Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
UNIX was half a billion (500000000) seconds old on Tue Nov 5 00:53:20 1985 GMT (measuring since the time(2) epoch). -- Andy Tannenbaum | |
Thank God a million billion times you live in Texas. | |
A billion here, a billion there -- pretty soon it adds up to real money. -- Sen. Everett Dirksen, on the U.S. defense budget | |
A billion seconds ago Harry Truman was president. A billion minutes ago was just after the time of Christ. A billion hours ago man had not yet walked on earth. A billion dollars ago was late yesterday afternoon at the U.S. Treasury. | |
Oh, I don't blame Congress. If I had $600 billion at my disposal, I'd be irresponsible, too. -- Lichty & Wagner | |
The Minnesota Board of Education voted to consider requiring all students to do some "volunteer work" as a prerequisite to high school graduation. Senator Orrin Hatch said that "capital punishment is our society's recognition of the sanctity of human life." According to the tax bill signed by President Reagan on December 22, 1987, Don Tyson and his sister-in-law Barbara run a "family farm." Their "farm" has 25,000 employees and grosses $1.7 billion a year. But as a "family farm" they get tax breaks that save them $135 million a year. Scott L. Pickard, spokesperson for the Massachusetts Department of Public Works, calls them "ground-mounted confirmatory route markers." You probably call them road signs, but then you don't work in a government agency. It's not "elderly" or "senior citizens" anymore. Now it's "chrono- logically experienced citizens." According to the FAA, the propeller blade didn't break off, it was just a case of "uncontained blade liberation." -- Quarterly Review of Doublespeak (NCTE) | |
Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Axiom: No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats -- approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less. | |
life, n.: A whim of several billion cells to be you for a while. | |
There are people who find it odd to eat four or five Chinese meals in a row; in China, I often remind them, there are a billion or so people who find nothing odd about it. -- Calvin Trillin | |
1 Billion dollars of budget deficit = 1 Gramm-Rudman 6.023 x 10 to the 23rd power alligator pears = Avocado's number 2 pints = 1 Cavort Basic unit of Laryngitis = The Hoarsepower Shortest distance between two jokes = A straight line 6 Curses = 1 Hexahex 3500 Calories = 1 Food Pound 1 Mole = 007 Secret Agents 1 Mole = 25 Cagey Bees 1 Dog Pound = 16 oz. of Alpo 1000 beers served at a Twins game = 1 Killibrew 2.4 statute miles of surgical tubing at Yale U. = 1 I.V.League 2000 pounds of chinese soup = 1 Won Ton 10 to the minus 6th power mouthwashes = 1 Microscope Speed of a tortoise breaking the sound barrier = 1 Machturtle 8 Catfish = 1 Octo-puss 365 Days of drinking Lo-Cal beer. = 1 Lite-year 16.5 feet in the Twilight Zone = 1 Rod Serling Force needed to accelerate 2.2lbs of cookies = 1 Fig-newton to 1 meter per second One half large intestine = 1 Semicolon 10 to the minus 6th power Movie = 1 Microfilm 1000 pains = 1 Megahertz 1 Word = 1 Millipicture 1 Sagan = Billions & Billions 1 Angstrom: measure of computer anxiety = 1000 nail-bytes 10 to the 12th power microphones = 1 Megaphone 10 to the 6th power Bicycles = 2 megacycles The amount of beauty required launch 1 ship = 1 Millihelen | |
Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while. | |
Oxygen is a very toxic gas and an extreme fire hazard. It is fatal in concentrations of as little as 0.000001 p.p.m. Humans exposed to the oxygen concentrations die within a few minutes. Symptoms resemble very much those of cyanide poisoning (blue face, etc.). In higher concentrations, e.g. 20%, the toxic effect is somewhat delayed and it takes about 2.5 billion inhalations before death takes place. The reason for the delay is the difference in the mechanism of the toxic effect of oxygen in 20% concentration. It apparently contributes to a complex process called aging, of which very little is known, except that it is always fatal. However, the main disadvantage of the 20% oxygen concentration is in the fact it is habit forming. The first inhalation (occurring at birth) is sufficient to make oxygen addiction permanent. After that, any considerable decrease in the daily oxygen doses results in death with symptoms resembling those of cyanide poisoning. Oxygen is an extreme fire hazard. All of the fires that were reported in the continental U.S. for the period of the past 25 years were found to be due to the presence of this gas in the atmosphere surrounding the buildings in question. Oxygen is especially dangerous because it is odorless, colorless and tasteless, so that its presence can not be readily detected until it is too late. -- Chemical & Engineering News February 6, 1956 | |
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." | |
Woke up this morning, don't believe what I saw. Hundred billion bottles washed up on the shore. Seems I'm not alone in being alone. Hundred billion castaways looking for a call. -- The Police, "Message in a Bottle" | |
"There are a billion people in China. And I want them to be able to pass notes to each other written in Perl. I want them to be able to write poetry in Perl. That is my vision of the Future. My chosen perspective." -- Larry Wall (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates) | |
New Linux Companies Hope To Get Rich Quick (#4) The buzz surrounding Linux and Open Source during 1999 has produced a large number of billionnaires. However, people who weren't employed by Red Hat or VA Linux, or who didn't receive The Letter, are still poor. The visionaries at The IPO Factory want to change all that. As the name suggests, this company helps other businesses get off the ground, secure investments from Venture Capitalists, and eventually hold an IPO that exits the stratosphere. "You can think of us as meta-VCs," the IPO Factory's founder said. "You provide the idea... and we do the rest. If your company doesn't hold a successful IPO, you get your money back, guaranteed!" He added quickly, "Of course, if you do undergo a billion dollar IPO, we get to keep 25% of your stock." The company's first customer, LinuxOne, has been a failure. "From now on we're only going to service clients that actually have a viable product," an IPO Factory salesperson admitted. "Oh, and we've learned our lesson: it's not a good idea to cut-and-paste large sections from Red Hat's S-1 filing." | |
Tell a man there are 300 billion stars in the universe and he'll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint on it and he'll have to touch to be sure. | |
If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars. -- J. Paul Getty | |
NEW YORK-- Kraft Foods, Inc. announced today that its board of directors unanimously rejected the $11 billion takeover bid by Philip Morris and Co. A Kraft spokesman stated in a press conference that the offer was rejected because the $90-per-share bid did not reflect the true value of the company. Wall Street insiders, however, tell quite a different story. Apparently, the Kraft board of directors had all but signed the takeover agreement when they learned of Philip Morris' marketing plans for one of their major Middle East subsidiaries. To a person, the board voted to reject the bid when they discovered that the tobacco giant intended to reorganize Israeli Cheddar, Ltd., and name the new company Cheeses of Nazareth. | |
XLI: The more one produces, the less one gets. XLII: Simple systems are not feasible because they require infinite testing. XLIII: Hardware works best when it matters the least. XLIV: Aircraft flight in the 21st century will always be in a westerly direction, preferably supersonic, crossing time zones to provide the additional hours needed to fix the broken electronics. XLV: One should expect that the expected can be prevented, but the unexpected should have been expected. XLVI: A billion saved is a billion earned. -- Norman Augustine | |
Once, there was NO fun ... This was before MENU planning, FASHION statements or NAUTILUS equipment ... Then, in 1985 ... FUN was completely encoded in this tiny MICROCHIP ... It contain 14,768 vaguely amusing SIT-COM pilots!! We had to wait FOUR BILLION years but we finally got JERRY LEWIS, MTV and a large selection of creme-filled snack cakes! |