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Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) by Linux fortune

Any dramatic series the producers want us to take seriously as a representation
of contemporary reality cannot be taken seriously as a representation of
anything -- except a show to be ignored by anyone capable of sitting upright
in a chair and chewing gum simultaneously.
                -- Richard Schickel
E.T. GO HOME!!!  (And take your Smurfs with you.)
I can't understand why a person will take a year or two to write a
novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.
                -- Fred Allen
I'm a Hollywood writer; so I put on a sports jacket and take off my brain.
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
Lamonte Cranston once hired a new Chinese manservant.  While describing his
duties to the new man, Lamonte pointed to a bowl of candy on the coffee
table and warned him that he was not to take any.  Some days later, the new
manservant was cleaning up, with no one at home, and decided to sample some
of the candy.  Just than, Cranston walked in, spied the manservant at the
candy, and said:
        "Pardon me Choy, is that the Shadow's nugate you chew?"
        Leslie West heads for the sticks, to Providence, Rhode Island and
tries to hide behind a beard.  No good.  There are still too many people
and too many stares, always taunting, always smirking.  He moves to the
outskirts of town. He finds a place to live -- huge mansion, dirt cheap,
caretaker included.  He plugs in his guitar and plays as loud as he wants,
day and night, and there's no one to laugh or boo or even look bored.
        Nobody's cut the grass in months.  What's happened to that caretaker?
What neighborhood people there are start to talk, and what kids there are
start to get curious.  A 13 year-old blond with an angelic face misses supper.
Before the summer's end, four more teenagers have disappeared.  The senior
class president, Barnard-bound come autumn, tells Mom she's going out to a
movie one night and stays out.  The town's up in arms, but just before the
police take action, the kids turn up.  They've found a purpose.  They go
home for their stuff and tell the folks not to worry but they'll be going
now.  They're in a band.
                -- Ira Kaplan
Might as well be frank, monsieur.  It would take a miracle to get you out
of Casablanca and the Germans have outlawed miracles.
                -- Casablanca
Rascal, am I?  Take THAT!
                -- Errol Flynn
Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscurantist drivel;
Star Trek can turn your brains to puree of bat guano; and the greatest
science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who!  And I'll take you all
on, one-by-one or all in a bunch to back it up!
                -- Harlan Ellison
The Great Movie Posters:

POWERFUL! SHOCKING! RAW! ROUGH! CHALLENGING! SEE A LITTLE GIRL MOLESTED!
                -- Never Take Candy from a Stranger (1963)

She Sins in Mobile --
Marries in Houston --
Loses Her Baby in Dallas --
Leaves Her Husband in Tuscon --
MEETS HARRU IN SAN DIEGO!...
FIRST -- HARLOW!
THEN -- MONROE!
NOW -- McCLANAHAN!!!
                -- The Rotten Apple (1963), Rue McClanahan

*NOT FOR SISSIES! DON'T COME IF YOU'RE CHICKEN!
A Horrifying Movie of Wierd Beauties and Shocking Monsters...
1001 WIERDEST SCENES EVER!!  MOST SHOCKING THRILLER OF THE CENTURY!
                -- Teenage Psycho meets Bloody Mary (1964)  (Alternate Title:
                   The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and
                   Became Mixed Up Zombies)
There's a trick to the Graceful Exit.  It begins with the vision to
recognize when a job, a life stage, a relationship is over -- and to let
go.  It means leaving what's over without denying its validity or its
past importance in our lives.  It involves a sense of future, a belief
that every exit line is an entry, that we are moving on, rather than out.
The trick of retiring well may be the trick of living well.  It's hard to
recognize that life isn't a holding action, but a process.  It's hard to
learn that we don't leave the best parts of ourselves behind, back in the
dugout or the office. We own what we learned back there.  The experiences
and the growth are grafted onto our lives.  And when we exit, we can take
ourselves along -- quite gracefully.
                -- Ellen Goodman
This is the ____LAST time I take travel suggestions from Ray Bradbury!
Sometimes when I get up in the morning, I feel very peculiar.  I feel
like I've just got to bite a cat!  I feel like if I don't bite a cat
before sundown, I'll go crazy!  But then I just take a deep breath and
forget about it.  That's what is known as real maturity.
                -- Snoopy
The difference between dogs and cats is that dogs come when they're
called.  Cats take a message and get back to you.
> 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)
Flourescent lights are generating negative ions. If turning them off doesn't work, take them out and put tin foil on the ends.
Cache miss - please take better aim next time
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.
Even the clearest and most perfect circumstantial evidence is likely to be at
fault, after all, and therefore ought to be received with great caution.  Take
the case of any pencil, sharpened by any woman; if you have witnesses, you will
find she did it with a knife; but if you take simply the aspect of the pencil,
you will say that she did it with her teeth.
                -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you must
have somebody to divide it with.
                -- Mark Twain
I reverently believe that the maker who made us all  makes everything in New
England, but the weather.  I don't know who makes that, but I think it must be
raw apprentices in the weather-clerks factory who experiment and learn how, in
New England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted to make weather for
countries that require a good article, and will take their custom elsewhere
if they don't get it.
                -- Mark Twain
Let me take you a button-hole lower.
                -- William Shakespeare, "Love's Labour's Lost"
"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 asked a programmer how long it would take him to finish the
program on which he was working.  "I will be finished tomorrow," the programmer
promptly replied.
        "I think you are being unrealistic," said the manager. "Truthfully,
how long will it take?"
        The programmer thought for a moment.  "I have some features that I wish
to add.  This will take at least two weeks," he finally said.
        "Even that is too much to expect," insisted the manager, "I will be
satisfied if you simply tell me when the program is complete."
        The programmer agreed to this.
        Several years later, the manager retired.  On the way to his
retirement lunch, he discovered the programmer asleep at his terminal.
He had been programming all night.
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
        A manager went to the master programmer and showed him the requirements
document for a new application.  The manager asked the master: "How long will
it take to design this system if I assign five programmers to it?"
        "It will take one year," said the master promptly.
        "But we need this system immediately or even sooner!  How long will it
take it I assign ten programmers to it?"
        The master programmer frowned.  "In that case, it will take two years."
        "And what if I assign a hundred programmers to it?"
        The master programmer shrugged.  "Then the design will never be
completed," he said.
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
        A novice asked the master: "In the east there is a great tree-structure
that men call 'Corporate Headquarters'.  It is bloated out of shape with
vice-presidents and accountants.  It issues a multitude of memos, each saying
'Go, Hence!' or 'Go, Hither!' and nobody knows what is meant.  Every year new
names are put onto the branches, but all to no avail.  How can such an
unnatural entity exist?"
        The master replies: "You perceive this immense structure and are
disturbed that it has no rational purpose.  Can you not take amusement from
its endless gyrations?  Do you not enjoy the untroubled ease of programming
beneath its sheltering branches?  Why are you bothered by its uselessness?"
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
Around computers it is difficult to find the correct unit of time to
measure progress.  Some cathedrals took a century to complete.  Can you
imagine the grandeur and scope of a program that would take as long?
                -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
As the trials of life continue to take their toll, remember that there
is always a future in Computer Maintenance.
                -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
At about 2500 A.D., humankind discovers a computer problem that *must* be
solved.  The only difficulty is that the problem is NP complete and will
take thousands of years even with the latest optical biologic technology
available.  The best computer scientists sit down to think up some solution.
In great dismay, one of the C.S. people tells her husband about it.  There
is only one solution, he says.  Remember physics 103, Modern Physics, general
relativity and all.  She replies, "What does that have to do with solving
a computer problem?"
        "Remember the twin paradox?"
        After a few minutes, she says, "I could put the computer on a very
fast machine and the computer would have just a few minutes to calculate but
that is the exact opposite of what we want... Of course!  Leave the
computer here, and accelerate the earth!"
        The problem was so important that they did exactly that.  When
the earth came back, they were presented with the answer:

        IEH032 Error in JOB Control Card.
By long-standing tradition, I take this opportunity to savage other
designers in the thin disguise of good, clean fun.
                -- P.J. Plauger, "Computer Language", 1988, April
                   Fool's column.
Dear Emily:
        I'm having a serious disagreement with somebody on the net. I
tried complaints to his sysadmin, organizing mail campaigns, called for
his removal from the net and phoning his employer to get him fired.
Everybody laughed at me.  What can I do?
                -- A Concerned Citizen

Dear Concerned:
        Go to the daily papers.  Most modern reporters are top-notch computer
experts who will understand the net, and your problems, perfectly.  They
will print careful, reasoned stories without any errors at all, and surely
represent the situation properly to the public.  The public will also all
act wisely, as they are also fully cognizant of the subtle nature of net
society.
        Papers never sensationalize or distort, so be sure to point out things
like racism and sexism wherever they might exist.  Be sure as well that they
understand that all things on the net, particularly insults, are meant
literally.  Link what transpires on the net to the causes of the Holocaust, if
possible.  If regular papers won't take the story, go to a tabloid paper --
they are always interested in good stories.
        *** DO YOU HAVE A RESTLESS URGE TO PROGRAM? ***
Do you want the instant respect that comes from being able to use technical
terms that nobody understands?  Do you want to strike fear and loathing into
the hearts of DP managers everywhere?  If so, then let the Famous Programmers'
School lead you on... into the world of professional computer programming.

        *** IS PROGRAMMING FOR YOU? ***
Programming is not for everyone.  But, if you have the desire to learn, we can
help you get started.  All you need is the Famous Programmers' Course and
enough money to keep those lessons coming month after month.

        *** TAKE OUR FREE APTITUDE TEST ***
To help determine if you are qualified to be a programmer, take a moment to
try this simple test:
        (1) Write down the numbers from zero to nine and the first six letters
                of the alphabet (Hint: 0123456789ABCDEF).
        (2) Whose picture is on the back of a twenty-dollar bill?
        (3) What is the state capital of Idaho?
If you managed to read all three questions without wondering why we asked
them, you may have a future as a computer programmer.
If computers take over (which seems to be their natural tendency), it will
serve us right.
                -- Alistair Cooke
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"
        Long ago, in a finite state far away, there lived a JOVIAL
character named Jack.  Jack and his relations were poor.  Often their
hash table was bare.  One day Jack's parent said to him, "Our matrices
are sparse.  You must go to the market to exchange our RAM for some
BASICs."  She compiled a linked list of items to retrieve and passed it
to him.
        So Jack set out.  But as he was walking along a Hamilton path,
he met the traveling salesman.
        "Whither dost thy flow chart take thou?" prompted the salesman
in high-level language.
        "I'm going to the market to exchange this RAM for some chips
and Apples," commented Jack.
        "I have a much better algorithm.  You needn't join a queue
there; I will swap your RAM for these magic kernels now."
        Jack made the trade, then backtracked to his house.  But when
he told his busy-waiting parent of the deal, she became so angry she
started thrashing.
        "Don't you even have any artificial intelligence?  All these
kernels together hardly make up one byte," and she popped them out the
window...
                -- Mark Isaak, "Jack and the Beanstack"
Mac Beer: At first, came only a 16-oz. can, but now comes in a 32-oz.
can. Considered by many to be a "light" beer. All the cans look
identical. When you take one from the fridge, it opens itself. The
ingredients list is not on the can. If you call to ask about the
ingredients, you are told that "you don't need to know." A notice on the
side reminds you to drag your empties to the trashcan.
        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 the other hand, the TCP camp also has a phrase for OSI people.
There are lots of phrases.  My favorite is `nitwit' -- and the rationale
is the Internet philosophy has always been you have extremely bright,
non-partisan researchers look at a topic, do world-class research, do
several competing implementations, have a bake-off, determine what works
best, write it down and make that the standard.
        The OSI view is entirely opposite.  You take written contributions
from a much larger community, you put the contributions in a room of
committee people with, quite honestly, vast political differences and all
with their own political axes to grind, and four years later you get
something out, usually without it ever having been implemented once.
        So the Internet perspective is implement it, make it work well,
then write it down, whereas the OSI perspective is to agree on it, write
it down, circulate it a lot and now we'll see if anyone can implement it
after it's an international standard and every vendor in the world is
committed to it.  One of those processes is backwards, and I don't think
it takes a Lucasian professor of physics at Oxford to figure out which.
                -- Marshall Rose, "The Pied Piper of OSI"
Overconfidence breeds error when we take for granted that the game will
continue on its normal course; when we fail to provide for an unusually
powerful resource -- a check, a sacrifice, a stalemate.  Afterwards the
victim may wail, `But who could have dreamt of such an idiotic-looking move?'
                -- Fred Reinfeld, "The Complete Chess Course"
Seems a computer engineer, a systems analyst, and a programmer were
driving down a mountain when the brakes gave out.  They screamed down the
mountain, gaining speed, but finally managed to grind to a halt, more by
luck than anything else, just inches from a thousand foot drop to jagged
rocks.  They all got out of the car:
        The computer engineer said, "I think I can fix it."
        The systems analyst said, "No, no, I think we should take it
into town and have a specialist look at it."
        The programmer said, "OK, but first I think we should get back
in and see if it does it again."
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!
Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more
"user-friendly".  ...  Their best approach, so far, has been to take all
the old brochures, and stamp the words, "user-friendly" on the cover.
                -- Bill Gates, Microsoft, Inc.
        [Pot. Kettle. Black.]
                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
        THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #13: SLOBOL

SLOBOL is best known for the speed, or lack of it, of its compiler.
Although many compilers allow you to take a coffee break while they
compile, SLOBOL compilers allow you to travel to Bolivia to pick the
coffee.  Forty-three programmers are known to have died of boredom
sitting at their terminals while waiting for a SLOBOL program to
compile.  Weary SLOBOL programmers often turn to a related (but
infinitely faster) language, COCAINE.
The Tao doesn't take sides;
it gives birth to both wins and losses.
The Guru doesn't take sides;
she welcomes both hackers and lusers.

The Tao is like a stack:
the data changes but not the structure.
the more you use it, the deeper it becomes;
the more you talk of it, the less you understand.

Hold on to the root.
X windows:
        Accept any substitute.
        If it's broke, don't fix it.
        If it ain't broke, fix it.
        Form follows malfunction.
        The Cutting Edge of Obsolescence.
        The trailing edge of software technology.
        Armageddon never looked so good.
        Japan's secret weapon.
        You'll envy the dead.
        Making the world safe for competing window systems.
        Let it get in YOUR way.
        The problem for your problem.
        If it starts working, we'll fix it.  Pronto.
        It could be worse, but it'll take time.
        Simplicity made complex.
        The greatest productivity aid since typhoid.
        Flakey and built to stay that way.

One thousand monkeys.  One thousand MicroVAXes.  One thousand years.
        X windows.
X windows:
        It's not how slow you make it.  It's how you make it slow.
        The windowing system preferred by masochists 3 to 1.
        Built to take on the world... and lose!
        Don't try it 'til you've knocked it.
        Power tools for Power Fools.
        Putting new limits on productivity.
        The closer you look, the cruftier we look.
        Design by counterexample.
        A new level of software disintegration.
        No hardware is safe.
        Do your time.
        Rationalization, not realization.
        Old-world software cruftsmanship at its finest.
        Gratuitous incompatibility.
        Your mother.
        THE user interference management system.
        You can't argue with failure.
        You haven't died 'til you've used it.

The environment of today... tomorrow!
        X windows.
You can't take damsel here now.
It is common sense to take a method and try it.  If it fails,
admit it frankly and try another.  But above all, try something.
                -- Franklin D. Roosevelt
"Life is too important to take seriously."
                -- Corky Siegel
Stop searching.  Happiness is right next to you.  Now, if they'd only
take a bath ...
Machines take me by surprise with great frequency.
- Alan Turing
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"
A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you.
-- Ramsey Clark
How many hardware guys does it take to change a light bulb?

"Well the diagnostics say it's fine buddy, so it's a software problem."
How many QA engineers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

3: 1 to screw it in and 2 to say "I told you so" when it doesn't work.
How many NASA managers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

"That's a known problem... don't worry about it."
"I may kid around about drugs, but really, I take them seriously."
- Doctor Graper
Deliberate provocation of mystical experience, particularly by LSD and related
hallucinogens, in contrast to spontaneous visionary experiences, entails
dangers that must not be underestimated.  Practitioners must take into
account the peculiar effects of these substances, namely their ability to
influence our consciousness, the innermost essence of our being.  The history
of LSD to date amply demonstrates the catastrophic consequences that can
ensue when its profound effect is misjudged and the substance is mistaken
for a pleasure drug.  Special internal and external advance preperations
are required; with them, an LSD experiment can become a meaningful
experience.
- Dr. Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD
"I say we take off; nuke the site from orbit.  It's the only way to be sure."
- Corporal Hicks, in "Aliens"
How many surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

One to hold the giraffe and one to fill the bathtub with brightly colored
power tools.
How many Bavarian Illuminati does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Three: one to screw it in, and one to confuse the issue.
How long does it take a DEC field service engineer to change a lightbulb?

It depends on how many bad ones he brought with him.
Most people exhibit what political scientists call "the conservatism of the
peasantry."  Don't lose what you've got.  Don't change.  Don't take a chance,
because you might end up starving to death.  Play it safe.  Buy just as much
as you need.  Don't waste time.

When  we think about risk, human beings and corporations realize in their
heads that risks are necessary to grow, to survive.  But when it comes down
to keeping good people when the crunch comes, or investing money in
something untried, only the brave reach deep into their pockets and play
the game as it must be played.

- David Lammers, "Yakitori", Electronic Engineering Times, January 18, 1988
How many nuclear engineers does it take to change a light bulb ?

Seven:  One to install the new bulb, and six to determine what to do
        with the old one for the next 10,000 years.
The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events, the firmer
becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered
regularity for causes of a different nature.  For him neither the rule of
human nor the rule of divine will exists as an independent cause of natural
events.  To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural
events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this
doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge
has not yet been able to set foot.

But I am persuaded that such behavior on the part of the representatives
of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal.  For a doctrine which
is able to maintain itself not in clear light, but only in the dark, will
of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human
progress.  In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion
must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is,
give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast
powers in the hands of priests.  In their labors they will have to avail
themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the
True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself.  This is, to be sure, a more
difficult but an incomparably more worthy task.
- Albert Einstein
"By long-standing tradition, I take this opportunity to savage other
designers in the thin disguise of good, clean fun."
-- P. J. Plauger, from his April Fool's column in April 88's "Computer Language"
"To take a significant step forward, you must make a series of finite
improvements."
-- Donald J. Atwood, General Motors
"I take Him shopping with me. I say, 'OK, Jesus, help me find a bargain'"
--Tammy Faye Bakker
"One of the problems I've always had with propaganda pamphlets is that they're
real boring to look at.  They're just badly designed.  People from the left
often are very well-intended, but they never had time to take basic design
classes, you know?"
-- Art Spiegelman
Q:  How many IBM CPU's does it take to execute a job?
A:  Four; three to hold it down, and one to rip its head off.
"Take that, you hostile sons-of-bitches!"
-- James Coburn, in the finale of _The_President's_Analyst_
HP had a unique policy of allowing its engineers to take parts from stock as
long as they built something.  "They figured that with every design, they were
getting a better engineer.  It's a policy I urge all companies to adopt."
-- Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, "Will Wozniak's class give Apple to teacher?"
   EE Times, June 6, 1988, pg 45
In his book, Mr. DePree tells the story of how designer George Nelson urged
that the company also take on Charles Eames in the late 1940s.  Max's father,
J. DePree, co-founder of the company with herman Miller in 1923, asked Mr.
Nelson if he really wanted to share the limited opportunities of a then-small
company with another designer.  "George's response was something like this:
'Charles Eames is an unusual talent.  He is very different from me.  The
company needs us both.  I want very much to have Charles Eames share in
whatever potential there is.'"
-- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., "Herman Miller's
   Secrets of Corporate Creativity", The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
A comment on schedules:
Ok, how long will it take?    
   For each manager involved in initial meetings add one month.
   For each manager who says "data flow analysis" add another month.
   For each unique end-user type add one month.
   For each unknown software package to be employed add two months.
   For each unknown hardware device add two months.
   For each 100 miles between developer and installation add one month.
   For each type of communication channel add one month.
   If an IBM mainframe shop is involved and you are working on a non-IBM
      system add 6 months.
   If an IBM mainframe shop is involved and you are working on an IBM
      system add 9 months.
Round up to the nearest half-year.
--Brad Sherman
By the way, ALL software projects are done by iterative prototyping.
Some companies call their prototypes "releases", that's all.
"How many teamsters does it take to screw in a light bulb?"
   "FIFTEEN!!  YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT?"
New York is a jungle, they tell you.  You could go further, and say that
New York is a jungle.  New York *is a jungle.*  Beneath the columns of
the old rain forest, made of melting macadam, the mean Limpopo of swamped
Ninth Avenue bears an angry argosy of crocs and dragons, tiger fish, noise
machines, sweating rainmakers.  On the corners stand witchdoctors and
headhunters, babbling voodoo-men -- the natives, the jungle-smart natives.
And at night, under the equatorial overgrowth and heat-holding cloud
cover, you hear the ragged parrot-hoot and monkeysqueak of the sirens,
and then fires flower to ward off monsters.  Careful: the streets are
sprung with pits and nets and traps.  Hire a guide.  Pack your snakebite
gook and your blowdart serum.  Take it seriously.  You have to get a
bit jungle-wise.
-- Martin Amis, _Money_
How many Unix hacks does it take to change a light bulb?
   Let's see, can you use a shell script for that or does it need a C program?
"You don't go out and kick a mad dog.  If you have a mad dog with rabies, you
take a gun and shoot him."
-- Pat Robertson, TV Evangelist, about Muammar Kadhafy
"I prefer rogues to imbeciles, because they sometimes take a rest."
-- Alexandre Dumas (fils)
How many Zen Buddhist does it take to change a light bulb?

Two.  One to change it and one not to change it.
"Don't drop acid, take it pass-fail!"
-- Bryan Michael Wendt
A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough
to take it all away.
                -- Barry Goldwater
A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you.
                -- Ramsey Clark
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.
I wish a robot would get elected president.  That way, when he came to town,
we could all take a shot at him and not feel too bad.
                -- Jack Handley
If people have to choose between freedom and sandwiches, they
will take sandwiches.
                -- Lord Boyd-orr

Eats first, morals after.
                -- Bertolt Brecht, "The Threepenny Opera"
In those days he was wiser than he is now -- he used to frequently take
my advice.
                -- Winston Churchill
My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty
nights -- or very early mornings -- when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and,
instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at
a hundred miles an hour ... booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at
the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which
turnoff to take when I got to the other end ... but being absolutely certain
that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were
just as high and wild as I was: no doubt at all about that.
                -- Hunter S. Thompson
Take Care of the Molehills, and the Mountains Will Take Care of Themselves.
                -- Motto of the Federal Civil Service
Take your Senator to lunch this week.
The universe is ruled by letting things take their course.  It cannot be
ruled by interfering.
                -- Chinese proverb
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom for trying to change the
system from within.  I'm coming now I'm coming to reward them.  First
we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.

I'm guided by a signal in the heavens.  I'm guided by this birthmark on
my skin.  I'm guided by the beauty of our weapons.  First we take Manhattan,
then we take Berlin.

I'd really like to live beside you, baby.  I love your body and your spirit
and your clothes.  But you see that line there moving through the station?
I told you I told you I told you I was one of those.
        -- Leonard Cohen, "First We Take Manhattan"
What does it take for Americans to do great things; to go to the moon, to
win wars, to dig canals linking oceans, to build railroads across a continent?
In independent thought about this question, Neil Armstrong and I concluded
that it takes a coincidence of four conditions, or in Neil's view, the
simultaneous peaking of four of the many cycles of American life.  First, a
base of technology must exist from which to do the thing to be done.  Second,
a period of national uneasiness about America's place in the scheme of human
activities must exist.  Third, some catalytic event must occur that focuses
the national attention upon the direction to proceed.  Finally, an articulate
and wise leader must sense these first three conditions and put forth with
words and action the great thing to be accomplished.  The motivation of young
Americans to do what needs to be done flows from such a coincidence of
conditions. ...  The Thomas Jeffersons, The Teddy Roosevelts, The John
Kennedys appear.  We must begin to create the tools of leadership which they,
and their young frontiersmen, will require to lead us onward and upward.
                -- Dr. Harrison H. Schmidt
When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog along to see
the sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes.  The dog has certain
relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten.
                -- Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
You first have to decide whether to use the short or the long form. The
short form is what the Internal Revenue Service calls "simplified", which
means it is designed for people who need the help of a Sears tax-preparation
expert to distinguish between their first and last names.  Here's the
complete text:

"(1) How much did you make?  (AMOUNT)
(2) How much did we here at the government take out?  (AMOUNT)
(3) Hey!  Sounds like we took too much!  So we're going to
     send an official government check for (ONE-FIFTEENTH OF
     THE AMOUNT WE TOOK) directly to the (YOUR LAST NAME)
     household at (YOUR ADDRESS), for you to spend in any way
     you please! Which just goes to show you, (YOUR FIRST
     NAME), that it pays to file the short form!"

The IRS wants you to use this form because it gets to keep most of your
money.  So unless you have pond silt for brains, you want the long form.
                -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
A new koan:
        If you have some ice cream, I will give it to you.
        If you have no ice cream, I will take it away from you.
It is an ice cream koan.
Blore's Razor:
        Given a choice between two theories, take the one which is funnier.
Consultant, n.:
        (1) Someone you pay to take the watch off your wrist and tell
        you what time it is. (2) (For resume use) The working title
        of anyone who doesn't currently hold a job. Motto: Have
        Calculator, Will Travel.
Famous last words:
        (1) Don't unplug it, it will just take a moment to fix.
        (2) Let's take the shortcut, he can't see us from there.
        (3) What happens if you touch these two wires tog--
        (4) We won't need reservations.
        (5) It's always sunny there this time of the year.
        (6) Don't worry, it's not loaded.
        (7) They'd never (be stupid enough to) make him a manager.
        (8) Don't worry!  Women love it!
Fifth Law of Applied Terror:
        If you are given an open-book exam, you will forget your book.

Corollary:
        If you are given a take-home exam, you will forget where you live.
Fun experiments:
        Get a can of shaving cream, throw it in a freezer for about a week.
        Then take it out, peel the metal off and put it where you want...
        bedroom, car, etc.  As it thaws, it expands an unbelievable amount.
Ginsburg's Law:
        At the precise moment you take off your shoe in a shoe store, your
        big toe will pop out of your sock to see what's going on.
Gray's Law of Programming:
        `_n+1' trivial tasks are expected to be accomplished in the same
        time as `_n' tasks.

Logg's Rebuttal to Gray's Law:
        `_n+1' trivial tasks take twice as long as `_n' trivial tasks.
hacker, n.:
        Originally, any person with a knack for coercing stubborn inanimate
        things; hence, a person with a happy knack, later contracted by the
        mythical philosopher Frisbee Frobenius to the common usage, 'hack'.
        In olden times, upon completion of some particularly atrocious body
        of coding that happened to work well, culpable programmers would gather
        in a small circle around a first edition of Knuth's Best Volume I by
        candlelight, and proceed to get very drunk while sporadically rending
        the following ditty:

                Hacker's Fight Song

                He's a Hack!  He's a Hack!
                He's a guy with the happy knack!
                Never bungles, never shirks,
                Always gets his stuff to work!

All take a drink (important!)
half-done, n.:
        This is the best way to eat a kosher dill -- when it's still crunchy,
        light green, yet full of garlic flavor.  The difference between this
        and the typical soggy dark green cucumber corpse is like the
        difference between life and death.

        You may find it difficult to find a good half-done kosher dill there
        in Seattle, so what you should do is take a cab out to the airport,
        fly to New York, take the JFK Express to Jay Street-Borough Hall,
        transfer to an uptown F, get off at East Broadway, walk north on
        Essex (along the park), make your first left onto Hester Street, walk
        about fifteen steps, turn ninety degrees left, and stop.  Say to the
        man, "Let me have a nice half-done."  Worth the trouble, wasn't it?
                -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
Hofstadter's Law:
        It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take
        Hofstadter's Law into account.
Hubbard's Law:
        Don't take life too seriously; you won't get out of it alive.
Major premise:
        Sixty men can do sixty times as much work as one man.
Minor premise:
        A man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds.
Conclusion:
        Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Secondary Conclusion:
        Do you realize how many holes there would be if people
        would just take the time to take the dirt out of them?
Please take note:
purpitation, n.:
        To take something off the grocery shelf, decide you
        don't want it, and then put it in another section.
                -- "Sniglets", Rich Hall & Friends
Responsibility:
        Everyone says that having power is a great responsibility.  This is
a lot of bunk.  Responsibility is when someone can blame you if something
goes wrong.  When you have power you are surrounded by people whose job it
is to take the blame for your mistakes.  If they're smart, that is.
                -- Cerebus, "On Governing"
take forceful action:
        Do something that should have been done a long time ago.
The Briggs-Chase Law of Program Development:
        To determine how long it will take to write and debug a
        program, take your best estimate, multiply that by two, add
        one, and convert to the next higher units.
Theorem: All positive integers are equal.
Proof: Sufficient to show that for any two positive integers, A and B, A = B.
        Further, it is sufficient to show that for all N > 0, if A and B
        (positive integers) satisfy (MAX(A, B) = N) then A = B.

Proceed by induction:
        If N = 1, then A and B, being positive integers, must both be 1.
        So A = B.

Assume that the theorem is true for some value k.  Take A and B with
        MAX(A, B) = k+1.  Then  MAX((A-1), (B-1)) = k.  And hence
        (A-1) = (B-1).  Consequently, A = B.
                William Safire's Rules for Writers:

Remember to never split an infinitive.  The passive voice should never be
used.  Do not put statements in the negative form.  Verbs have to agree with
their subjects.  Proofread carefully to see if you words out.  If you reread
your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be
avoided by rereading and editing.  A writer must not shift your point of
view.  And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.  (Remember, too, a
preposition is a terrible word to end a sentence with.) Don't overuse
exclamation marks!!  Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long
sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents.  Writing carefully,
dangling participles must be avoided.  If any word is improper at the end of
a sentence, a linking verb is.  Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing
metaphors.  Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.  Everyone should be
careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.
Always pick on the correct idiom.  The adverb always follows the verb.  Last
but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek viable alternatives.
Recurving:
        Leaving one job to take another that pays less but places one
back on the learning curve.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Survivulousness:
        The tendency to visualize oneself enjoying being the last
person on Earth.  "I'd take a helicopter up and throw microwave ovens
down on the Taco Bell."
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Don't worry if you're a kleptomaniac; you can always take something for it.
Have the courage to take your own thoughts seriously, for they will shape you.
                -- Albert Einstein
Take it easy, we're in a hurry.
Take what you can use and let the rest go by.
                -- Ken Kesey
When eating an elephant take one bite at a time.
                -- Gen. C. Abrams
Who will take care of the world after you're gone?
Best Beer: A panel of tasters assembled by the Consumer's Union in 1969
judged Coors and Miller's High Life to be among the very best. Those who
doubt that beer is a serious subject might ponder its effect on American
history. For example, New England's first colonists decided to drop anchor
at Plymouth Rock instead of continuing on to Virginia because, as one of
them put it, "We could not now take time for further consideration, our
victuals being spent and especially our beer."
        -- Felton & Fowler's Best, Worst & Most Unusual
Coach: What would you say to a beer, Normie?
Norm:  Daddy wuvs you.
                -- Cheers, The Mail Goes to Jail

Sam:  What'd you like, Normie?
Norm: A reason to live.  Gimme another beer.
                -- Cheers, Behind Every Great Man

Sam:  What will you have, Norm?
Norm: Well, I'm in a gambling mood, Sammy.  I'll take a glass of whatever
      comes out of that tap.
Sam:  Oh, looks like beer, Norm.
Norm: Call me Mister Lucky.
                -- Cheers, The Executive's Executioner
FORTUNE'S PARTY TIPS                #14

Tired of finding that other people are helping themselves to your good
liquor at BYOB parties?  Take along a candle, which you insert and
light after you've opened the bottle.  No one ever expects anything
drinkable to be in a bottle which has a candle stuck in its neck.
HOGAN'S HEROES DRINKING GAME --
        Take a shot every time:

-- Sergeant Schultz says, "I knoooooowww nooooothing!"
-- General Burkhalter or Major Hochstetter intimidate/insult Colonel Klink.
-- Colonel Klink falls for Colonel Hogan's flattery.
-- One of the prisoners sneaks out of camp (one shot for each prisoner to go).
-- Colonel Klink snaps to attention after answering the phone (two shots
        if it's one of our heroes on the other end).
-- One of the Germans is threatened with being sent to the Russian front.
-- Corporal Newkirk calls up a German in his phoney German accent, and
        tricks him (two shots if it's Colonel Klink).
-- Hogan has a romantic interlude with a beautiful girl from the underground.
-- Colonel Klink relates how he's never had an escape from Stalag 13.
-- Sergeant Schultz gives up a secret (two shots if he's bribed with food).
-- The prisoners listen to the Germans' conversation by a hidden transmitter.
-- Sergeant Schultz "captures" one of the prisoners after an escape.
-- Lebeau pronounces "colonel" as "cuh-loh-`nell".
-- Carter builds some kind of device (two shots if it's not explosive).
-- Lebeau wears his apron.
-- Hogan says "We've got no choice" when someone claims that the plan is
        impossible.
-- The prisoners capture an important German, and sneak him out the tunnel.
I never take work home with me; I always leave it in some bar along the way.
In 1967, the Soviet Government minted a beautiful silver ruble with Lenin
in a very familiar pose -- arms raised above him, leading the country to
revolution.  But, it was clear to everybody, that if you looked at it from
behind, it was clear that Lenin was pointing to 11:00, when the Vodka
shops opened, and was actually saying, "Comrades, forward to the Vodka shops.

It became fashionable, when one wanted to have a drink, to take out the
ruble and say, "Oh my goodness, Comrades, Lenin tells me we should go.
[Norm goes into the bar at Vic's Bowl-A-Rama.]

Off-screen crowd:  Norm!
Sam:   How the hell do they know him here?
Cliff: He's got a life, you know.
                -- Cheers, From Beer to Eternity

Woody: What can I do for you, Mr. Peterson?
Norm:  Elope with my wife.
                -- Cheers, The Triangle

Woody: How's life, Mr. Peterson?
Norm:  Oh, I'm waiting for the movie.
                -- Cheers, Take My Shirt... Please?
Recipe for a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster:
        (1) Take the juice from one bottle of Ol' Janx Spirit
        (2) Pour into it one measure of water from the seas of
                Santraginus V  (Oh, those Santraginean fish!)
        (3) Allow 3 cubes of Arcturan Mega-gin to melt into the
                mixture (properly iced or the benzine is lost.)
        (4) Allow four liters of Fallian marsh gas to bubble through it.
        (5) Over the back of a silver spoon, float a measure of
                Qualactin Hypermint extract.
        (6) Drop in the tooth of an Algolian Suntiger.  Watch it dissolve.
        (7) Sprinkle Zamphuor.
        (8) Add an olive.
        (9) Drink... but... very carefully...
Take me drunk, I'm home again!
When I drink, *everybody* drinks!" a man shouted to the assembled bar patrons.
A loud general cheer went up.  After downing his whiskey, he hopped onto a
barstool and shouted "When I take another drink, *everybody* takes another
drink!"  The announcement produced another cheer and another round of drinks.
        As soon as he had downed his second drink, the fellow hopped back
onto the stool.  "And when I pay," he bellowed, slapping five dollars onto
the bar, "*everybody* pays!"
Woody: Hey, Mr. Peterson, what's up?
Norm:  The warranty on my liver.
                -- Cheers, Breaking In Is Hard to Do

Sam:  What can I do for you, Norm?
Norm: Open up those beer taps and, oh, take the day off, Sam.
                -- Cheers, Veggie-Boyd

Woody: What's going on, Mr. Peterson?
Norm:  Another layer for the winter, Wood.
                -- Cheers, It's a Wonderful Wife
Q:        How do you stop an elephant from charging?
A:        Take away his credit cards.
Q:        How many Bell Labs Vice Presidents does it take to change a light bulb?
A:        That's proprietary information.  Answer available from AT&T on payment
        of license fee (binary only).
Q:        How many bureaucrats does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A:        Two.  One to assure everyone that everything possible is being
        done while the other screws the bulb into the water faucet.
Q:        How many Californians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A:        Five.  One to screw in the light bulb and four to share the
                experience.  (Actually, Californians don't screw in
                light bulbs, they screw in hot tubs.)

Q:        How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A:        Three.  One to screw in the light bulb and two to fend off all
                those Californians trying to share the experience.
Q:        How many college football players does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A:        Only one, but he gets three credits for it.
Q:        How many DEC repairman does it take to fix a flat?
A:        Five; four to hold the car up and one to swap tires.

Q:        How long does it take?
A:        It's indeterminate.
        It will depend upon how many flats they've brought with them.

Q:        What happens if you've got TWO flats?
A:        They replace your generator.
Q:        How many existentialists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A:        Two.  One to screw it in and one to observe how the light bulb
        itself symbolizes a single incandescent beacon of subjective
        reality in a netherworld of endless absurdity reaching out toward a
        maudlin cosmos of nothingness.
Q:        How many gradual (sorry, that's supposed to be "graduate") students
        does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A:        "I'm afraid we don't know, but make my stipend tax-free, give my
        advisor a $30,000 grant of the taxpayer's money, and I'm sure he
        can tell me how to do the shit work for him so he can take the
        credit for answering this incredibly vital question."
Q:        How many hardware engineers does it take to change a light bulb?
A:        None.  We'll fix it in software.

Q:        How many system programmers does it take to change a light bulb?
A:        None.  The application can work around it.

Q:        How many software engineers does it take to change a light bulb?
A:        None.  We'll document it in the manual.

Q:        How many tech writers does it take to change a light bulb?
A:        None.  The user can figure it out.
Q:        How many Harvard MBA's does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A:        Just one.  He grasps it firmly and the universe revolves around him.
Q:        How many IBM 370's does it take to execute a job?
A:        Four, three to hold it down, and one to rip its head off.
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:        How many IBM types does it take to change a light bulb?
A:        Fifteen.  One to do it, and fourteen to write document number
        GC7500439-0001, Multitasking Incandescent Source System Facility,
        of which 10% of the pages state only "This page intentionally
        left blank", and 20% of the definitions are of the form "A:.....
        consists of sequences of non-blank characters separated by blanks".
Q:        How many journalists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A:        Three.  One to report it as an inspired government program to bring
        light to the people, one to report it as a diabolical government plot
        to deprive the poor of darkness, and one to win a Pulitzer prize for
        reporting that Electric Company hired a light bulb-assassin to break
        the bulb in the first place.
Q:        How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb?
A:        One.  Only it's his light bulb when he's done.
Q:        How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb?
A:        Whereas the party of the first part, also known as "Lawyer", and the
party of the second part, also known as "Light Bulb", do hereby and forthwith
agree to a transaction wherein the party of the second part shall be removed
from the current position as a result of failure to perform previously agreed
upon duties, i.e., the lighting, elucidation, and otherwise illumination of
the area ranging from the front (north) door, through the entryway, terminating
at an area just inside the primary living area, demarcated by the beginning of
the carpet, any spillover illumination being at the option of the party of the
second part and not required by the aforementioned agreement between the
parties.
        The aforementioned removal transaction shall include, but not be
limited to, the following.  The party of the first part shall, with or without
elevation at his option, by means of a chair, stepstool, ladder or any other
means of elevation, grasp the party of the second part and rotate the party
of the second part in a counter-clockwise direction, this point being tendered
non-negotiable.  Upon reaching a point where the party of the second part
becomes fully detached from the receptacle, the party of the first part shall
have the option of disposing of the party of the second part in a manner
consistent with all relevant and applicable local, state and federal statutes.
Once separation and disposal have been achieved, the party of the first part
shall have the option of beginning installation.  Aforesaid installation shall
occur in a manner consistent with the reverse of the procedures described in
step one of this self-same document, being careful to note that the rotation
should occur in a clockwise direction, this point also being non-negotiable.
The above described steps may be performed, at the option of the party of the
first part, by any or all agents authorized by him, the objective being to
produce the most possible revenue for the Partnership.
Q:        How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb?
A:        You won't find a lawyer who can change a light bulb.  Now, if
        you're looking for a lawyer to screw a light bulb...
Q:        How many marketing people does it take to change a light bulb?
A:        I'll have to get back to you on that.
Q:        How many Martians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A:        One and a half.
Q:        How many Marxists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A:        None:  The light bulb contains the seeds of its own revolution.
Q:        How many mathematicians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A:        One.  He gives it to six Californians, thereby reducing the problem
        to the earlier joke.
Q:        How many members of the U.S.S. Enterprise does it take to change a
        light bulb?
A:        Seven.  Scotty has to report to Captain Kirk that the light bulb in
        the Engineering Section is getting dim, at which point Kirk will send
        Bones to pronounce the bulb dead (although he'll immediately claim
        that he's a doctor, not an electrician).  Scotty, after checking
        around, realizes that they have no more new light bulbs, and complains
        that he "canna" see in the dark.  Kirk will make an emergency stop at
        the next uncharted planet, Alpha Regula IV, to procure a light bulb
        from the natives, who, are friendly, but seem to be hiding something.
        Kirk, Spock, Bones, Yeoman Rand and two red shirt security officers
        beam down to the planet, where the two security officers are promply
        killed by the natives, and the rest of the landing party is captured.
        As something begins to develop between the Captain and Yeoman Rand,
        Scotty, back in orbit, is attacked by a Klingon destroyer and must
        warp out of orbit.  Although badly outgunned, he cripples the Klingon
        and races back to the planet in order to rescue Kirk et. al. who have
        just saved the natives' from an awful fate and, as a reward, been
        given all light bulbs they can carry.  The new bulb is then inserted
        and the Enterprise continues on its five year mission.
Q:        How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A:        Three.  One to screw in the light bulb and two to fend off all those
        Californians trying to share the experience.
Q:        How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?
A:        Only one, but it takes a long time, and the light bulb has
        to really want to change.
Q:        How many supply-siders does it take to change a light bulb?
A:        None.  The darkness will cause the light bulb to change by itself.
Q:        How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?
A:        Two, one to hold the giraffe, and the other to fill the bathtub
        with brightly colored machine tools.

        [Surrealist jokes just aren't my cup of fur.  Ed.]
Q:        How many WASPs does it take to change a light bulb?
A:        One.
Q:        How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A:        None.  The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master stays out
        of the way.
Q:        What does friendship among Soviet nationalities mean?
A:        It means that the Armenians take the Russians by the hand; the
        Russians take the Ukrainians by the hand; the Ukranians take
        the Uzbeks by the hand; and they all go and beat up the Jews.
Q:        Where's the Lone Ranger take his garbage?
A:        To the dump, to the dump, to the dump dump dump!

Q:        What's the Pink Panther say when he steps on an ant hill?
A:        Dead ant, dead ant, dead ant dead ant dead ant...
Q:        Why don't Scotsmen ever have coffee the way they like it?
A:        Well, they like it with two lumps of sugar.  If they drink
        it at home, they only take one, and if they drink it while
        visiting, they always take three.
         A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling
                          by Mark Twain

        For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped
to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer
be part of the alphabet.  The only kase in which "c" would be retained
would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later.  Year 2
might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the
same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with
"i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
        Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear
with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12
or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.
Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi
ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz
ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
        Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud
hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
        A reader reports that when the patient died, the attending doctor
recorded the following on the patient's chart:  "Patient failed to fulfill
his wellness potential."
        Another doctor reports that in a recent issue of the *American Journal
of Family Practice* fleas were called "hematophagous arthropod vectors."
        A reader reports that the Army calls them "vertically deployed anti-
personnel devices."  You probably call them bombs.
        At McClellan Air Force base in Sacramento, California, civilian
mechanics were placed on "non-duty, non-pay status."  That is, they were fired.
        After taking the trip of a lifetime, our reader sent his twelve rolls
of film to Kodak for developing (or "processing," as Kodak likes to call it)
only to receive the following notice:  "We must report that during the handling
of your twelve 35mm Kodachrome slide orders, the films were involved in an
unusual laboratory experience."  The use of the passive is a particularly nice
touch, don't you think?  Nobody did anything to the films; they just had a bad
experience.  Of course our reader can always go back to Tibet and take his
pictures all over again, using the twelve replacement rolls Kodak so generously
sent him.
                -- Quarterly Review of Doublespeak (NCTE)
                        It's grad exam time...
COMPUTER SCIENCE
        Inside your desk you'll find a listing of the DEC/VMS operating
system in IBM 1710 machine code. Show what changes are necessary to convert
this code into a UNIX Berkeley 7 operating system.  Prove that these fixes are
bug free and run correctly. You should gain at least 150% efficiency in the
new system.  (You should take no more than 10 minutes on this question.)

MATHEMATICS
        If X equals PI times R^2, construct a formula showing how long
it would take a fire ant to drill a hole through a dill pickle, if the
length-girth ratio of the ant to the pickle were 98.17:1.

GENERAL KNOWLEDGE
Describe the Universe.  Give three examples.
Universities are places of knowledge.  The freshman each bring a little
in with them, and the seniors take none away, so knowledge accumulates.
A help wanted add for a photo journalist asked the rhetorical question:

If you found yourself in a situation where you could either save
a drowning man, or you could take a Pulitzer prize winning
photograph of him drowning, what shutter speed and setting would you use?
                -- Paul Harvey
Also, the Scots are said to have invented golf.  Then they had
to invent Scotch whiskey to take away the pain and frustration.
Do Miami a favor.  When you leave, take someone with you.
Someone did a study of the three most-often-heard phrases in New York
City.  One is "Hey, taxi."  Two is, "What train do I take to get to
Bloomingdale's?"  And three is, "Don't worry.  It's just a flesh wound."
                -- David Letterman
A bunch of Polish scientists decided to flee their repressive government by
hijacking an airliner and forcing the pilot to fly them to the West.  They
drove to the airport, forced their way on board a large passenger jet, and
found there was no pilot on board.  Terrified, they listened as the sirens
got louder.  Finally, one of the scientists suggested that since he was an
experimentalist, he would try to fly the aircraft.
        He sat down at the controls and tried to figure them out.  The sirens
got louder and louder.  Armed men surrounded the jet.  The would be pilot's
friends cried out, "Please, please take off now!!!  Hurry!!!"
        The experimentalist calmly replied, "Have patience.  I'm just a simple
pole in a complex plane."
Although we modern persons tend to take our electric lights, radios, mixers,
etc., for granted, hundreds of years ago people did not have any of these
things, which is just as well because there was no place to plug them in.
Then along came the first Electrical Pioneer, Benjamin Franklin, who flew a
kite in a lighting storm and received a serious electrical shock.  This
proved that lighting was powered by the same force as carpets, but it also
damaged Franklin's brain so severely that he started speaking only in
incomprehensible maxims, such as "A penny saved is a penny earned."
Eventually he had to be given a job running the post office.
                -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
Isn't it strange that the same people that laugh at gypsy fortune
tellers take economists seriously?
Proof techniques #1: Proof by Induction.

This technique is used on equations with "_n" in them.  Induction
techniques are very popular, even the military used them.

SAMPLE: Proof of induction without proof of induction.

        We know it's true for _n equal to 1.  Now assume that it's true
for every natural number less than _n.  _N is arbitrary, so we can take _n
as large as we want.  If _n is sufficiently large, the case of _n+1 is
trivially equivalent, so the only important _n are _n less than _n.  We
can take _n = _n (from above), so it's true for _n+1 because it's just
about _n.
        QED.        (QED translates from the Latin as "So what?")
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for Mother Nature
cannot be fooled.
                -- R.P. Feynman
Take an astronaut to launch.
The Commandments of the EE:

(5)        Take care that thou useth the proper method when thou takest the
        measures of high-voltage circuits too, that thou dost not incinerate
        both thee and thy test meter, for verily, though thou has no company
        property number and can be easily surveyed, the test meter has
        one and, as a consequence, bringeth much woe unto a purchasing agent.
(6)        Take care that thou tamperest not with interlocks and safety devices,
        for this incurreth the wrath of the chief electrician and bring
        the fury of the engineers on his head.
(7)        Work thou not on energized equipment for if thou doest so, thy
        friends will surely be buying beers for thy widow and consoling
        her in certain ways not generally acceptable to thee.
(8)        Verily, verily I say unto thee, never service equipment alone,
        for electrical cooking is a slow process and thou might sizzle in
        thy own fat upon a hot circuit for hours on end before thy maker
        sees fit to end thy misery and drag thee into his fold.
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Yes, you too can take advantage of the amazing properties of Dot-Product.  Use
it to calculate forces, velocities, displacements, and virtually any vector
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Call 1-800-DOT-6000.  Operators are standing by.  That number again...
1-800-DOT-6000.  Supplies are limited, so act now.  This offer is not
available through stores and is void where prohibited by law.
Top scientists agree that with the present rate of consumption, the earth's
supply of gravity will be exhausted before the 24th century. As man
struggles to discover cheaper alternatives, we need your help. Please...

                        CONSERVE GRAVITY

Follow these simple suggestions:

(1)  Walk with a light step.  Carry helium balloons if possible.
(2)  Use tape, magnets, or glue instead of paperweights.
(3)  Give up skiing and skydiving for more horizontal sports like curling.
(4)  Avoid showers .. take baths instead.
(5)  Don't hang all your clothes in the closet ... Keep them in one big pile.
(6)  Stop flipping pancakes
We dedicate this book to our fellow citizens who, for love of truth, take from
their own wants by taxes and gifts, and now and then send forth one of
themselves as dedicated servant, to forward the search into the mysteries and
marvelous simplicities of this strange and beautiful Universe, Our home.
                -- "Gravitation", Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler
You can take all the impact that science considerations have on funding
decisions at NASA, put them in the navel of a flea, and have room left
over for a caraway seed and Tony Calio's heart.
                -- F. Allen
Do you feel personally responsible for the world food shortage?
Every time you go to the beach, does the tide come in?
Have you ever eaten an entire moose?
Can you see your neck?
Do joggers take laps around you for exercise?
If so, welcome to National Fat Week.
This week we'll eat without guilt, and kick off our membership campaign,
        ...by force-feeding a box of cornstarch to a skinny person.
                -- Garfield
How many hors d'oeuvres you are allowed to take off a tray being carried by
a waiter at a nice party?
        Two, but there are ways around it, depending on the style of the hors
d'oeuvre.  If they're those little pastry things where you can't tell what's
inside, you take one, bite off about two-thirds of it, then say:  "This is
cheese!  I hate cheese!"  Then you put the rest of it back on the tray and
bite another one and go, "Darn it!  Another cheese!" and so on.
                -- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette"
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"
RULES OF EATING -- THE BRONX DIETER'S CREED
        (1)  Never eat on an empty stomach.
        (2)  Never leave the table hungry.
        (3)  When traveling, never leave a country hungry.
        (4)  Enjoy your food.
        (5)  Enjoy your companion's food.
        (6)  Really taste your food.  It may take several portions to
             accomplish this, especially if subtly seasoned.
        (7)  Really feel your food.  Texture is important.  Compare,
             for example, the texture of a turnip to that of a
             brownie.  Which feels better against your cheeks?
        (8)  Never eat between snacks, unless it's a meal.
        (9)  Don't feel you must finish everything on your plate.  You
             can always eat it later.
        (10) Avoid any wine with a childproof cap.
        (11) Avoid blue food.
                -- Richard Smith, "The Bronx Diet"
You should tip the waiter $10, minus $2 if he tells you his name, another $2
if he claims it will be His Pleasure to serve you and another $2 for each
"special" he describes involving confusing terms such as "shallots," and $4
if the menu contains the word "fixin's." In many restaurants, this means the
waiter will actually owe you money. If you are traveling with a child aged
six months to three years, you should leave an additional amount equal to
twice the bill to compensate for the fact that they will have to take the
banquette out and burn it because the cracks are wedged solid with gobbets
made of partially chewed former restaurant rolls saturated with baby spit.

In New York, tip the taxicab driver $40 if he does not mention his hemorrhoids.
                -- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette"
100 buckets of bits on the bus        
100 buckets of bits
Take one down, short it to ground
FF buckets of bits on the bus        

FF buckets of bits on the bus        
FF buckets of bits
Take one down, short it to ground
FE buckets of bits on the bus        

ad infinitum...
Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall,
Aleph-null bottles of beer,
You take one down, and pass it around,
Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall.
And I heard Jeff exclaim,
As they strolled out of sight,
"Merry Christmas to all --
You take credit cards, right?"
                -- "Outsiders" comic
As I was walking down the street one dark and dreary day,
I came upon a billboard and much to my dismay,
The words were torn and tattered,
From the storm the night before,
The wind and rain had done its work and this is how it goes,

Smoke Coca-Cola cigarettes, chew Wrigleys Spearmint beer,
Ken-L-Ration dog food makes your complexion clear,
Simonize your baby in a Hershey candy bar,
And Texaco's a beauty cream that's used by every star.

Take your next vacation in a brand new Frigedaire,
Learn to play the piano in your winter underwear,
Doctors say that babies should smoke until they're three,
And people over sixty-five should bathe in Lipton tea.
Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood,
Stop up the access and passage to remorse
That no compunctious visiting of nature
Shake my fell purpose, not keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night,
And pall the in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry `Hold, hold!'
                -- Lady MacBeth
Don't wake me up too soon...
Gonna take a ride across the moon...
You and me.
Eleanor Rigby
        Sits at the keyboard
        And waits for a line on the screen
Lives in a dream
Waits for a signal
        Finding some code
        That will make the machine do some more.
What is it for?

All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
All the lonely users, why does it take so long?

Hacker MacKensie
Writing the code for a program that no one will run
It's nearly done
Look at him working, fixing the bugs in the night when there's
        nobody there.
What does he care?

All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
All the lonely users, why does it take so long?
Ah, look at all the lonely users.
Ah, look at all the lonely users.
Even in the moment of our earliest kiss,
When sighed the straitened bud into the flower,
Sat the dry seed of most unwelcome this;
And that I knew, though not the day and hour.
Too season-wise am I, being country-bred,
To tilt at autumn or defy the frost:
Snuffing the chill even as my fathers did,
I say with them, "What's out tonight is lost."
I only hoped, with the mild hope of all
Who watch the leaf take shape upon the tree,
A fairer summer and a later fall
Than in these parts a man is apt to see,
And sunny clusters ripened for the wine:
I tell you this across the blackened vine.
                -- Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Even in the Moment of
                   Our Earliest Kiss", 1931
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded.  Everybody rolls with their
fingers crossed.  Everybody knows the war is over.  Everybody knows the
good guys lost.  Everybody knows the fight was fixed: the poor stay
poor, the rich get rich.  That's how it goes.  Everybody knows.

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking.  Everybody knows the captain
lied.  Everybody got this broken feeling like their father or their dog
just died.

Everybody talking to their pockets.  Everybody wants a box of chocolates
and long stem rose.  Everybody knows.

Everybody knows that you love me, baby.  Everybody knows that you really
do.  Everybody knows that you've been faithful, give or take a night or
two.  Everybody knows you've been discreet, but there were so many people
you just had to meet without your clothes.  And everybody knows.

And everybody knows it's now or never.  Everybody knows that it's me or you.
And everybody knows that you live forever when you've done a line or two.
Everybody knows the deal is rotten: Old Black Joe's still pickin' cotton
for you ribbons and bows.  And everybody knows.
        -- Leonard Cohen, "Everybody Knows"
Five names that I can hardly stand to hear,
Including yours and mine and one more chimp who isn't here,
I can see the ladies talking how the times is gettin' hard,
And that fearsome excavation on Magnolia boulevard,
Yes, I'm goin' insane,
And I'm laughing at the frozen rain,
Well, I'm so alone, honey when they gonna send me home?
        Bad sneakers and a pina colada my friend,
        Stopping on the avenue by Radio City, with a
        Transistor and a large sum of money to spend...
You fellah, you tearin' up the street,
You wear that white tuxedo, how you gonna beat the heat,
Do you take me for a fool, do you think that I don't see,
That ditch out in the Valley that they're diggin' just for me,
Yes, and goin' insane,
You know I'm laughin' at the frozen rain,
Feel like I'm so alone, honey when they gonna send me home?
(chorus)
                -- Bad Sneakers, "Steely Dan"
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
Gimme Twinkies, gimme wine,
    Gimme jeans by Calvin Kline ...
But if you split those atoms fine,
    Mama keep 'em off those genes of mine!

Gimme zits, take my dough,
    Gimme arsenic in my jelly roll ...
Call the devil and sell my soul,
    But Mama keep dem atoms whole!
                -- Milo Bloom, "The Split-Atom Blues," in "Bloom County"
        Hack placidly amidst the noisy printers and remember what prizes there
may be in Science.  As fast as possible get a good terminal on a good system.
Enter your data clearly but always encrypt your results.  And listen to others,
even the dull and ignorant, for they may be your customers.  Avoid loud and
aggressive persons, for they are sales reps.
        If you compare your outputs with those of others, you may be surprised,
for always there will be greater and lesser numbers than you have crunched.
Keep others interested in your career, and try not to fumble; it can be a real
hassle and could change your fortunes in time.
        Exercise system control in your experiments, for the world is full of
bugs.  But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive
for linearity and everywhere papers are full of approximations.  Strive for
proportionality.  Especially, do not faint when it occurs.  Neither be cyclical
about results; for in the face of all data analysis it is sure to be noticed.
        Take with a grain of salt the anomalous data points.  Gracefully pass
them on to the youth at the next desk.  Nurture some mutual funds to shield
you in times of sudden layoffs.  But do not distress yourself with imaginings
-- the real bugs are enough to screw you badly.  Murphy's Law runs the
Universe -- and whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt <Curl>B*n dS = 0.
        Therefore, grab for a piece of the pie, with whatever proposals you
can conceive of to try.  With all the crashed disks, skewed data, and broken
line printers, you can still have a beautiful secretary.  Be linear.  Strive
to stay employed.
                -- Technolorata, "Analog"
                Hard Copies and Chmod

And everyone thinks computers are impersonal
cold diskdrives hardware monitors
user-hostile software

of course they're only bits and bytes
and characters and strings
and files

just some old textfiles from my old boyfriend
telling me he loves me and
he'll take care of me

simply a discarded printout of a friend's directory
deep intimate secrets and
how he doesn't trust me

couldn't hurt me more if they were scented in lavender or mould
on personal stationery
                -- terri@csd4.milw.wisc.edu
Have you seen the old man in the closed down market,
Kicking up the papers in his worn out shoes?
In his eyes you see no pride, hands hang loosely at his side
Yesterdays papers, telling yesterdays news.

How can you tell me you're lonely,
And say for you the sun don't shine?
Let me take you by the hand
Lead you through the streets of London
I'll show you something to make you change your mind...

Have you seen the old man outside the sea-man's mission
Memories fading like the metal ribbons that he wears.
In our winter city the rain cries a little pity
For one more forgotten hero and a world that doesn't care...
I see a bad moon rising.
I see trouble on the way.
I see earthquakes and lightnin'
I see bad times today.
Don't go 'round tonight,
It's bound to take your life.
There's a bad moon on the rise.
                -- J. C. Fogerty, "Bad Moon Rising"
If a system is administered wisely,
its users will be content.
They enjoy hacking their code
and don't waste time implementing
labor-saving shell scripts.
Since they dearly love their accounts,
they aren't interested in other machines.
There may be telnet, rlogin, and ftp,
but these don't access any hosts.
There may be an arsenal of cracks and malware,
but nobody ever uses them.
People enjoy reading their mail,
take pleasure in being with their newsgroups,
spend weekends working at their terminals,
delight in the doings at the site.
And even though the next system is so close
that users can hear its key clicks and biff beeps,
they are content to die of old age
without ever having gone to see it.
If I could read your mind, love,
What a tale your thoughts could tell,
Just like a paperback novel,
The kind the drugstore sells,
When you reach the part where the heartaches come,
The hero would be me,
Heroes often fail,
You won't read that book again, because
        the ending is just too hard to take.

I walk away, like a movie star,
Who gets burned in a three way script,
Enter number two,
A movie queen to play the scene
Of bringing all the good things out in me,
But for now, love, let's be real
I never thought I could act this way,
And I've got to say that I just don't get it,
I don't know where we went wrong but the feeling is gone
And I just can't get it back...
                -- Gordon Lightfoot, "If You Could Read My Mind"
Lighten up, while you still can,
Don't even try to understand,
Just find a place to make your stand,
And take it easy.
                -- The Eagles, "Take It Easy"
Like corn in a field I cut you down,
I threw the last punch way too hard,
After years of going steady, well, I thought it was time,
To throw in my hand for a new set of cards.
And I can't take you dancing out on the weekend,
I figured we'd painted too much of this town,
And I tried not to look as I walked to my wagon,
And I knew then I had lost what should have been found,
I knew then I had lost what should have been found.
        And I feel like a bullet in the gun of Robert Ford
        I'm as low as a paid assassin is
        You know I'm cold as a hired sword.
        I'm so ashamed we can't patch it up,
        You know I can't think straight no more
        You make me feel like a bullet, honey,
                a bullet in the gun of Robert Ford.
                -- Elton John "I Feel Like a Bullet"
Louie Louie, me gotta go
Louie Louie, me gotta go

Fine little girl she waits for me
Me catch the ship for cross the sea
Me sail the ship all alone                Three nights and days me sail the sea
Me never thinks me make it home                Me think of girl constantly
(chorus)                                On the ship I dream she there
                                        I smell the rose in her hair
Me see Jamaica moon above                (chorus, guitar solo)
It won't be long, me see my love
I take her in my arms and then
Me tell her I never leave again
                -- The real words to The Kingsmen's classic "Louie Louie"
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
Nine-track tapes and seven-track tapes
And tapes without any tracks;
Stretchy tapes and snarley tapes
And tapes mixed up on the racks --
        Take hold of the tape
        And pull off the strip,
        And then you'll be sure
        Your tape drive will skip.
                -- Uncle Colonel's Cursory Rhymes
Now of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It leaves me only fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
                -- A.E. Housman
Now's the time to have some big ideas
Now's the time to make some firm decisions
We saw the Buddha in a bar down south
Talking politics and nuclear fission
We see him and he's all washed up --
Moving on into the body of a beetle
Getting ready for a long long crawl
He  ain't nothing -- he ain't nothing at all...

Death and Money make their point once more
In the shape of Philosophical assassins
Mark and Danny take the bus uptown
Deadly angels for reality and passion
Have the courage of the here and now
Don't taking nothing from the half-baked buddhas
When you think you got it paid in full
You got nothing -- you got nothing at all...
        We're on the road and we're gunning for the Buddha.
        We know his name and he mustn't get away.
        We're on the road and we're gunning for the Buddha.
        It would take one shot -- to blow him away...
                -- Shriekback, "Gunning for the Buddah"
Oh, give me a locus where the gravitons focus
        Where the three-body problem is solved,
        Where the microwaves play down at three degrees K,
        And the cold virus never evolved.                        (chorus)
We eat algea pie, our vacuum is high,
        Our ball bearings are perfectly round.
        Our horizon is curved, our warheads are MIRVed,
        And a kilogram weighs half a pound.                        (chorus)
If we run out of space for our burgeoning race
        No more Lebensraum left for the Mensch
        When we're ready to start, we can take Mars apart,
        If we just find a big enough wrench.                        (chorus)
I'm sick of this place, it's just McDonald's in space,
        And living up here is a bore.
        Tell the shiggies, "Don't cry," they can kiss me goodbye
        'Cause I'm moving next week to L4!                        (chorus)

CHORUS:        Home, home on LaGrange,
        Where the space debris always collects,
        We possess, so it seems, two of Man's greatest dreams:
        Solar power and zero-gee sex.
                -- to Home on the Range
On a morning from a Bogart movie, in a country where they turned back time,
You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre contemplating a crime.
She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running like a watercolor in the rain.
Don't bother asking for explanations, she'll just tell you that she came
In the Year of the Cat.

She doesn't give you time for questions, as she locks up your arm in hers,
And you follow 'till your sense of which direction completely disappears.
By the blue-tiled walls near the market stall there's a hidden door she
    leads you to.
These days, she say, I feel my life just like a river running through
The Year of the Cat.

Well, she looks at you so coolly,
And her eyes shine like the moon in the sea.
She comes in incense and patchouli,
So you take her to find what's waiting inside
The Year of the Cat.

Well, morning comes and you're still with her, but the bus and the tourists
    are gone,
And you've thrown away your choice and lost your ticket, so you have to stay on.
But the drum-beat strains of the night remain in the rhythm of the new-born day.
You know some time you're bound to leave her, but for now you're going to stay
In the Year of the Cat.
                -- Al Stewart, "Year of the Cat"
        Proposed Country & Western Song Titles
I Can't Get Over You, So I Get Up and Go Around to the Other Side
If You Won't Leave Me Alone, I'll Find Someone Who Will
I Knew That You'd Committed a Sin When You Came Home Late With
        Your Socks Outside-in
I'm a Rabbit in the Headlights of Your Love
Don't Kick My Tires If You Ain't Gonna Take Me For a Ride
I Liked You Better Before I Knew You So Well
I Still Miss You, Baby, But My Aim's Gettin' Better
I've Got Red Eyes From Your White Lies and I'm Blue All the Time
                -- "Wordplay"
        Proposed Country & Western Song Titles
I Don't Mind If You Lie to Me, As Long As I Ain't Lyin' Alone
I Wouldn't Take You to a Dog Fight Even If I Thought You Could Win
If You Leave Me, Walk Out Backwards So I'll Think You're Comin' In
Since You Learned to Lip-Sync, I'm At Your Disposal
My John Deere Was Breaking Your Field, While Your Dear John Was
        Breaking My Heart
Don't Cry, Little Darlin', You're Waterin' My Beer
Tennis Must Be Your Racket, 'Cause Love Means Nothin' to You
When You Say You Love Me, You're Full of Prunes, 'Cause Living
        With You Is the Pits
I Wanted Your Hand in Marriage but All I Got Was the Finger
                -- "Wordplay"
Reclaimer, spare that tree!
Take not a single bit!
It used to point to me,
Now I'm protecting it.
It was the reader's CONS
That made it, paired by dot;
Now, GC, for the nonce,
Thou shalt reclaim it not.
She stood on the tracks
Waving her arms
Leading me to that third rail shock
Quick as a wink
She changed her mind

She gave me a night
That's all it was
What will it take until I stop
Kidding myself
Wasting my time

There's nothing else I can do
'Cause I'm doing it all for Leyna
I don't want anyone new
'Cause I'm living it all for Leyna
There's nothing in it for you
'Cause I'm giving it all to Leyna
                -- Billy Joel, "All for Leyna" (Glass Houses)
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"
Take heart amid the deepening gloom that your dog is finally getting
enough cheese.
                -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
The net of law is spread so wide,
No sinner from its sweep may hide.
Its meshes are so fine and strong,
They take in every child of wrong.
O wondrous web of mystery!
Big fish alone escape from thee!
                -- James Jeffrey Roche
This is the story of the bee
Whose sex is very hard to see

You cannot tell the he from the she
But she can tell, and so can he

The little bee is never still
She has no time to take the pill

And that is why, in times like these
There are so many sons of bees.
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 write a sonnet you must ruthlessly
strip down your words to naked, willing flesh.
Then bind them to a metaphor or three,
and take by force a satisfying mesh.
Arrange them to your will, each foot in place.
You are the master here, and they the slaves.
Now whip them to maintain a constant pace
and rhythm as they stand in even staves.
A word that strikes no pleasure?  Cast it out!
What use are words that drive not to the heart?
A lazy phrase? Discard it, shrug off doubt,
and choose more docile words to take its part.
A well-trained sonnet lives to entertain,
by making love directly to the brain.
Upon the hearth the fire is red,
Beneath the roof there is a bed;
But not yet weary are our feet,
Still round the corner we may meet
A sudden tree or standing stone
That none have seen but we alone.        Still round the corner there may wait
  Tree and flower and leaf and grass,        A new road or a secret gate,
  Let them pass!  Let them pass!        And though we pass them by today
  Hill and water under sky,                Tomorrow we may come this way
  Pass them by!  Pass them by!                And take the hidden paths that run
                                        Towards the Moon or to the Sun,
Home is behind, the world ahead,          Apple, thorn, and nut and sloe,
And there are many paths to tread          Let them go!  Let them go!
Through shadows to the edge of night,          Sand and stone and pool and dell,
Until the stars are all alight.                  Fare you well!  Fare you well!
Then world behind and home ahead,
We'll wander back to home and bed.
  Mist and twilight, cloud and shade,
  Away shall fade!  Away shall fade!
  Fire and lamp, and meat and bread,
  And then to bed!  And then to bed!
                -- J. R. R. Tolkien
We've tried each spinning space mote
And reckoned its true worth:
Take us back again to the homes of men
On the cool, green hills of Earth.

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

We pray for one last landing
On the globe that gave us birth;
Let us rest our eyes on the fleecy skies
And the cool, green hills of Earth.
                -- Robert A. Heinlein, 1941
Well I looked at my watch and it said a quarter to five,
The headline screamed that I was still alive,
I couldn't understand it, I thought I died last night.
I dreamed I'd been in a border town,
In a little cantina that the boys had found,
I was desperate to dance, just to dig the local sounds.
When along came a senorita,
She looked so good that I had to meet her,
I was ready to approach her with my English charm,
When her brass knuckled boyfriend grabbed me by the arm,
And he said, grow some funk of your own, amigo,
Grow some funk of your own.
We no like to with the gringo fight,
But there might be a death in Mexico tonite.
...
Take my advice, take the next flight,
And grow some funk, grow your funk at home.
                -- Elton John, "Grow Some Funk of Your Own"
Well, some take delight in the carriages a-rolling,
And some take delight in the hurling and the bowling,
But I take delight in the juice of the barley,
And courting pretty fair maids in the morning bright and early.
Well, we're big rock singers, we've got golden fingers,
And we're loved everywhere we go.
We sing about beauty, and we sing about truth,
At ten thousand dollars a show.
We take all kind of pills to give us all kind of thrills,
But the thrill we've never known,
Is the thrill that'll get'cha, when you get your picture,
On the cover of the Rolling Stone.

I got a freaky old lady, name of Cole King Katie,
Who embroiders on my jeans.
I got my poor old gray-haired daddy,
Drivin' my limousine.
Now it's all designed, to blow our minds,
But our minds won't be really be blown;
Like the blow that'll get'cha, when you get your picture,
On the cover of the Rolling Stone.

We got a lot of little, teen-aged, blue-eyed groupies,
Who'll do anything we say.
We got a genuine Indian guru, that's teachin' us a better way.
We got all the friends that money can buy,
So we never have to be alone.
And we keep gettin' richer, but we can't get our picture,
On the cover of the Rolling Stone.
                -- Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show
                [As a note, they eventually DID make the cover of RS. Ed.]
When the leaders speak of peace
The common folk know
That war is coming
When the leaders curse war
The mobilization order is already written out.

Every day, to earn my daily bread
I go to the market where lies are bought
Hopefully
I take my place among the sellers.
                -- Bertolt Brecht, "Hollywood"
When you find yourself in danger,
When you're threatened by a stranger,
When it looks like you will take a lickin'...

There is one thing you should learn,
When there is no one else to turn to,
        Caaaall for Super Chicken!!    (**bwuck-bwuck-bwuck-bwuck**)
        Caaaall for Super Chicken!!
Celebrate Hannibal Day this year.  Take an elephant to lunch.
In the stairway of life, you'd best take the elevator.
It is so very hard to be an
on-your-own-take-care-of-yourself-because-there-is-no-one-else-to-do-it-for-you
grown-up.
You have literary talent that you should take pains to develop.
Although written many years ago, Lady Chatterley's Lover has just been
reissued by the Grove Press, and this pictorial account of the
day-to-day life of an English gamekeeper is full of considerable
interest to outdoor minded readers, as it contains many passages on
pheasant-raising, the apprehending of poachers, ways to control vermin,
and other chores and duties of the professional gamekeeper.
Unfortunately, one is obliged to wade through many pages of extraneous
material in order to discover and savour those sidelights on the
management of a midland shooting estate, and in this reviewer's opinion
the book cannot take the place of J. R. Miller's "Practical Gamekeeping."
                -- Ed Zern, "Field and Stream" (Nov. 1959)
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"
If you want to see card tricks, you have to expect to take cards.
                -- Harry Blackstone
Life is a gamble at terrible odds, if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.
                -- Tom Stoppard, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead"
This fortune cookie program out of order.  For those in desperate need,
please use the program "________randchar".  This program generates random
characters, and, given enough time, will undoubtedly come up with
something profound.  It will, however, take it no time at all to be
more profound than THIS program has ever been.
But Captain -- the engines can't take this much longer!
Do you know the one -- "All I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer
her by ..."  You could feel the wind at your back, about you ...  the
sounds of the sea beneath you.  And even if you take away the wind and
the water, it's still the same.  The ship is yours ... you can feel her
... and the stars are still there.
                -- Kirk, "The Ultimate Computer", stardate 4729.4
        "I think they're going to take all this money that we spend now on war
and death --"
        "And make them spend it on life."
                -- Edith Keeler and Kirk, "The City on the Edge of Forever",
                   stardate unknown.
One of the advantages of being a captain is being able to ask for
advice without necessarily having to take it.
                -- Kirk, "Dagger of the Mind", stardate 2715.2
"`I think you ought to know that I'm feeling very
depressed.'"
"`Life, don't talk to me about life.'"
"`Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to
take you down to the bridge. Call that "job satisfaction"?
'Cos I don't.'"
"`I've got this terrible pain in all the diodes down my
left side.'"

- Guess who.
        A MODERN FABLE

Aesop's fables and other traditional children's stories involve allegory
far too subtle for the youth of today.  Children need an updated message
with contemporary circumstance and plot line, and short enough to suit
today's minute attention span.

        The Troubled Aardvark

Once upon a time, there was an aardvark whose only pleasure in life was
driving from his suburban bungalow to his job at a large brokerage house
in his brand new 4x4.  He hated his manipulative boss, his conniving and
unethical co-workers, his greedy wife, and his snivelling, spoiled
children.  One day, the aardvark reflected on the meaning of his life and
his career and on the unchecked, catastrophic decline of his nation, its
pathetic excuse for leadership, and the complete ineffectiveness of any
personal effort he could make to change the status quo.  Overcome by a
wave of utter depression and self-doubt, he decided to take the only
course of action that would bring him greater comfort and happiness: he
drove to the mall and bought imported consumer electronics goods.

MORAL OF THE STORY:  Invest in foreign consumer electronics manufacturers.
                -- Tom Annau
Don't take life so serious, son, it ain't nohow permanent.
                -- Walt Kelly
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"
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"
I used to live in a house by the freeway.  When I went anywhere, I had
to be going 65 MPH by the end of my driveway.

I replaced the headlights in my car with strobe lights.  Now it looks
like I'm the only one moving.

I was pulled over for speeding today.  The officer said, "Don't you know
the speed limit is 55 miles an hour?"  And I said, "Yes, but I wasn't going
to be out that long."

I put a new engine in my car, but didn't take the old one out.  Now
my car goes 500 miles an hour.
                -- Steven Wright
I worked in a health food store once.  A guy came in and asked me,
"If I melt dry ice, can I take a bath without getting wet?"
                -- Steven Wright
Sharks are as tough as those football fans who take their shirts off
during games in Chicago in January, only more intelligent.
                -- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every
                   Teen Should Know"
There comes a time in the affairs of a man when he has to take the bull
by the tail and face the situation.
                -- W.C. Fields
"Suppose I want to take over the world. Simplicity says I should just take over the world by myself."

  -- Larry Wall (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
Q: How many Pentium designers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: 1.99904274017, but that's close enough for non-technical people.
Q: How many Bill Gateses does it take to change a light bulb?
A: One. He puts the bulb in and lets the world revolve around him.
A: None. He declares Darkness(tm) the new industry standard.
Q: How many Microsoft support staff does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Four. One to ask "What is the registration number of the light bulb?", one
   to ask "Have you tried rebooting it?", another to ask "Have you tried
   reinstalling it?" and the last one to say "It must be your hardware because
   the light bulb in our office works fine..."
Q: How many Microsoft vice presidents does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Eight. One to work the bulb, and seven to make sure that Microsoft gets $2
   for every light bulb ever changed anywhere in the world.
Q: How many Microsoft tech writers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Twelve.  One to work the bulb, and eleven to write a 1,123 page guide to
   changing lightbulbs ("Learn Lightbulb Management in 21 Days").
Q: How many Micro$oft programmers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: 472. One to write WinGetLightBulbHandle.  One to write
   WinQueryStatusLightBulb. One to write WinGetLightSwitch-Handle...
Q: How many Internet Explorer programmers does it take to change a
   lightbulb?
A: None.  Their light bulbs are integrated in to the fixtures and can not
   be changed.
Q: How many Microsoft Programmers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: It cannot be done. You will need to upgrade your house.

Q: How many Linux users does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Two. One to write the HOWTO-LIGHTBULB-CRONJOB, and another to read
it.

   -- Geoff Johnson
Your mouse has moved. Windows NT must be restarted for the change
to take effect. Reboot now?  [ OK ]

   -- From a Slashdot.org post
ARE YOU ADDICTED TO SLASHDOT?
Take this short test to find out if you are a Dothead.

1. Do you submit articles to Slashdot and then reload the main page every 3.2
    seconds to see if your article has been published yet?
2. Have you made more than one "first comment!" post within the past week?
3. Have you ever participated in a Gnome vs. KDE or a Linux vs. FreeBSD
    flamewar on Slashdot?
4. Do you write jokes about Slashdot?
5. Do you wake up at night, go to the bathroom, and fire up your web browser
    to get your Slashdot fix on the way back?
6. Do you dump your date at the curb so you can hurry home to visit Slashdot?
7. Do you think of Slashdot when you order a taco at a restaurant?
8. Are you a charter member of the Rob Malda Fan Club?
9. Did you lease a T3 line so you could download Slashdot faster?
10. Is Slashdot your only brower's bookmark?
11. Do you get a buzz when your browser finally connects to Slashdot?
12. Do you panic when your browser says "Unable to connect to slashdot.org"?
13. Have you even made a New Year's Resolution to cut back on Slashdot
    access... only to visit it at 12:01?
Linux Drinking Game (Abridged)

With a group of friends, take turns reading articles about Linux from popular
media sources (Ziff-Davis AnchorDesk is recommended) or postings on Usenet (try
alt.fan.bill-gates). If the author says one of the things below, take a drink.
Continue until everyone involved is plastered.

- Linux will never go mainstream
- Any platform that can't run Microsoft Office [or some other Microsoft
  "solution"] sucks
- Linux is hard to install
- Linux tech support is lacking
- No one ever got fired for choosing Microsoft
- Any OS with a command line interface is primitive
- Microsoft is an innovative company
- Could you get fired for choosing Linux?
- Linux was created by a bunch of snot-nosed 14 year old hackers with acne and
  no life
- Security through obscurity is the way to go
- Linus and Unix are 70s technology while NT is 90s technology
- All Linux software must be released under the GPL
- Linux is a great piece of shareware
Microsoft Mandatory Survey (#5)

Customers who want to upgrade to Windows 98 Second Edition must now fill
out a Microsoft survey online before they can order the bugfix/upgrade.

Question 5: Where do you want to go today?(tm)

A. To Washington, D.C. to meet Janet Reno and cuss her out for persecuting
   Microsoft

B. To Redmond, WA to take a tour of the Microsoft campus

C. To the software store to purchase a new piece of Microsoft software

D. To my local school district to convince the administration to upgrade
   the Macintoshes in the computer labs to Wintel systems

E. I don't know about myself, but I'd like to see so-called "consumer
   advocates" like Ralph Nader go to Hell.
Jargon Coiner (#4)

An irregular feature that aims to give you advance warning of new jargon
that we've just made up.

* FREE LECTURE: Attempting to explain the concepts of Linux, Open Source
  software, free software, and gift cultures to someone who is not
  familiar with them. Made extra difficult if the explainee has been
  misled by superficial mainstream news articles about the subject.

  Example: "Eric gave an hour-long free lecture to his mother-in-law after
  she asked him about this Linux thingy she read about in USA Today."

* LEXICON LAZINESS:  Filling a fortune file with a list of fake jargon
  instead of publishing something more substantive (and funny) that would
  take more effort to write.

* FOR(;;)TUNE LOOP: Repeatedly running fortune(6) for cheap entertainment.

  Example: "During a coffee break, Bob became bored and started a
  for(;;)tune loop. His boss had to issue a SIGTERM to get him to resume
  working."
Treaty of Helsinki Signed

HELSINKI, FINLAND -- A cease-fire in the flame war between Linux and
FreeBSD has been reached. A group of two dozen Linux and FreeBSD zealots
met in Helsinki to ratify a treaty bringing a temporary end to the hostile
fighting between both camps. "Today is a good day for peace," one observer
noted. "Now both sides can lay down their keyboards and quit flaming the
opposing side on Usenet and Slashdot."

The cease-fire is a response to the sudden increase in fighting that has
occured over the past two weeks. The Slashdot server became a victim of
the cross-fire this week when thousands of Anonymous Cowards and Geek
Zealots posted inflammatory comments that amounted to, "My OS is better
than your OS!" Many nerds, suffering withdrawl symptoms when the Slashdot
site slowed to a crawl, demanded that the bickering stop.

"I can't take it anymore! It takes two minutes to download the Slashdot
homepage -- assuming the site is actually online. I must have my 'News for
Nerds' now! The fighting must stop," one Anonymous Coward ranted.
Do-It-Yourself IPO

You too can get rich quick by translating an existing Linux
distribution into one of the following untapped markets:

- Babylonian
- Hittite
- Ancient Egyptian (hieroglyphics may be a challenge, though)
- Pig Latin (this may be the strongest type of encryption allowed by the
  DOJ in the near future)
- Mayan
- Cherokee
- Cyrillic (to take advantage of the booming Russian economy)
- Redneck
- Klingon (it's a wonder this hasn't been done yet)
- Wingdings    
      
Once you start marketing your new product, a highly lucrative
self-underwritten IPO is just months away!
Evolution Of A Linux User: The 11 Stages Towards Getting A Life

0. Microserf - Your life revolves around Windows and you worship Bill
   Gates and his innovative company.
1. Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt... About Microsoft - You encounter a growing
   number of problems with Microsoft solutions, shaking your world-view
2. FUD... About Linux - After hearing about this new Linux thing, you
   take the plunge, but are unimpressed by the nerdware OS.
3. Born-Again Microserf - You rededicate your life to Microsoft worship
4. Disgruntled User - Microsoft software keeps screwing you over,
   and you're not going to take it anymore!
5. A Religious Experience - You successfully install Linux, and are
   left breathless at its elegance. No more Windows for you!
6. Linux Convert - You continue to fall in love with the new system
7. Linux Zealot - You dedicate your life to Linux World Domination...
   and it shows! You go beyond mere advocacy to sheer zealotry.
8. Back To Reality - Forces out of your control compel you to
   return to using Windows and Office
9. Enlightened Linux User - You become 100% Microsoft free after finding
   ways to overcome the need for Microsoft bloatware
10.Get A Life - You become a millionaire after your Linux portal is
   acquired; you move to a small tropical island and get a life
What Did Santa Claus Bring You In 1999? (#2)

WEBMASTER OF LINUXSUPERMEGAPORTAL.COM: One of my in-laws gifted me a
CD-ROM containing the text of every "...For Dummies" book ever published.
It's a shame IDG never published "Hiring A Hitman To Knock Off Your
Inlaws... For Dummies", because that's something I'm itching to do. At any
rate, I'm using the CD as a beer coaster.

JESSE BERST: I got a coupon redeemable for the full copy of Windows 2000
when it comes out in February. Win2K is the most innovative,
enterprise-ready, stable, feature-enriched, easy-to-use operating system
on the market. I don't see how Linux can survive against Microsoft's far
superior offering. I ask you: could you get fired for NOT choosing Windows
2000? You bet.

LINUX CONVERT: I kept hinting for a SGI box, but instead my wife got me an
old Packard Bell. Unfortunately, she bought it at CompUSSR, which doesn't
take returns, so I'm stuck with it. I haven't been able to get Linux to
boot on it, so this machine will probably become a $750 paperweight.
Is Linux A Finnish Conspiracy?

WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF CORRUPTION -- According to a report recently
issued by the NSA (No Such Agency), Finland is now considered a national
economic and security risk. "We don't trust the Finns... software written
by these people could potentially contain backdoors that could undermine
domestic security," the report states. In response to the news, US Senator
Fatcatte (R-WA) has proposed a bill, the It's For The Children Act of
2000, that would ban all software written by native-born Finns.

"It's time we take the Finnish threat seriously," Fatcatte said at a press
conference. "Not only is Finn software a threat to domestic tranquility,
but it could radically alter the computer industry, costing us thousands
of jobs... and, more importantly, billions in tax revenue. We must prevent
the Finns from subverting our economy with so-called 'open-source
software'." He then asked, "Is anybody thinking of the children of
programmers who will become unemployed when Finnish software overruns the
country?"
Excerpts From The First Annual Nerd Bowl (#5)

A commercial that aired during the live ASCII broadcast of the game:

  Having trouble staying awake for weeks at a time working on that latest
  hack? Worried that some young punk will take over your cushy job because
  you sleep too much? Don't worry, EyeOpener® brand cola is here to save
  the day. You'll never feel sleepy again when you drink EyeOpener®.

  Surgeon General's Warning: This product should only be used under a
  doctor's immediate supervision, as it contains more caffeine than 512
  cases of Coca-Cola.

  Caution: When sleep does occur after about three weeks, optometrists
  recommend having someone on hand to close your eyelids.

  Coming soon: ExtremelyWired(tm) cola with 50% more sugar! May or may not
  meet FDA approval... we're still trying.
NOTICE

LinuxForecast.com has issued a Slashdot Effect Watch for your domain
effective for the next 48 hours. Forecast models indicate that Taco Boy is
planning on posting an article about your "Penguin Porn" site. The models
disagree on the timing or duration of the storm, although we can say that
a moderate risk of server crashes, excess bandwidth usage, and increased
website hosting bills are possible.

Please take appropriate action by mirroring your site. It might be too
late now, but you might also want to consider purchasing Denial Of Service
Insurance.
Elite Nerds Create Linux Distro From Hell

HELL, MICHIGAN -- A group of long-time Linux zealots and newbie haters
have thrown together a new Linux distro called Hellix that is so
user-hostile, so anti-newbie, so cryptic, and so old-fashioned that it
actually makes MS-DOS look like a real operating system. Said the founder
of the project, "I'm sick and tired of the Windowsification of the Linux
desktop in a fruitless attempt to make the system more appealing to
newbies, PHBs, and MCSEs. Linux has always been for nerds only, and we
want to make sure it stays that way!"

One of the other Bastard Distributors From Hell explained, "In the last
five years think of all the hacking effort spent on Linux... and for what?
We have nothing to show for it but half-finished Windows-like desktops, vi
dancing paperclips, and graphical front-ends to configuration files. Real
nerds use text files for configuration, darnit, and they like it! It's
time to take a stand against the hordes of newbies that are polluting our
exclusive operating system."

One Anonymous Coward said, "This is so cool... It's just like Unix back in
the good old days of the 70's when men were men and the only intuitive
interface was still the nipple."
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.
Won't Somebody Please Think Of The Microsoft Shareholder's Children?

The Evil Monopoly will soon be a duopoly of MICROS~1 and MICROS~2 now that
Judge Jackson has made his ruling. Geeks everywhere are shedding tears of
joy, while Microsoft investors are shedding real tears. But not everybody
is ecstatic about the ruling. "It dawned on me today that if Microsoft is
broken up, we won't have anyone to bash anymore. We can have that," said
Rob Graustein, the founder of the new "Save Microsoft Now! Campaign".

Rob continued, "I know what you're thinking! I have not been
assimilated... er, hired... by Microsoft. I'm not crazy. I haven't been
paid off. My life as a geek revolves around bashing Microsoft. I mean, I
own the world's largest collection of anti-Microsoft T-shirts and
underwear. It's time to take a stand against the elimination of Geek Enemy
#1."

Most observers agree that Mr. Graustein's brain has gone 404. "This guy is
nuts! Support Microsoft? I can't believe I'm hearing this. Even fake news
sites couldn't make up this kind of insanity."
Mass Exodus From Hollywood

During the past week, over 150 Hollywood actors, musicians, writers,
directors, and key grips have quit their day jobs and moved to the Midwest
to engage in quieter occupations such as gardening or accounting. All of
the these people cite piracy as the reason for giving up their careers.

"I simply can't sit by and let my hard work be stolen by some snot nosed
punk over the Internet," explained millionaire movie director Steve
Bergospiel. "There's absolutely no incentive to create movies if they're
going to be transmitted at the speed of light by thousands of infringers.
Such criminal acts personally cost me hundreds -- no, thousands -- of
dollars. I can't take that kind of fear and abuse anymore."

MPAA President Pei Pervue considers the exodus to be proof that Hollywood
is waking up to the fact that they are being "held hostage" by copyright
infringers. "Without copyright protection and government-backed monopolies
on intellectual property, these's absolutely no reason to engage in the
creative process. Now the Internet, with its click-and-pirate technology,
makes it easy for anybody to flout the law and become a copyright
terrorist. With the scales tipped so much in favor of criminals, it's no
wonder some of Hollywood's elite have thrown in the towel. What a shame."
"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"
Do you realize how many holes there could be if people would just take
the time to take the dirt out of them?
Don't confuse things that need action with those that take care of themselves.
Every man is apt to form his notions of things difficult to be apprehended,
or less familiar, from their analogy to things which are more familiar.
Thus, if a man bred to the seafaring life, and accustomed to think and talk
only of matters relating to navigation, enters into discourse upon any other
subject; it is well known, that the language and the notions proper to his
own profession are infused into every subject, and all things are measured
by the rules of navigation: and if he should take it into his head to
philosophize concerning the faculties of the mind, it cannot be doubted,
but he would draw his notions from the fabric of the ship, and would find
in the mind, sails, masts, rudder, and compass.
                -- Thomas Reid, "An Inquiry into the Human Mind", 1764
Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.
                -- Robert Frost, "The Death of the Hired Man"
I knew one thing: as soon as anyone said you didn't need a gun, you'd better
take one along that worked.
                -- Raymond Chandler
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
                -- Alexandre Dumas, fils
It's reassuring to know that if you behave strangely enough, society will
take full responsibility for you.
Most people need some of their problems to help take their mind off
some of the others.
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
Obstacles are what you see when you take your eyes off your goal.
Pelorat sighed.
        "I will never understand people."
        "There's nothing to it.  All you have to do is take a close look
at yourself and you will understand everyone else.  How would Seldon have
worked out his Plan -- and I don't care how subtle his mathematics was --
if he didn't understand people; and how could he have done that if people
weren't easy to understand?  You show me someone who can't understand
people and I'll show you someone who has built up a false image of himself
-- no offense intended."
                -- Asimov, "Foundation's Edge"
People who take cat naps don't usually sleep in a cat's cradle.
People who take cold baths never have rheumatism, but they have cold baths.
Rarely do people communicate; they just take turns talking.
Something better...

1 (obvious): Excuse me.  Is that your nose or did a bus park on your face?
2 (meteorological): Everybody take cover.  She's going to blow.
3 (fashionable): You know, you could de-emphasize your nose if you wore
        something larger.  Like ... Wyoming.
4 (personal): Well, here we are.  Just the three of us.
5 (punctual): Alright gentlemen.  Your nose was on time but you were fifteen
        minutes late.
6 (envious): Oooo, I wish I were you.  Gosh.  To be able to smell your
        own ear.
7 (naughty): Pardon me, Sir.  Some of the ladies have asked if you wouldn't
        mind putting that thing away.
8 (philosophical): You know.  It's not the size of a nose that's important.
        It's what's in it that matters.
9 (humorous): Laugh and the world laughs with you.  Sneeze and it's goodbye,
        Seattle.
10 (commercial): Hi, I'm Earl Schibe and I can paint that nose for $39.95.
11 (polite): Ah.  Would you mind not bobbing your head.  The orchestra keeps
        changing tempo.
12 (melodic): Everybody! "He's got the whole world in his nose."
                -- Steve Martin, "Roxanne"
Take a lesson from the whale; the only time he gets speared is when he
raises to spout.
Whenever someone tells you to take their advice, you can be pretty sure
that they're not using it.
You know you're in trouble when...
(1)        Your car horn goes off accidentally and remains stuck as you
                follow a group of Hell's Angels on the freeway.
(2)        You want to put on the clothes you wore home from the party
                and there aren't any.
(3)        Your boss tells you not to bother to take off your coat.
(4)        The bird singing outside your window is a buzzard.
(5)        You wake up and your braces are locked together.
(6)        Your mother approves of the person you're dating.
"> I am using the Intel PCI backplane with default etchlink/jumper
> configuration and the EBSA285 configured as host bridge.

I'd suggest that you check, double check, triple check, take a photo of
the links and put it up on the web and get someone else to check all
the link settings on the EBSA285 card."

         - Russell King on linux-arm-kernel
It should be fixed, but it won't be easy and it won't be fast. If you want
to help - wonderful. But keep in mind that it will take months of wading
through the ugliest code we have in the tree. If you've got a weak stomach -
stay out. I've been there and it's not a nice place.

        - Al Viro on fixing drivers
... and for absolute majority of programmers additional shared objects mean
additional fsckup sources.  I don't trust them to write correct async code.
OK, so I don't trust the majority of programmers to find their dicks if
you take their Visual Masturbation Aid++ away, but that's another story -
I'm talking about otherwise clued people, not burger-flippers armed with
Foo For Complete Dummies in 24 Hours.

        - Al Viro about multi-threading on linux-kernel
Looks nice to me but about the only way you are likely to get Linus to take
in kernel debugging patches is to turn them into hex and disguise them as USB
firmware ;)

        - Alan Cox's guide on submitting Linux patches, today:
                chapter #3, kernel debuggers
Do you think you can take over the universe and improve it?
I do not believe it can be done.

The universe is sacred.
You cannot improve it.
If you try to change it, you will ruin it.
If you try to hold it, you will lose it.

So sometimes things are ahead and sometimes they are behind;
Sometimes breathing is hard, sometimes it comes easily;
Sometimes there is strength and sometimes weakness;
Sometimes one is up and sometimes down.

Therefore the sage avoids extremes, excesses, and complacency.
Whenever you advise a ruler in the way of Tao,
Counsel him not to use force to conquer the universe.
For this would only cause resistance.
Thorn bushes spring up wherever the army has passed.
Lean years follow in the wake of a great war.
Just do what needs to be done.
Never take advantage of power.

Achieve results,
But never glory in them.
Achieve results,
But never boast.
Achieve results,
But never be proud.
Achieve results,
Because this is the natural way.
Achieve results,
But not through violence.

Force is followed by loss of strength.
This is not the way of Tao.
That which goes against the Tao comes to an early end.
The Tao is forever undefined.
Small though it is in the unformed state, it cannot be grasped.
If kings and lords could harness it,
The ten thousand things would come together
And gentle rain fall.
Men would need no more instruction and all things would take their course.
Once the whole is divided, the parts need names.
There are already enough names.
One must know when to stop.
Knowing when to stop averts trouble.
Tao in the world is like a river flowing home to the sea.
In the pursuit of learning, every day something is acquired.
In the pursuit of Tao, every day something is dropped.

Less and less is done
Until non-action is achieved.
When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.

The world is ruled by letting things take their course.
It cannot be ruled by interfering.
Rule a nation with justice.
Wage war with surprise moves.
Become master of the universe without striving.
How do I know that this is so?
Because of this!

The more laws and restrictions there are,
The poorer people become.
The sharper men's weapons,
The more trouble in the land.
The more ingenious and clever men are,
The more strange things happen.
The more rules and regulations,
The more thieves and robbers.

Therefore the sage says:
  I take no action and people are reformed.
  I enjoy peace and people become honest.
  I do nothing and people become rich.
  I have no desires and people return to the good and  simple life.
If men are not afraid to die,
It is no avail to threaten them with death.

If men live in constant fear of dying,
And if breaking the law means that a man will be killed,
Who will dare to break the law?

There is always an official executioner.
If you try to take his place,
It is like trying to be a master carpenter and cutting wood.
If you try to cut wood like a master carpenter, you will only hurt your hand.
Why are the people starving?
Because the rulers eat up the money in taxes.
Therefore the people are starving.

Why are the people rebellious?
Because the rulers interfere too much.
Therefore they are rebellious.

Why do the people think so little of death?
Because the rulers demand too much of life.
Therefore the people take death lightly.

Having little to live on, one knows better than to value life too much.
The Tao of heaven is like the bending of a bow.
The high is lowered, and the low is raised.
If the string is too long, it is shortened;
If there is not enough, it is made longer.

The Tao of heaven is to take from those who have too much and give to those who do not have enough.
Man's way is different.
He takes from those who do not have enough and give to those who already have too much.
What man has more than enough and gives it to the world?
Only the man of Tao.

Therefore the sage works without recognition.
He achieves what has to be done without dwelling on it.
He does not try to show his knowledge.
A small country has fewer people.
Though there are machines that can work ten to a hundred times faster than man, they are not needed.
The people take death seriously and do not travel far.
Though they have boats and carriages, no one uses them.
Though they have armor and weapons, no one displays them.
Men return to the knotting of rope in place of writing.
Their food is plain and good, their clothes fine but simple, their homes secure;
They are happy in their ways.
Though they live within sight of their neighbors,
And crowing cocks and barking dogs are heard across the way,
Yet they leave each other in peace while they grow old and die.
"In the event of a percieved failing of the project leadership #debian is
empowered to take drastic and descisive action to correct the failing,
including by not limited to expelling officials, apointing new officials
and generally abusing power"
        -- proposed amendment to Debian Constitution
"As you journey through life take a minute every now and then to give a
thought for the other fellow. He could be plotting something."
        -- Hagar the Horrible
<frogbert> its hard being a lesbian withoutn breasts...people dont take
           you seriously
<lilo> it's weird, when you go on a safari to Africa to catch a lion, you
       find it alive and it charges, and then you kill it
<lilo> when you go on a safari to South Bay to find a Palm Vx, you find
       it dead and take it home and it charges after it arrives :)
"What are we going to do tonight, Bill?"
"Same thing we do every night Steve, try to take over the world!"
<hoponpop> my program works if i take out the bugs.
<DannyS> Hit the monkey to win $20(*)!
* knghtbrd gets out his mallet.
* knghtbrd plants it firmly on DannyS' head.
* knghtbrd will take his $20 now.  =D
<hop_> i had something that i think was chicken that was coated with a red
       paste that seemed to be composed of lye based on how much of my
       tounge it burned away.
<hop_> our friend who is Indian said this is why most Indians are thin
       and i quote "It doesn't take very much of this food to get you
       satisfied enoguh to stop eating."
According to Kentucky state law, every person must take a bath at least
once a year.
Fortune Documents the Great Legal Decisions:

We think that we may take judicial notice of the fact that the term "bitch"
may imply some feeling of endearment when applied to a female of the canine
species but that it is seldom, if ever, so used when applied to a female
of the human race. Coming as it did, reasonably close on the heels of two
revolver shots directed at the person of whom it was probably used, we think
it carries every reasonable implication of ill-will toward that person.
                -- Smith v. Moran, 193 N.E. 2d 466.
        God decided to take the devil to court and settle their differences
once and for all.
        When Satan heard of this, he grinned and said, "And just where do you
think you're going to find a lawyer?"
He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides.
Some of the most interesting documents from Sweden's middle ages are the
old county laws (well, we never had counties but it's the nearest equivalent
I can find for "landskap").  These laws were written down sometime in the
13th century, but date back even down into Viking times.  The oldest one is
the Vastgota law which clearly has pagan influences, thinly covered with some
Christian stuff.  In this law, we find a page about "lekare", which is the
Old Norse word for a performing artist, actor/jester/musician etc.  Here is
an approximate translation, where I have written "artist" as equivalent of
"lekare".
        "If an artist is beaten, none shall pay fines for it.  If an artist
        is wounded, one such who goes with hurdie-gurdie or travels with
        fiddle or drum, then the people shall take a wild heifer and bring
        it out on the hillside.  Then they shall shave off all hair from the
        heifer's tail, and grease the tail.  Then the artist shall be given
        newly greased shoes.  Then he shall take hold of the heifer's tail,
        and a man shall strike it with a sharp whip.  If he can hold her, he
        shall have the animal.  If he cannot hold her, he shall endure what
        he received, shame and wounds."
We may not like doctors, but at least they doctor.  Bankers are not ever
popular but at least they bank.  Policeman police and undertakers take
under.  But lawyers do not give us law.  We receive not the gladsome light
of jurisprudence, but rather precedents, objections, appeals, stays,
filings and forms, motions and counter-motions, all at $250 an hour.
                -- Nolo News, summer 1989
Do not take life too seriously; you will never get out of it alive.
Don't take life seriously, you'll never get out alive.
If I had my life to live over, I'd try to make more mistakes next time.  I
would relax, I would limber up, I would be sillier than I have been this
trip.  I know of very few things I would take seriously.  I would be crazier.
I would climb more mountains, swim more rivers and watch more sunsets.  I'd
travel and see.  I would have more actual troubles and fewer imaginary ones.
You see, I am one of those people who lives prophylactically and sensibly
and sanely, hour after hour, day after day.  Oh, I have had my moments and,
if I had it to do over again, I'd have more of them.  In fact, I'd try to
have nothing else.  Just moments, one after another, instead of living so many
years ahead each day.  I have been one of those people who never go anywhere
without a thermometer, a hotwater bottle, a gargle, a raincoat and a parachute.
If I had it to do over again, I would go places and do things and travel
lighter than I have.  If I had my life to live over, I would start bare-footed
earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall.  I would play hooky
more.  I probably wouldn't make such good grades, but I'd learn more.  I would
ride on more merry-go-rounds.  I'd pick more daisies.
If men are not afraid to die,
it is of no avail to threaten them with death.

If men live in constant fear of dying,
And if breaking the law means a man will be killed,
Who will dare to break the law?

There is always an official executioner.
If you try to take his place,
It is like trying to be a master carpenter and cutting wood.
If you try to cut wood like a master carpenter,
        you will only hurt your hand.
                -- Tao Te Ching, "Lao Tsu, #74"
It's easier to take it apart than to put it back together.
                -- Washlesky
        Most of what I really need to know about how to live, and what to do,
and how to be, I learned in kindergarten.  Wisdom was not at the top of the
graduate school mountain but there in the sandbox at nursery school.
        These are the things I learned:  Share everything.  Play fair.  Don't
hit people.  Put things back where you found them.  Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.   Say you're sorry when you hurt someone.
Wash your hands before you eat.  Flush.  Warm cookies and cold milk are good
for you.  Live a balanced life.  Learn some and think some and draw and paint
and sing and dance and play and work some every day.
        Take a nap every afternoon.  When you go out into the world, watch for
traffic, hold hands, and stick together.  Be aware of wonder.  Remember the
little seed in the plastic cup.   The roots go down and the plant goes up and
nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.  Goldfish and
hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the plastic cup -- they all
die.  So do we.
        And then remember the book about Dick and Jane and the first word you
learned, the biggest word of all: LOOK.  Everything you need to know is in
there somewhere.  The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation.  Ecology and
politics and sane living.
        Think of what a better world it would be if we all -- the whole world
-- had cookies and milk about 3 o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with
our blankets for a nap.  Or if we had a basic policy in our nation and other
nations to always put things back where we found them and cleaned up our own
messes.  And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out into
the world it is best to hold hands and stick together.
                -- Robert Fulghum, "All I ever really needed to know I learned
                   in kindergarten"
        Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great
crystal river.  Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs
and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and
resisting the current what each had learned from birth.  But one creature
said at last, "I trust that the current knows where it is going.  I shall
let go, and let it take me where it will.  Clinging, I shall die of boredom."
        The other creatures laughed and said, "Fool!  Let go, and that current
you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks, and you will
die quicker than boredom!"
        But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at
once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.  Yet, in time,
as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the
bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.
        And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried, "See
a miracle!  A creature like ourselves, yet he flies!  See the Messiah, come
to save us all!"  And the one carried in the current said, "I am no more
Messiah than you.  The river delight to lift us free, if only we dare let go.
Our true work is this voyage, this adventure.
        But they cried the more, "Saviour!" all the while clinging to the
rocks, making legends of a Saviour.
                -- Richard Bach
Only those who leisurely approach that which the masses are busy about
can be busy about that which the masses take leisurely.
                -- Lao Tsu
Perfection is reached, not when there is no longer anything to add, but
when there is no longer anything to take away.
                -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Take your dying with some seriousness, however.  Laughing on the way to
your execution is not generally understood by less advanced life forms,
and they'll call you crazy.
                -- "Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul"
The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions.
                -- Alfred Adler
You can't take it with you -- especially when crossing a state line.
> 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
"Linux was made by foreign terrorists to take money from true US companies
like Microsoft." - Some AOL'er.
"To this end we dedicate ourselves..." -Don
        -- From the sig of "Don", don@cs.byu.edu
1648 files (84%) out of the files that I mirror disappeared.  Since
my delete threshold was set at 90%, all those files are now missing
from my hard drive.  It's going to take a loooong time to fetch those
again via 14.4kbps!
        -- Brian C. White
Because I don't need to worry about finances I can ignore Microsoft
and take over the (computing) world from the grassroots.
        -- Linus Torvalds
<dark> Turns out that grep returns error code 1 when there are no matches.
       I KNEW that.  Why did it take me half an hour?
        -- Seen on #Debian
... a thing called Ethics, whose nature was confusing but if you had it you
were a High-Class Realtor and if you hadn't you were a shyster, a piker and
a fly-by-night.  These virtues awakened Confidence and enabled you to handle
Bigger Propositions.  But they didn't imply that you were to be impractical
and refuse to take twice the value for a house if a buyer was such an idiot
that he didn't force you down on the asking price.
                -- Sinclair Lewis, "Babbitt"
All this big deal about white collar crime -- what's WRONG with white collar
crime?  Who enjoys his job today?  You?  Me?  Anybody?  The only satisfying
part of any job is coffee break, lunch hour and quitting time.  Years ago
there was at least the hope of improvement -- eventual promotion -- more
important jobs to come.  Once you can be sold the myth that you may make
president of the company you'll hardly ever steal stamps.  But nobody
believes he's going to be president anymore.  The more people change jobs
the more they realize that there is a direct connection between working for
a living and total stupefying boredom.  So why NOT take revenge?  You're not
going to find ME knocking a guy because he pads an expense account and his
home stationery carries the company emblem.  Take away crime from the white
collar worker and you will rob him of his last vestige of job interest.
                -- J. Feiffer
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?"
Carelessly planned projects take three times longer to complete than expected.
Carefully planned projects take four times longer to complete than expected,
mostly because the planners expect their planning to reduce the time it takes.
Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?
                -- Charlie McCarthy
        Home centers are designed for the do-it-yourselfer who's willing to
pay higher prices for the convenience of being able to shop for lumber,
hardware, and toasters all in one location.  Notice I say "shop for," as
opposed to "obtain." This is the major drawback of home centers: they are
always out of everything except artificial Christmas trees.  The home center
employees have no time to reorder merchandise because they are too busy
applying little price stickers to every object -- every board, washer, nail
and screw -- in the entire store ...

        Let's say a piece in your toilet tank breaks, so you remove the
broken part, take it to the home center, and ask an employee if he has a
replacement.  The employee, who has never is his life even seen the inside
of a toilet tank, will peer at the broken part in very much the same way
that a member of a primitive Amazon jungle tribe would look at an electronic
calculator, and then say, "We're expecting a shipment of these sometime
around the middle of next week."
                -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
Let's organize this thing and take all the fun out of it.
Men take only their needs into consideration -- never their abilities.
                -- Napoleon Bonaparte
No skis take rocks like rental skis!
Or you or I must yield up his life to Ahrimanes.  I would rather it were you.
I should have no hesitation in sacrificing my own life to spare yours, but
we take stock next week, and it would not be fair on the company.
                -- J. Wellington Wells
Practical people would be more practical if they would take a little
more time for dreaming.
                -- J. P. McEvoy
So... did you ever wonder, do garbagemen take showers before they go to work?
Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.
                -- Lazarus Long
Take everything in stride.  Trample anyone who gets in your way.
        Take the folks at Coca-Cola.  For many years, they were content
to sit back and make the same old carbonated beverage.  It was a good
beverage, no question about it; generations of people had grown up
drinking it and doing the experiment in sixth grade where you put a
nail into a glass of Coke and after a couple of days the nail dissolves
and the teacher says: "Imagine what it does to your TEETH!"  So Coca-Cola
was solidly entrenched in the market, and the management saw no need to
improve ...
                -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
Take time to reflect on all the things you have, not as a result of your
merit or hard work or because God or chance or the efforts of other people
have given them to you.
Take your work seriously but never take yourself seriously; and do not
take what happens either to yourself or your work seriously.
                -- Booth Tarkington
The easiest way to figure the cost of living is to take your income and
add ten percent.
The only problem with being a man of leisure is that you can never stop
and take a rest.
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"
Time to take stock.  Go home with some office supplies.
To spot the expert, pick the one who predicts the job will take the longest
and cost the most.
What they said:
        What they meant:

"You will be fortunate if you can get him to work for you."
        (We certainly never succeeded.)
There is no other employee with whom I can adequately compare him.
        (Well, our rats aren't really employees...)
"Success will never spoil him."
        (Well, at least not MUCH more.)
"One usually comes away from him with a good feeling."
        (And such a sigh of relief.)
"His dissertation is the sort of work you don't expect to see these days;
in it he has definitely demonstrated his complete capabilities."
        (And his IQ, as well.)
"He should go far."
        (The farther the better.)
"He will take full advantage of his staff."
        (He even has one of them mowing his lawn after work.)
You or I must yield up his life to Ahrimanes.  I would rather it were you.
I should have no hesitation in sacrificing my own life to spare yours, but
we take stock next week, and it would not be fair on the company.
                -- J. Wellington Wells
If you consistently take an antagonistic approach, however, people are
going to start thinking you're from New York.   :-)
             -- Larry Wall to Dan Bernstein in <10187@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
:       I've tried (in vi) "g/[a-z]\n[a-z]/s//_/"...but that doesn't
: cut it.  Any ideas?  (I take it that it may be a two-pass sort of solution).
In the first pass, install perl. :-)
             -- Larry Wall <6849@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
P.S. Perl's master plan (or what passes for one) is to take over the
world like English did.  Er, *as* English did...
             -- Larry Wall in <199705201832.LAA28393@wall.org>
Of course, this being Perl, we could always take both approaches.  :-)
             -- Larry Wall in <199709021744.KAA12428@wall.org>
It is my job in life to travel all roads, so that some may take the road
less travelled, and others the road more travelled, and all have a
pleasant day.
             -- Larry Wall in <199709241628.JAA08908@wall.org>
I wasn't recommending that we make the links for them, only provide them
with the tools to do so if they want to take the gamble (or the gambol).
             -- Larry Wall in <199709292259.PAA10407@wall.org>
An INK-LING?  Sure -- TAKE one!!  Did you BUY any COMMUNIST UNIFORMS??
Barbie says, Take quaaludes in gin and go to a disco right away!
But Ken says, WOO-WOO!!  No credit at "Mr. Liquor"!!
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 do you explain Wayne Newton's POWER over millions?  It's th' MOUSTACHE
...  Have you ever noticed th' way it radiates SINCERITY, HONESTY & WARMTH?
It's a MOUSTACHE you want to take HOME and introduce to NANCY SINATRA!
I'm having a RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE ... and I don't take any DRUGS
Is this an out-take from the "BRADY BUNCH"?
        Talking Pinhead Blues:
Oh, I LOST my ``HELLO KITTY'' DOLL and I get BAD reception on channel
    TWENTY-SIX!!

Th'HOSTESS FACTORY is closin' down and I just heard ZASU PITTS has been
    DEAD for YEARS..  (sniff)

My PLATFORM SHOE collection was CHEWED up by th' dog, ALEXANDER HAIG
    won't let me take a SHOWER 'til Easter ... (snurf)

So I went to the kitchen, but WALNUT PANELING whup me upside mah HAID!!
    (on no, no, no..  Heh, heh)
Tex SEX!  The HOME of WHEELS!  The dripping of COFFEE!!  Take me to
Minnesota but don't EMBARRASS me!!
Why is it that when you DIE, you can't take your HOME ENTERTAINMENT
CENTER with you??
After his legs had been broken in an accident, Mr. Miller sued for damages,
claming that he was crippled and would have to spend the rest of his life
in a wheelchair.  Although the insurance-company doctor testified that his
bones had healed properly and that he was fully capable  of walking, the
judge decided for the plaintiff and awarded him $500,000.
        When he was wheeled into the insurance office to collect his check,
Miller was confronted by several executives.  "You're not getting away with
this, Miller," one said.  "We're going to watch you day and night.  If you
take a single step, you'll not only repay the damages but stand trial for
perjury.  Here's the money.  What do you intend to do with it?"
        "My wife and I are going to travel," Miller replied.  "We'll go to
Stockholm, Berlin, Rome, Athens and, finally, to a place called Lourdes --
where, gentlemen, you'll see yourselves one hell of a miracle."
At the hospital, a doctor is training an intern on how to announce bad news
to the patients.  The doctor tells the intern "This man in 305 is going to
die in six months.  Go in and tell him."  The intern boldly walks into the
room, over to the man's bedisde and tells him "Seems like you're gonna die!"
The man has a heart attack and is rushed into surgery on the spot.  The doctor
grabs the intern and screams at him, "What!?!? are you some kind of moron?
You've got to take it easy, work your way up to the subject.  Now this man in
213 has about a week to live.  Go in and tell him, but, gently, you hear me,
gently!"
        The intern goes softly into the room, humming to himself, cheerily
opens the drapes to let the sun in, walks over to the man's bedside, fluffs
his pillow and wishes him a "Good morning!"  "Wonderful day, no?  Say...
guess who's going to die soon!"
"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
        "Welcome back for you 13th consecutive week, Evelyn.  Evelyn, will
you go into the auto-suggestion booth and take your regular place on the
psycho-prompter couch?"
        "Thank you, Red."
        "Now, Evelyn, last week you went up to $40,000 by properly citing
your rivalry with your sibling as a compulsive sado-masochistic behavior
pattern which developed out of an early post-natal feeding problem."
        "Yes, Red."
        "But -- later, when asked about pre-adolescent oedipal phantasy
repressions, you rationalized twice and mental blocked three times.  Now,
at $300 per rationalization and $500 per mental block you lost $2,100 off
your $40,000 leaving you with a total of $37,900.  Now, any combination of
two more mental blocks and either one rationalization or three defensive
projections will put you out of the game.  Are you willing to go ahead?"
        "Yes, Red."
        "I might say here that all of Evelyn's questions and answers have
been checked for accuracy with her analyst.  Now, Evelyn, for $80,000
explain the failure of your three marriages."
        "Well, I--"
        "We'll get back to Evelyn in one minute.  First a word about our
product."
                -- Jules Feiffer
No guarantee of accuracy or completeness!
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