Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
There is is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home. -- Ken Olsen (President of Digital Equipment Corporation), Convention of the World Future Society, in Boston, 1977 | |
Two hundred years ago today, Irma Chine of White Plains, New York, was performing her normal housekeeping routines. She was interrupted by British soldiers who, rallying to the call of their supervisor, General Hughes, sought to gain control of the voter registration lists kept in her home. Masking her fear and thinking fast, Mrs. Chine quickly divided a nearby apple in two and deftly stored the list in its center. Upon entering, the British blatantly violated every conceivable convention, and, though they went through the house virtually bit by bit, their search was fruitless. They had to return empty handed. Word of the incident propagated rapidly through the region. This historic event became the first documented use of core storage for the saving of registers. | |
"Facts are stupid things." -- President Ronald Reagan (a blooper from his speeach at the '88 GOP convention) | |
"Indecision is the basis of flexibility" -- button at a Science Fiction convention. | |
"Sometimes insanity is the only alternative" -- button at a Science Fiction convention. | |
Seen on a button at an SF Convention: Veteran of the Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force. 1990-1951. | |
According to convention there is a sweet and a bitter, a hot and a cold, and according to convention, there is an order. In truth, there are atoms and a void. -- Democritus, 400 B.C. | |
There is a building with four floors. On the first floor, there is a convention of architects. On the second floor, there is a vinyl manufacturing plant. On the third floor there is a fast food stand, and on the fourth floor there is a library. Q: What would happen if a librarian traveled down in a small elevator with one other person from each floor? A: The elevator would be full. | |
Ladies and Gentlemen, Hobos and Tramps, Cross-eyed mosquitos and bowlegged ants, I come before you to stand behind you To tell you of something I know nothing about. Next Thursday (which is good Friday), There will be a convention held in the Women's Club which is strictly for Men. Admission is free, pay at the door, Pull up a chair, and sit on the floor. It was a summer's day in winter, And the snow was raining fast, As a barefoot boy with shoes on, Stood sitting in the grass. Oh, that bright day in the dead of night, Two dead men got up to fight. Three blind men to see fair play, Forty mutes to yell "Hooray"! Back to back, they faced each other, Drew their swords and shot each other. A deaf policeman heard the noise, Came and arrested those two dead boys. | |
Missouri Town Changes Name to 'Linux' LINUX, MO -- The small Missouri town of Linn, county seat of Osage County, announced yesterday that it will be henceforth called 'Linux'. Mayor Bob Farrow said, "Linn needed something to put it on the map. A few weeks ago my daughter mentioned that she installed Linux on her computer and how great she thought it was. I thought to myself, 'Self, changing the town's name to 'Linux' could be an opportunity to attract attention -- and money -- to our town. We could even hold a Linux Convention at the community center.' So I approached the city council about the idea, and they loved it. The rest is history." Farrow's daughter is organizing the Linux Linux User Group. She hopes to be able to hold a Linux Convention this fall. "The Linn, er, Linux community center probably won't be big enough, we'll probably have to hold it in nearby Jefferson City," she said. The mayor does have one reservation. "How the hell do you pronounce Linux?" One of the mayor's contenders in the next election, Mr. Noah Morals, says he will start an ad campaign calling Bob Farrow "the Incumbent Liar of LIE-nucks". Needless to say, the mayor usually pronounces Linux as "LIH-nucks". | |
Red Hat Linux 10.0 RALEIGH-DURHAM, NC -- HypeNewsWire -- Red Hat, the producer of the most popular Linux distribution with over 25 million estimated users, is proud to announce the availability of Red Hat Linux 10.0. The latest version contains the new Linux 6.2 kernel, the Z Window System 2.0, full support for legacy Windows 3.x/9x/200x/NT software apps, and more. Copies of Red Hat Linux 10.0 will be available in stores on CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, or GNUDE (GNU Digital Encoding) disks within the next week. Compaq, Dell, Gateway, and several other large computer manufacturers have announced that they will offer computer systems with Red Hat 10.0 pre-installed. "We can sell systems with Red Hat pre-installed for considerably less than systems with Microsoft ActiveWindows 2001. Overall, Red Hat Linux's superior quality, low price, and modest system requirements puts Windows to shame," one Dell spokesperson said at last week's LinDex convention. | |
New Linux Companies Hope To Get Rich Quick (#2) Don't throw out that old Red Hat Linux 3.0 CD. A group of entrepreneurs are hording vintage Linux items in the hopes that they will become hot collector's items in the coming decades. The venture, called "Money Grows On Binary Trees", hopes to amass a warehouse full of old Linux distributions, books, stuffed penguins, promotional material, and Linus Torvalds autographs. "Nobody thought pieces of cardstock featuring baseball players would be worth anything..." the founder of Binary Trees said. "That 'Linux For Dummies' book sitting in your trash could be the next Babe Ruth card." The company organized a Linux Collectibles Convention last week in Silicon Valley, drawing in a respectable crowd of 1,500 people and 20 exhibitors. The big attraction was a "Windows For Dummies" book actually signed by Linus Torvalds. "He signed it back at a small Linux conference in '95," the owner explained. "He didn't realize it was a Dummies book because I had placed an O'Reilly cover on it... Somebody at the convention offered me $10,000 for it, but that seemed awfully low. I hope to sell it on eBay next month with a reserve price containing a significant number of zeros." | |
The new "I Love You" virus is not the work of some snot-nosed acne-laced teenager working from a basement in the Phillipines. It's actually part of a conspiracy concocted by the unholy alliance of Microsoft and several well-known and well-despised spammers. You'll notice that the ILOVEYOU, Melissa, and Tuxissa strains all extract email addresses from the victim's system. This is a gold mine for spammers, who are able to use these viruses to harvest active email addresses for them. Everytime ILOVEYOU, for instance, propogates, it keeps track of all the email addresses it has been sent to, so that when it finally boomerangs back to a spammer, they have a nice convenient list of addresses to send "laser printer toner" and "get rich quick!" advertisements to. -- Bob Smith (not his real code-name), in a speech given at the First Annual Connecticut Conspiracy Convention (ConConCon), "the largest ever gathering of conspiracy theorists east of the Mississippi." | |
Right now hundreds of Anonymous Cowards are cheering the fact that only Windows boobs are victims of ILOVEYOU and other email viruses. I realize Outlook is so insecure that using it is like posting a sign outside your door saying, "DOOR UNLOCKED -- ROB ME!". However, Linux isn't immune. If I had a dollar for every pine buffer overflow uncovered, I could buy a truckload of fresh herring. I expect the next mass email virus to spread will be cross-platform. If the recipient is a Windows/Outlook luser, they'll get hit. If the recipient is a Linux/pine user, they'll find themselves staring at a self-executing bash script that's has just allocated 1 petabyte of memory and crashed the system (or worse). Either that or the next mass email virus will only damage Linux systems. I can just see Bill Gates assigning some junior programmer that very task. Be afraid. Be very afraid. -- A speech given at the First Annual Connecticut Conspiracy] Convention (ConConCon) by an anonymous creature said to be "wearing what appeared to be a tuxedo". | |
Convention is the ruler of all. -- Pindar | |
Linus, Alan - Please apply the following self-explanatory patch. + /* LynuxWorks are politely reminded that removing copyright + notices is an offence under the Copyright Design and + Patents Act 1988, and under equivalent non-UK law in + accordance with the Berne Convention. */ + printk("Portions (C) 2000, 2001 Red Hat, Inc.\n"); - David Woodhouse on linux-kernel | |
Convention organizer to Linus Torvalds: "You might like to come with us to some licensed[1] place, and have some pizza." Linus: "Oh, I did not know that you needed a license to eat pizza". [1] Licenced - refers in Australia to a restaurant which has government licence to sell liquor. -- Linus at a talk at the Melbourne University |