Soft : Dictionary / Wörterbuch (BEOLINGUS, TU Chemnitz)

Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English)	by Linux fortune

Why am I so soft in the middle when the rest of my life is so hard? -- Paul Simon
A soft answer turneth away wrath; but grievous words stir up anger. -- Proverbs 15:1
A soft drink turneth away company.
"Lying lips are abomination to the Lord; but they that deal truly are his delight. A soft answer turneth away wrath; but grievous words stir up anger. He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him. Be not a witness against thy neighbor without cause; and deceive not with thy lips. Death and life are in the power of the tongue." -- Proverbs, some selections from the Jewish Scripture
Clovis' Consideration of an Atmospheric Anomaly: The perversity of nature is nowhere better demonstrated than by the fact that, when exposed to the same atmosphere, bread becomes hard while crackers become soft.
Gold, n.: A soft malleable metal relatively scarce in distribution. It is mined deep in the earth by poor men who then give it to rich men who immediately bury it back in the earth in great prisons, although gold hasn't done anything to them. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
Q: What's hard going in and soft and sticky coming out? A: Chewing gum.
"I have examined Bogota," he said, "and the case is clearer to me. I think very probably he might be cured." "That is what I have always hoped," said old Yacob. "His brain is affected," said the blind doctor. The elders murmured assent. "Now, what affects it?" "Ah!" said old Yacob. "This," said the doctor, answering his own question. "Those queer things that are called the eyes, and which exist to make an agreeable soft depression in the face, are diseased, in the case of Bogota, in such a way as to affect his brain. They are greatly distended, he has eyelashes, and his eyelids move, and cosequently his brain is in a state of constant irritation and distraction." "Yes?" said old Yacob. "Yes?" "And I think I may say with reasonable certainty that, in order to cure him completely, all that we need do is a simple and easy surgical operation -- namely, to remove those irritant bodies." "And then he will be sane?" "Then he will be perfectly sane, and a quite admirable citizen." "Thank heaven for science!" said old Yacob. -- H.G. Wells, "The Country of the Blind"
If you push the "extra ice" button on the soft drink vending machine, you won't get any ice. If you push the "no ice" button, you'll get ice, but no cup.
The perversity of nature is nowhere better demonstrated by the fact that, when exposed to the same atmosphere, bread becomes hard while crackers become soft.
But soft you, the fair Ophelia: Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws, But get thee to a nunnery -- go! -- Mark "The Bard" Twain
In the early morning queue, With a listing in my hand. With a worry in my heart, There on terminal number 9, Waitin' here in CERAS-land. Pascal run all set to go. I'm a long way from sleep, But I'm waitin' in the queue, How I miss a good meal so. With this code that ever grows. In the early mornin' queue, Now the lobby chairs are soft, With no place to go. But that can't make the queue move fast. Hey, there it goes my friend, I've moved up one at last. -- Ernest Adams, "Early Morning Queue", to "Early Morning Rain" by G. Lightfoot
Nature to all things fixed the limits fit, And wisely curbed proud man's pretending wit. As on the land while here the ocean gains, In other parts it leaves wide sandy plains; Thus in the soul while memory prevails, The solid power of understanding fails; Where beams of warm imagination play, The memory's soft figures melt away. -- Alexander Pope (on runtime bounds checking?)
"Oh, he [a big dog] hunts with papa," she said. "He says Don Carlos [the dog] is good for almost every kind of game. He went duck hunting one time and did real well at it. Then Papa bought some ducks, not wild ducks but, you know, farm ducks. And it got Don Carlos all mixed up. Since the ducks were always around the yard with nobody shooting at them he knew he wasn't supposed to kill them, but he had to do something. So one morning last spring, when the ground was still soft, he took all the ducks and buried them." "What do you mean, buried them?" "Oh, he didn't hurt them. He dug little holes all over the yard and picked up the ducks in his mouth and put them in the holes. Then he covered them up with mud except for their heads. He did thirteen ducks that way and was digging a hole for another one when Tony found him. We talked about it for a long time. Papa said Don Carlos was afraid the ducks might run away, and since he didn't know how to build a cage he put them in holes. He's a smart dog." -- R. Bradford, "Red Sky At Morning"
Open Source Beer Revolution Yesterday, Red Hat introduced an 'open source' beer called Red Brew. The recipes for making the beer are available for free over the Net, and microbrewery kits are available at low cost from Red Hat. Says a Red Hat spokesman, "With the proliferation of free (open source) software, it was only a matter of time before open source beer became reality. After all, the only thing hackers like more than free software is free beer!" Following the Red Hat annoucement, other companies are racing to launch their own beer 'distribution'. Caldera is developing an OpenBrew beer. Meanwhile, Patrick Volkerding is working on a SlackBeer distribution, and DebianBrew is expected soon. Traditional breweries and beer distributors are not thrilled about open source beer. "This is ludicrous! People want beer that comes from time-tested, secret recipes -- not beer from recipes invented overnight! Open source is a fad," a spokesman for Buddwizzer Beer, Inc. said. In addition, other beverage distributors are nervous. "First open source beer, and soon open source soft drinks! Before we know it, we'll have RedCoke and SlackPepsi! This open source plague must be stopped before it eats into our bottom line! Don't quote me on that last sentence," the CEO of Croak-a-Cola said.
Brief History Of Linux (#15) Too many hyphens: Traf-O-Data and Micro-soft Bill Gates and Paul Allen attended an exclusive private school in Seattle. In 1968, after raising $3,000 from a yard sale, they gained access to a timeshare computer and became addicted. After depleting their money learning BASIC and playing Solitaire, they convinced a company to give them free computer time in exchange for reporting bugs -- ironically, an early form of Open Source development! The two then founded a small company called Traf-O-Data that collected and analyzed traffic counts for municipalities using a crude device based on the Intel "Pretanium" 8008 CPU. They had some success at first, but ran into problems when they were unable to deliver their much hyped next-generation device called "TrafficX". An engineer is quoted as saying that "Traf-O-Data is the local leader in vaporware", the first documented usage of the term that has come to be synonymous with Bill Gates. Soon thereafter, the two developed their own BASIC interpreter, and sold it to MITS for their new Altair computer. April 4, 1975 is the fateful day that Micro-soft was founded in Albuquerque, NM as a language vendor.
Brief History Of Linux (#16) Closed source, opened wallets In 1976 Bill Gates wrote the famous letter to Altair hobbyists accusing them of "stealing software" and "preventing good software from being written". We must assume Bill's statement was true, because no good software was being written at Micro-soft. Bill Gates did not innovate the concept of charging megabucks for software, but he was the first to make megabucks from peddling commercial software.
Brief History Of Linux (#17) If only Gary had been sober When Micro-soft moved to Seattle in 1979, most of its revenue came from sales of BASIC, a horrible language so dependant on GOTOs that spaghetti looked more orderly than its code did. (BASIC has ruined more promising programmers than anything else, prompting its original inventor Dartmouth University to issue a public apology in 1986.) However, by 1981 BASIC hit the backburner to what is now considered the luckiest break in the history of computing: MS-DOS. (We use the term "break" because MS-DOS was and always will be broken.) IBM was developing a 16-bit "personal computer" and desperately needed an OS to drive it. Their first choice was Gary Kildall's CP/M, but IBM never struck a deal with him. We've discovered the true reason: Kildall was drunk at the time the IBM representatives went to talk with him. A sober man would not have insulted the reps, calling their employer an "Incredibly Bad Monopoly" and referring to their new IBM-PC as an "Idealistically Backwards Microcomputer for People without Clues". Needless to say, Gary "I Lost The Deal Of The Century" Kildall was not sober.
World Domination, One CPU Cycle At A Time Forget about searching for alien signals or prime numbers. The real distributed computing application is "Domination@World", a program to advocate Linux and Apache to every website in the world that uses Windows and IIS. The goal of the project is to probe every IP number to determine what kind of platform each Net-connected machine is running. "That's a tall order... we need lots of computers running our Domination@World clients to help probe every nook and cranny of the Net," explained Mr. Zell Litt, the project head. After the probing is complete, the second phase calls for the data to be cross-referenced with the InterNIC whois database. "This way we'll have the names, addresses, and phone numbers for every Windows-using system administrator on the planet," Zell gloated. "That's when the fun begins." The "fun" part involves LART (Linux Advocacy & Re-education Training), a plan for extreme advocacy. As part of LART, each Linux User Group will receive a list of the Windows-using weenies in their region. The LUG will then be able to employ various advocacy techniques, ranging from a soft-sell approach (sending the target a free Linux CD in the mail) all the way to "LARTcon 5" (cracking into their system and forcibly installing Linux).
Fortune finishes the great quotations, #6 "But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks?" It's nothing, honey. Go back to sleep.
That which shrinks Must first expand. That which fails Must first be strong. That which is cast down Must first be raised. Before receiving There must be giving. This is called perception of the nature of things. Soft and weak overcome hard and strong. Fish cannot leave deep waters, And a country's weapons should not be displayed.
He who is filled with Virtue is like a newborn child. Wasps and serpents will not sting him; Wild beasts will not pounce upon him; He will not be attacked by birds of prey. His bones are soft, his muscles weak, But his grip is firm. He has not experienced the union of man and woman, but is whole. His manhood is strong. He screams all day without becoming hoarse. This is perfect harmony. Knowing harmony is constancy. Knowing constancy is enlightenment. It is not wise to rush about. Controlling the breath causes strain. If too much energy is used, exhaustion follows. This is not the way of Tao. Whatever is contrary to Tao will not last long.
A man is born gentle and weak. At his death he is hard and stiff. Green plants are tender and filled with sap. At their death they are withered and dry. Therefore the stiff and unbending is the disciple of death. The gentle and yielding is the disciple of life. Thus an army without flexibility never wins a battle. A tree that is unbending is easily broken. The hard and strong will fall. The soft and weak will overcome.
Under heaven nothing is more soft and yielding than water. Yet for attacking the solid and strong, nothing is better; It has no equal. The weak can overcome the strong; The supple can overcome the stiff. Under heaven everyone knows this, Yet no one puts it into practice. Therefore the sage says: He who takes upon himself the humiliation of the people is fit to rule them. He who takes upon himself the country's disasters deserves to be king of the universe. The truth often sounds paradoxical.
Gold, n.: A soft malleable metal relatively scarce in distribution. It is mined deep in the earth by poor men who then give it to rich men who immediately bury it back in the earth in great prisons, although gold hasn't done anything to them. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
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!"