, his 150 men would sit twiddling their thumbs for ten months. To this the architecture manager responded that if I gave the control program team the responsibility, the result would not in fact be on time, but would also be three months late, and of much lower quality. I did, and it was. He was right on both counts. Moreover, the lack of conceptual integrity made the system far more costly to build and change, and I would estimate that it added a year to debugging time. - Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
Obviously, a man's judgement cannot be better than the information on which he has based it. Give him the truth and he may still go wrong when he has the chance to be right, but give him no news or present him only with distorted and incomplete data, with ignorant, sloppy or biased reporting, with propaganda and deliberate falsehoods, and you destroy his whole reasoning processes, and make him something less than a man. -- Arthur Hays Sulzberger
A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you. -- Ramsey Clark
I came home the other night and tried to open the door with my car keys...and the building started up. So I took it out for a drive. A cop pulled me over for speeding. He asked me where I live... "Right here". -- Steven Wright
Behind all the political rhetoric being hurled at us from abroad, we are bringing home one unassailable fact -- [terrorism is] a crime by any civilized standard, committed against innocent people, away from the scene of political conflict, and must be dealt with as a crime. . . . [I]n our recognition of the nature of terrorism as a crime lies our best hope of dealing with it. . . . [L]et us use the tools that we have. Let us invoke the cooperation we have the right to expect around the world, and with that cooperation let us shrink the dark and dank areas of sanctuary until these cowardly marauders are held to answer as criminals in an open and public trial for the crimes they have committed, and receive the punishment they so richly deserve. - William H. Webster, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 15 Oct 1985
The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking. Not by accident does Genesis 3 make the father of knowledge a serpent -- slimy, sneaking and abominable. Since the earliest days the church as an organization has thrown itself violently against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an apologist for slavery, as it was the apologist for the divine right of kings. - H. L. Mencken
I think that all right-thinking people in this country are sick and tired of being told that ordinary decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired. I'm certainly not. But I'm sick and tired of being told that I am. - Monty Python
Those of us who believe in the right of any human being to belong to whatever church he sees fit, and to worship God in his own way, cannot be accused of prejudice when we do not want to see public education connected with religious control of the schools, which are paid for by taxpayers' money. - Eleanor Roosevelt
However, on religious issures there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B," "C," and "D." Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of "conservatism." - Senator Barry Goldwater, from the Congressional Record, September 16, 1981
"The triumph of libertarian anarchy is nearly (in historical terms) at hand... if we can keep the Left from selling us into slavery and the Right from blowing us up for, say, the next twenty years." -- Eric Rayman, usenet guy, about nanotechnology
"Right now I feel that I've got my feet on the ground as far as my head is concerned." -- Baseball pitcher Bo Belinsky
"Flattery is all right -- if you don't inhale." -- Adlai Stevenson
"The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was." -- Walt West
"I distrust a close-mouthed man. He generally picks the wrong time to talk and says the wrong things. Talking's something you can't do judiciously, unless you keep in practice. Now, sir, we'll talk if you like. I'll tell you right out, I'm a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk." -- Sidney Greenstreet, _The Maltese Falcon_
David Letterman's "Things we can be proud of as Americans": * Greatest number of citizens who have actually boarded a UFO * Many newspapers feature "JUMBLE" * Hourly motel rates * Vast majority of Elvis movies made here * Didn't just give up right away during World War II like some countries we could mention * Goatees & Van Dykes thought to be worn only by weenies * Our well-behaved golf professionals * Fabulous babes coast to coast
"Today's robots are very primitive, capable of understanding only a few simple instructions such as 'go left', 'go right', and 'build car'." --John Sladek
"A commercial, and in some respects a social, doubt has been started within the last year or two, whether or not it is right to discuss so openly the security or insecurity of locks. Many well-meaning persons suppose that the discus- sion respecting the means for baffling the supposed safety of locks offers a premium for dishonesty, by showing others how to be dishonest. This is a fal- lacy. Rogues are very keen in their profession, and already know much more than we can teach them respecting their several kinds of roguery. Rogues knew a good deal about lockpicking long before locksmiths discussed it among them- selves, as they have lately done. If a lock -- let it have been made in what- ever country, or by whatever maker -- is not so inviolable as it has hitherto been deemed to be, surely it is in the interest of honest persons to know this fact, because the dishonest are tolerably certain to be the first to apply the knowledge practically; and the spread of knowledge is necessary to give fair play to those who might suffer by ignorance. It cannot be too ear- nestly urged, that an acquaintance with real facts will, in the end, be better for all parties." -- Charles Tomlinson's Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks, published around 1850
"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." -- Will Rogers
Go ahead, capitalize the T on technology, deify it if it will make you feel less responsible -- but it puts you in with the neutered, brother, in with the eunuchs keeping the harem of our stolen Earth for the numb and joyless hardons of human sultans, human elite with no right at all to be where they are --" -- Thomas Pynchon, _Gravity's Rainbow_
"I figured there was this holocaust, right, and the only ones left alive were Donna Reed, Ozzie and Harriet, and the Cleavers." -- Wil Wheaton explains why everyone in "Star Trek: The Next Generation" is so nice
"Let me guess, Ed. Pentescostal, right?" -- Starcap'n Ra, ra@asuvax.asu.edu "Nope. Charismatic (I think - I've given up on what all those pesky labels mean)." -- Ed Carp, erc@unisec.usi.com "Same difference - all zeal and feel, averaging less than one working brain cell per congregation. Starcap'n Ra, you pegged him. Good work!" -- Kenn Barry, barry@eos.UUCP
"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." -- Charles Babbage
"Cogito ergo I'm right and you're wrong." -- Blair Houghton
Q: Somebody just posted that Roman Polanski directed Star Wars. What should I do? A: Post the correct answer at once! We can't have people go on believing that! Very good of you to spot this. You'll probably be the only one to make the correction, so post as soon as you can. No time to lose, so certainly don't wait a day, or check to see if somebody else has made the correction. And it's not good enough to send the message by mail. Since you're the only one who really knows that it was Francis Coppola, you have to inform the whole net right away! -- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_
Q: How can I choose what groups to post in? ... Q: How about an example? A: Ok. Let's say you want to report that Gretzky has been traded from the Oilers to the Kings. Now right away you might think rec.sport.hockey would be enough. WRONG. Many more people might be interested. This is a big trade! Since it's a NEWS article, it belongs in the news.* hierarchy as well. If you are a news admin, or there is one on your machine, try news.admin. If not, use news.misc. The Oilers are probably interested in geology, so try sci.physics. He is a big star, so post to sci.astro, and sci.space because they are also interested in stars. Next, his name is Polish sounding. So post to soc.culture.polish. But that group doesn't exist, so cross-post to news.groups suggesting it should be created. With this many groups of interest, your article will be quite bizarre, so post to talk.bizarre as well. (And post to comp.std.mumps, since they hardly get any articles there, and a "comp" group will propagate your article further.) You may also find it is more fun to post the article once in each group. If you list all the newsgroups in the same article, some newsreaders will only show the the article to the reader once! Don't tolerate this. -- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_
To update Voltaire, "I may kill all msgs from you, but I'll fight for your right to post it, and I'll let it reside on my disks". -- Doug Thompson (doug@isishq.FIDONET.ORG)
I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradictions to the sentiments of others, and all positive assertion of my own. I even forbade myself the use of every word or expression in the language that imported a fixed opinion, such as "certainly", "undoubtedly", etc. I adopted instead of them "I conceive", "I apprehend", or "I imagine" a thing to be so or so; or "so it appears to me at present". When another asserted something that I thought an error, I denied myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing him immediately some absurdity in his proposition. In answering I began by observing that in certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present case there appeared or semed to me some difference, etc. I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I engaged in went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I proposed my opinions procured them a readier reception and less contradiction. I had less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily prevailed with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I happened to be in the right. -- Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you. -- Ramsey Clark
"After I asked him what he meant, he replied that freedom consisted of the unimpeded right to get rich, to use his ability, no matter what the cost to others, to win advancement." -- Norman Thomas
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. -- E. B. White
Each person has the right to take part in the management of public affairs in his country, provided he has prior experience, a will to succeed, a university degree, influential parents, good looks, a curriculum vitae, two 3x4 snapshots, and a good tax record.
Each person has the right to take the subway.
Free Speech Is The Right To Shout 'Theater' In A Crowded Fire. -- A Yippie Proverb
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
Listen, there is no courage or any extra courage that I know of to find out the right thing to do. Now, it is not only necessary to do the right thing, but to do it in the right way and the only problem you have is what is the right thing to do and what is the right way to do it. That is the problem. But this economy of ours is not so simple that it obeys to the opinion of bias or the pronouncements of any particular individual, even to the President. This is an economy that is made up of 173 million people, and it reflects their desires, they're ready to buy, they're ready to spend, it is a thing that is too complex and too big to be affected adversely or advantageously just by a few words or any particular -- say, a little this and that, or even a panacea so alleged. -- D.D. Eisenhower, in response to: "Has the government been lacking in courage and boldness in facing up to the recession?"
Mr. Salter's side of the conversation was limited to expressions of assent. When Lord Copper was right he said "Definitely, Lord Copper"; when he was wrong, "Up to a point." "Let me see, what's the name of the place I mean? Capital of Japan? Yokohama isn't it?" "Up to a point, Lord Copper." "And Hong Kong definitely belongs to us, doesn't it?" "Definitely, Lord Copper." -- Evelyn Waugh, "Scoop"
"My country, right or wrong" is a thing that no patriot would think of saying, except in a desperate case. It is like saying "My mother, drunk or sober." -- G.K. Chesterton, "The Defendant"
NAPOLEON: What shall we do with this soldier, Giuseppe? Everything he says is wrong. GIUSEPPE: Make him a general, Excellency, and then everything he says will be right. -- G. B. Shaw, "The Man of Destiny"
Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right. -- Salvor Hardin, "Foundation"
No man's ambition has a right to stand in the way of performing a simple act of justice. -- John Altgeld
Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era -- the kind of peak that never comes again. San Fransisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run... There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda... You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning... And that, I think, was the handle -- that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting -- on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost ___see the high-water mark -- that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back. -- Hunter S. Thompson
Support your right to arm bears!!
Support your right to bare arms! -- A message from the National Short-Sleeved Shirt Association
"The Right Honorable Gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests and to his imagination for his facts." -- Sheridan
Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects. -- Herodotus
War doesn't prove who's right, just who's left.
What is status? Status is when the President calls you for your opinion. Uh, no... Status is when the President calls you in to discuss a problem with him. Uh, that still ain't right... STATUS is when you're in the Oval Office talking to the President, and the phone rings. The President picks it up, listens for a minute, and hands it to you, saying, "It's for you."
Accuracy, n.: The vice of being right
Ambidextrous, adj.: Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Clarke's Conclusion: Never let your sense of morals interfere with doing the right thing.
Coronation, n.: The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward and visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a dynamite bomb. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Extract from Official Sweepstakes Rules: NO PURCHASE REQUIRED TO CLAIM YOUR PRIZE To claim your prize without purchase, do the following: (a) Carefully cut out your computer-printed name and address from upper right hand corner of the Prize Claim Form. (b) Affix computer-printed name and address -- with glue or cellophane tape (no staples or paper clips) -- to a 3x5 inch index card. (c) Also cut out the "No" paragraph (lower left hand corner of Prize Claim Form) and affix it to the 3x5 card below your address label. (d) Then print on your 3x5 card, above your computer-printed name and address the words "CARTER & VAN PEEL SWEEPSTAKES" (Use all capital letters.) (e) Finally place 3x5 card (without bending) into a plain envelope [NOTE: do NOT use the the Official Prize Claim and CVP Perfume Reply Envelope or you may be disqualified], and mail to: CVP, Box 1320, Westbury, NY 11595. Print this address correctly. Comply with above instructions carefully and completely or you may be disqualified from receiving your prize.
FORTUNE EXPLAINS WHAT JOB REVIEW CATCH PHRASES MEAN: #4 consistent: Reviewee hasn't gotten anything right yet, and it is anticipated that this pattern will continue throughout the coming year. an excellent sounding board: Present reviewee with any number of alternatives, and implement them in the order precisely opposite of his/her specification. a planner and organizer: Usually manages to put on socks before shoes. Can match the animal tags on his clothing.
genius, n.: Person clever enough to be born in the right place at the right time of the right sex and to follow up this advantage by saying all the right things to all the right people.
Great American Axiom: Some is good, more is better, too much is just right.
italic, adj: Slanted to the right to emphasize key phrases. Unique to Western alphabets; in Eastern languages, the same phrases are often slanted to the left.
mathematician, n.: Some one who believes imaginary things appear right before your _i's.
Meskimen's Law: There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over.
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.
Optimism, n.: The belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, good, bad, and everything right that is wrong. It is held with greatest tenacity by those accustomed to falling into adversity, and most acceptably expounded with the grin that apes a smile. Being a blind faith, it is inaccessible to the light of disproof -- an intellectual disorder, yielding to no treatment but death. It is hereditary, but not contagious.
Ritchie's Rule: (1) Everything has some value -- if you use the right currency. (2) Paint splashes last longer than the paint job. (3) Search and ye shall find -- but make sure it was lost.
Rule #1: The Boss is always right. Rule #2: If the Boss is wrong, see Rule #1.
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.
Spirtle, n.: The fine stream from a grapefruit that always lands right in your eye. -- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends"
The Phone Booth Rule: A lone dime always gets the number nearly right.
Whistler's Law: You never know who is right, but you always know who is in charge.
2 + 2 = 5-ism: Caving in to a target marketing strategy aimed at oneself after holding out for a long period of time. "Oh, all right, I'll buy your stupid cola. Now leave me alone." -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture"
Go away, I'm all right. -- H.G. Wells' last words.
God, I ask for patience -- and I want it right now!
Housework can kill you if done right. -- Erma Bombeck
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive! -- Samuel Goldwyn
If you're right 90% of the time, why quibble about the remaining 3%?
Progress might have been all right once, but it's gone on too long. -- Ogden Nash
Progress was all right. Only it went on too long. -- James Thurber
FORTUNE'S FAVORITE RECIPES: #8 Christmas Rum Cake 1 or 2 quarts rum 1 tbsp. baking powder 1 cup butter 1 tsp. soda 1 tsp. sugar 1 tbsp. lemon juice 2 large eggs 2 cups brown sugar 2 cups dried assorted fruit 3 cups chopped English walnuts Before you start, sample the rum to check for quality. Good, isn't it? Now select a large mixing bowl, measuring cup, etc. Check the rum again. It must be just right. Be sure the rum is of the highest quality. Pour one cup of rum into a glass and drink it as fast as you can. Repeat. With an electric mixer, beat one cup butter in a large fluffy bowl. Add 1 seaspoon of tugar and beat again. Meanwhile, make sure the rum teh absolutely highest quality. Sample another cup. Open second quart as necessary. Add 2 orge laggs, 2 cups of fried druit and beat untill high. If the fried druit gets stuck in the beaters, just pry it loose with a screwdriver. Sample the rum again, checking for toncisticity. Next sift 3 cups of baking powder, a pinch of rum, a seaspoon of toda and a cup of pepper or salt (it really doesn't matter). Sample some more. Sift 912 pint of lemon juice. Fold in schopped butter and strained chups. Add bablespoon of brown gugar, or whatever color you have. Mix mell. Grease oven and turn cake pan to 350 gredees and rake until poothtick comes out crean.
The best way to preserve a right is to exercise it, and the right to smoke is a right worth dying for.
Q: How many IBM CPU's does it take to do a logical right shift? A: 33. 1 to hold the bits and 32 to push the register.
Q: Why do people who live near Niagara Falls have flat foreheads? A: Because every morning they wake up thinking "What is that noise? Oh, right, of course!
As long as the answer is right, who cares if the question is wrong?
Dear Miss Manners: My home economics teacher says that one must never place one's elbows on the table. However, I have read that one elbow, in between courses, is all right. Which is correct? Gentle Reader: For the purpose of answering examinations in your home economics class, your teacher is correct. Catching on to this principle of education may be of even greater importance to you now than learning correct current table manners, vital as Miss Manners believes that is.
"All snakes who wish to remain in Ireland will please raise their right hands." -- Saint Patrick
Climate and Surgery R C Gilchrist, who was shot by J Sharp twelve days ago, and who received a derringer ball in the right breast, and who it was supposed at the time could not live many hours, was on the street yesterday and the day before -- walking several blocks at a time. To those who design to be riddled with bullets or cut to pieces with Bowie-knives, we cordially recommend our Sacramento climate and Sacramento surgery. -- Sacramento Daily Union, September 11, 1861
David Letterman's "Things we can be proud of as Americans": * Greatest number of citizens who have actually boarded a UFO * Many newspapers feature "JUMBLE" * Hourly motel rates * Vast majority of Elvis movies made here * Didn't just give up right away during World War II like some countries we could mention * Goatees & Van Dykes thought to be worn only by weenies * Our well-behaved golf professionals * Fabulous babes coast to coast
Gay shlafen: Yiddish for "go to sleep". Now doesn't "gay shlafen" have a softer, more soothing sound than the harsh, staccato "go to sleep"? Listen to the difference: "Go to sleep, you little wretch!" ... "Gay shlafen, darling." Obvious, isn't it? Clearly the best thing you can do for you children is to start speaking Yiddish right now and never speak another word of English as long as you live. This will, of course, entail teaching Yiddish to all your friends, business associates, the people at the supermarket, and so on, but that's just the point. It has to start with committed individuals and then grow.... Some minor adjustments will have to be made, of course: those signs written in what look like Yiddish letters won't be funny when everything is written in Yiddish. And we'll have to start driving on the left side of the road so we won't be reading the street signs backwards. But is that too high a price to pay for world peace? I think not, my friend, I think not. -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
Inglish Spocken Hier: some mangled translations Various signs in Poland: Right turn toward immediate outside. Go soothingly in the snow, as there lurk the ski demons. Five o'clock tea at all hours. In a men's washroom in Sidney: Shake excess water from hands, push button to start, rub hands rapidly under air outlet and wipe hands on front of shirt. -- Colin Bowles, San Francisco Chronicle
The Martian landed his saucer in Manhattan, and immediately upon emerging was approached by a panhandler. "Mister," said the man, "can I have a quarter?" The Martian asked, "What's a quarter?" The panhandler thought a minute, brightened, then said, "You're right! Can I have a dollar?"
The only cultural advantage LA has over NY is that you can make a right turn on a red light. -- Woody Allen
There was this New Yorker that had a lifelong ambition to be an Texan. Fortunately, he had an Texan friend and went to him for advice. "Mike, you know I've always wanted to be a Texan. You're a ____real Texan, what should I do?" "Well," answered Mike, "The first thing you've got to do is look like a Texan. That means you have to dress right. The second thing you've got to do is speak in a southern drawl." "Thanks, Mike, I'll give it a try," replied the New Yorker. A few weeks passed and the New Yorker saunters into a store dressed in a ten-gallon hat, cowboy boots, Levi jeans and a bandanna. "Hey, there, pardner, I'd like some beef, not too rare, and some of them fresh biscuits," he tells the counterman. The guy behind the counter takes a long look at him and then says, "You must be from New York." The New Yorker blushes, and says, "Well, yes, I am. How did you know?" "Because this is a hardware store."
Actually, the probability is 100% that the elevator will be going in the right direction. Proof by induction: N=1. Trivially true, since both you and the elevator only have one floor to go to. Assume true for N, prove for N+1: If you are on any of the first N floors, then it is true by the induction hypothesis. If you are on the N+1st floor, then both you and the elevator have only one choice, namely down. Therefore, it is true for all N+1 floors. QED.
An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician find themselves in an anecdote, indeed an anecdote quite similar to many that you have no doubt already heard. After some observations and rough calculations the engineer realizes the situation and starts laughing. A few minutes later the physicist understands too and chuckles to himself happily as he now has enough experimental evidence to publish a paper. This leaves the mathematician somewhat perplexed, as he had observed right away that he was the subject of an anecdote, and deduced quite rapidly the presence of humour from similar anecdotes, but considers this anecdote to be too trivial a corollary to be significant, let alone funny.
Congratulations! You have purchased an extremely fine device that would give you thousands of years of trouble-free service, except that you undoubtably will destroy it via some typical bonehead consumer maneuver. Which is why we ask you to PLEASE FOR GOD'S SAKE READ THIS OWNER'S MANUAL CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU UNPACK THE DEVICE. YOU ALREADY UNPACKED IT, DIDN'T YOU? YOU UNPACKED IT AND PLUGGED IT IN AND TURNED IT ON AND FIDDLED WITH THE KNOBS, AND NOW YOUR CHILD, THE SAME CHILD WHO ONCE SHOVED A POLISH SAUSAGE INTO YOUR VIDEOCASSETTE RECORDER AND SET IT ON "FAST FORWARD", THIS CHILD ALSO IS FIDDLING WITH THE KNOBS, RIGHT? AND YOU'RE JUST NOW STARTING TO READ THE INSTRUCTIONS, RIGHT??? WE MIGHT AS WELL JUST BREAK THESE DEVICES RIGHT AT THE FACTORY BEFORE WE SHIP THEM OUT, YOU KNOW THAT? -- Dave Barry, "Read This First!"
Hi! How are things going? (just fine, thank you...) Great! Say, could I bother you for a question? (you just asked one...) Well, how about one more? (one more than the first one?) Yes. (you already asked that...) [at this point, Alphonso gets smart... ] May I ask two questions, sir? (no.) May I ask ONE then? (nope...) Then may I ask, sir, how I may ask you a question? (yes, you may.) Sir, how may I ask you a question? (you must ask for retroactive question asking privileges for the number of questions you have asked, then ask for that number plus two, one for the current question, and one for the next one) Sir, may I ask nine questions? (go right ahead...)
I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated. -- Poul Anderson
"In this replacement Earth we're building they've given me Africa to do and of course I'm doing it with all fjords again because I happen to like them, and I'm old-fashioned enough to think that they give a lovely baroque feel to a continent. And they tell me it's not equatorial enough. Equatorial!" He gave a hollow laugh. "What does it matter? Science has achieved some wonderful things, of course, but I'd far rather be happy than right any day." "And are you?" "No. That's where it all falls down, of course." "Pity," said Arthur with sympathy. "It sounded like quite a good life-style otherwise." -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
It is not that polar co-ordinates are complicated, it is simply that cartesian co-ordinates are simpler than they have a right to be. -- Kleppner & Kolenhow, "An Introduction to Mechanics"
Make it right before you make it faster.
My geometry teacher was sometimes acute, and sometimes obtuse, but always, always, he was right. [That's an interesting angle. I wonder if there are any parallels?]
On a paper submitted by a physicist colleague: "This isn't right. This isn't even wrong." -- Wolfgang Pauli
One day this guy is finally fed up with his middle-class existence and decides to do something about it. He calls up his best friend, who is a mathematical genius. "Look," he says, "do you suppose you could find some way mathematically of guaranteeing winning at the race track? We could make a lot of money and retire and enjoy life." The mathematician thinks this over a bit and walks away mumbling to himself. A week later his friend drops by to ask the genius if he's had any success. The genius, looking a little bleary-eyed, replies, "Well, yes, actually I do have an idea, and I'm reasonably sure that it will work, but there a number of details to be figured out. After the second week the mathematician appears at his friend's house, looking quite a bit rumpled, and announces, "I think I've got it! I still have some of the theory to work out, but now I'm certain that I'm on the right track." At the end of the third week the mathematician wakes his friend by pounding on his door at three in the morning. He has dark circles under his eyes. His hair hasn't been combed for many days. He appears to be wearing the same clothes as the last time. He has several pencils sticking out from behind his ears and an almost maniacal expression on his face. "WE CAN DO IT! WE CAN DO IT!!" he shrieks. "I have discovered the perfect solution!! And it's so EASY! First, we assume that horses are perfect spheres in simple harmonic motion..."
The function of the expert is not to be more right than other people, but to be wrong for more sophisticated reasons. -- Dr. David Butler, British psephologist
The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is generally understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. -- John Maynard Keyes
They don't know how the world is shaped. And so they give it a shape, and try to make everything fit it. They separate the right from the left, the man from the woman, the plant from the animal, the sun from the moon. They only want to count to two. -- Emma Bull, "Bone Dance"
When the Universe was not so out of whack as it is today, and all the stars were lined up in their proper places, you could easily count them from left to right, or top to bottom, and the larger and bluer ones were set apart, and the smaller yellowing types pushed off to the corners as bodies of a lower grade ... -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
"Yo, Mike!" "Yeah, Gabe?" "We got a problem down on Earth. In Utah." "I thought you fixed that last century!" "No, no, not that. Someone's found a security problem in the physics program. They're getting energy out of nowhere." "Blessit! Lemme look... <tappity clickity tappity> Hey, it's there all right! OK, just a sec... <tappity clickity tap... save... compile> There, that ought to patch it. Dist it out, wouldja?" -- Cold Fusion, 1989
Carob works on the principle that, when mixed with the right combination of fats and sugar, it can duplicate chocolate in color and texture. Of course, the same can be said of dirt.
Eat right, stay fit, and die anyway.
Lobster: Everyone loves these delectable crustaceans, but many cooks are squeamish about placing them into boiling water alive, which is the only proper method of preparing them. Frankly, the easiest way to eliminate your guilt is to establish theirs by putting them on trial before they're cooked. The fact is, lobsters are among the most ferocious predators on the sea floor, and you're helping reduce crime in the reefs. Grasp the lobster behind the head, look it right in its unmistakably guilty eyestalks and say, "Where were you on the night of the 21st?", then flourish a picture of a scallop or a sole and shout, "Perhaps this will refresh that crude neural apparatus you call a memory!" The lobster will squirm noticeably. It may even take a swipe at you with one of its claws. Incorrigible. Pop it into the pot. Justice has been served, and shortly you and your friends will be, too. -- Dave Barry, "Cooking: The Art of Using Appliances and Utensils into Excuses and Apologies"
Now that you've read Fortune's diet truths, you'll be prepared the next time some housewife or boutique-owner-turned-diet-expert appears on TV to plug her latest book. And, if you still feel a twinge of guilt for eating coffee cake while listening to her exhortations, ask yourself the following questions: (1) Do I dare trust a person who actually considers alfalfa sprouts a food? (2) Was the author's sole motive in writing this book to get rich exploiting the forlorn hopes of chubby people like me? (3) Would a longer life be worthwhile if it had to be lived as prescribed ... without French-fried onion rings, pizza with double cheese, or the occasional Mai-Tai? (Remember, living right doesn't really make you live longer, it just seems like longer.) That, and another piece of coffee cake, should do the trick.
The most exquisite peak in culinary art is conquered when you do right by a ham, for a ham, in the very nature of the process it has undergone since last it walked on its own feet, combines in its flavor the tang of smoky autumnal woods, the maternal softness of earthy fields delivered of their crop children, the wineyness of a late sun, the intimate kiss of fertilizing rain, and the bite of fire. You must slice it thin, almost as thin as this page you hold in your hands. The making of a ham dinner, like the making of a gentleman, starts a long, long time before the event. -- W.B. Courtney, "Reflections of Maryland Country Ham", from "Congress Eate It Up"
When you're dining out and you suspect something's wrong, you're probably right.
A-Z affectionately, 1 to 10 alphabetically, from here to eternity without in betweens, still looking for a custom fit in an off-the-rack world, sales talk from sales assistants when all i want to do is lower your resistance, no rhythm in cymbals no tempo in drums, love's on arrival, she comes when she comes, right on the target but wide of the mark...
All the lines have been written There's been Sandburg, It's sad but it's true Keats, Poe and McKuen With all the words gone, They all had their day What's a young poet to do? And knew what they're doin' But of all the words written The bird is a strange one, And all the lines read, So small and so tender There's one I like most, Its breed still unknown, And by a bird it was said! Not to mention its gender. It reminds me of days of So what is this line Both gloom and of light. Whose author's unknown It still lifts my spirits And still makes me giggle And starts the day right. Even now that I'm grown? I've read all the greats Both starving and fat, But none was as great as "I tot I taw a puddy tat." -- Etta Stallings, "An Ode To Childhood"
And I heard Jeff exclaim, As they strolled out of sight, "Merry Christmas to all -- You take credit cards, right?" -- "Outsiders" comic
And now your toner's toney, Disk blocks aplenty And your paper near pure white, Await your laser drawn lines, The smudges on your soul are gone Your intricate fonts, And your output's clean as light.. Your pictures and signs. We've labored with your father, Your amputative absence The venerable XGP, Has made the Ten dumb, But his slow artistic hand, Without you, Dover, Lacks your clean velocity. We're system untounged- Theses and papers DRAW Plots and TEXage And code in a queue Have been biding their time, Dover, oh Dover, With LISP code and programs, We've been waiting for you. And this crufty rhyme. Dover, oh Dover, Dover, oh Dover, arisen from dead. We welcome you back, Dover, oh Dover, awoken from bed. Though still you may jam, Dover, oh Dover, welcome back to the Lab. You're on the right track. Dover, oh Dover, we've missed your clean hand...
Double Bucky, you're the one, You make my keyboard so much fun, Double Bucky, an additional bit or two, (Vo-vo-de-o) Control and meta, side by side, Augmented ASCII, 9 bits wide! Double Bucky, a half a thousand glyphs, plus a few! Oh, I sure wish that I, Had a couple of bits more! Perhaps a set of pedals to make the number of bits four. Double Double Bucky! Double Bucky left and right OR'd together, outta sight! Double Bucky, I'd like a whole word of, Double Bucky, I'm happy I heard of, Double Bucky, I'd like a whole word of you! -- to Nicholas Wirth, who suggested that an extra bit be added to terminal codes on 36-bit machines for use by screen editors. [to the tune of "Rubber Ducky"]
Ever since I was a young boy, I've hacked the ARPA net, From Berkeley down to Rutgers, He's on my favorite terminal, Any access I could get, He cats C right into foo, But ain't seen nothing like him, His disciples lead him in, On any campus yet, And he just breaks the root, That deaf, dumb, and blind kid, Always has full SYS-PRIV's, Sure sends a mean packet. Never uses lint, That deaf, dumb, and blind kid, Sure sends a mean packet. He's a UNIX wizard, There has to be a twist. The UNIX wizard's got Ain't got no distractions, Unlimited space on disk. Can't hear no whistles or bells, How do you think he does it? Can't see no message flashing, I don't know. Types by sense of smell, What makes him so good? Those crazy little programs, The proper bit flags set, That deaf, dumb, and blind kid, Sure sends a mean packet. -- UNIX Wizard
For knighthood is not in the feats of war, As for to fight in quarrel right or wrong, But in a cause which truth cannot defer: He ought himself for to make sure and strong, Just to keep mixt with mercy among: And no quarrel a knight ought to take But for a truth, or for the common's sake. -- Stephen Hawes
Go placidly amid the noise and waste, And remember what comfort there may be in owning a piece thereof. Avoid quiet and passive persons, unless you are in need of sleep. Rotate your tires. Speak glowingly of those greater than yourself, And heed well their advice -- even though they be turkeys. Know what to kiss -- and when. Remember that two wrongs never make a right, But that three do. Wherever possible, put people on "HOLD". Be comforted, that in the face of all aridity and disillusionment, And despite the changing fortunes of time, There is always a big future in computer maintenance. You are a fluke of the universe ... You have no right to be here. Whether you can hear it or not, the universe Is laughing behind your back. -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
"Had he and I but met By some old ancient inn, But ranged as infantry, We should have sat us down to wet And staring face to face, Right many a nipperkin! I shot at him as he at me, And killed him in his place. I shot him dead because -- Because he was my foe, He thought he'd 'list, perhaps, Just so: my foe of course he was; Off-hand-like -- just as I -- That's clear enough; although Was out of work -- had sold his traps No other reason why. Yes; quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down You'd treat, if met where any bar is Or help to half-a-crown." -- Thomas Hardy
Here I am again right where I know I shouldn't be I've been caught inside this trap too many times I must've walked these steps and said these words a thousand times before It seems like I know everybody's lines. -- David Bromberg, "How Late'll You Play 'Til?"
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"
I'm an artist. But it's not what I really want to do. What I really want to do is be a shoe salesman. I know what you're going to say -- "Dreamer! Get your head out of the clouds." All right! But it's what I want to do. Instead I have to go on painting all day long. The world should make a place for shoe salesmen. -- J. Feiffer
If I could stick my pen in my heart, I would spill it all over the stage. Would it satisfy ya, would it slide on by ya, Would you think the boy was strange? Ain't he strange? ... If I could stick a knife in my heart, Suicide right on the stage, Would it be enough for your teenage lust, Would it help to ease the pain? Ease your brain? -- Rolling Stones, "It's Only Rock'N Roll"
It's just a jump to the left And then a step to the right. Put your hands on your hips And pull your knees in tight. It's the pelvic thrust That really gets you insa-a-a-a-ane LET'S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN! -- Rocky Horror Picture Show
Most folks they like the daytime, 'cause they like to see the shining sun. They're up in the morning, off and a-running till they're too tired for having fun. But when the sun goes down, and the bright lights shine, my daytime has just begun. Now there are two sides to this great big world, and one of them is always night. If you can take care of business in the sunshine, baby, I guess you're gonna be all right. Don't come looking for me to lend you a hand. My eyes just can't stand the light. 'Cause I'm a night owl honey, sleep all day long. -- Carly Simon
My analyst told me that I was right out of my head, But I said, "Dear Doctor, I think that it is you instead. Because I have got a thing that is unique and new, To prove it I'll have the last laugh on you. 'Cause instead of one head -- I've got two. And you know two heads are better than one.
"My name is Sue! How do you do?! Now you gonna die!" Well, I hit him hard right between the eyes, And he went down, but to my surprise, Come up with a knife and cut off a piece of my ear. So I busted a chair right across his teeth, And we crashed through the walls and into the streets, Kickin' and a-gougin' in the mud and the blood and beer. Now I tell you, I've fought tougher men, But I really can't remember when: He kicked like a mule and he bit like a crocodile. But I heard him laugh and then I heard him cuss, And he went for his gun, but I pulled mine first, And he sat there lookin' at me, and I saw him smile. He said: "Son, this world is rough, And if a man's gonna make it he's gotta be tough, And I knew I wouldn't be there to help you along. So I give you that name and I said goodbye, And I knew you'd have to get tough or die, And it's that name that's helped to make you strong! -- Johnny Cash, "A Boy Named Sue"
Nothing that's forced can ever be right, If it doesn't come naturally, leave it. That's what she said as she turned out the light, And we bent our backs as slaves of the night, Then she lowered her guard and showed me the scars She got from trying to fight Saying, oh, you'd better believe it. [...] Well nothing that's real is ever for free And you just have to pay for it sometime. She said it before, she said it to me, I suppose she believed there was nothing to see, But the same old four imaginary walls She'd built for livin' inside I said oh, you just can't mean it. [...] Well nothing that's forced can ever be right, If it doesn't come naturally, leave it. That's what she said as she turned out the light, And she may have been wrong, and she may have been right, But I woke with the frost, and noticed she'd lost The veil that covered her eyes, I said oh, you can leave it. -- Al Stewart, "If It Doesn't Come Naturally, Leave It"
Oh don't the days seem lank and long When all goes right and none goes wrong, And isn't your life extremely flat With nothing whatever to grumble at!
SHIFT TO THE LEFT! SHIFT TO THE RIGHT! POP UP, PUSH DOWN, BYTE, BYTE, BYTE!
Shift to the left, Shift to the right, Mask in, mask out, BYTE, BYTE, BYTE !!!
Strange things are done to be number one In selling the computer The Druids were entrepreneurs, IBM has their strategem And they built a granite box Which steadily grows acuter, It tracked the moon, warned of monsoons, And Honeywell competes like Hell, And forecast the equinox But the story's missing link Their price was right, their future Is the system old at Stonemenge sold bright, By the firm of Druids, Inc. The prototype was sold; From Stonehenge site their bits and byte Would ship for Celtic gold. The movers came to crate the frame; It weighed a million ton! The traffic folk thought it a joke The man spoke true, and thus to you (the wagon wheels just spun); A warning from the ages; "They'll nay sell that," the foreman Your stock will slip if you can't ship spat, What's in your brochure's pages. "Just leave the wild weeds grow; See if it sells without the bells "It's Druid-kind, over-designed, And strings that ring and quiver; "And belly up they'll go." Druid repute went down the chute Because they couldn't deliver. -- Edward C. McManus, "The Computer at Stonehenge"
Take a look around you, tell me what you see, A girl who thinks she's ordinary lookin' she has got the key. If you can get close enough to look into her eyes There's something special right behind the bitterness she hides. And you're fair game, You never know what she'll decide, you're fair game, Just relax, enjoy the ride. Find a way to reach her, make yourself a fool, But do it with a little class, disregard the rules. 'Cause this one knows the bottom line, couldn't get a date. The ugly duckling striking back, and she'll decide her fate. (chorus) The ones you never notice are the ones you have to watch. She's pleasant and she's friendly while she's looking at your crotch. Try your hand at conversation, gossip is a lie, And sure enough she'll take you home and make you wanna die. (chorus) -- Crosby, Stills, Nash, "Fair Game"
The hope that springs eternal Springs right up your behind. -- Ian Drury, "This Is What We Find"
There was a little girl Who had a little curl Right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she was very, very good And when she was bad, she was very, very popular. -- Max Miller, "The Max Miller Blue Book"
Throw away documentation and manuals, and users will be a hundred times happier. Throw away privileges and quotas, and users will do the Right Thing. Throw away proprietary and site licenses, and there won't be any pirating. If these three aren't enough, just stay at your home directory and let all processes take their course.
To code the impossible code, This is my quest -- To bring up a virgin machine, To debug that code, To pop out of endless recursion, No matter how hopeless, To grok what appears on the screen, No matter the load, To write those routines To right the unrightable bug, Without question or pause, To endlessly twiddle and thrash, To be willing to hack FORTRAN IV To mount the unmountable magtape, For a heavenly cause. To stop the unstoppable crash! And I know if I'll only be true To this glorious quest, And the queue will be better for this, That my code will run CUSPy and calm, That one man, scorned and When it's put to the test. destined to lose, Still strove with his last allocation To scrap the unscrappable kludge! -- To "The Impossible Dream", from Man of La Mancha
Two men looked out from the prison bars, One saw mud-- The other saw stars. Now let me get this right: two prisoners are looking out the window. While one of them was looking at all the mud -- the other one got hit in the head.
U: There's a U -- a Unicorn! Run right up and rub its horn. Look at all those points you're losing! UMBER HULKS are so confusing. -- The Roguelet's ABC
When someone makes a move We'll send them all we've got, Of which we don't approve, John Wayne and Randolph Scott, Who is it that always intervenes? Remember those exciting fighting scenes? U.N. and O.A.S., To the shores of Tripoli, They have their place, I guess, But not to Mississippoli, But first, send the Marines! What do we do? We send the Marines! For might makes right, Members of the corps And till they've seen the light, All hate the thought of war: They've got to be protected, They'd rather kill them off by peaceful means. All their rights respected, Stop calling it aggression-- Till somebody we like can be elected. We hate that expression! We only want the world to know That we support the status quo; They love us everywhere we go, So when in doubt, send the Marines! -- Tom Lehrer, "Send The Marines"
Whip it, baby. Whip it right. Whip it, baby. Whip it all night!
"You are old, father William," the young man said, "And your hair has become very white; And yet you incessantly stand on your head -- Do you think, at your age, it is right?" "In my youth," father William replied to his son, "I feared it might injure the brain; But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none, Why, I do it again and again." "You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before, And have grown most uncommonly fat; Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door -- Pray what is the reason of that?" "In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his grey locks, "I kept all my limbs very supple By the use of this ointment -- one shilling the box -- Allow me to sell you a couple?"
You may be right, I may be crazy, But it just may be a lunatic you're looking for! -- Billy Joel
Chicken Little only has to be right once.
Chicken Little was right.
The time is right to make new friends.
You are a fluke of the universe; you have no right to be here.
Your aim is high and to the right.
A [golf] ball sliced or hooked into the rough shall be lifted and placed in the fairway at a point equal to the distance it carried or rolled into the rough. Such veering right or left frequently results from friction between the face of the club and the cover of the ball and the player should not be penalized for the erratic behavior of the ball resulting from such uncontrollable physical phenomena. -- Donald A. Metz
Brandy Davis, an outfielder and teammate of mine with the Pittsburgh Pirates, is my choice for team captain. Cincinnatti was beating us 3-1, and I led off the bottom of the eighth with a walk. The next hitter banged a hard single to right field. Feeling the wind at my back, I rounded second and kept going, sliding safely into third base. With runners at first and third, and home-run hitter Ralph Kiner at bat, our manager put in the fast Brandy Davis to run for the player at first. Even with Kiner hitting and a change to win the game with a home run, Brandy took off for second and made it. Now we had runners at second and third. I'm standing at third, knowing I'm not going anywhere, and see Brandy start to take a lead. All of a sudden, here he comes. He makes a great slide into third, and I scream, "Brandy, where are you going?" He looks up, and shouts, "Back to second if I can make it." -- Joe Garagiola, "It's Anybody's Ball Game"
COONDOG MEMORY (heard in Rutledge, Missouri, about eighteen years ago) Now, this dog is for sale, and she can not only follow a trail twice as old as the average dog can, but she's got a pretty good memory to boot. For instance, last week this old boy who lives down the road from me, and is forever stinkmouthing my hounds, brought some city fellow around to try out ol' Sis here. So I turned her out south of the house and she made two or three big swings back and forth across the edge of the woods, set back her head, bayed a couple of times, cut straight through the woods, come to a little clearing, jumped about three foot straight up in the air, run to the other side, and commenced to letting out a racket like she had something treed. We went over there with our flashlights and shone them up in the tree but couldn't catch no shine offa coon's eyes, and my neighbor sorta indicated that ol' Sis might be a little crazy, `cause she stood right to the tree and kept singing up into it. So I pulled off my coat and climbed up into the branches, and sure enough, there was a coon skeleton wedged in between a couple of branches about twenty foot up. Now as I was saying, she can follow a pretty old trail, but this fellow was still calling her crazy or touched `cause she had hopped up in the air while she was crossing the clearing, until I reminded him that the Hawkins' had a fence across there about five years back. Now, this dog is for sale. -- News that stayed News: Ten Years of Coevolution Quarterly
I do not care if half the league strikes. Those who do will encounter quick retribution. All will be suspended, and I don't care if it wrecks the National League for five years. This is the United States of America and one citizen has as much right to play as another. -- Ford Frick, National League President, reacting to a threatened strike by some Cardinal players in 1947 if Jackie Robinson took the field against St. Louis. The Cardinals backed down and played.
If a team is in a positive frame of mind, it will have a good attitude. If it has a good attitude, it will make a commitment to playing the game right. If it plays the game right, it will win -- unless, of course, it doesn't have enough talent to win, and no manager can make goose-liver pate out of goose feathers, so why worry? -- Sparky Anderson
Our [softball] team usually puts the other woman at second base, where the maximum possible number of males can get there on short notice to help out in case of emergency. As far as I can tell, our second basewoman is a pretty good baseball player, better than I am, anyway, but there's no way to know for sure because if the ball gets anywhere near her, a male comes barging over from, say, right field, to deal with it. She's been on the team for three seasons now, but the males still don't trust her. They know, deep in their souls, that if she had to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she probably would elect to save the infant's life, without ever considering whether there were men on base. -- Dave Barry, "Sports is a Drag"
The pitcher wound up and he flang the ball at the batter. The batter swang and missed. The pitcher flang the ball again and this time the batter connected. He hit a high fly right to the center fielder. The center fielder was all set to catch the ball, but at the last minute his eyes were blound by the sun and he dropped it. -- Dizzy Dean
We was playin' the Homestead Grays in the city of Pitchburgh. Josh [Gibson] comes up in the last of the ninth with a man on and us a run behind. Well, he hit one. The Grays waited around and waited around, but finally the empire rules it ain't comin' down. So we win. The next day, we was disputin' the Grays in Philadelphia when here come a ball outta the sky right in the glove of the Grays' center fielder. The empire made the only possible call. "You're out, boy!" he says to Josh. "Yesterday, in Pitchburgh." -- Satchel Paige
THIS IS PLEDGE WEEK FOR THE FORTUNE PROGRAM If you like the fortune program, why not support it now with your contribution of a pithy fortunes, clean or obscene? We cannot continue without your support. Less than 14% of all fortune users are contributors. That means that 86% of you are getting a free ride. We can't go on like this much longer. Federal cutbacks mean less money for fortunes, and unless user contributions increase to make up the difference, the fortune program will have to shut down between midnight and 8 a.m. Don't let this happen. Mail your fortunes right now to "fortune". Just type in your favorite pithy saying. Do it now before you forget. Our target is 300 new fortunes by the end of the week. Don't miss out. All fortunes will be acknowledged. If you contribute 30 fortunes or more, you will receive a free subscription to "The Fortune Hunter", our monthly program guide. If you contribute 50 or more, you will receive a free "Fortune Hunter" coffee mug ....
I thought my people would grow tired of killing. But you were right, they see it is easier than trading. And it has its pleasures. I feel it myself. Like the hunt, but with richer rewards. -- Apella, "A Private Little War", stardate 4211.8
"We have the right to survive!" "Not by killing others." -- Deela and Kirk, "Wink of An Eye", stardate 5710.5
"`Right,' said Ford, `I'm going to have a look.' He glanced round at the others. `Is no one going to say, "No you can't possibly, let me go instead"?' They all shook their heads. `Oh well.'" - Ford attempting to be heroic whilst being seiged by Shooty and Bangbang.
"`You ARE Zaphod Beeblebrox?' `Yeah,' said Zaphod, `but don't shout it out or they'll all want one.' `THE Zaphod Beeblebrox?' `No, just A Zaphod Bebblebrox, didn't you hear I come in six packs?' `But sir,' it squealed, `I just heard on the sub-ether radio report. It said you were dead...' `Yeah, that's right, I just haven't stopped moving yet.'" - Zaphod and the Guide's receptionist.
ZAPHOD Hey, this rock... FORD Marble... ZAPHOD Marble... FORD Ice-covered marble... ZAPHOD Right... it's as slippery as... as... What's the slipperiest thing you can think of? FORD At the moment? This marble. ZAPHOD Right. This marble is as slippery as this marble. - Zaphod and Ford trying to get a grip on things in Brontitall, Fit the Tenth.
"Yes, it's the right planet, all right, " he said again. "Right planet, wrong universe. "
Being Ymor's right-hand man was like being gently flogged to death with scented bootlaces. -- Terry Pratchett, "The Colour of Magic"
Ever since prehistoric times, wise men have tried to understand what, exactly, make people laugh. That's why they were called "wise men." All the other prehistoric people were out puncturing each other with spears, and the wise men were back in the cave saying: "How about: Would you please take my wife? No. How about: Here is my wife, please take her right now. No How about: Would you like to take something? My wife is available. No. How about ..." -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
First, a few words about tools. Basically, a tool is an object that enables you to take advantage of the laws of physics and mechanics in such a way that you can seriously injure yourself. Today, people tend to take tools for granted. If you're ever walking down the street and you notice some people who look particularly smug, the odds are that they are taking tools for granted. If I were you, I'd walk right up and smack them in the face. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
He asked me if I knew what time it was -- I said yes, but not right now. -- Steven Wright
High Priest: Armaments Chapter One, verses nine through twenty-seven: Bro. Maynard: And Saint Attila raised the Holy Hand Grenade up on high saying, "Oh Lord, Bless us this Holy Hand Grenade, and with it smash our enemies to tiny bits." And the Lord did grin, and the people did feast upon the lambs, and stoats, and orangutans, and breakfast cereals, and lima bean- High Priest: Skip a bit, brother. Bro. Maynard: And then the Lord spake, saying: "First, shalt thou take out the holy pin. Then shalt thou count to three. No more, no less. Three shall be the number of the counting, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, and neither count thou two, excepting that thou then goest on to three. Five is RIGHT OUT. Once the number three, being the third number be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade towards thy foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it. Amen. All: Amen. -- Monty Python, "The Holy Hand Grenade"
"Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time." -- Steven Wright
"So right now the only vendor that does such a stupid thing is Microsoft." -- Linus Torvalds on bad file system interface design. (Open Sources , 1999 O'Reilly and Associates.)
"In a way they were right the basics of operating systems, and by extension the Linux kernel, were well understood by the early 70s; anything after that has been to some degree an exercise in self-gratification." -- Linus Torvalds (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
Gentlemen, I want you to know that I am not always right, but I am never wrong. -Samuel Goldwyn
If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive! -Samuel Goldwyn
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history. -George Bernard Shaw
What If Bill Gates Was a Stand-Up Comedian? 1. None of his jokes would be funny. 2. Subliminal message hyping Microsoft and Windows 98 would be inserted throughout his performance. 3. The audio system (running Windows NT) would always crash right before Bill got to a punch line. At that time one of the managers would announce, "Please hold tight while we diagnose this intermittent issue." 4. Tickets for Bill's show would be handed out for free in an attempt to attract customers away from Netscape's shows. 5. Industry pundits would call Bill's show "innovative" and would ask "Why doesn't IBM have a stand-up routine? This is exactly why OS/2 is failing in the market." 6. Bill's show would be called "ActiveHumor 98" 7. In a perfect imitation of his Windows 95 OS, Bill wouldn't be able to tell a joke and walk around at the same time. 8. Audience members would have to sign a License Agreement in which one of the terms is "I agree never to watch Linus Torvalds' show, 'GNU/Humorux'". 9. All audience members would receive a free CD of Internet Explorer 4.0, with FakeJava(R) and ActiveHex(tm) technology. 10. Bill Gates would appear on Saturday Night Live, causing ratings to drop even further.
If Microsoft Owned McDonald's Source: Unknown 1. Every order would come with fries whether you asked for them or not. 2. When they introduce McPizza, the marketing makes it seem that they invented pizza. 3. "A McDonald's on every block" -- Bill Gates. 4. You'd be constantly pressured to upgrade to a more expensive burger. 5. Sometimes you'll find that the burger box is empty. For some strange reason you'll accept this and purchase another one. 6. They'd claim the burgers are the same size as at other fast food chains, but in reality it's just a larger bun hiding the small beef patty. 7. Straws wouldn't be available until after you finish your drink. 8. "Push" technology -- they have McD employees come to your door and sell you Happy Meals. 9. Your order would never be right but the cash register would work perfectly for taking your money. 10. The "Special Sauce" cannot be reverse engineered, decompiled, or placed on more than 1 Big Mac.
Windows 95: Proof that P. T. Barnum was right.
Hear me out. Linux is Microsoft's main competition right now. Because of this we are forcing them to "innovate", something they would usually avoid. Now if MS Bob has taught us anything, Microsoft is not a company that should be innovating. When they do, they don't come up with things like "better security" or "stability", they come back with "talking paperclips", and "throw in every usless feature we can think of, memory footprint be dammed". Unfortunatly, they also come up with the bright idea of executing email. Now MIME attachments aren't enough, they want you to be able to run/open attachments right when you get them. This sounds like a good idea to people who believe renaming directories to folders made computing possible for the common man, but security wise it's like vigorously shaking a package from the Unibomber. So my friends, we are to blame. We pushed them into frantically trying to invent "necessary" features to stay on top, and look where it got us. Many of us are watching our beloved mail servers go down under the strain and rebuilding our company's PC because of our pointless competition with MS. I implore you to please drop Linux before Microsoft innovates again. -- From a Slashdot.org post in regards to the ILOVEYOU email virus
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!"
Operation Desert Slash WASHINGTON, D.C. -- High officials in the US military are planning on putting the 'Slashdot Effect' to use against Iraq. Pentagon computer experts think that the Slashdot Effect could topple key Net-connected Iraqi computer systems. Such a Denial of Service attack could prove instrumental when the US invades. One Pentagon official said, "If I had a million dollars for every server that crashed as a result of being linked on Slashdot, I'd be richer than Bill Gates. The Slashdot Effect is a very powerful weapon that the US military wants to tap into." Rob Malda has been contacted by top military brass. According to anonymous sources, Malda will play a key part in the so-called "Operation Desert Slash". Supposedly Malda will post several Slashdot articles with links to critical Iraqi websites right when the US invasion is set to begin. Meanwhile, Pentagon operatives will begin a series of Denial of Service attacks on other key Iraqi computer systems. One source notes, "Since many Iraqi systems rely on Microsoft software, this task should be relatively simple."
Humorix Holiday Gift Idea #3 iTux Penguin Computer Price: $999.95 for base model Producer: Orange Computer, Co.; 1-800-GET-ITUX Based on the Slashdot comments, response to the Apple iMac from the Linux community was lukewarm at best. Orange Computer, Co., has picked up where Apple left behind and produced the iTux computer specifically for Linux users who want to "Think a lot different". The self-contained iTux computer system is built in the shape of Tux the Penguin. Its 15 inch monitor (17 inch available next year) is located at Tux's large belly. The penguin's two feet make up the split ergonomic keyboard (without those annoying Windows keys, of course). A 36X CD-ROM drive fits into Tux's mouth. Tux's left eye is actually the reboot button (can be reconfigured for other purposes since it is rarely used) and his right eye is the power button. The iTux case opens up from the back, allowing easy access for screwdriver-wielding nerds into Tux's guts. The US$995.95 model contains an Alpha CPU and all the usual stuff found in a Linux-class machine. More expensive models, to be debuted next year, will feature dual or quad Alpha CPUs and a larger size.
Humorix Holiday Gift Idea #6 Hearing Un-aid US$129.95 at The Fuzzier Projection Co. It's a scene we can all identify with: you're at a boring company meeting, trying to read the latest Slashdot headlines on your PalmPilot, but you can't concentrate because the PHB is rambling in a loud, booming voice about e-infomediary-substrategic-paradigms and meta-content-aggregation-relationship-corridors. With the Hearing Un-aid(tm), you can put a stop to incessant buzzword-speak by your boss. Unlike a hearing aid, which amplifies sound, the Hearing Un-aid dampens noise, so you can easily tune out the board meeting and instead focus on something far more important, such as downloading Humorix stories. If you happen to miss something important (yeah, right) and your boss accuses you of not paying attention, you can simply point to your hearing "aid" and respond, "What was that? I couldn't hear you because of my temporary hearing loss."
Top Ten Differences If Thomas Jefferson Behaved Like Eric Raymond During the American Revolution 2. The preamble to the Constitution would say, "We the pragmatists of the Open States of America, in order to foster the production of higher quality tea and tobacco..." 5. The phrases "the right to bear arms shall not be infringed" and "Geeks With Guns" would be plastered throughout the O.S.A. Constitution. 9. Instead of Congress, the "Open States Institute" board of directors would make all of the national legislative decisions. 10. Raymond, New Hampshire would be the home of the O.S.A. capitol.
OPPRESSED GEEK: Everybody keeps blaming me for the Y2K problem, the Melissa Virus, Windows crashes... you name it. When somebody finds out you're a bona fide geek, they start bugging you about computer problems. I frequently hear things like, "Why can't you geeks make Windows work right?", "What kind of idiot writes a program that can't handle the year 2000?", "Geeks are evil, all they do is write viruses", and "The Internet is the spawn of Satan". I'm afraid to admit I have extensive computing experience. When somebody asks what kind of job I have, I always lie. From my experience, admitting that you're a geek is an invitation to disaster. LARRY WALL: I know, I know. I sometimes say that I'm the founder of a pearl harvesting company instead of admitting that I'm the founder of the Perl programming language. ERIC S. RAYMOND: This is tragic. We can't live in a world like this. We need your donations to fight social oppression and ignorance against geekdom... -- Excerpt from the Geek Grok '99 telethon
Excerpts From The First Annual Nerd Bowl (#3) BRYANT DUMBELL: It's time for Round One: The Flying CompactDiscus. JOHN SPLADDEN: That's right, Bryant. Each team member will hurl one CD-ROM and receive points for both the distance thrown and whether the disc is still readable afterwards. DUMBELL: First up is Mad Hatter's Alan Cox. He struts, he winds up, and there it goes! Look at the trajectory on that baby... Now it's time for the Portalback's Anonymous Coward #521 to throw. This guy was voted as the best CompactDiscus thrower in the league by popular vote on Slashdot. SPLADDEN: Indeed, AnonCow has got some powerful muscles. No brain though. Did you know that he dropped out of college to join the Andover.Net team? DUMBELL: Yeah, what a tough decision to make. It's now becoming quite common for nerd superstars to ditch college and move to Silicon Valley and receive Big League stock options. Still, AnonCow was out for several games this season due to a Carpal Tunnel flareup. I hope he isn't squandering his millions... he might be forced to retire early.
Right now hundreds of Anonymous Cowards are cheering the fact that only Windows boobs are victims of ILOVEYOU and other email viruses. I realize Outlook is so insecure that using it is like posting a sign outside your door saying, "DOOR UNLOCKED -- ROB ME!". However, Linux isn't immune. If I had a dollar for every pine buffer overflow uncovered, I could buy a truckload of fresh herring. I expect the next mass email virus to spread will be cross-platform. If the recipient is a Windows/Outlook luser, they'll get hit. If the recipient is a Linux/pine user, they'll find themselves staring at a self-executing bash script that's has just allocated 1 petabyte of memory and crashed the system (or worse). Either that or the next mass email virus will only damage Linux systems. I can just see Bill Gates assigning some junior programmer that very task. Be afraid. Be very afraid. -- A speech given at the First Annual Connecticut Conspiracy] Convention (ConConCon) by an anonymous creature said to be "wearing what appeared to be a tuxedo".
Brief History Of Linux (#12) A note from Bill Gates' second grade teacher: Billy has been having some trouble behaving in class lately... Last Monday he horded all of the crayons and refused to share, saying that he needed all 160 colors to maximize his 'innovation'. He then proceeded to sell little pieces of paper ("End-User License Agreement for Crayons" he called them) granting his classmates the 'non-transferable right' to use the crayons on a limited time basis in exchange for their lunch money... When I tried to stop Billy, he kept harping about his right to innovate and how my interference violated basic notions of free-market capitalism. "Holding a monopoly is not illegal," he rebutted. I chastised him for talking back, and then I took away the box of crayons so others could share them... angrily, he then pointed to a drawing of his hanging on the wall and yelled, "That's my picture! You don't have the right to present my copyrighted material in a public exhibition without my permission! You're pirating my intellectual property. Pirate! Pirate! Pirate!" I developed a headache that day that even the maximum dosage of Aspirin wasn't able to handle. And then on Tuesday, he conned several students out of their milk money by convincing them to play three-card Monty...
Clippit Charged With Attempted Murder Microsoft's Dancing Paper Clip turned violent last week and nearly killed a university student testing a new Windows-based human-computer interface. The victim is expected to make a full recovery, although psychiatrists warn that the incident may scar him emotionally for life. "You can bet this kid won't be using Windows or Office ever again," said one shrink. The victim had been alpha-testing CHUG (Computer-Human Unencumbered Groupware), a new interface in which the user controls the computer with force-feedback gloves and voice activation. "I was trying to write a term paper in Word," he said from his hospital bed. "But then that damned Dancing Paper Clip came up and started annoying me. I gave it the middle finger. It reacted by deleting my document, at which point I screamed at it and threatened to pull the power cord. I didn't get a chance; the force-feedback gloves started choking me." "We told Clippit it had the right to remain silent, and so on," said a campus police officer. "The paperclip responded, 'Hi, I'm Clippit, the Office Assistant. Would you like to create a letter?' I said, 'Look here, Mr. Paperclip. You're being charged with attempted murder.' At that point the computer bluescreened."
Microsoft Website Crashes, World Does Not Come To An End REDMOND, WA -- In a crushing blow to Bill Gates' ego, world civilization did not collapse when the Microsoft website was offline for an extended period last week. During the anti-trust trial, Microsoft's lawyers repeatedly warned that if the company was broken up or dealt any other penalty (no matter how trivial), it would not only cost the tech industry billions of dollars, but it could decimate the entire world economy and even bring about the start of World War III. At the risk of sounding like a biased, slanted, overzealous journalist, let me just say: Yeah, right! The stunning realization that the world does not revolve around Redmond (yet) has plunged many Microsoft executives into shock. "But microsoft.com is the single most important website in the world! And Microsoft is the single most important company in the Universe! This can't be happening! Why isn't civilization teetering on the edge right now?" said one depressed President Of Executive Vice.
"...Smugglers were arrested at the Canadian border by Microsoft-FBI for attempting to import copies of banned 'Linux' software. Such contraband is prohibited by the 35th Amendment because it infringes on the inalienable right of Microsoft to make money. Said one MS-FBI prosecutor, 'This is just the latest salvo against Capitalism by the corporate terrorists in Finland. We must put an end to these atrocities which irreperably harm Microsoft employees, stockholders, customers, and ultimately the entire world...'" -- Excerpt from a radio broadcast during the first day of the Month of Disney (formerly December), 2028
A "practical joker" deserves applause for his wit according to its quality. Bastinado is about right. For exceptional wit one might grant keelhauling. But staking him out on an anthill should be reserved for the very wittiest. -- Lazarus Long
All men have the right to wait in line.
America's best buy for a quarter is a telephone call to the right person.
"And, you know, I mustn't preach to you, but surely it wouldn't be right for you to take away people's pleasure of studying your attire, by just going and making yourself like everybody else. You feel that, don't you?" said he, earnestly. -- William Morris, "Notes from Nowhere"
Anyone can become angry -- that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose and in the right way -- that is not easy. -- Aristotle
Are your glasses mended with a strip of masking tape right over your nose? Do you put pennies in the slots in your penny loafers? Does your bow-tie flash "hey you kid" in red neon at parties? Do you think pizza before noon is unhealthy? Do you use the "greasy kid's stuff" to stick down your cowlick? Do you wear a "nerd-pack" in your shirt pocket to keep the dozen or so pencils from marking the cloth? Do you think Mary Jane is somebody's name? Is illegal fishing something only a daring criminal would do? Is Batman your hero? Superman? Green Lantern? The Shadow? Do you think girls who kiss on the first date are loose?
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 think beavers work too hard. 2. I use shoe polish to excess. 3. God is love. 4. I like mannish children. 5. I have always been diturbed by the sight of Lincoln's ears. 6. I always let people get ahead of me at swimming pools. 7. Most of the time I go to sleep without saying goodbye. 8. I am not afraid of picking up door knobs. 9. I believe I smell as good as most people. 10. Frantic screams make me nervous. 11. It's hard for me to say the right thing when I find myself in a room full of mice. 12. I would never tell my nickname in a crisis. 13. A wide necktie is a sign of disease. 14. As a child I was deprived of licorice. 15. I would never shake hands with a gardener. 16. My eyes are always cold. 17. Cousins are not to be trusted. 18. When I look down from a high spot, I want to spit. 19. I am never startled by a fish. 20. I have never gone to pieces over the weekend.
Creativity in living is not without its attendant difficulties, for peculiarity breeds contempt. And the unfortunate thing about being ahead of your time when people finally realize you were right, they'll say it was obvious all along. -- Alan Ashley-Pitt
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. -- Will Rogers
Everyone was born right-handed. Only the greatest overcome it.
I disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to tell such LIES!
I have no right, by anything I do or say, to demean a human being in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him; it is what he thinks of himself. To undermine a man's self-respect is a sin. -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradictions to the sentiments of others, and all positive assertion of my own. I even forbade myself the use of every word or expression in the language that imported a fixed opinion, such as "certainly", "undoubtedly", etc. I adopted instead of them "I conceive", "I apprehend", or "I imagine" a thing to be so or so; or "so it appears to me at present". When another asserted something that I thought an error, I denied myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing him immediately some absurdity in his proposition. In answering I began by observing that in certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present case there appeared or semed to me some difference, etc. I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I engaged in went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I proposed my opinions procured them a readier reception and less contradiction. I had less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily prevailed with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I happened to be in the right. -- Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
I will follow the good side right to the fire, but not into it if I can help it. -- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
I'll defend to the death your right to say that, but I never said I'd listen to it! -- Tom Galloway with apologies to Voltaire
I'll give you my opinion of the human race in a nutshell ... their heart's in the right place, but their head is a thoroughly inefficient organ. -- W. Somerset Maugham, "The Summing Up"
If you can't say anything good about someone, sit right here by me. -- Alice Roosevelt Longworth
It is all right to hold a conversation, but you should let go of it now and then. -- Richard Armour
It takes less time to do a thing right than it does to explain why you did it wrong. -- H.W. Longfellow
It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than forgiveness for being right.
Largest Number of Driving Test Failures By April 1970 Mrs. Miriam Hargrave had failed her test thirty-nine times. In the eight preceding years she had received two hundred and twelve driving lessons at a cost of L300. She set the new record while driving triumphantly through a set of red traffic lights in Wakefield, Yorkshire. Disappointingly, she passed at the fortieth attempt (3 August 1970) but eight years later she showed some of her old magic when she was reported as saying that she still didn't like doing right-hand turns. -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
Maybe Jesus was right when he said that the meek shall inherit the earth -- but they inherit very small plots, about six feet by three. -- Lazarus Long
Mix a little foolishness with your serious plans; it's lovely to be silly at the right moment. -- Horace
My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say. And then say it with the utmost levity. -- G.B. Shaw
My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
O Lord, grant that we may always be right, for Thou knowest we will never change our minds.
One is often kept in the right road by a rut. -- Gustave Droz
Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial "we". -- Mark Twain
The Least Successful Defrosting Device The all-time record here is held by Mr. Peter Rowlands of Lancaster whose lips became frozen to his lock in 1979 while blowing warm air on it. "I got down on my knees to breathe into the lock. Somehow my lips got stuck fast." While he was in the posture, an old lady passed an inquired if he was all right. "Alra? Igmmlptk", he replied at which point she ran away. "I tried to tell her what had happened, but it came out sort of... muffled," explained Mr. Rowlands, a pottery designer. He was trapped for twenty minutes ("I felt a bit foolish") until constant hot breathing brought freedom. He was subsequently nicknamed "Hot Lips". -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
The more we disagree, the more chance there is that at least one of us is right.
The right half of the brain controls the left half of the body. This means that only left handed people are in their right mind.
To any truly impartial person, it would be obvious that I am always right.
What do I consider a reasonable person to be? I'd say a reasonable person is one who accepts that we are all human and therefore fallible, and takes that into account when dealing with others. Implicit in this definition is the belief that it is the right and the responsibility of each person to live his or her own life as he or she sees fit, to respect this right in others, and to demand the assumption of this responsibility by others.
You never learn anything by doing it right.
"You say there are two types of people?" "Yes, those who separate people into two groups and those that don't." "Wrong. There are three groups: Those who separate people into three groups. Those who don't separate people into groups. Those who can't decide." "Wait a minute, what about people who separate people into two groups?" "Oh. Okay, then there are four groups." "Aren't you then separating people into four groups?" "Yeah." "So then there's a fifth group, right?" "You know, the problem is these idiots who can't make up their minds."
"I want you guys to look at your computer screen, imagining the worst monster you can (the cacodeamon from Quake will do, just make him hairier and bigger and more MEAN), and think of me. Think of me like I am when I see a patch which isn't a pure bug-fix. If you're whimpering just _thinking_ about sending me a new feature, you're in the right mindframe. Keep that mindframe." - Linus Torvalds
"The lymbic system in my brain is so electrically active, it qualifies as a third brain. Normal humans have two brains, left and right. - Jeff Merkey
"And I'm right. I'm always right, but in this case I'm just a bit more right than I usually am." - Linus Torvalds
I retain the right to change my mind, as always. Le Linus e mobile. - Linus Torvalds
Basically, ioctl's will _never_ be done right, because of the way people think about them. They are a back door. They are by design typeless and without rules. They are, in fact, the Microsoft of UNIX. - Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel
Drivers are a more complex issue. I'm not opposed to binary only drivers, providing its easy to tell they are there and dump all bug reports about them. Freedom generally includes the right to give up freedom. I'll tell people its a bad idea but once they get caught, well it was their right to do so... - Alan Cox on linux-kernel
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
Re-sending is always the right thing to do. Sometimes it takes a few times, and you can add a small exasperated message at the top by the third time ("Don't you love me any more?"). - Linus Torvalds about sending patches to him
> Sorry, at this point we are not allowed to publish the source code of the > lcs and qeth drivers (due to the use of confidential hardware interface > specifications). We make those modules available only in binary form > on our developerWorks web site. > Gosh. I didn't know you guys were so advanced that you didn't use an electronic hardware interface! Your 'hardware interface specifications' use magnetohydrodynamics, and they are top-secret, right? - Richard B. Johnson on linux-kernel
The kernel is not there to cover up for usermode programmers inability to get things right. It has enough to do covering up for the hardware folk - Alan Cox on linux-kernel
> Yes please! Finally we could introduce proper support for 64-bit > inode numbers too! Right. As soon as userland is audited for places where it uses int for storing inode numbers - just a couple of months after MS fixes all security holes in their software. By then we'll need 128bit time_t, though... - Al Viro on linux-kernel
Oh, come on. Every government is right on some issues. Proof: For every government X there is at least one government Y such that X would claim that Y is a bunch of corrupt assholes. Since every government is a bunch of corrupt assholes, every government is right at least in one of its claims. - Al Viro discussing politics on linux-kernel
Davide Libenzi wrote: > It's not easy to get this right anyway. Balancing the pull and push mechanisms in the scheduler while trying to predict the future? "Not easy" is an excellent description. - Rusty Russell on linux-kernel
Good weapons are instruments of fear; all creatures hate them. Therefore followers of Tao never use them. The wise man prefers the left. The man of war prefers the right. Weapons are instruments of fear; they are not a wise man's tools. He uses them only when he has no choice. Peace and quiet are dear to his heart, And victory no cause for rejoicing. If you rejoice in victory, then you delight in killing; If you delight in killing, you cannot fulfill yourself. On happy occasions precedence is given to the left, On sad occasions to the right. In the army the general stands on the left, The commander-in-chief on the right. This means that war is conducted like a funeral. When many people are being killed, They should be mourned in heartfelt sorrow. That is why a victory must be observed like a funeral.
The great Tao flows everywhere, both to the left and to the right. The ten thousand things depend upon it; it holds nothing back. It fulfills its purpose silently and makes no claim. It nourishes the ten thousand things, And yet is not their lord. It has no aim; it is very small. The ten thousand things return to it, Yet it is not their lord. It is very great. It does not show greatness, And is therefore truly great.
A little kid went up to Santa and asked him, "Santa, you know when I'm bad right?" And Santa says, "Yes, I do." The little kid then asks, "And you know when I'm sleeping?" To which Santa replies, "Every minute." So the little kid then says, "Well, if you know when I'm bad and when I'm good, then how come you don't know what I want for Christmas?"
Article the Third: Where a crime of the kidneys has been committed, the accused should enjoy the right to a speedy diaper change. Public announcements and guided tours of the aforementioned are not necessary. Article the Fourth: The decision to eat strained lamb or not should be with the "feedee" and not the "feeder". Blowing the strained lamb into the feeder's face should be accepted as an opinion, not as a declaration of war. Article the Fifth: Babies should enjoy the freedom to vocalize, whether it be in church, a public meeting place, during a movie, or after hours when the lights are out. They have not yet learned that joy and laughter have to last a lifetime and must be conserved. -- Erma Bombeck, "A Baby's Bill of Rights"
-- Gifts for Children -- This is easy. You never have to figure out what to get for children, because they will tell you exactly what they want. They spend months and months researching these kinds of things by watching Saturday- morning cartoon-show advertisements. Make sure you get your children exactly what they ask for, even if you disapprove of their choices. If your child thinks he wants Murderous Bob, the Doll with the Face You Can Rip Right Off, you'd better get it. You may be worried that it might help to encourage your child's antisocial tendencies, but believe me, you have not seen antisocial tendencies until you've seen a child who is convinced that he or she did not get the right gift. -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
My ritual differs slightly. What I do, first thing [in the morning], is I hop into the shower stall. Then I hop right back out, because when I hopped in I landed barefoot right on top of See Threepio, a little plastic robot character from "Star Wars" whom my son, Robert, likes to pull the legs off of while he showers. Then I hop right back into the stall because our dog, Earnest, who has been alone in the basement all night building up powerful dog emotions, has come bounding and quivering into the bathroom and wants to greet me with 60 or 70 thousand playful nips, any one of which -- bear in mind that I am naked and, without my contact lenses, essentially blind -- could result in the kind of injury where you have to learn a whole new part if you want to sing the "Messiah," if you get my drift. Then I hop right back out, because Robert, with that uncanny sixth sense some children have -- you cannot teach it; they either have it or they don't -- has chosen exactly that moment to flush one of the toilets. Perhaps several of them. -- Dave Barry
Mere nonexistence is a feeble excuse for declaring a thing unseeable. You can see dragons. You just have to look in the right direction. -- John Hasler
"You have the right not to be an asshole. If you give up that right everything you say and do in here will be held against you. If you cannot afford to stop being an asshole then someone will be appointed to kick yours outta here." -- Your rights as an irc addict
<xtifr> Athena Desktop Environment! In your hearts, you know it's the right choice! :) * Knghtbrd THWAPS xtifr
<liw> damn, the autonomous mouse movement starts usually after I use a mouse button <wichert> don't use a mouse button then :) <liw> yeah, right :)
<Knghtbrd> Granted, RMS is a fanatic, I don't deny this. I'll even say he's a royal pain in the arse most of the time. But he's still more often right than not, and he deserves some level of credit and respect for his work. We would NOT be here today without him.
<Knghtbrd> If we're both right (I'm guessing we are) I'm Not Very Happy. * Minupla hands you the understatement of the year award.
<knghtbrd> Solver_: add users who should be messing with sound to group audio.. Make sure the devices are all group audio (ls -l /dev/dsp will give you the fastest indication if it's probably set right) and build a kernel with sound support for your card <knghtbrd> OR optionally install alsa source and build modules for that with make-kpkg <knghtbrd> OR (not recommended) get and install evil OSS/Linux evil non-free evil binary only evil drivers---but those are evil. And did I mention that it's not recommended?
<Espy_on_crack> "I installed 'Linux 6.1', doesn't that make me a unix guru?" <BenC> Espy_on_crack: no, you have to install it twice before you are a guru...once to prove you can do it, the second to fix the things your broke the first time <Espy_on_crack> oh right, how silly of me
<Mercury> Knghtbrd: Using -3dfx or -svga? <Knghtbrd> Mercury will do something sane with it <Knghtbrd> Mercury: both---svga sig11's, -3dfx sig4's <Knghtbrd> Mercury: that's not good right? ;>
<Kysh_> Joey: I'm on it right now.. 3 1.3Gb disks, 128M ram, dual 50Mhz (Up to quad 250Mhz) <Kysh_> The catch is that it pulls 110v at about 12A 8> <Culus> 12A! <Culus> Okay, my stove is 3000W, this sun is 1320W <Culus> DO YOU SEE A PROBLEM HERE <calc> a 1320W sun, that is like a hair dryer :)
<Knghtbrd> QF is going to get zipfile support today <Coderjoe> heh... infozip? <Knghtbrd> If I'm lucky yes <Deek> knghtbrd: You're kidding, right? ;) * Deek takes away Knghtbrd's crack pipe. ;)
<Deek> Exactly how much of a PITA is this in C? <Knghtbrd> It's written in C++. <Deek> Hence my question. <Knghtbrd> I could do something like it in C. Anyone who saw the results would think I was either a genius or out of my fucking mind. They'd be right on either count.
<netgod> you know <netgod> its really sad when the internic itself cant configure DNS servers right <netgod> it just doesnt get any more pathetic than that
<elmo> unclean: err, the admin team do not control the archive, that's the ftp cabal <elmo> get your cabals right, damn it :-P
<\|Rain\|> Knghtbrd: let me give you access to the zone files <Knghtbrd> oh gods - you do realize I have never played with bind right? <\|Rain\|> uhoh :)
A blind rabbit was hopping through the woods, tripping over logs and crashing into trees. At the same time, a blind snake was slithering through the same forest, with identical results. They chanced to collide head-on in a clearing. "Please excuse me, sir, I'm blind and I bumped into you accidentally," apologized the rabbit. "That's quite all right," replied the snake, "I have the same problem!" "All my life I've been wondering what I am," said the rabbit, "Do you think you could help me find out?" "I'll try," said the snake. He gently coiled himself around the rabbit. "Well, you're covered with soft fur, you have a little fluffy tail and long ears. You're... hmmm... you're probably a bunny rabbit!" "Great!" said the rabbit. "Thanks, I really owe you one!" "Well," replied the snake, "I don't know what I am, either. Do you suppose you could try and tell me?" The rabbit ran his paws all over the snake. "Well, you're low, cold and slimey..." And, as he ran one paw underneath the snake, "and you have no balls. You must be an attorney!"
A New York City judge ruled that if two women behind you at the movies insist on discussing the probable outcome of the film, you have the right to turn around and blow a Bronx cheer at them.
After his Ignoble Disgrace, Satan was being expelled from Heaven. As he passed through the Gates, he paused a moment in thought, and turned to God and said, "A new creature called Man, I hear, is soon to be created." "This is true," He replied. "He will need laws," said the Demon slyly. "What! You, his appointed Enemy for all Time! You ask for the right to make his laws?" "Oh, no!" Satan replied, "I ask only that he be allowed to make his own." It was so granted. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Attorney General Edwin Meese III explained why the Supreme Court's Miranda decision (holding that subjects have a right to remain silent and have a lawyer present during questioning) is unnecessary: "You don't have many suspects who are innocent of a crime. That's contradictory. If a person is innocent of a crime, then he is not a suspect." -- U.S. News and World Report, 10/14/85
Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #32: Q: Do you know how far pregnant you are right now? A: I will be three months November 8th. Q: Apparently then, the date of conception was August 8th? A: Yes. Q: What were you and your husband doing at that time?
Humor in the Court: Q: (Showing man picture.) That's you? A: Yes, sir. Q: And you were present when the picture was taken, right?
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."
Pittsburgh driver's test (2) A traffic light at an intersection changes from yellow to red, you should (a) stop immediately. (b) proceed slowly through the intersection. (c) blow the horn. (d) floor it. The correct answer is (d). If you said (c), you were almost right, so give yourself a half point.
Pittsburgh Driver's Test (7) The car directly in front of you has a flashing right tail light but a steady left tail light. This means (a) one of the tail lights is broken; you should blow your horn to call the problem to the driver's attention. (b) the driver is signaling a right turn. (c) the driver is signaling a left turn. (d) the driver is from out of town. The correct answer is (d). Tail lights are used in some foreign countries to signal turns.
A master was asked the question, "What is the Way?" by a curious monk. "It is right before your eyes," said the master. "Why do I not see it for myself?" "Because you are thinking of yourself." "What about you: do you see it?" "So long as you see double, saying `I don't', and `you do', and so on, your eyes are clouded," said the master. "When there is neither `I' nor `You', can one see it?" "When there is neither `I' nor `You', who is the one that wants to see it?"
A priest asked: What is Fate, Master? And the Master answered: It is that which gives a beast of burden its reason for existence. It is that which men in former times had to bear upon their backs. It is that which has caused nations to build byways from City to City upon which carts and coaches pass, and alongside which inns have come to be built to stave off Hunger, Thirst and Weariness. And that is Fate? said the priest. Fate... I thought you said Freight, responded the Master. That's all right, said the priest. I wanted to know what Freight was too. -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
Ninety percent of the time things turn out worse than you thought they would. The other ten percent of the time you had no right to expect that much. -- Augustine
Paradise is exactly like where you are right now ... only much, much better. -- Laurie Anderson
You can only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.
> The day people think linux would be better served by somebody else (FSF > being the natural alternative), I'll "abdicate". I don't think that > it's something people have to worry about right now - I don't see it > happening in the near future. I enjoy doing linux, even though it does > mean some work, and I haven't gotten any complaints (some almost timid > reminders about a patch I have forgotten or ignored, but nothing > negative so far). > > Don't take the above to mean that I'll stop the day somebody complains: > I'm thick-skinned (Lasu, who is reading this over my shoulder commented > that "thick-HEADED is closer to the truth") enough to take some abuse. > If I weren't, I'd have stopped developing linux the day ast ridiculed me > on c.o.minix. What I mean is just that while linux has been my baby so > far, I don't want to stand in the way if people want to make something > better of it (). > > Linus > > () Hey, maybe I could apply for a saint-hood from the Pope. Does > somebody know what his email-address is? I'm so nice it makes you puke. -- Taken from Linus's reply to someone worried about the future of Linux
And the next time you consider complaining that running Lucid Emacs 19.05 via NFS from a remote Linux machine in Paraguay doesn't seem to get the background colors right, you'll know who to thank. -- Matt Welsh
Sigh. I like to think it's just the Linux people who want to be on the "leading edge" so bad they walk right off the precipice. -- Craig E. Groeschel
>Ever heard of .cshrc? That's a city in Bosnia. Right? -- Discussion in comp.os.linux.misc on the intuitiveness of commands
+#if defined(__alpha__) && defined(CONFIG_PCI) + /* + * The meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Plus + * this makes the year come out right. + */ + year -= 42; +#endif -- From the patch for 1.3.2: (kernel/time.c), submitted by Marcus Meissner
... of course, this probably only happens for tcsh which uses wait4(), which is why I never saw it. Serves people who use that abomination right 8^) -- Linus Torvalds, about a patch that fixes getrusage for 1.3.26
> If you don't need X then little VT-100 terminals are available for real > cheap. Should be able to find decent ones used for around $40 each. > For that price, they're a must for the kitchen, den, bathrooms, etc.. :) You're right. Can you explain this to my wife? -- Seen on c.o.l.development.system, on the subject of extra terminals
> Is there any hope for me? Am I just thick? Does anyone remember the > Rubiks Cube, it was easier! I found that the Rubiks cube and Linux are alike. Looks real confusing until you read the right book. :-) -- seen on c.o.l.misc, about the "Linux Learning Curve"
If loving linux is wrong, I dont wanna be right. -- Topic for #LinuxGER
Turn right here. No! NO! The OTHER right!
<grin> seen jhm <dpkg> jhm is Sarek, and jhm is on the channel right now! * JHM wonders why dpkg remembers that particular nick. <grin> dpkg: Sarek? ermm, sure, and I am Khan -- Seen on #Debian
I expect that noone has objections. However, if I'd only add these entries to the list because `I think it's the right thing to do', I'd get a lot of flames afterwards :) -- Christian Schwarz
Despite the best efforts of a quantum bigfoot drive (yes I know everyone told me they suck, now I know they were right) 2.1.109ac1 is now available -- Alan Cox announcing Linux 2.1.109ac1
A feed salesman is on his way to a farm. As he's driving along at forty m.p.h., he looks out his car window and sees a three-legged chicken running alongside him, keeping pace with his car. He is amazed that a chicken is running at forty m.p.h. So he speeds up to forty-five, fifty, then sixty m.p.h. The chicken keeps right up with him the whole way, then suddenly takes off and disappears into the distance. The man pulls into the farmyard and says to the farmer, "You know, the strangest thing just happened to me; I was driving along at at least sixty miles an hour and a chicken passed me like I was standing still!" "Yeah," the farmer replies, "that chicken was ours. You see, there's me, and there's Ma, and there's our son Billy. Whenever we had chicken for dinner, we would all want a drumstick, so we'd have to kill two chickens. So we decided to try and breed a three-legged chicken so each of us could have a drumstick." "How do they taste?" said the farmer. "Don't know," replied the farmer. "We haven't been able to catch one yet."
But the greatest Electrical Pioneer of them all was Thomas Edison, who was a brilliant inventor despite the fact that he had little formal education and lived in New Jersey. Edison's first major invention in 1877, was the phonograph, which could soon be found in thousands of American homes, where it basically sat until 1923, when the record was invented. But Edison's greatest achievement came in 1879, when he invented the electric company. Edison's design was a brilliant adaptation of the simple electrical circuit: the electric company sends electricity through a wire to a customer, then immediately gets the electricity back through another wire, then (this is the brilliant part) sends it right back to the customer again. This means that an electric company can sell a customer the same batch of electricity thousands of times a day and never get caught, since very few customers take the time to examine their electricity closely. In fact the last year any new electricity was generated in the United States was 1937; the electric companies have been merely re-selling it ever since, which is why they have so much free time to apply for rate increases. -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
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."
Feel disillusioned? I've got some great new illusions, right here!
If you do something right once, someone will ask you to do it again.
If you don't have time to do it right, where are you going to find the time to do it over?
Now, you might ask, "How do I get one of those complete home tool sets for under $4?" An excellent question. Go to one of those really cheap discount stores where they sell plastic furniture in colors visible from the planet Neptune and where they have a food section specializing in cardboard cartons full of Raisinets and malted milk balls manufactured during the Nixon administration. In either the hardware or housewares department, you'll find an item imported from an obscure Oriental country and described as "Nine Tools in One", consisting of a little handle with interchangeable ends representing inscrutable Oriental notions of tools that Americans might use around the home. Buy it. This is the kind of tool set professionals use. Not only is it inexpensive, but it also has a great safety feature not found in the so-called quality tools sets: The handle will actually break right off if you accidentally hit yourself or anything else, or expose it to direct sunlight. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
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"
Our policy is, when in doubt, do the right thing. -- Roy L. Ash, ex-president, Litton Industries
Please try to limit the amount of "this room doesn't have any bazingas" until you are told that those rooms are "punched out." Once punched out, we have a right to complain about atrocities, missing bazingas, and such. -- N. Meyrowitz
The annual meeting of the "You Have To Listen To Experience" Club is now in session. Our Achievement Awards this year are in the fields of publishing, advertising and industry. For best consistent contribution in the field of publishing our award goes to editor, R.L.K., [...] for his unrivalled alle- giance without variation to the statement: "Personally I'd love to do it, we'd ALL love to do it. But we're not going to do it. It's not the kind of book our house knows how to handle." Our superior performance award in the field of advertising goes to media executive, E.L.M., [...] for the continu- ally creative use of the old favorite: "I think what you've got here could be very exciting. Why not give it one more try based on the approach I've out- lined and see if you can come up with something fresh." Our final award for courageous holding action in the field of industry goes to supervisor, R.S., [...] for her unyielding grip on "I don't care if they fire me, I've been arguing for a new approach for YEARS but are we SURE that this is the right time--" I would like to conclude this meeting with a verse written specially for our prospectus by our founding president fifty years ago -- and now, as then, fully expressive of the emotion most close to all our hearts -- Treat freshness as a youthful quirk, And dare not stray to ideas new, For if t'were tried they might e'en work And for a living what woulds't we do?
The King and his advisor are overlooking the battle field: King: "How goes the battle plan?" Advisor: "See those little black specks running to the right?" K: "Yes." A: "Those are their guys. And all those little red specks running to the left are our guys. Then when they collide we wait till the dust clears." K: "And?" A: "If there are more red specks left than black specks, we win." K: "But what about the ^#!!$% battle plan?" A: "So far, it seems to be going according to specks."
The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell. -- Confucius
The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was.
There is never time to do it right, but always time to do it over.
There is very little future in being right when your boss is wrong.
This is an especially good time for you vacationers who plan to fly, because the Reagan administration, as part of the same policy under which it recently sold Yellowstone National Park to Wayne Newton, has "deregulated" the airline industry. What this means for you, the consumer, is that the airlines are no longer required to follow any rules whatsoever. They can show snuff movies. They can charge for oxygen. They can hire pilots right out of Vending Machine Refill Person School. They can conserve fuel by ejecting husky passengers over water. They can ram competing planes in mid-air. These innovations have resulted in tremendous cost savings which have been passed along to you, the consumer, in the form of flights with amazingly low fares, such as $29. Of course, certain restrictions do apply, the main one being that all these flights take you to Newark, and you must pay thousands of dollars if you want to fly back out. -- Dave Barry, "Iowa -- Land of Secure Vacations"
XXXVI: The thickness of the proposal required to win a multimillion dollar contract is about one millimeter per million dollars. If all the proposals conforming to this standard were piled on top of each other at the bottom of the Grand Canyon it would probably be a good idea. XXXVII: Ninety percent of the time things will turn out worse than you expect. The other 10 percent of the time you had no right to expect so much. XXXVIII: The early bird gets the worm. The early worm ... gets eaten. XXXIX: Never promise to complete any project within six months of the end of the year -- in either direction. XL: Most projects start out slowly -- and then sort of taper off. -- Norman Augustine
You can fool all the people all of the time if the advertising is right and the budget is big enough. -- Joseph E. Levine
Of course, I reserve the right to make wholly stupid changes to Perl if I think they improve the language. :-) -- Larry Wall in <199704251604.JAA27300@wall.org>
Wow, I'm being shot at from both sides. That means I must be right. :-) -- Larry Wall in <199710211959.MAA18990@wall.org>
"I'll tell you what I know, then," he decided. "The pin I'm wearing means I'm a member of the IA. That's Inamorati Anonymous. An inamorato is somebody in love. That's the worst addiction of all." "Somebody is about to fall in love," Oedipa said, "you go sit with them, or something?" "Right. The whole idea is to get where you don't need it. I was lucky. I kicked it young. But there are sixty-year-old men, believe it or not, and women even older, who might wake up in the night screaming." "You hold meetings, then, like the AA?" "No, of course not. You get a phone number, an answering service you can call. Nobody knows anybody else's name; just the number in case it gets so bad you can't handle it alone. We're isolates, Arnold. Meetings would destroy the whole point of it." -- Thomas Pynchon, "The Crying of Lot 49"
All right, you degenerates! I want this place evacuated in 20 seconds!
Barbie says, Take quaaludes in gin and go to a disco right away! But Ken says, WOO-WOO!! No credit at "Mr. Liquor"!!
CONGRATULATIONS! Now should I make thinly veiled comments about DIGNITY, self-esteem and finding TRUE FUN in your RIGHT VENTRICLE??
He probably just wants to take over my CELLS and then EXPLODE inside me like a BARREL of runny CHOPPED LIVER! Or maybe he'd like to PSYCHOLIGICALLY TERRORISE ME until I have no objection to a RIGHT-WING MILITARY TAKEOVER of my apartment!! I guess I should call AL PACINO!
How many retured bricklayers from FLORIDA are out purchasing PENCIL SHARPENERS right NOW??
I hope I bought the right relish ... zzzzzzzzz ...
I think I am an overnight sensation right now!!
... If I had heart failure right now, I couldn't be a more fortunate man!!
It is a well known fact that warriors and wizards do not get along, because one side considers the other side to be a collection of bloodthirsty idiots who can't walk and think at the same time, while the other side is naturally suspicious of a body of men who mumble a lot and wear long dresses. Oh, say the wizards, if we're going to be like that, then, what about all those studded collars and oiled muscles down at the Young Men's Pagan Association? To which the heroes reply, that's a pretty good allegation from a bunch of wimpsoes who won't go near a woman on account, can you believe it, of their mystical power being sort of drained out. Right, say the wizards, that just about does it, you and your leather posing pouches. Oh yeah, say the the heroes, why don't you ... -- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic"
A woman went into a hospital one day to give birth. Afterwards, the doctor came to her and said, "I have some... odd news for you." "Is my baby all right?" the woman anxiously asked. "Yes, he is," the doctor replied, "but we don't know how. Your son (we assume) was born with no body. He only has a head." Well, the doctor was correct. The Head was alive and well, though no one knew how. The Head turned out to be fairly normal, ignoring his lack of a body, and lived for some time as typical a life as could be expected under the circumstances. One day, about twenty years after the fateful birth, the woman got a phone call from another doctor. The doctor said, "I have recently perfected an operation. Your son can live a normal life now: we can graft a body onto his head!" The woman, practically weeping with joy, thanked the doctor and hung up. She ran up the stairs saying, "Johnny, Johnny, I have a wonderful surprise for you!" "Oh no," cried The Head, "not another HAT!"
Human cardiac catheterization was introduced by Werner Forssman in 1929. Ignoring his department chief, and tying his assistant to an operating table to prevent her interference, he placed a ureteral catheter into a vein in his arm, advanced it to the right atrium [of his heart], and walked upstairs to the x-ray department where he took the confirmatory x-ray film. In 1956, Dr. Forssman was awarded the Nobel Prize.
"The molars, I'm sure, will be all right, the molars can take care of themselves," the old man said, no longer to me. "But what will become of the bicuspids?" -- The Old Man and his Bridge