Dictionary De - En
De - Es
De - Pt| Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
| "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" | |
| Q: How do you stop an elephant from charging? A: Take away his credit cards. | |
| Chapter 2: Newtonian Growth and Decay The growth-decay formulas were developed in the trivial fashion by Isaac Newton's famous brother Phigg. His idea was to provide an equation that would describe a quantity that would dwindle and dwindle, but never quite reach zero. Historically, he was merely trying to work out his mortgage. Another versatile equation also emerged, one which would define a function that would continue to grow, but never reach unity. This equation can be applied to charging capacitors, over-damped springs, and the human race in general. | |
| Some people have told me they don't think a fat penguin really embodies the grace of Linux, which just tells me they have never seen a angry penguin charging at them in excess of 100mph. They'd be a lot more careful about what they say if they had. -- Linus Torvalds | |
| Brief History Of Linux (#16) Closed source, opened wallets In 1976 Bill Gates wrote the famous letter to Altair hobbyists accusing them of "stealing software" and "preventing good software from being written". We must assume Bill's statement was true, because no good software was being written at Micro-soft. Bill Gates did not innovate the concept of charging megabucks for software, but he was the first to make megabucks from peddling commercial software. | |
| <knghtbrd> If charging someone for violation of US crypto laws would get you laughed out of court, just "investigate" them on hte charge of TREASON! <knghtbrd> Tea, anyone? <Espy> I'd rather drown politicians instead of tea :) <stu> espy: politicians have gills, duh <Espy> weasels don't have gills | |
| [District Attorneys] learn in District Attorney School that there are two sure-fire ways to get a lot of favorable publicity: (1) Go down and raid all the lockers in the local high school and confiscate 53 marijuana cigarettes and put them in a pile and hold a press conference where you announce that they have a street value of $850 million. These raids never fail, because ALL high schools, including brand-new, never-used ones, have at least 53 marijuana cigarettes in the lockers. As far as anyone can tell, the locker factory puts them there. (2) Raid an "adult book store" and hold a press conference where you announce you are charging the owner with 850 counts of being a piece of human sleaze. This also never fails, because you always get a conviction. A juror at a pornography trial is not about to state for the record that he finds nothing obscene about a movie where actors engage in sexual activities with live snakes and a fire extinguisher. He is going to convict the bookstore owner, and vote for the death penalty just to make sure nobody gets the wrong impression. -- Dave Barry, "Pornography" | |
| The justifications for drug testing are part of the presently fashionable debate concerning restoring America's "competitiveness." Drugs, it has been revealed, are responsible for rampant absenteeism, reduced output, and poor quality work. But is drug testing in fact rationally related to the resurrection of competitiveness? Will charging the atmosphere of the workplace with the fear of excretory betrayal honestly spur productivity? Much noise has been made about rehabilitating the worker using drugs, but to date the vast majority of programs end with the simple firing or the not hiring of the abuser. This practice may exacerbate, not alleviate, the nation's productivity problem. If economic rehabilitation is the ultimate goal of drug testing, then criteria abandoning the rehabilitation of the drug-using worker is the purest of hypocrisy and the worst of rationalization. -- The concluding paragraph of "Constitutional Law: The Fourth Amendment and Drug Testing in the Workplace," Tim Moore, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, vol. 10, No. 3 (Summer 1987), pp. 762-768. | |
| Some people have told me they don't think a fat penguin really embodies the grace of Linux, which just tells me they have never seen a angry penguin charging at them in excess of 100mph. They'd be a lot more careful about what they say if they had. -- Linus Torvalds, announcing Linux v2.0 | |
