Student : Dictionary / Wörterbuch (BEOLINGUS, TU Chemnitz)

Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English)	by Linux fortune

If it were thought that anything I wrote was influenced by Robert Frost, I would take that particular work of mine, shred it, and flush it down the toilet, hoping not to clog the pipes. A more sententious, holding- forth old bore who expected every hero-worshiping adenoidal little twerp of a student-poet to hang on to his every word I never saw. -- James Dickey
I still maintain the point that designing a monolithic kernel in 1991 is a fundamental error. Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a high grade for such a design :-) (Andrew Tanenbaum to Linus Torvalds)
A Tale of Two Cities LITE(tm) -- by Charles Dickens A lawyer who looks like a French Nobleman is executed in his place. The Metamorphosis LITE(tm) -- by Franz Kafka A man turns into a bug and his family gets annoyed. Lord of the Rings LITE(tm) -- by J.R.R. Tolkien Some guys take a long vacation to throw a ring into a volcano. Hamlet LITE(tm) -- by Wm. Shakespeare A college student on vacation with family problems, a screwy girl-friend and a mother who won't act her age.
A man from AI walked across the mountains to SAIL to see the Master, Knuth. When he arrived, the Master was nowhere to be found. "Where is the wise one named Knuth?" he asked a passing student. "Ah," said the student, "you have not heard. He has gone on a pilgrimage across the mountains to the temple of AI to seek out new disciples." Hearing this, the man was Enlightened.
A novice was trying to fix a broken lisp machine by turning the power off and on. Knight, seeing what the student was doing spoke sternly, "You cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong." Knight turned the machine off and on. The machine worked.
A student, in hopes of understanding the Lambda-nature, came to Greenblatt. As they spoke a Multics system hacker walked by. "Is it true", asked the student, "that PL-1 has many of the same data types as Lisp?" Almost before the student had finished his question, Greenblatt shouted, "FOO!", and hit the student with a stick.
Does a good farmer neglect a crop he has planted? Does a good teacher overlook even the most humble student? Does a good father allow a single child to starve? Does a good programmer refuse to maintain his code? -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
One day a student came to Moon and said, "I understand how to make a better garbage collector. We must keep a reference count of the pointers to each cons." Moon patiently told the student the following story -- "One day a student came to Moon and said, "I understand how to make a better garbage collector..."
Prof: So the American government went to IBM to come up with a data encryption standard and they came up with ... Student: EBCDIC!"
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..."
* STUDENT SUCCESSES * Many of our students have gone on to achieve great success in all fields of programming. One former student developed the concept of the personalized form letter. Does the phrase, "Dear Mr.(insert name), You may already be a winner!," sound familiar? Another student writes "After only five lessons I sold a "My Most Unforgettable Program" article to Corrosive Computing magazine. Another of our graduates writes, "I recently completed a database-management program for my department manager. My program touched him so deeply that he was speechless. He told me later that he had never seen such a program in his entire career. Thank you, Famous Programmers' school; only you could have made this possible." Send for our introductory brochure which explains in vague detail the operation of the Famous Programmers' School, and you'll be eligible to win a possible chance to enter a drawing, the winner of which can vie for a set of free steak knives. If you don't do it now, you'll hate yourself in the morning.
This quote is taken from the Diamondback, the University of Maryland student newspaper, of Tuesday, 3/10/87. One disadvantage of the Univac system is that it does not use Unix, a recently developed program which translates from one computer language to another and has a built-in editing system which identifies errors in the original program.
"If you weren't my teacher, I'd think you just deleted all my files." -- an anonymous UCB CS student, to an instructor who had typed "rm -i *" to get rid of a file named "-f" on a Unix system.
"There is also a thriving independent student movement in Poland, and thus there is a strong possibility (though no guarantee) of making an EARN-Poland link, should it ever come about, a genuine link - not a vacuum cleaner attachment for a Bloc information gathering apparatus rationed to trusted apparatchiks." -- David Phillips, SUNY at Buffalo, about establishing a gateway from EARN (Eurpoean Academic Research Network) to Poland
A student asked the master for help... does this program run from the Workbench? The master grabbed the mouse and pointed to an icon. "What is this?" he asked. The student replied "That's the mouse". The master pressed control-Amiga-Amiga and hit the student on the head with the Amiga ROM Kernel Manual. -- Amiga Zen Master Peter da Silva
Second Law of Final Exams: In your toughest final -- for the first time all year -- the most distractingly attractive student in the class will sit next to you.
The Modelski Chain Rule: (1) Look intently at the problem for several minutes. Scratch your head at 20-30 second intervals. Try solving the problem on your Hewlett-Packard. (2) Failing this, look around at the class. Select a particularly bright-looking individual. (3) Procure a large chain. (4) Walk over to the selected student and threaten to beat him severely with the chain unless he gives you the answer to the problem. Generally, he will. It may also be a good idea to give him a sound thrashing anyway, just to show you mean business.
A student who changes the course of history is probably taking an exam.
=============== ALL FRESHMEN PLEASE NOTE =============== To minimize scheduling confusion, please realize that if you are taking one course which is offered at only one time on a given day, and another which is offered at all times on that day, the second class will be arranged as to afford maximum inconvenience to the student. For example, if you happen to work on campus, you will have 1-2 hours between classes. If you commute, there will be a minimum of 6 hours between the two classes.
Dear Freshman, You don't know who I am and frankly shouldn't care, but unknown to you we have something in common. We are both rather prone to mistakes. I was elected Student Government President by mistake, and you came to school here by mistake.
Professor Gorden Newell threw another shutout in last week's Chem Eng. 130 midterm. Once again a student did not receive a single point on his exam. Newell has now tossed 5 shutouts this quarter. Newell's earned exam average has now dropped to a phenomenal 30%.
"The student in question is performing minimally for his peer group and is an emerging underachiever."
What I Did During My Fall Semester On the first day of my fall semester, I got up. Then I went to the library to find a thesis topic. Then I hung out in front of the Dover. On the second day of my fall semester, I got up. Then I went to the library to find a thesis topic. Then I hung out in front of the Dover. On the third day of my fall semester, I got up. Then I went to the library to find a thesis topic. I found a thesis topic: How to keep people from hanging out in front of the Dover. -- Sister Mary Elephant, "Student Statement for Black Friday"
After this was written there appeared a remarkable posthumous memoir that throws some doubt on Millikan's leading role in these experiments. Harvey Fletcher (1884-1981), who was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, at Millikan's suggestion worked on the measurement of electronic charge for his doctoral thesis, and co-authored some of the early papers on this subject with Millikan. Fletcher left a manuscript with a friend with instructions that it be published after his death; the manuscript was published in Physics Today, June 1982, page 43. In it, Fletcher claims that he was the first to do the experiment with oil drops, was the first to measure charges on single droplets, and may have been the first to suggest the use of oil. According to Fletcher, he had expected to be co-authored with Millikan on the crucial first article announcing the measurement of the electronic charge, but was talked out of this by Millikan. -- Steven Weinberg, "The Discovery of Subatomic Particles" Robert Millikan is generally credited with making the first really precise measurement of the charge on an electron and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1923.
It seems that more and more mathematicians are using a new, high level language named "research student".
No plain fanfold paper could hold that fractal Puff -- He grew so fast no plotting pack could shrink him far enough. Compiles and simulations grew so quickly tame And swapped out all their data space when Puff pushed his stack frame. (refrain) Puff, he grew so quickly, while others moved like snails And mini-Puffs would perch themselves on his gigantic tail. All the student hackers loved that fractal Puff But DCS did not like Puff, and finally said, "Enough!" (refrain) Puff used more resources than DCS could spare. The operator killed Puff's job -- he didn't seem to care. A gloom fell on the hackers; it seemed to be the end, But Puff trapped the exception, and grew from naught again! (refrain) Refrain: Puff the fractal dragon was written in C, And frolicked while processes switched in mainframe memory. Puff the fractal dragon was written in C, And frolicked while processes switched in mainframe memory.
"I got into an elevator at work and this man followed in after me... I pushed '1' and he just stood there... I said 'Hi, where you going?' He said, 'Phoenix.' So I pushed Phoenix. A few seconds later the doors opened, two tumbleweeds blew in... we were in downtown Phoenix. I looked at him and said 'You know, you're the kind of guy I want to hang around with.' We got into his car and drove out to his shack in the desert. Then the phone rang. He said 'You get it.' I picked it up and said 'Hello?'... the other side said 'Is this Steven Wright?'... I said 'Yes...' The guy said 'Hi, I'm Mr. Jones, the student loan director from your bank... It seems you have missed your last 17 payments, and the university you attended said that they received none of the $17,000 we loaned you... we would just like to know what happened to the money?' I said, 'Mr. Jones, I'll give it to you straight. I gave all of the money to my friend Slick, and with it he built a nuclear weapon... and I would appreciate it if you never called me again." -- Steven Wright
Linux Dominates Academic Research A recent survey of colleges and high school reveals that Linux, Open Source Software, and Microsoft are favorite topics for research projects. Internet Censorship, a popular topic for the past two years, was supplanted by Biology of Penguins as another of this year's most popular subjects for research papers. "The Internet has changed all the rules," one college professor told Humorix. "Nobody wants to write papers about traditional topics like the death penalty, freedom of speech, abortion, juvenile crime, etc. Most of the research papers I've seen the past year have been computer related, and most of the reference material has come from the Net. This isn't necessarily good; there's a lot of crap on the Net. One student tried to use 'Bob's Totally Wicked Anti-Microsoft Homepage of Doom' and 'The Support Group for People Used by Microsoft' as primary sources of information for his paper about Microsoft." A high school English teacher added, "Plagarism is a problem with the Net. One of my students 'wrote' a brilliant piece about the free software revolution. Upon further inspection, however, almost everything was stolen from Eric S. Raymond's website. I asked the student, "What does noosphere mean?" He responded, 'New-what?' Needless to say, he failed the class."
Brief History Of Linux (#10) The AnyQuack Computer One electronic machine, Colossus, was used by the British in World War II to decode Nazi transmissions. The code-breakers were quite successful in their mission, except for the tiny detail that nobody knew how to read German. They had decoded unreadable messages into... unreadable messages. Two years later in 1945, a group of professors and students at the Univ. of Pennsylvania were discussing computing theory. An argument ensued, in which one professor yelled, "Any quack can build an electronic computer! The real challenge is building one that doesn't crash every five minutes." One graduate student, J. Presper Eckert, Jr., responded, "I'm any quack! I'll take you up on that challenge. I'll build a device that can calculate 1,000 digits of pi in one hour... without crashing!" Several professors laughed; "Such high-speed calculations are beyond our level of technology." Eckert and his friends did build such a device. As a joke, he called the machine "AnyQuack", which eventually became ENIAC -- ENIAC's Not Intended As Crashware, the first known example of a self-referential acronym.
Brief History Of Linux (#19) Boy meets operating system The young Linus Torvalds might have been just another CompSci student if it wasn't for his experiences in the Univ. of Helsinki's Fall 1990 Unix & C course. During one class, the professor experienced difficulty getting Minix to work properly on a Sun box. "Who the heck designed this thing?" the angry prof asked, and somebody responded, "Andrew Tanenbaum". The name of the Unix & C professor has already escaped from Linus, but the words he spoke next remain forever etched in his grey matter: "Tanenbaum... ah, yes, that Amsterdam weenie who thinks microkernels are the greatest thing since sliced bread. Well, they're not. I would just love to see somebody create their own superior Unix-like 32-bit operating system using a monolithic kernel just to show Tanenbaum up!" His professor's outburst inspired Linus to order a new IBM PC so he could hack Minix. You can probably guess what happened next. Inspired by his professor's words, Linus Torvalds hacks together his own superior Unix-like 32-but operating system using a monolithic kernel just to show Mr. Christmas Tree up.
DeCSS T-Shirt Used To Commit Piracy! College student Cody Potter stunned the world yesterday when he used a T-shirt with the printed DeCSS source code to illegally copy a DVD of "Star Trek XXI: We Promise This Is The Last One". Well, it wasn't the actual DeCSS source code. The shirt contained a Perl script which spits out a bash shell script which produces a GW-BASIC program which outputs a ROT13-encoded Python script that manufactures a Pig-Latin-encoded Java program that finally produces the real DeCSS C source code when executed.
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."
A good walker leaves no tracks; A good speaker makes no slips; A good reckoner needs no tally. A good door needs no lock, Yet no one can open it. Good binding requires no knots, Yet no one can loosen it. Therefore the sage takes care of all men And abandons no one. He takes care of all things And abandons nothing. This is called "following the light." What is a good man? A teacher of a bad man. What is a bad man? A good man's charge. If the teacher is not respected, And the student not cared for, Confusion will arise, however clever one is. This is the crux of mystery.
The wise student hears of the Tao and practices it diligently. The average student hears of the Tao and gives it thought now and again. The foolish student hears of the Tao and laughs aloud. If there were no laughter, the Tao would not be what it is. Hence it is said: The bright path seems dim; Going forward seems like retreat; The easy way seems hard; The highest Virtue seems empty; Great purity seems sullied; A wealth of Virtue seems inadequate; The strength of Virtue seems frail; Real Virtue seems unreal; The perfect square has no corners; Great talents ripen late; The highest notes are hard to hear; The greatest form has no shape; The Tao is hidden and without name. The Tao alone nourishes and brings everything to fulfillment.
In Columbia, Pennsylvania, it is against the law for a pilot to tickle a female flying student under her chin with a feather duster in order to get her attention.
An older student came to Otis and said, "I have been to see a great number of teachers and I have given up a great number of pleasures. I have fasted, been celibate and stayed awake nights seeking enlightenment. I have given up everything I was asked to give up and I have suffered, but I have not been enlightened. What should I do?" Otis replied, "Give up suffering." -- Camden Benares, "Zen Without Zen Masters"
I still maintain the point that designing a monolithic kernel in 1991 is a fundamental error. Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a high grade for such a design :-) -- Andrew Tanenbaum to Linus Torvalds
There was a college student trying to earn some pocket money by going from house to house offering to do odd jobs. He explained this to a man who answered one door. "How much will you charge to paint my porch?" asked the man. "Forty dollars." "Fine" said the man, and gave the student the paint and brushes. Three hours later the paint-splattered lad knocked on the door again. "All done!", he says, and collects his money. "By the way," the student says, "That's not a Porsche, it's a Ferrari."
Why I Can't Go Out With You: I'd LOVE to, but... -- I have to answer all of my "occupant" letters. -- None of my socks match. -- I'm having all my plants neutered. -- I changed the lock on my door and now I can't get out. -- My yucca plant is feeling yucky. -- I'm touring China with a wok band. -- My chocolate-appreciation class meets that night. -- I'm running off to Yugoslavia with a foreign-exchange student named Basil Metabolism. -- There are important world issues that need worrying about. -- I'm going to count the bristles in my toothbrush. -- I prefer to remain an enigma. -- I think you want the OTHER Peggy/Cathy/Mike/whomever. -- I feel a song coming on.