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Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) by Linux fortune

Lamonte Cranston once hired a new Chinese manservant.  While describing his
duties to the new man, Lamonte pointed to a bowl of candy on the coffee
table and warned him that he was not to take any.  Some days later, the new
manservant was cleaning up, with no one at home, and decided to sample some
of the candy.  Just than, Cranston walked in, spied the manservant at the
candy, and said:
        "Pardon me Choy, is that the Shadow's nugate you chew?"
Feel free to contact me (flames about my english and the useless of this
driver will be redirected to /dev/null, oh no, it's full...).
(Michael Beck, describing the PC-speaker sound device)
    if (argc > 1 && strcmp(argv[1], "-advice") == 0) {
        printf("Don't Panic!\n");
        exit(42);
    }
(Arnold Robbins in the LJ of February '95, describing RCS)
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There has also been some work to allow the interesting use of macro names.
For example, if you wanted all of your "creat()" calls to include read
permissions for everyone, you could say

        #define creat(file, mode)        creat(file, mode | 0444)

        I would recommend against this kind of thing in general, since it
hides the changed semantics of "creat()" in a macro, potentially far away
from its uses.
        To allow this use of macros, the preprocessor uses a process that
is worth describing, if for no other reason than that we get to use one of
the more amusing terms introduced into the C lexicon.  While a macro is
being expanded, it is temporarily undefined, and any recurrence of the macro
name is "painted blue" -- I kid you not, this is the official terminology
-- so that in future scans of the text the macro will not be expanded
recursively.  (I do not know why the color blue was chosen; I'm sure it
was the result of a long debate, spread over several meetings.)
                -- From Ken Arnold's "C Advisor" column in Unix Review
This is the first numerical problem I ever did.  It demonstrates the
power of computers:

Enter lots of data on calorie & nutritive content of foods.  Instruct
the thing to maximize a function describing nutritive content, with a
minimum level of each component, for fixed caloric content.  The
results are that one should eat each day:

        1/2 chicken
        1 egg
        1 glass of skim milk
        27 heads of lettuce.
                -- Rev. Adrian Melott
Digital computers are themselves more complex than most things people build:
They hyave very large numbers of states.  This makes conceiving, describing,
and testing them hard.  Software systems have orders-of-magnitude more states
than computers do.
- Fred Brooks, Jr.
"Mr. Spock succumbs to a powerful mating urge and nearly kills Captain Kirk."
-- TV Guide, describing the Star Trek episode _Amok_Time_
SMOKING IS NOW ALLOWED !!!
        Anyone wishing to smoke, however, must file, in triplicate, the
        U.S. government Environmental Impact Narrative Statement (EINS),
        describing in detail the type of combustion proposed, impact on
        the environment, and anticipated opposition.  Statements must be
        filed 30 days in advance.
                The Worst Lines of Verse
For a start, we can rule out James Grainger's promising line:
        "Come, muse, let us sing of rats."
Grainger (1721-67) did not have the courage of his convictions and deleted
these words on discovering that his listeners dissolved into spontaneous
laughter the instant they were read out.
        No such reluctance afflicted Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833-70) who was
inspired by the subject of war.
        "Flash! flash! bang! bang! and we blazed away,
        And the grey roof reddened and rang;
        Flash! flash! and I felt his bullet flay
        The tip of my ear.  Flash! bang!"
By contrast, Cheshire cheese provoked John Armstrong (1709-79):
        "... that which Cestria sends, tenacious paste of solid milk..."
While John Bidlake was guided by a compassion for vegetables:
        "The sluggard carrot sleeps his day in bed,
        The crippled pea alone that cannot stand."
George Crabbe (1754-1832) wrote:
        "And I was ask'd and authorized to go
        To seek the firm of Clutterbuck and Co."
William Balmford explored the possibilities of religious verse:
        "So 'tis with Christians, Nature being weak
        While in this world, are liable to leak."
And William Wordsworth showed that he could do it if he really tried when
describing a pond:
        "I've measured it from side to side;
        Tis three feet long and two feet wide."
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
<lilo> I can read the bloody *manual* as if it were some sort of
       religious tract describing forms of enlightenment you can achieve
       after 10 years on a mountain :)
Feel free to contact me (flames about my english and the useless of this
driver will be redirected to /dev/null, oh no, it's full...).
        -- Michael Beck, describing the PC-speaker sound device
    if (argc > 1 && strcmp(argv[1], "-advice") == 0) {
        printf("Don't Panic!\n");
        exit(42);
    }
        -- Arnold Robbins in the LJ of February '95, describing RCS
No guarantee of accuracy or completeness!
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