Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
Best Mistakes In Films In his "Filmgoer's Companion", Mr. Leslie Halliwell helpfully lists four of the cinema's greatest moments which you should get to see if at all possible. In "Carmen Jones", the camera tracks with Dorothy Dandridge down a street; and the entire film crew is reflected in the shop window. In "The Wrong Box", the roofs of Victorian London are emblazoned with television aerials. In "Decameron Nights", Louis Jourdain stands on the deck of his fourteenth century pirate ship; and a white lorry trundles down the hill in the background. In "Viking Queen", set in the times of Boadicea, a wrist watch is clearly visible on one of the leading characters. -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures" | |
Just close your eyes, tap your heels together three times, and think to yourself, `There's no place like home.' -- Glynda the Good | |
We're constantly being bombarded by insulting and humiliating music, which people are making for you the way they make those Wonder Bread products. Just as food can be bad for your system, music can be bad for your spirtual and emotional feelings. It might taste good or clever, but in the long run, it's not going to do anything for you. -- Bob Dylan, "LA Times", September 5, 1984 | |
struck by the Good Times virus | |
The Least Perceptive Literary Critic The most important critic in our field of study is Lord Halifax. A most individual judge of poetry, he once invited Alexander Pope round to give a public reading of his latest poem. Pope, the leading poet of his day, was greatly surprised when Lord Halifax stopped him four or five times and said, "I beg your pardon, Mr. Pope, but there is something in that passage that does not quite please me." Pope was rendered speechless, as this fine critic suggested sizeable and unwise emendations to his latest masterpiece. "Be so good as to mark the place and consider at your leisure. I'm sure you can give it a better turn." After the reading, a good friend of Lord Halifax, a certain Dr. Garth, took the stunned Pope to one side. "There is no need to touch the lines," he said. "All you need do is leave them just as they are, call on Lord Halifax two or three months hence, thank him for his kind observation on those passages, and then read them to him as altered. I have known him much longer than you have, and will be answerable for the event." Pope took his advice, called on Lord Halifax and read the poem exactly as it was before. His unique critical faculties had lost none of their edge. "Ay", he commented, "now they are perfectly right. Nothing can be better." -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures" | |
What I tell you three times is true. -- Lewis Carroll | |
Dear Sir, I am firmly opposed to the spread of microchips either to the home or to the office, We have more than enough of them foisted upon us in public places. They are a disgusting Americanism, and can only result in the farmers being forced to grow smaller potatoes, which in turn will cause massive un- employment in the already severely depressed agricultural industry. Yours faithfully, Capt. Quinton D'Arcy, J.P. Sevenoaks -- Letters To The Editor, The Times of London | |
During the next two hours, the system will be going up and down several times, often with lin~po_~{po ~poz~ppo\~{ o n~po_~{o[po ~y oodsou>#w4k**n~po_~{ol;lkld;f;g;dd;po\~{o | |
`Lasu' Releases SAG 0.3 -- Freeware Book Takes Paves For New World Order by staff writers Helsinki, Finland, August 6, 1995 -- In a surprise movement, Lars ``Lasu'' Wirzenius today released the 0.3 edition of the ``Linux System Administrators' Guide''. Already an industry non-classic, the new version sports such overwhelming features as an overview of a Linux system, a completely new climbing session in a tree, and a list of acknowledgements in the introduction. The SAG, as the book is affectionately called, is one of the corner stones of the Linux Documentation Project. ``We at the LDP feel that we wouldn't be able to produce anything at all, that all our work would be futile, if it weren't for the SAG,'' says Matt Welsh, director of LDP, Inc. The new version is still distributed freely, now even with a copyright that allows modification. ``More dough,'' explains the author. Despite insistent rumors about blatant commercialization, the SAG will probably remain free. ``Even more dough,'' promises the author. The author refuses to comment on Windows NT and Windows 96 versions, claiming not to understand what the question is about. Industry gossip, however, tells that Bill Gates, co-founder and CEO of Microsoft, producer of the Windows series of video games, has visited Helsinki several times this year. Despite of this, Linus Torvalds, author of the word processor Linux with which the SAG was written, is not worried. ``We'll have world domination real soon now, anyway,'' he explains, ``for 1.4 at the lastest.'' ... -- Lars Wirzenius <wirzeniu@cs.helsinki.fi> [comp.os.linux.announce] | |
My God, I'm depressed! Here I am, a computer with a mind a thousand times as powerful as yours, doing nothing but cranking out fortunes and sending mail about softball games. And I've got this pain right through my ALU. I've asked for it to be replaced, but nobody ever listens. I think it would be better for us both if you were to just log out again. | |
Now she speaks rapidly. "Do you know *why* you want to program?" He shakes his head. He hasn't the faintest idea. "For the sheer *joy* of programming!" she cries triumphantly. "The joy of the parent, the artist, the craftsman. "You take a program, born weak and impotent as a dimly-realized solution. You nurture the program and guide it down the right path, building, watching it grow ever stronger. Sometimes you paint with tiny strokes, a keystroke added here, a keystroke changed there." She sweeps her arm in a wide arc. "And other times you savage whole *blocks* of code, ripping out the program's very *essence*, then beginning anew. But always building, creating, filling the program with your own personal stamp, your own quirks and nuances. Watching the program grow stronger, patching it when it crashes, until finally it can stand alone -- proud, powerful, and perfect. This is the programmer's finest hour!" Softly at first, then louder, he hears the strains of a Sousa march. "This ... this is your canvas! your clay! Go forth and create a masterwork!" | |
Speaking as someone who has delved into the intricacies of PL/I, I am sure that only Real Men could have written such a machine-hogging, cycle-grabbing, all-encompassing monster. Allocate an array and free the middle third? Sure! Why not? Multiply a character string times a bit string and assign the result to a float decimal? Go ahead! Free a controlled variable procedure parameter and reallocate it before passing it back? Overlay three different types of variable on the same memory location? Anything you say! Write a recursive macro? Well, no, but Real Men use rescan. How could a language so obviously designed and written by Real Men not be intended for Real Man use? | |
The net is like a vast sea of lutefisk with tiny dinosaur brains embedded in it here and there. Any given spoonful will likely have an IQ of 1, but occasional spoonfuls may have an IQ more than six times that! -- James 'Kibo' Parry | |
There was, it appeared, a mysterious rite of initiation through which, in one way or another, almost every member of the team passed. The term that the old hands used for this rite -- West invented the term, not the practice -- was `signing up.' By signing up for the project you agreed to do whatever was necessary for success. You agreed to forsake, if necessary, family, hobbies, and friends -- if you had any of these left (and you might not, if you had signed up too many times before). -- Tracy Kidder, "The Soul of a New Machine" | |
Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: (10) Sorry, but that's too useful. (9) Dammit, little-endian systems *are* more consistent! (8) I'm on the committee and I *still* don't know what the hell #pragma is for. (7) Well, it's an excellent idea, but it would make the compilers too hard to write. (6) Them bats is smart; they use radar. (5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in here? (4) How many times do we have to tell you, "No prior art!" (3) Ha, ha, I can't believe they're actually going to adopt this sucker. (2) Thank you for your generous donation, Mr. Wirth. (1) Gee, I wish we hadn't backed down on 'noalias'. | |
May you live in uninteresting times. -- Chinese proverb | |
Thank God a million billion times you live in Texas. | |
The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking. Not by accident does Genesis 3 make the father of knowledge a serpent -- slimy, sneaking and abominable. Since the earliest days the church as an organization has thrown itself violently against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an apologist for slavery, as it was the apologist for the divine right of kings. - H. L. Mencken | |
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 | |
"Infidels in all ages have battled for the rights of man, and have at all times been the fearless advocates of liberty and justice." -- Robert Green Ingersoll | |
Delta: We never make the same mistake three times. -- David Letterman | |
"If you took everyone who's ever been to a Dead show, and lined them up, they'd stretch halfway to the moon and back... and none of them would be complaining." -- a local Deadhead in the Seattle Times | |
In recognizing AT&T Bell Laboratories for corporate innovation, for its invention of cellular mobile communications, IEEE President Russell C. Drew referred to the cellular telephone as a "basic necessity." How times have changed, one observer remarked: many in the room recalled the advent of direct dialing. -- The Institute, July 1988, pg. 11 | |
"I knew then (in 1970) that a 4-kbyte minicomputer would cost as much as a house. So I reasoned that after college, I'd have to live cheaply in an apartment and put all my money into owning a computer." -- Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, EE Times, June 6, 1988, pg 45 | |
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 | |
Now, if the leaders of the world -- people who are leaders by virtue of political, military or financial power, and not necessarily wisdom or consideration for mankind -- if these leaders manage not to pull us over the brink into planetary suicide, despite their occasional pompous suggestions that they may feel obliged to do so, we may survive beyond 1988. -- George Rostky, EE Times, June 20, 1988 p. 45 | |
"The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in times of moral crisis, preserved their neutrality." -- Dante | |
There was, it appeared, a mysterious rite of initiation through which, in one way or another, almost every member of the team passed. The term that the old hands used for this rite -- West invented the term, not the practice -- was `signing up.' By signing up for the project you agreed to do whatever was necessary for success. You agreed to forsake, if necessary, family, hobbies, and friends -- if you had any of these left (and you might not, if you had signed up too many times before). -- Tracy Kidder, _The Soul of a New Machine_ | |
"The NY Times is read by the people who run the country. The Washington Post is read by the people who think they run the country. The National Enquirer is read by the people who think Elvis is alive and running the country..." -- Robert J Woodhead (trebor@biar.UUCP) | |
A general leading the State Department resembles a dragon commanding ducks. -- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981 | |
I was appalled by this story of the destruction of a member of a valued endangered species. It's all very well to celebrate the practicality of pigs by ennobling the porcine sibling who constructed his home out of bricks and mortar. But to wantonly destroy a wolf, even one with an excessive taste for porkers, is unconscionable in these ecologically critical times when both man and his domestic beasts continue to maraud the earth. Sylvia Kamerman, "Book Reviewing" | |
It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: "And this, too, shall pass away." -- Abraham Lincoln | |
Nobody shot me. -- Frank Gusenberg, his last words, when asked by police who had shot him 14 times with a machine gun in the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre. Only Capone kills like that. -- George "Bugs" Moran, on the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre The only man who kills like that is Bugs Moran. -- Al Capone, on the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre | |
Once is happenstance, Twice is coincidence, Three times is enemy action. -- Auric Goldfinger | |
The Least Successful Executions History has furnished us with two executioners worthy of attention. The first performed in Sydney in Australia. In 1803 three attempts were made to hang a Mr. Joseph Samuels. On the first two of these the rope snapped, while on the third Mr. Samuels just hung there peacefully until he and everyone else got bored. Since he had proved unsusceptible to capital punishment, he was reprieved. The most important British executioner was Mr. James Berry who tried three times in 1885 to hang Mr. John Lee at Exeter Jail, but on each occasion failed to get the trap door open. In recognition of this achievement, the Home Secretary commuted Lee's sentence to "life" imprisonment. He was released in 1917, emigrated to America and lived until 1933. -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures" | |
Carperpetuation (kar' pur pet u a shun), n.: The act, when vacuuming, of running over a string at least a dozen times, reaching over and picking it up, examining it, then putting it back down to give the vacuum one more chance. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" | |
Davis' Law of Traffic Density: The density of rush-hour traffic is directly proportional to 1.5 times the amount of extra time you allow to arrive on time. | |
Egotism, n: Doing the New York Times crossword puzzle with a pen. Egotist, n: A person of low taste, more interested in himself than me. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" | |
Fortune's Rules for Memo Wars: #2 Given the incredible advances in sociocybernetics and telepsychology over the last few years, we are now able to completely understand everything that the author of an memo is trying to say. Thanks to modern developments in electrocommunications like notes, vnews, and electricity, we have an incredible level of interunderstanding the likes of which civilization has never known. Thus, the possibility of your misinterpreting someone else's memo is practically nil. Knowing this, anyone who accuses you of having done so is a liar, and should be treated accordingly. If you *do* understand the memo in question, but have absolutely nothing of substance to say, then you have an excellent opportunity for a vicious ad hominem attack. In fact, the only *inappropriate* times for an ad hominem attack are as follows: 1: When you agree completely with the author of an memo. 2: When the author of the original memo is much bigger than you are. 3: When replying to one of your own memos. | |
Grinnell's Law of Labor Laxity: At all times, for any task, you have not got enough done today. | |
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!) | |
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? | |
QOTD: "He eats like a bird... five times his own weight each day." | |
Rules for Writers: Avoid run-on sentences they are hard to read. Don't use no double negatives. Use the semicolon properly, always use it where it is appropriate; and never where it isn't. Reserve the apostrophe for it's proper use and omit it when its not needed. No sentence fragments. Avoid commas, that are unnecessary. Eschew dialect, irregardless. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction. Hyphenate between sy-llables and avoid un-necessary hyphens. Write all adverbial forms correct. Don't use contractions in formal writing. Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided. It is incumbent on us to avoid archaisms. Steer clear of incorrect forms of verbs that have snuck in the language. Never, ever use repetitive redundancies. If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, resist hyperbole. Also, avoid awkward or affected alliteration. Don't string too many prepositional phrases together unless you are walking through the valley of the shadow of death. "Avoid overuse of 'quotation "marks."'" | |
Speer's 1st Law of Proofreading: The visibility of an error is inversely proportional to the number of times you have looked at it. | |
Tsort's Constant: 1.67563, or precisely 1,237.98712567 times the difference between the distance to the sun and the weight of a small orange. -- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic" (slightly modified) | |
Finding out what goes on in the C.I.A. is like performing acupuncture on a rock. -- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981 | |
If the future isn't what it used to be, does that mean that the past is subject to change in times to come? | |
Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these. -- Ovid (43 B.C. - A.D. 18) | |
Shirley MacLaine died today in a freak psychic collision today. Two freaks in a van [Oh no!! It's the Copyright Police!!] Her aura-charred body was laid to rest after a eulogy by Jackie Collins, fellow member of SAFE [Society of Asinine Flake Entertainers]. Excerpted from some of his more quotable comments: "Truly a woman of the times. These times, those times..." "A Renaissance woman. Why in 1432..." "A man for all seasons. Really..." After the ceremony, Shirley thanked her mourners and explained how delightful it was to "get it together" again, presumably referring to having her now dead body join her long dead brain. | |
A guy walks into a bar, orders a beer, carries it to the bathroom and dumps it into a urinal. Over the course of the next few hours, he goes back to the bar and repeats this sequence -- several times. Finally the bartender got so curious that he leaned over the bar and asked him what he was doing. Replied the customer, "Avoiding the middleman." | |
Glogg (a traditional Scandinavian holiday drink): fifth of dry red wine fifth of Aquavit 1 and 1/2 inch piece of cinnamon 10 cardamom seeds 1 cup raisins 4 dried figs 1 cup blanched or flaked almonds a few pieces of dried orange peel 5 cloves 1/2 lb. sugar cubes Heat up the wine and hard stuff (which may be substituted with wine for the faint of heart) in a big pot after adding all the other stuff EXCEPT the sugar cubes. Just when it reaches boiling, put the sugar in a wire strainer, moisten it in the hot brew, lift it out and ignite it with a match. Dip the sugar several times in the liquid until it is all dissolved. Serve hot in cups with a few raisins and almonds in each cup. N.B. Aquavit may be hard to find and expensive to boot. Use it only if you really have a deep-seated desire to be fussy, or if you are of Swedish extraction. | |
These days the necessities of life cost you about three times what they used to, and half the time they aren't even fit to drink. | |
=============== ALL FRESHMEN PLEASE NOTE =============== To minimize scheduling confusion, please realize that if you are taking one course which is offered at only one time on a given day, and another which is offered at all times on that day, the second class will be arranged as to afford maximum inconvenience to the student. For example, if you happen to work on campus, you will have 1-2 hours between classes. If you commute, there will be a minimum of 6 hours between the two classes. | |
In California, Bill Honig, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, said he thought the general public should have a voice in defining what an excellent teacher should know. "I would not leave the definition of math," Dr. Honig said, "up to the mathematicians." -- The New York Times, October 22, 1985 | |
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. | |
Periphrasis is the putting of things in a round-about way. "The cost may be upwards of a figure rather below 10m#." is a periphrasis for The cost may be nearly 10m#. "In Paris there reigns a complete absence of really reliable news" is a periphrasis for There is no reliable news in Paris. "Rarely does the 'Little Summer' linger until November, but at times its stay has been prolonged until quite late in the year's penultimate month" contains a periphrasis for November, and another for lingers. "The answer is in the negative" is a periphrasis for No. "Was made the recipient of" is a periphrasis for Was presented with. The periphrasis style is hardly possible on any considerable scale without much use of abstract nouns such as "basis, case, character, connexion, dearth, description, duration, framework, lack, nature, reference, regard, respect". The existence of abstract nouns is a proof that abstract thought has occurred; abstract thought is a mark of civilized man; and so it has come about that periphrasis and civilization are by many held to be inseparable. These good people feel that there is an almost indecent nakedness, a reversion to barbarism, in saying No news is good news instead of "The absence of intelligence is an indication of satisfactory developments." -- Fowler's English Usage | |
After two or three weeks of this madness, you begin to feel As One with the man who said, "No news is good news." In twenty-eight papers, only the rarest kind of luck will turn up more than two or three articles of any interest... but even then the interest items are usually buried deep around paragraph 16 on the jump (or "Cont. on ...") page... The Post will have a story about Muskie making a speech in Iowa. The Star will say the same thing, and the Journal will say nothing at all. But the Times might have enough room on the jump page to include a line or so that says something like: "When he finished his speech, Muskie burst into tears and seized his campaign manager by the side of the neck. They grappled briefly, but the struggle was kicked apart by an oriental woman who seemed to be in control." Now that's good journalism. Totally objective; very active and straight to the point. -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing '72" | |
My father was a God-fearing man, but he never missed a copy of the New York Times, either. -- E.B. White | |
"No self-respecting fish would want to be wrapped in that kind of paper." -- Mike Royko on the Chicago Sun-Times after it was taken over by Rupert Murdoch | |
Reporters like Bill Greider from the Washington Post and Him Naughton of the New York Times, for instance, had to file long, detailed, and relatively complex stories every day -- while my own deadline fell every two weeks -- but neither of them ever seemed in a hurry about getting their work done, and from time to time they would try to console me about the terrible pressure I always seemed to be laboring under. Any $100-an-hour psychiatrist could probably explain this problem to me, in thirteen or fourteen sessions, but I don't have time for that. No doubt it has something to do with a deep-seated personality defect, or maybe a kink in whatever blood vessel leads into the pineal gland... On the other hand, it might be something as simple & basically perverse as whatever instinct it is that causes a jackrabbit to wait until the last possible second to dart across the road in front of a speeding car. -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail" | |
"The New York Times is read by the people who run the country. The Washington Post is read by the people who think they run the country. The National Enquirer is read by the people who think Elvis is alive and running the country ..." -- Robert J Woodhead | |
Some 1500 miles west of the Big Apple we find the Minneapple, a haven of tranquility in troubled times. It's a good town, a civilized town. A town where they still know how to get your shirts back by Thursday. Let the Big Apple have the feats of "Broadway Joe" Namath. We have known the stolid but steady Killebrew. Listening to Cole Porter over a dry martini may well suit those unlucky enough never to have heard the Whoopee John Polka Band and never to have shared a pitcher of 3.2 Grain Belt Beer. The loss is theirs. And the Big Apple has yet to bake the bagel that can match peanut butter on lefse. Here is a town where the major urban problem is dutch elm disease and the number one crime is overtime parking. We boast more theater per capita than the Big Apple. We go to see, not to be seen. We go even when we must shovel ten inches of snow from the driveway to get there. Indeed the winters are fierce. But then comes the marvel of the Minneapple summer. People flock to the city's lakes to frolic and rejoice at the sight of so much happy humanity free from the bonds of the traditional down-filled parka. Here's to the Minneapple. And to its people. Our flair for style is balanced by a healthy respect for wind chill factors. And we always, always eat our vegetables. This is the Minneapple. | |
10.0 times 0.1 is hardly ever 1.0. | |
A rope lying over the top of a fence is the same length on each side. It weighs one third of a pound per foot. On one end hangs a monkey holding a banana, and on the other end a weight equal to the weight of the monkey. The banana weighs two ounces per inch. The rope is as long (in feet) as the age of the monkey (in years), and the weight of the monkey (in ounces) is the same as the age of the monkey's mother. The combined age of the monkey and its mother is thirty years. One half of the weight of the monkey, plus the weight of the banana, is one forth as much as the weight of the weight and the weight of the rope. The monkey's mother is half as old as the monkey will be when it is three times as old as its mother was when she she was half as old as the monkey will be when when it is as old as its mother will be when she is four times as old as the monkey was when it was twice as its mother was when she was one third as old as the monkey was when it was old as is mother was when she was three times as old as the monkey was when it was one fourth as old as it is now. How long is the banana? | |
A Severe Strain on the Credulity As a method of sending a missile to the higher, and even to the highest parts of the earth's atmospheric envelope, Professor Goddard's rocket is a practicable and therefore promising device. It is when one considers the multiple-charge rocket as a traveler to the moon that one begins to doubt... for after the rocket quits our air and really starts on its journey, its flight would be neither accelerated nor maintained by the explosion of the charges it then might have left. Professor Goddard, with his "chair" in Clark College and countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to re-action, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react... Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools. -- New York Times Editorial, 1920 | |
I myself have dreamed up a structure intermediate between Dyson spheres and planets. Build a ring 93 million miles in radius -- one Earth orbit -- around the sun. If we have the mass of Jupiter to work with, and if we make it a thousand miles wide, we get a thickness of about a thousand feet for the base. And it has advantages. The Ringworld will be much sturdier than a Dyson sphere. We can spin it on its axis for gravity. A rotation speed of 770 m/s will give us a gravity of one Earth normal. We wouldn't even need to roof it over. Place walls one thousand miles high at each edge, facing the sun. Very little air will leak over the edges. Lord knows the thing is roomy enough. With three million times the surface area of the Earth, it will be some time before anyone complains of the crowding. -- Larry Niven, "Ringworld" | |
Nuclear powered vacuuum cleaners will probably be a reality within 10 years. -- Alex Lewyt (President of the Lewyt Corporation, manufacturers of vacuum cleaners), quoted in The New York Times, June 10, 1955. | |
Once upon a time, when I was training to be a mathematician, a group of us bright young students taking number theory discovered the names of the smaller prime numbers. 2: The Odd Prime -- It's the only even prime, therefore is odd. QED. 3: The True Prime -- Lewis Carroll: "If I tell you 3 times, it's true." 31: The Arbitrary Prime -- Determined by unanimous unvote. We needed an arbitrary prime in case the prof asked for one, and so had an election. 91 received the most votes (well, it *looks* prime) and 3+4i the next most. However, 31 was the only candidate to receive none at all. 41: The Female Prime -- The polynomial X**2 - X + 41 is prime for integer values from 1 to 40. 43: The Male Prime - they form a prime pair. Since the composite numbers are formed from primes, their qualities are derived from those primes. So, for instance, the number 6 is "odd but true", while the powers of 2 are all extremely odd numbers. | |
The Shuttle is now going five times the sound of speed. -- Dan Rather, first landing of Columbia | |
The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed from available data. Our authority is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days." Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition seven times seven (49) times as much as the Earth does from the Sun, or fifty times in all. The light we receive from the Moon is one ten-thousandth of the light we receive from the Sun, so we can ignore that. With these data we can compute the temperature of Heaven. The radiation falling on Heaven will heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses fifty times as much heat as the Earth by radiation. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation, (H/E)^4 = 50, where E is the absolute temperature of the earth (~300K), gives H as 798K (525C). The exact temperature of Hell cannot be computed, but it must be less than 444.6C, the temperature at which brimstone or sulphur changes from a liquid to a gas. Revelations 21:8 says "But the fearful, and unbelieving ... shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone." A lake of molten brimstone means that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point, or 444.6C (Above this point it would be a vapor, not a lake.) We have, then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C. -- "Applied Optics", vol. 11, A14, 1972 | |
To converse at the distance of the Indes by means of sympathetic contrivances may be as natural to future times as to us is a literary correspondence. -- Joseph Glanvill, 1661 | |
Two men are in a hot-air balloon. Soon, they find themselves lost in a canyon somewhere. One of the three men says, "I've got an idea. We can call for help in this canyon and the echo will carry our voices to the end of the canyon. Someone's bound to hear us by then!" So he leans over the basket and screams out, "Helllloooooo! Where are we?" (They hear the echo several times). Fifteen minutes later, they hear this echoing voice: "Helllloooooo! You're lost!" The shouter comments, "That must have been a mathematician." Puzzled, his friend asks, "Why do you say that?" "For three reasons. First, he took a long time to answer, second, he was absolutely correct, and, third, his answer was absolutely useless." | |
While the engineer developed his thesis, the director leaned over to his assistant and whispered, "Did you ever hear of why the sea is salt?" "Why the sea is salt?" whispered back the assistant. "What do you mean?" The director continued: "When I was a little kid, I heard the story of `Why the sea is salt' many times, but I never thought it important until just a moment ago. It's something like this: Formerly the sea was fresh water and salt was rare and expensive. A miller received from a wizard a wonderful machine that just ground salt out of itself all day long. At first the miller thought himself the most fortunate man in the world, but soon all the villages had salt to last them for centuries and still the machine kept on grinding more salt. The miller had to move out of his house, he had to move off his acres. At last he determined that he would sink the machine in the sea and be rid of it. But the mill ground so fast that boat and miller and machine were sunk together, and down below, the mill still went on grinding and that's why the sea is salt." "I don't get you," said the assistant. -- Guy Endore, "Men of Iron" | |
The Kosher Dill was invented in 1723 by Joe Kosher and Sam Dill. It is the single most popular pickle variety today, enjoyed throughout the free world by man, woman and child alike. An astounding 350 billion kosher dills are eaten each year, averaging out to almost 1/4 pickle per person per day. New York Times food critic Mimi Sheraton says "The kosher dill really changed my life. I used to enjoy eating McDonald's hamburgers and drinking Iron City Lite, and then I encountered the kosher dill pickle. I realized that there was far more to haute cuisine then I'd ever imagined. And now, just look at me." | |
There are times when truth is stranger than fiction and lunch time is one of them. | |
And did those feet, in ancient times, Walk upon England's mountains green? And was the Holy Lamb of God In England's pleasant pastures seen? And did the Countenance Divine Shine forth upon these crowded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here Among these dark satanic mills? Bring me my bow of burning gold! Bring me my arrows of desire! Bring me my spears! O clouds unfold! Bring me my chariot of fire! I shall not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword rest in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem In England's green and pleasant land. -- William Blake, "Jerusalem" | |
At times discretion should be thrown aside, and with the foolish we should play the fool. -- Menander | |
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" | |
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" | |
Here I am again right where I know I shouldn't be I've been caught inside this trap too many times I must've walked these steps and said these words a thousand times before It seems like I know everybody's lines. -- David Bromberg, "How Late'll You Play 'Til?" | |
HERE LIES LESTER MOORE SHOT 4 TIMES WITH A .44 NO LES NO MOORE -- tombstone, in Tombstone, AZ | |
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" | |
I'm N-ary the tree, I am, N-ary the tree, I am, I am. I'm getting traversed by the parser next door, She's traversed me seven times before. And ev'ry time it was an N-ary (N-ary!) Never wouldn't ever do a binary. (No sir!) I'm 'er eighth tree that was N-ary. N-ary the tree I am, I am, N-ary the tree I am. -- Stolen from Paul Revere and the Raiders | |
`Just the place for a Snark!' the Bellman cried, As he landed his crew with care; Supporting each man on the top of the tide By a finger entwined in his hair. 'Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice: That alone should encourage the crew. Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.' | |
`Just the place for a Snark!' the Bellman cried, As he landed his crew with care; Supporting each man on the top of the tide By a finger entwined in his hair. `Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice: That alone should encourage the crew. Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.' | |
Just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone, Suzanne, the plans they made put an end to you, I went out this morning and I wrote down this song, Just can't remember who to send it to... Oh, I've seen fire and I've seen rain, I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end, I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend, But I always thought that I'd see you again. Thought I'd see you one more time again. -- James Taylor, "Fire and Rain" | |
Once there was a little nerd who loved to read your mail, And then yank back the i-access times to get hackers off his tail, And once as he finished reading from the secretary's spool, He wrote a rude rejection to her boyfriend (how uncool!) And this as delivermail did work and he ran his backfstat, He heard an awful crackling like rat fritters in hot fat, And hard errors brought the system down 'fore he could even shout! And the bio bug'll bring yours down too, ef you don't watch out! And once they was a little flake who'd prowl through the uulog, And when he went to his blit that night to play at being god, The ops all heard him holler, and they to the console dashed, But when they did a ps -ut they found the system crashed! Oh, the wizards adb'd the dumps and did the system trace, And worked on the file system 'til the disk head was hot paste, But all they ever found was this: "panic: never doubt", And the bio bug'll crash your box too, ef you don't watch out! When the day is done and the moon comes out, And you hear the printer whining and the rk's seems to count, When the other desks are empty and their terminals glassy grey, And the load is only 1.6 and you wonder if it'll stay, You must mind the file protections and not snoop around, Or the bio bug'll getcha and bring the system down! | |
Picking up the pieces of my sweet shattered dream, I wonder how the old folks are tonight, Her name was Ann, and I'll be damned if I recall her face, She left me not knowing what to do. Carefree Highway, let me slip away on you, Carefree Highway, you seen better days, The morning after blues, from my head down to my shoes, Carefree Highway, let me slip away, slip away, on you... Turning back the pages to the times I love best, I wonder if she'll ever do the same, Now the thing that I call livin' is just bein' satisfied, With knowing I got noone left to blame. Carefree Highway, I got to see you, my old flame... Searching through the fragments of my dream shattered sleep, I wonder if the years have closed her mind, I guess it must be wanderlust or tryin' to get free, From the good old faithful feelin' we once knew. -- Gordon Lightfoot, "Carefree Highway" | |
Sometimes the light's all shining on me, Other times I can barely see. Lately it occurs to me What a long strange trip it's been. -- The Grateful Dead, "American Beauty" | |
Stayed in bed all morning just to pass the time, There's something wrong here, there can be no more denying, One of us is changing, or maybe we just stopped trying, And it's too late, baby, now, it's too late, Though we really did try to make it, Something inside has died and I can't hide and I just can't fake it... It used to be so easy living here with you, You were light and breezy and I knew just what to do Now you look so unhappy and I feel like a fool. There'll be good times again for me and you, But we just can't stay together, don't you feel it too? But I'm glad for what we had and that I once loved you... But it's too late baby... It's too late, now darling, it's too late... -- Carol King, "Tapestry" | |
There are bad times just around the corner, There are dark clouds hurtling through the sky And it's no good whining About a silver lining For we know from experience that they won't roll by... -- Noel Coward | |
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. | |
We're Knights of the Round Table We dance whene'er we're able We do routines and chorus scenes We're knights of the Round Table With footwork impeccable Our shows are formidable We dine well here in Camelot But many times We eat ham and jam and Spam a lot. We're given rhymes That are quite unsingable In war we're tough and able, We're opera mad in Camelot Quite indefatigable We sing from the diaphragm a lot. Between our quests We sequin vests And impersonate Clark Gable It's a busy life in Camelot. I have to push the pram a lot. -- Monty Python | |
While walking down a crowded City street the other day, I heard a little urchin To a comrade turn and say, "Say, Chimmey, lemme tell youse, I'd be happy as a clam If only I was de feller dat Me mudder t'inks I am. "She t'inks I am a wonder, My friends, be yours a life of toil An' she knows her little lad Or undiluted joy, Could never mix wit' nuttin' You can learn a wholesome lesson Dat was ugly, mean or bad. From that small, untutored boy. Oh, lot o' times I sit and t'ink Don't aim to be an earthly saint How nice, 'twould be, gee whiz! With eyes fixed on a star: If a feller was de feller Just try to be the fellow that Dat his mudder t'inks he is." Your mother thinks you are. -- Will S. Adkin, "If I Only Was the Fellow" | |
COONDOG MEMORY (heard in Rutledge, Missouri, about eighteen years ago) Now, this dog is for sale, and she can not only follow a trail twice as old as the average dog can, but she's got a pretty good memory to boot. For instance, last week this old boy who lives down the road from me, and is forever stinkmouthing my hounds, brought some city fellow around to try out ol' Sis here. So I turned her out south of the house and she made two or three big swings back and forth across the edge of the woods, set back her head, bayed a couple of times, cut straight through the woods, come to a little clearing, jumped about three foot straight up in the air, run to the other side, and commenced to letting out a racket like she had something treed. We went over there with our flashlights and shone them up in the tree but couldn't catch no shine offa coon's eyes, and my neighbor sorta indicated that ol' Sis might be a little crazy, `cause she stood right to the tree and kept singing up into it. So I pulled off my coat and climbed up into the branches, and sure enough, there was a coon skeleton wedged in between a couple of branches about twenty foot up. Now as I was saying, she can follow a pretty old trail, but this fellow was still calling her crazy or touched `cause she had hopped up in the air while she was crossing the clearing, until I reminded him that the Hawkins' had a fence across there about five years back. Now, this dog is for sale. -- News that stayed News: Ten Years of Coevolution Quarterly | |
HARVARD: Quarterback: Sophomore Dave Strewzinski... likes to pass. And pass he does, with a record 86 attempts (three completions) in 87 plays.... Though Strewzinksi has so far failed to score any points for the Crimson, his jackrabbit speed has made him the least sacked quarterback in the Ivy league. Wide Receiver: The other directional signal in Harvard's offensive machine is senior Phil Yip, who is very fast. Yip is so fast that he has set a record for being fast. Expect to see Yip elude all pursuers and make it into the endzone five or six times, his average for a game. Yip, nicknamed "fumblefingers" and "you asshole" by his teammates, hopes to carry the ball with him at least one of those times. YALE: Defense: On the defensive side, Yale boasts the stingiest line in the Ivies. Primarily responsible are seniors Izzy "Shylock" Bloomberg and Myron Finklestein, the tightest ends in recent Eli history. Also contributing to the powerful defense is junior tackle Angus MacWhirter, a Scotsman who rounds out the offensive ethnic joke. Look for these three to shut down the opening coin toss. -- Harvard Lampoon 1988 Program Parody, distributed at The Game | |
Life is a game. In order to have a game, something has to be more important than something else. If what already is, is more important than what isn't, the game is over. So, life is a game in which what isn't, is more important than what is. Let the good times roll. -- Werner Erhard | |
The fellow sat down at a bar, ordered a drink and asked the bartender if he wanted to hear a dumb-jock joke. "Hey, buddy," the bartender replied, "you see those two guys next to you? They used to be with the Chicago Bears. The two dudes behind you made the U.S. Olympic wrestling team. And for your information, I used to play center at Notre Dame." "Forget it," the customer said. "I don't want to explain it five times." | |
This fortune soaks up 47 times its own weight in excess memory. | |
"`You know,' said Arthur, `it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die from asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young.' `Why, what did she tell you?' `I don't know, I didn't listen.'" - Arthur coping with certain death as best as he could. | |
"Arthur's consciousness approached his body as from a great distance, and reluctantly. It had had some bad times in there. Slowly, nervously, it entered and settled down into its accustomed position. Arthur sat up. `Where am I?' he said. `Lord's Cricket Ground,' said Ford. `Fine,' said Arthur, and his consciousness stepped out again for a quick breather. His body flopped back on the grass." - Arthur coping with his return to Earth as best as he could. | |
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" | |
"I was drunk last night, crawled home across the lawn. By accident I put the car key in the door lock. The house started up. So I figured what the hell, and drove it around the block a few times. I thought I should go park it in the middle of the freeway and yell at everyone to get off my driveway." -- Steven Wright | |
"You know, it's at times like this when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young!" "Why, what did she tell you?" "I don't know, I didn't listen." -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" | |
Most bacteria have the decency to be microscopic. Epulopiscium fishelsoni is not among them. The newly identified one-celled macro-microorganism is a full .5 mm long, large enough to be seen with the naked eye. Described in the current Nature, "It is a million times as massive as a typical bacterium."-Time, page 25, March 29, 1993 | |
William Safire's rules for writing as seen in the New York Times Do not put statements in the negative form. And don't start sentences with a conjunction. If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do. Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky. Never, ever use repetitive redundancies. Also, avoid awkward or affected alliteration. Last, but not least, avoid cliche's like the plague. | |
Statements recently seen on Slashdot: "The Internet interprets advertising as damage and routes around it." "Accept risk. Accept responsibility. Put a lawyer out of business." "A beowulf cluster of Cisco routers? Isn't that the Internet?" "Geeks aren't interested in politics because government doesn't double its efficiency and speed once every 18 months." "Windows 98 hasn't crashed for me once in over a year, either. Oh, wait, I haven't booted it in over a year." "For more than 4 generations the IT Professionals were the guardians of quality and stability in software. Before the dark times. Before Microsoft..." "You can tell how desperate they are by counting the number of times they say 'innovate' in their press releases." | |
I sat laughing snidely into my notebook until they showed me a PC running Linux... And oh! It was as though the heavens opened and God handed down a client-side OS so beautiful, so graceful, and so elegant that a million Microsoft developers couldn't have invented it even if they had a hundred years and a thousand crates of Jolt cola. -- Polly Sprenger, LAN Times | |
Could You Get Fired for Visiting Slashdot? PADUCAH, KY -- Matt Johnson, an employee at Paradigm Shift Consulting, Inc., was fired from his programming job because of his addiction to Slashdot. Johnson typically visited Slashdot several times a day during working hours. Citing productivity problems, Johnson's boss gave him the pink slip and instituted a 'NoDot' policy -- no visiting Slashdot or related sites from the office, ever. Now Johnson has filed a lawsuit, claiming that his Slashdot addiction is protected by the Americans With Disabilities Act. Matt Johnson explained, "They discriminated against me because I'm a Dothead. Drug abuse and alcoholism are often considered handicaps. Why not Slashdot addiction?" Johnson's boss sees the situation differently. "Matt never got any work done. He was always visiting Slashdot, Freshmeat, or some other nerd website. And when he wasn't, he suffered withdrawl symptoms and couldn't think straight. A few months ago he spent eight consecutive hours posting comments in a KDE vs. GNOME flame war. I tried to offer assistance to overcome his addiction, but he refused. Enough is enough." The company's 'NoDot' policy has been under fire as well. One anonymous employee said, "We can't visit Slashdot because of Matt's addiction. This just sucks. I really don't see anything wrong with visiting Slashdot during breaks or after hours." | |
Brief History Of Linux (#2) Hammurabi's Open-Source Code Hammurabi became king of Babylonia around 1750BC. Under his reign, a sophisticated legal code developed; Version 1, containing 282 clauses, was carved into a large rock column open to the public. However, the code contained several errors (Hammurabi must have been drunk), which numerous citizens demanded be fixed. One particularly brave Babylonian submitted to the king's court a stack of cloth patches that, when affixed to the column, would cover up and correct the errors. With the king's approval, these patches were applied to the legal code; within a month a new corrected rock column (Version 2.0) was officially announced. While future kings never embraced this idea (who wanted to admit they made a mistake?), the concept of submitting patches to fix problems is now taken for granted in modern times. | |
Brief History Of Linux (#7) The Rise of Geeks The late 19th Century saw the rise and fall of "geeks", wild carnival performers who bit the heads off live chickens. This vocal minority, outcast from mainstream society, clamored for respect, but failed. Their de facto spokesman, Tom Splatz, tried to expose America to their plight in his 312-page book, "Geeks". In the book Splatz documented the life of two Idahoan geeks with no social life as they made a meager living traveling the Pacific Northwest in circuses. While Splatz's masterpiece was a commercial failure, the book did set a world record for using the term "geek" a total of 6,143 times. | |
Look Out! It's Microsoft Outlook An old maxim in the Unix community states, "All programs expand until they can read mail... except Microsoft Outlook." Well, that's no longer true. By taking advantage of loopholes in several undocumented APIs, a team of geeks were able to transform Outlook from a virus-delivery system into an actual mail client. "It was quite a feat to accomplish this," said one of the geeks. "I mean, the rat's nest that is the Windows API can be used to frighten small children... or adults. And the frequency by which Outlook exploits are discovered is directly proportional to the number of times Bill Gates uses the word 'innovation'. But this is the first time somebody has discovered a beneficial exploit." Microsoft has vowed to release a patch to fix the uncovered security flaws. "We simply cannot tolerate unauthorized reverse engineering and hacking of our innovative solutions. Our Security Response Team will pull an all-nighter to eliminate these known issues." | |
Ted Turner Unveils All-Commercial Channel For years, the pundits have predicted that the Web would become more like television. However, media tycoon Ted Turner is pursuing the exact opposite. Taking a cue from pop-under advertisements, Flash ads, get-rich-quick spam emails, viral marketing, and "Gator" programs, Turner has unveiled "TCC", the Turner Commercial Channel, for cable TV. TCC will feature "shows" like "Best Commercials That You've Seen A Million Times", "Life Is A Slogan, Just Buy It", and "Name That Jingle". These shows will occupy about 30% of the screen, while several rows of marquees at the bottom will flash various advertising messages. An animated "TCC" watermark will float around the screen while corporate logos are flashed randomly in the corners. Meanwhile, "pop-up ads" will randomly appear that obscure the other ads. These pop-ups will sometimes be further obscured by meta-pop-ups. Likewise, corporate jingles will play in the background, interfering with other jingles and advertising sounds. | |
A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience. -- John Updike | |
He laughs at every joke three times... once when it's told, once when it's explained, and once when he understands it. | |
"He's the kind of man for the times that need the kind of man he is ..." | |
If people see that you mean them no harm, they'll never hurt you, nine times out of ten! | |
Justice always prevails ... three times out of seven! -- Michael J. Wagner | |
Largest Number of Driving Test Failures By April 1970 Mrs. Miriam Hargrave had failed her test thirty-nine times. In the eight preceding years she had received two hundred and twelve driving lessons at a cost of L300. She set the new record while driving triumphantly through a set of red traffic lights in Wakefield, Yorkshire. Disappointingly, she passed at the fortieth attempt (3 August 1970) but eight years later she showed some of her old magic when she was reported as saying that she still didn't like doing right-hand turns. -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures" | |
People don't usually make the same mistake twice -- they make it three times, four time, five times... | |
What is involved in such [close] relationships is a form of emotional chemistry, so far unexplained by any school of psychiatry I am aware of, that conditions nothing so simple as a choice between the poles of attraction and repulsion. You can meet some people thirty, forty times down the years, and they remain amiable bystanders, like the shore lights of towns that a sailor passes at stated times but never calls at on the regular run. Conversely, all considerations of sex aside, you can meet some other people once or twice and they remain permanent influences on your life. Everyone is aware of this discrepancy between the acquaintance seen as familiar wallpaper or instant friend. The chemical action it entails is less worth analyzing than enjoying. At any rate, these six pieces are about men with whom I felt an immediate sympat - to use a coining of Max Beerbohm's more satisfactory to me than the opaque vogue word "empathy". -- Alistair Cooke, "Six Men" | |
"THIS time it really is fixed. I mean, how many times can we get it wrong? At some point, we just have to run out of really bad ideas.." - Linus Torvalds" | |
"Thanks, and THIS time it really is fixed. I mean, how many times can we get it wrong? At some point, we just have to run out of really bad ideas.." - Linus Torvalds | |
"Yeah. Maybe we fixed truncate, and maybe we didn't. I've thought that we fixed it now several times, and I was always wrong. Time for some reverse psychology: I'm sure this one doesn't fix the truncate bug either. - Linus Torvalds | |
The executive, Irving Wladawsky- Berger, an I.B.M. vice president, said, "If we thought this was a trap, we wouldn't be doing it, and as you know, we have a lot of lawyers." - from a New York Times article about Microsoft vs GPL licensing | |
Re-sending is always the right thing to do. Sometimes it takes a few times, and you can add a small exasperated message at the top by the third time ("Don't you love me any more?"). - Linus Torvalds about sending patches to him | |
(But Intel has redefined the memory ordering so many times that they might redefine it in the future too and say that dependent loads are ok. I suspect most of the definitions are of the type "Oh, it used to be ok in the implementation even though it wasn't defined, and it turns out that Windows doesn't work if we change it, so we'll define darkness to be the new standard"..) - Linus Torvalds | |
Didn't you hear? I think Linus broke the news awhile back: Alan has the uncanny ability to fork() himself infinitely many times. And he has no resource contention, so he scales O(1). - Robert Love on linux-kernel | |
Give up sainthood, renounce wisdom, And it will be a hundred times better for everyone. Give up kindness, renounce morality, And men will rediscover filial piety and love. Give up ingenuity, renounce profit, And bandits and thieves will disappear. These three are outward forms alone; they are not sufficient in themselves. It is more important To see the simplicity, To realize one's true nature, To cast off selfishness And temper desire. | |
These things from ancient times arise from one: The sky is whole and clear. The earth is whole and firm. The spirit is whole and strong. The valley is whole and full. The ten thousand things are whole and alive. Kings and lords are whole, and the country is upright. All these are in virtue of wholeness. The clarity of the sky prevents its falling. The firmness of the earth prevents its splitting. The strength of the spirit prevents its being used up. The fullness of the valley prevents its running dry. The growth of the ten thousand things prevents their drying out. The leadership of kings and lords prevents the downfall of the country. Therefore the humble is the root of the noble. The low is the foundation of the high. Princes and lords consider themselves "orphaned", "widowed" and "worthless". Do they not depend on being humble? Too much success is not an advantage. Do not tinkle like jade Or clatter like stone chimes. | |
A good soldier is not violent. A good fighter is not angry. A good winner is not vengeful A good employer is humble. This is known as the Virtue of not striving. This is known as ability to deal with people. This since ancient times has been known as the ultimate unity with heaven. | |
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. | |
Are you a parent? Do you sometimes find yourself unsure as to what to say in those awkward situations? Worry no more... Go away. You bother me. Why? Because life is unfair. That's a nice drawing. What is it? Children should be seen and not heard. You'll be the death of me. You'll understand when you're older. Because. Wipe that smile off your face. I don't believe you. How many times have I told you to be careful? Just because. | |
I never thought that I'd see the day where Netscape is free software and X11 is proprietary. We live in interesting times. -- Matt Kimball <mkimball@xmission.com> | |
I sat laughing snidely into my notebook until they showed me a PC running Linux. And oh! It was as though the heavens opened and God handed down a client-side OS so beautiful, so graceful, and so elegant that a million Microsoft developers couldn't have invented it even if they had a hundred years and a thousand crates of Jolt cola. -- LAN Times | |
I sat laughing snidely into my notebook until they showed me a PC running Linux.... And did this PC choke? Did it stutter? Did it, even once, say that this program has performed an illegal operation and must be shut down? No. And this is just on the client. -- LAN Times | |
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Internet users who spend even a few hours a week online at home experience higher levels of depression and loneliness than if they had used the computer network less frequently, The New York Times reported Sunday. The result ... surprised both researchers and sponsors, which included Intel Corp., Hewlett Packard, AT&T Research and Apple Computer. | |
<zarkov> "NT 5.0. All the bugs and ten times the code size!" | |
p.s. - i'm about *this* close to running around in the server room with a pair of bolt cutters, and a large wooden mallet, laughing like a maniac and cutting everything i can fit the bolt cutters around. and whacking that which i cannot. so if i seem semi-incoherent, or just really *really* nasty at times, please forgive me. stress is not a pretty thing. };P -- Phillip R. Jaenke | |
* cesarb wonders if in less than a week Carmack will end up receiving in e-mail a courtesy copy of a version of the Quake source which is four times faster than what went out of his virtual hands... | |
<doogie> there is one bad thing about having a cell phone. <doogie> I can be reached at any time. :| <wmono> that's why I leave mine off at all times. ;> | |
Humor in the Court: Q. Mrs. Smith, do you believe that you are emotionally unstable? A. I should be. Q. How many times have you comitted suicide? A. Four times. | |
It seems these two guys, George and Harry, set out in a Hot Air balloon to cross the United States. After forty hours in the air, George turned to Harry, and said, "Harry, I think we've drifted off course! We need to find out where we are." Harry cools the air in the balloon, and they descend to below the cloud cover. Slowly drifting over the countryside, George spots a man standing below them and yells out, "Excuse me! Can you please tell me where we are?" The man on the ground yells back, "You're in a balloon, approximately fifty feet in the air!" George turns to Harry and says, "Well, that man *must* be a lawyer". Replies Harry, "How can you tell?". "Because the information he gave us is 100% accurate, and totally useless!" That's the end of The Joke, but for you people who are still worried about George and Harry: they end up in the drink, and make the front page of the New York Times: "Balloonists Soaked by Lawyer". | |
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." | |
(1) Avoid fried meats which angry up the blood. (2) If your stomach antagonizes you, pacify it with cool thoughts. (3) Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move. (4) Go very lightly on the vices, such as carrying on in society, as the social ramble ain't restful. (5) Avoid running at all times. (6) Don't look back, something might be gaining on you. -- S. Paige, c. 1951 | |
A priest asked: What is Fate, Master? And the Master answered: It is that which gives a beast of burden its reason for existence. It is that which men in former times had to bear upon their backs. It is that which has caused nations to build byways from City to City upon which carts and coaches pass, and alongside which inns have come to be built to stave off Hunger, Thirst and Weariness. And that is Fate? said the priest. Fate... I thought you said Freight, responded the Master. That's all right, said the priest. I wanted to know what Freight was too. -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit" | |
Normal times may possibly be over forever. | |
We're mortal -- which is to say, we're ignorant, stupid, and sinful -- but those are only handicaps. Our pride is that nevertheless, now and then, we do our best. A few times we succeed. What more dare we ask for? -- Ensign Flandry | |
I forgot to mention an important fact in the 1.3.67 announcement. In order to get a fully working kernel, you have to follow the steps below: - Walk around your computer widdershins 3 times, chanting "Linus is overworked, and he makes lousy patches, but we love him anyway". Get your spuouse to do this too for extra effect. Children are optional. - Apply the patch included in this mail - Call your system "Super-67", and don't forget to unapply the patch before you later applying the official 1.3.68 patch. - reboot -- Linus Torvalds, announcing another kernel patch | |
Besides, its really not worthwhile to use more than two times your physical ram in swap (except in a select few situations). The performance of the system becomes so abysmal you'd rather heat pins under your toenails while reciting Windows95 source code and staring at porn flicks of Bob Dole than actually try to type something. -- seen on c.o.l.development.system, about the size of the swap space | |
Try to remove the color-problem by restarting your computer several times. -- Microsoft-Internet Explorer README.TXT | |
I never thought that I'd see the day where Netscape is free software and X11 is proprietary. We live in interesting times. -- Matt Kimball <mkimball@xmission.com> | |
Just go ahead and write your own multitasking multiuser os! Worked for me all the times. -- Linus Torvalds | |
According to a recent and unscientific national survey, smiling is something everyone should do at least 6 times a day. In an effort to increase the national average (the US ranks third among the world's superpowers in smiling), Xerox has instructed all personnel to be happy, effervescent, and most importantly, to smile. Xerox employees agree, and even feel strongly that they can not only meet but surpass the national average... except for Tubby Ackerman. But because Tubby does such a fine job of racing around parking lots with a large butterfly net retrieving floating IC chips, Xerox decided to give him a break. If you see Tubby in a parking lot he may have a sheepish grin. This is where the expression, "Service with a slightly sheepish grin" comes from. | |
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?" | |
Can anyone remember when the times were not hard, and money not scarce? | |
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. | |
The confusion of a staff member is measured by the length of his memos. -- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981 | |
XI: If the Earth could be made to rotate twice as fast, managers would get twice as much done. If the Earth could be made to rotate twenty times as fast, everyone else would get twice as much done since all the managers would fly off. XII: It costs a lot to build bad products. XIII: There are many highly successful businesses in the United States. There are also many highly paid executives. The policy is not to intermingle the two. XIV: After the year 2015, there will be no airplane crashes. There will be no takeoffs either, because electronics will occupy 100 percent of every airplane's weight. XV: The last 10 percent of performance generates one-third of the cost and two-thirds of the problems. -- Norman Augustine | |
XLVII: Two-thirds of the Earth's surface is covered with water. The other third is covered with auditors from headquarters. XLVIII: The more time you spend talking about what you have been doing, the less time you have to spend doing what you have been talking about. Eventually, you spend more and more time talking about less and less until finally you spend all your time talking about nothing. XLIX: Regulations grow at the same rate as weeds. L: The average regulation has a life span one-fifth as long as a chimpanzee's and one-tenth as long as a human's -- but four times as long as the official's who created it. LI: By the time of the United States Tricentennial, there will be more government workers than there are workers. LII: People working in the private sector should try to save money. There remains the possibility that it may someday be valuable again. -- Norman Augustine | |
There are many times when you want it to ignore the rest of the string just like atof() does. Oddly enough, Perl calls atof(). How convenient. :-) -- Larry Wall in <1991Jun24.231628.14446@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov> | |
"These are DARK TIMES for all mankind's HIGHEST VALUES!" "These are DARK TIMES for FREEDOM and PROSPERITY!" "These are GREAT TIMES to put your money on BAD GUY to kick the CRAP out of MEGATON MAN!" | |
"A wizard cannot do everything; a fact most magicians are reticent to admit, let alone discuss with prospective clients. Still, the fact remains that there are certain objects, and people, that are, for one reason or another, completely immune to any direct magical spell. It is for this group of beings that the magician learns the subtleties of using indirect spells. It also does no harm, in dealing with these matters, to carry a large club near your person at all times." -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Volume VIII | |
A CODE OF ETHICAL BEHAVIOR FOR PATIENTS: 1. DO NOT EXPECT YOUR DOCTOR TO SHARE YOUR DISCOMFORT. Involvement with the patient's suffering might cause him to lose valuable scientific objectivity. 2. BE CHEERFUL AT ALL TIMES. Your doctor leads a busy and trying life and requires all the gentleness and reassurance he can get. 3. TRY TO SUFFER FROM THE DISEASE FOR WHICH YOU ARE BEING TREATED. Remember that your doctor has a professional reputation to uphold. | |
"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 |