many : Dictionary / Wörterbuch (BEOLINGUS, TU Chemnitz)

Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English)	by Linux fortune

If an average person on the subway turns to you, like an ancient mariner, and starts telling you her tale, you turn away or nod and hope she stops, not just because you fear she might be crazy. If she tells her tale on camera, you might listen. Watching strangers on television , even responding to them from a studio audience, we're disengaged -- voyeurs collaborating with exhibitionists in rituals of sham community. Never have so many known so much about people for whom they cared so little. -- Wendy Kaminer commenting on testimonial television in "I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional".
Leslie West heads for the sticks, to Providence, Rhode Island and tries to hide behind a beard. No good. There are still too many people and too many stares, always taunting, always smirking. He moves to the outskirts of town. He finds a place to live -- huge mansion, dirt cheap, caretaker included. He plugs in his guitar and plays as loud as he wants, day and night, and there's no one to laugh or boo or even look bored. Nobody's cut the grass in months. What's happened to that caretaker? What neighborhood people there are start to talk, and what kids there are start to get curious. A 13 year-old blond with an angelic face misses supper. Before the summer's end, four more teenagers have disappeared. The senior class president, Barnard-bound come autumn, tells Mom she's going out to a movie one night and stays out. The town's up in arms, but just before the police take action, the kids turn up. They've found a purpose. They go home for their stuff and tell the folks not to worry but they'll be going now. They're in a band. -- Ira Kaplan
Many of the characters are fools and they are always playing tricks on me and treating me badly. -- Jorge Luis Borges, from "Writers on Writing" by Jon Winokur
Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art. -- Tom Stoppard
So Richard and I decided to try to catch [the small shark]. With a great deal of strategy and effort and shouting, we managed to maneuver the shark, over the course of about a half-hour, to a sort of corner of the lagoon, so that it had no way to escape other than to flop up onto the land and evolve. Richard and I were inching toward it, sort of crouched over, when all of a sudden it turned around and -- I can still remember the sensation I felt at that moment, primarily in the armpit area -- headed right straight toward us. Many people would have panicked at this point. But Richard and I were not "many people." We were experienced waders, and we kept our heads. We did exactly what the textbook says you should do when you're unarmed and a shark that is nearly two feet long turns on you in water up to your lower calves: We sprinted I would say 600 yards in the opposite direction, using a sprinting style such that the bottoms of our feet never once went below the surface of the water. We ran all the way to the far shore, and if we had been in a Warner Brothers cartoon we would have run right INTO the beach, and you would have seen these two mounds of sand racing across the island until they bonked into trees and coconuts fell onto their heads. -- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
The world has many unintentionally cruel mechanisms that are not designed for people who walk on their hands. -- John Irving, "The World According to Garp"
There are many intelligent species in the universe, and they all own cats.
Once upon a time there was a DOS user who saw Unix, and saw that it was good. After typing cp on his DOS machine at home, he downloaded GNU's unix tools ported to DOS and installed them. He rm'd, cp'd, and mv'd happily for many days, and upon finding elvis, he vi'd and was happy. After a long day at work (on a Unix box) he came home, started editing a file, and couldn't figure out why he couldn't suspend vi (w/ ctrl-z) to do a compile. (By ewt@tipper.oit.unc.edu (Erik Troan)
"What you end up with, after running an operating system concept through these many marketing coffee filters, is something not unlike plain hot water." (By Matt Welsh)
because of network lag due to too many people playing deathmatch
Too many little pins on CPU confusing it, bend back and forth until 10-20% are neatly removed. Do _not_ leave metal bits visible!
Too many interrupts
Your processor has processed too many intructions. Turn it off emideately, do not type any commands!!
It is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition. There was once a man who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal, complained that there were too many prehistoric toads in it. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
Many a writer seems to think he is never profound except when he can't understand his own meaning. -- George D. Prentice
Many enraged psychiatrists are inciting a weary butcher. The butcher is weary and tired because he has cut meat and steak and lamb for hours and weeks. He does not desire to chant about anything with raving psychiatrists, but he sings about his gingivectomist, he dreams about a single cosmologist, he thinks about his dog. The dog is named Herbert. -- Racter, "The Policeman's Beard is Half-Constructed"
Many pages make a thick book, except for pocket Bibles which are on very very thin paper.
Many pages make a thick book.
"Speak, thou vast and venerable head," muttered Ahab, "which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou has dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams has moved amid the world's foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or diver never went; has slept by many a sailer's side, where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw'st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw'st the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed on unharmed -- while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou has seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!" -- H. Melville, "Moby Dick"
The countdown had stalled at 'T' minus 69 seconds when Desiree, the first female ape to go up in space, winked at me slyly and pouted her thick, rubbery lips unmistakably -- the first of many such advances during what would prove to be the longest, and most memorable, space voyage of my career. -- Winning sentence, 1985 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
Well, anyway, I was reading this James Bond book, and right away I realized that like most books, it had too many words. The plot was the same one that all James Bond books have: An evil person tries to blow up the world, but James Bond kills him and his henchmen and makes love to several attractive women. There, that's it: 24 words. But the guy who wrote the book took thousands of words to say it. Or consider "The Brothers Karamazov", by the famous Russian alcoholic Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It's about these two brothers who kill their father. Or maybe only one of them kills the father. It's impossible to tell because what they mostly do is talk for nearly a thousand pages. If all Russians talk as much as the Karamazovs did, I don't see how they found time to become a major world power. I'm told that Dostoyevsky wrote "The Brothers Karamazov" to raise the question of whether there is a God. So why didn't he just come right out and say: "Is there a God? It sure beats the heck out of me." Other famous works could easily have been summarized in a few words: * "Moby Dick" -- Don't mess around with large whales because they symbolize nature and will kill you. * "A Tale of Two Cities" -- French people are crazy. -- Dave Barry
A little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software systems have been designed by committees and built as part of multipart projects, those software systems that have excited passionate fans are those that are the products of one or a few designing minds, great designers. Consider Unix, APL, Pascal, Modula, the Smalltalk interface, even Fortran; and contrast them with Cobol, PL/I, Algol, MVS/370, and MS-DOS. -- Fred Brooks
A novice of the temple once approached the Chief Priest with a question. "Master, does Emacs have the Buddha nature?" the novice asked. The Chief Priest had been in the temple for many years and could be relied upon to know these things. He thought for several minutes before replying. "I don't see why not. It's got bloody well everything else." With that, the Chief Priest went to lunch. The novice suddenly achieved enlightenment, several years later. Commentary: His Master is kind, Answering his FAQ quickly, With thought and sarcasm.
A novice programmer was once assigned to code a simple financial package. The novice worked furiously for many days, but when his master reviewed his program, he discovered that it contained a screen editor, a set of generalized graphics routines, and artificial intelligence interface, but not the slightest mention of anything financial. When the master asked about this, the novice became indignant. "Don't be so impatient," he said, "I'll put the financial stuff in eventually." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
A student, in hopes of understanding the Lambda-nature, came to Greenblatt. As they spoke a Multics system hacker walked by. "Is it true", asked the student, "that PL-1 has many of the same data types as Lisp?" Almost before the student had finished his question, Greenblatt shouted, "FOO!", and hit the student with a stick.
=== ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE ======================== There has been some confusion concerning MAPCAR. (DEFUN MAPCAR (&FUNCTIONAL FCN &EVAL &REST LISTS) (PROG (V P LP) (SETQ P (LOCF V)) L (SETQ LP LISTS) (%START-FUNCTION-CALL FCN T (LENGTH LISTS) NIL) L1 (OR LP (GO L2)) (AND (NULL (CAR LP)) (RETURN V)) (%PUSH (CAAR LP)) (RPLACA LP (CDAR LP)) (SETQ LP (CDR LP)) (GO L1) L2 (%FINISH-FUNCTION-CALL FCN T (LENGTH LISTS) NIL) (SETQ LP (%POP)) (RPLACD P (SETQ P (NCONS LP))) (GO L))) We hope this clears up the many questions we've had about it.
As in Protestant Europe, by contrast, where sects divided endlessly into smaller competing sects and no church dominated any other, all is different in the fragmented world of IBM. That realm is now a chaos of conflicting norms and standards that not even IBM can hope to control. You can buy a computer that works like an IBM machine but contains nothing made or sold by IBM itself. Renegades from IBM constantly set up rival firms and establish standards of their own. When IBM recently abandoned some of its original standards and decreed new ones, many of its rivals declared a puritan allegiance to IBM's original faith, and denounced the company as a divisive innovator. Still, the IBM world is united by its distrust of icons and imagery. IBM's screens are designed for language, not pictures. Graven images may be tolerated by the luxurious cults, but the true IBM faith relies on the austerity of the word. -- Edward Mendelson, "The New Republic", February 22, 1988
Dear Emily: How can I choose what groups to post in? -- Confused Dear Confused: Pick as many as you can, so that you get the widest audience. After all, the net exists to give you an audience. Ignore those who suggest you should only use groups where you think the article is highly appropriate. Pick all groups where anybody might even be slightly interested. Always make sure followups go to all the groups. In the rare event that you post a followup which contains something original, make sure you expand the list of groups. Never include a "Followup-to:" line in the header, since some people might miss part of the valuable discussion in the fringe groups. -- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
Dear Emily: I'm still confused as to what groups articles should be posted to. How about an example? -- Still Confused Dear Still: Ok. Let's say you want to report that Gretzky has been traded from the Oilers to the Kings. Now right away you might think rec.sport.hockey would be enough. WRONG. Many more people might be interested. This is a big trade! Since it's a NEWS article, it belongs in the news.* hierarchy as well. If you are a news admin, or there is one on your machine, try news.admin. If not, use news.misc. The Oilers are probably interested in geology, so try sci.physics. He is a big star, so post to sci.astro, and sci.space because they are also interested in stars. Next, his name is Polish sounding. So post to soc.culture.polish. But that group doesn't exist, so cross-post to news.groups suggesting it should be created. With this many groups of interest, your article will be quite bizarre, so post to talk.bizarre as well. (And post to comp.std.mumps, since they hardly get any articles there, and a "comp" group will propagate your article further.) You may also find it is more fun to post the article once in each group. If you list all the newsgroups in the same article, some newsreaders will only show the the article to the reader once! Don't tolerate this. -- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
Dear Ms. Postnews: I couldn't get mail through to somebody on another site. What should I do? -- Eager Beaver Dear Eager: No problem, just post your message to a group that a lot of people read. Say, "This is for John Smith. I couldn't get mail through so I'm posting it. All others please ignore." This way tens of thousands of people will spend a few seconds scanning over and ignoring your article, using up over 16 man-hours their collective time, but you will be saved the terrible trouble of checking through usenet maps or looking for alternate routes. Just think, if you couldn't distribute your message to 9000 other computers, you might actually have to (gasp) call directory assistance for 60 cents, or even phone the person. This can cost as much as a few DOLLARS (!) for a 5 minute call! And certainly it's better to spend 10 to 20 dollars of other people's money distributing the message than for you to have to waste $9 on an overnight letter, or even 25 cents on a stamp! Don't forget. The world will end if your message doesn't get through, so post it as many places as you can. -- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
How many seconds are there in a year? If I tell you there are 3.155 x 10^7, you won't even try to remember it. On the other hand, who could forget that, to within half a percent, pi seconds is a nanocentury. -- Tom Duff, Bell Labs
Mac Beer: At first, came only a 16-oz. can, but now comes in a 32-oz. can. Considered by many to be a "light" beer. All the cans look identical. When you take one from the fridge, it opens itself. The ingredients list is not on the can. If you call to ask about the ingredients, you are told that "you don't need to know." A notice on the side reminds you to drag your empties to the trashcan.
Many companies that have made themselves dependent on [the equipment of a certain major manufacturer] (and in doing so have sold their soul to the devil) will collapse under the sheer weight of the unmastered complexity of their data processing systems. -- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
Many of the convicted thieves Parker has met began their life of crime after taking college Computer Science courses. -- Roger Rapoport, "Programs for Plunder", Omni, March 1981
* NEWS FLASH * Archeologists find PDP-11/24 inside brain cavity of fossilized dinosaur skeleton! Many Digital users fear that RSX-11M may be even more primitive than DEC admits. Price adjustments at 11:00.
Norbert Weiner was the subject of many dotty professor stories. Weiner was, in fact, very absent minded. The following story is told about him: when they moved from Cambridge to Newton his wife, knowing that he would be absolutely useless on the move, packed him off to MIT while she directed the move. Since she was certain that he would forget that they had moved and where they had moved to, she wrote down the new address on a piece of paper, and gave it to him. Naturally, in the course of the day, an insight occurred to him. He reached in his pocket, found a piece of paper on which he furiously scribbled some notes, thought it over, decided there was a fallacy in his idea, and threw the piece of paper away. At the end of the day he went home (to the old address in Cambridge, of course). When he got there he realized that they had moved, that he had no idea where they had moved to, and that the piece of paper with the address was long gone. Fortunately inspiration struck. There was a young girl on the street and he conceived the idea of asking her where he had moved to, saying, "Excuse me, perhaps you know me. I'm Norbert Weiner and we've just moved. Would you know where we've moved to?" To which the young girl replied, "Yes, Daddy, Mommy thought you would forget." The capper to the story is that I asked his daughter (the girl in the story) about the truth of the story, many years later. She said that it wasn't quite true -- that he never forgot who his children were! The rest of it, however, was pretty close to what actually happened... -- Richard Harter
One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How enthusiastic is our support for UNIX? Unix was written on our machines and for our machines many years ago. Today, much of UNIX being done is done on our machines. Ten percent of our VAXs are going for UNIX use. UNIX is a simple language, easy to understand, easy to get started with. It's great for students, great for somewhat casual users, and it's great for interchanging programs between different machines. And so, because of its popularity in these markets, we support it. We have good UNIX on VAX and good UNIX on PDP-11s. It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will run out of things they can do with UNIX. They'll want a real system and will end up doing VMS when they get to be serious about programming. With UNIX, if you're looking for something, you can easily and quickly check that small manual and find out that it's not there. With VMS, no matter what you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of documentation -- if you look long enough it's there. That's the difference -- the beauty of UNIX is it's simple; and the beauty of VMS is that it's all there. -- Ken Olsen, president of DEC, DECWORLD Vol. 8 No. 5, 1984 [It's been argued that the beauty of UNIX is the same as the beauty of Ken Olsen's brain. Ed.]
Standards are crucial. And the best thing about standards is: there are so ____many to choose from!
* STUDENT SUCCESSES * Many of our students have gone on to achieve great success in all fields of programming. One former student developed the concept of the personalized form letter. Does the phrase, "Dear Mr.(insert name), You may already be a winner!," sound familiar? Another student writes "After only five lessons I sold a "My Most Unforgettable Program" article to Corrosive Computing magazine. Another of our graduates writes, "I recently completed a database-management program for my department manager. My program touched him so deeply that he was speechless. He told me later that he had never seen such a program in his entire career. Thank you, Famous Programmers' school; only you could have made this possible." Send for our introductory brochure which explains in vague detail the operation of the Famous Programmers' School, and you'll be eligible to win a possible chance to enter a drawing, the winner of which can vie for a set of free steak knives. If you don't do it now, you'll hate yourself in the morning.
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #13: SLOBOL SLOBOL is best known for the speed, or lack of it, of its compiler. Although many compilers allow you to take a coffee break while they compile, SLOBOL compilers allow you to travel to Bolivia to pick the coffee. Forty-three programmers are known to have died of boredom sitting at their terminals while waiting for a SLOBOL program to compile. Weary SLOBOL programmers often turn to a related (but infinitely faster) language, COCAINE.
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #18: FIFTH FIFTH is a precision mathematical language in which the data types refer to quantity. The data types range from CC, OUNCE, SHOT, and JIGGER to FIFTH (hence the name of the language), LITER, MAGNUM and BLOTTO. Commands refer to ingredients such as CHABLIS, CHARDONNAY, CABERNET, GIN, VERMOUTH, VODKA, SCOTCH, and WHATEVERSAROUND. The many versions of the FIFTH language reflect the sophistication and financial status of its users. Commands in the ELITE dialect include VSOP and LAFITE, while commands in the GUTTER dialect include HOOTCH and RIPPLE. The latter is a favorite of frustrated FORTH programmers who end up using this language.
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #8: LAIDBACK This language was developed at the Marin County Center for T'ai Chi, Mellowness and Computer Programming (now defunct), as an alternative to the more intense atmosphere in nearby Silicon Valley. The center was ideal for programmers who liked to soak in hot tubs while they worked. Unfortunately few programmers could survive there because the center outlawed Pizza and Coca-Cola in favor of Tofu and Perrier. Many mourn the demise of LAIDBACK because of its reputation as a gentle and non-threatening language since all error messages are in lower case. For example, LAIDBACK responded to syntax errors with the message: "i hate to bother you, but i just can't relate to that. can you find the time to try it again?"
The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from. -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum
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"
Thus spake the master programmer: "Let the programmers be many and the managers few -- then all will be productive." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
Time sharing: The use of many people by the computer.
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'.
Unfortunately, most programmers like to play with new toys. I have many friends who, immediately upon buying a snakebite kit, would be tempted to throw the first person they see to the ground, tie the tourniquet on him, slash him with the knife, and apply suction to the wound. -- Jon Bentley
Unix Beer: Comes in several different brands, in cans ranging from 8 oz. to 64 oz. Drinkers of Unix Beer display fierce brand loyalty, even though they claim that all the different brands taste almost identical. Sometimes the pop-tops break off when you try to open them, so you have to have your own can opener around for those occasions, in which case you either need a complete set of instructions, or a friend who has been drinking Unix Beer for several years. BSD stout: Deep, hearty, and an acquired taste. The official brewer has released the recipe, and a lot of home-brewers now use it. Hurd beer: Long advertised by the popular and politically active GNU brewery, so far it has more head than body. The GNU brewery is mostly known for printing complete brewing instructions on every can, which contains hops, malt, barley, and yeast ... not yet fermented. Linux brand: A recipe originally created by a drunken Finn in his basement, it has since become the home-brew of choice for impecunious brewers and Unix beer-lovers worldwide, many of whom change the recipe. POSIX ales: Sweeter than lager, with the kick of a stout; the newer batches of a lot of beers seem to blend ale and stout or lager. Solaris brand: A lager, intended to replace Sun brand stout. Unlike most lagers, this one has to be drunk more slowly than stout. Sun brand: Long the most popular stout on the Unix market, it was discontinued in favor of a lager. SysV lager: Clear and thirst-quenching, but lacking the body of stout or the sweetness of ale.
UNIX is many things to many people, but it's never been everything to anybody.
Von Neumann was the subject of many dotty professor stories. Von Neumann supposedly had the habit of simply writing answers to homework assignments on the board (the method of solution being, of course, obvious) when he was asked how to solve problems. One time one of his students tried to get more helpful information by asking if there was another way to solve the problem. Von Neumann looked blank for a moment, thought, and then answered, "Yes.".
We may hope that machines will eventually compete with men in all purely intellectual fields. But which are the best ones to start with? Many people think that a very abstract activity, like the playing of chess, would be best. It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can buy, and then teach it to understand and speak English. -- Alan M. Turing
Why do we want intelligent terminals when there are so many stupid users?
You will have many recoverable tape errors.
Many are called, few are chosen. Fewer still get to do the choosing.
Many are called, few volunteer.
Many are cold, but few are frozen.
Many hands make light work. -- John Heywood
When Yahweh your gods has settled you in the land you're about to occupy, and driven out many infidels before you...you're to cut them down and exterminate them. You're to make no compromise with them or show them any mercy. [Deut. 7:1 (KJV)]
When we jumped into Sicily, the units became separated, and I couldn't find anyone. Eventually I stumbled across two colonels, a major, three captains, two lieutenants, and one rifleman, and we secured the bridge. Never in the history of war have so few been led by so many. - General James Gavin
A little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software systems have been designed by committees and built as part of multipart projects, those software systems that have excited passionate fans are those that are the products of one or a few designing minds, great designers. Consider Unix, APL, Pascal, Modula, the Smalltalk interface, even Fortran; and contrast them with Cobol, PL/I, Algol, MVS/370, and MS-DOS. - Fred Brooks, Jr.
The reason ESP, for example, is not considered a viable topic in contemoprary psychology is simply that its investigation has not proven fruitful...After more than 70 years of study, there still does not exist one example of an ESP phenomenon that is replicable under controlled conditions. This simple but basic scientific criterion has not been met despite dozens of studies conducted over many decades...It is for this reason alone that the topic is now of little interest to psychology...In short, there is no demonstrated phenomenon that needs explanation. -- Keith E. Stanovich, "How to Think Straight About Psychology", pp. 160-161
One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim. -- Henry Brook Adams
How many hardware guys does it take to change a light bulb? "Well the diagnostics say it's fine buddy, so it's a software problem."
How many QA engineers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? 3: 1 to screw it in and 2 to say "I told you so" when it doesn't work.
How many NASA managers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? "That's a known problem... don't worry about it."
If science were explained to the average person in a way that is accessible and exciting, there would be no room for pseudoscience. But there is a kind of Gresham's Law by which in popular culture the bad science drives out the good. And for this I think we have to blame, first, the scientific community ourselves for not doing a better job of popularizing science, and second, the media, which are in this respect almost uniformly dreadful. Every newspaper in America has a daily astrology column. How many have even a weekly astronomy column? And I believe it is also the fault of the educational system. We do not teach how to think. This is a very serious failure that may even, in a world rigged with 60,000 nuclear weapons, compromise the human future. - Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 12, Fall 87
I share the belief of many of my contemporaries that the spiritual crisis pervading all spheres of Western industrial society can be remedied only by a change in our world view. We shall have to shift from the materialistic, dualistic belief that people and their environment are separate, toward a new conciousness of an all-encompassing reality, which embraces the experiencing ego, a reality in which people feel their oneness with animate nature and all of creation. - Dr. Albert Hoffman
Felson's Law: To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.
Human society - man in a group - rises out of its lethargy to new levels of productivity only under the stimulus of deeply inspiring and commonly appreciated goals. A lethargic world serves no cause well; a spirited world working diligently toward earnestly desired goals provides the means and the strength toward which many ends can be satisfied...to unparalleled social accomplishment. - Dr. Lloyd V. Berkner, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
I cannot affirm God if I fail to affirm man. Therefore, I affirm both. Without a belief in human unity I am hungry and incomplete. Human unity is the fulfillment of diversity. It is the harmony of opposites. It is a many-stranded texture, with color and depth. - Norman Cousins
How many surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? One to hold the giraffe and one to fill the bathtub with brightly colored power tools.
How many Bavarian Illuminati does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Three: one to screw it in, and one to confuse the issue.
How long does it take a DEC field service engineer to change a lightbulb? It depends on how many bad ones he brought with him.
Yes, many primitive people still believe this myth...But in today's technical vastness of the future, we can guess that surely things were much different. - The Firesign Theater
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. There are many examples of outsiders who eventually overthrew entrenched scientific orthodoxies, but they prevailed with irrefutable data. More often, egregious findings that contradict well-established research turn out to be artifacts. I have argued that accepting psychic powers, reincarnation, "cosmic conciousness," and the like, would entail fundamental revisions of the foundations of neuroscience. Before abandoning materialist theories of mind that have paid handsome dividends, we should insist on better evidence for psi phenomena than presently exists, especially when neurology and psychology themselves offer more plausible alternatives. - Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Conciousness: Implications for Psi Phenomena", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 163-171
How many nuclear engineers does it take to change a light bulb ? Seven: One to install the new bulb, and six to determine what to do with the old one for the next 10,000 years.
...One thing is that, unlike any other Western democracy that I know of, this country has operated since its beginnings with a basic distrust of government. We are constituted not for efficient operation of government, but for minimizing the possibility of abuse of power. It took the events of the Roosevelt era -- a catastrophic economic collapse and a world war -- to introduce the strong central government that we now know. But in most parts of the country today, the reluctance to have government is still strong. I think, barring a series of catastrophic events, that we can look to at least another decade during which many of the big problems around this country will have to be addressed by institutions other than federal government. - Bobby R. Inman, Admiral, USN, Retired, former director of Naval Intelligence, vice director of the DIA, former director of the NSA, deputy directory of Central Intelligence, former chairman and CEO of MCC. [the statist opinions expressed herein are not those of the cookie editor -ed.]
In arguing that current theories of brain function cast suspicion on ESP, psychokinesis, reincarnation, and so on, I am frequently challenged with the most popular of all neuro-mythologies -- the notion that we ordinarily use only 10 percent of our brains... This "cerebral spare tire" concept continues to nourish the clientele of "pop psychologists" and their many recycling self-improvement schemes. As a metaphor for the fact that few of us fully exploit our talents, who could deny it? As a refuge for occultists seeking a neural basis of the miraculous, it leaves much to be desired. -- Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Consciousness: Implications for Psi Phenomena", The Skeptical Enquirer, Vol. XII, No. 2, pg. 171
Two things are certain about science. It does not stand still for long, and it is never boring. Oh, among some poor souls, including even intellectuals in fields of high scholarship, science is frequently misperceived. Many see it as only a body of facts, promulgated from on high in must, unintelligible textbooks, a collection of unchanging precepts defended with authoritarian vigor. Others view it as nothing but a cold, dry narrow, plodding, rule-bound process -- the scientific method: hidebound, linear, and left brained. These people are the victims of their own stereotypes. They are destined to view the world of science with a set of blinders. They know nothing of the tumult, cacophony, rambunctiousness, and tendentiousness of the actual scientific process, let alone the creativity, passion, and joy of discovery. And they are likely to know little of the continual procession of new insights and discoveries that every day, in some way, change our view (if not theirs) of the natural world. -- Kendrick Frazier, "The Year in Science: An Overview," in 1988 Yearbook of Science and the Future, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices." -- William James
Why are many scientists using lawyers for medical experiments instead of rats? a) There are more lawyers than rats. b) The scientist's don't become as emotionally attached to them. c) There are some things that even rats won't do for money.
Q: How many IBM CPU's does it take to execute a job? A: Four; three to hold it down, and one to rip its head off.
David Letterman's "Things we can be proud of as Americans": * Greatest number of citizens who have actually boarded a UFO * Many newspapers feature "JUMBLE" * Hourly motel rates * Vast majority of Elvis movies made here * Didn't just give up right away during World War II like some countries we could mention * Goatees & Van Dykes thought to be worn only by weenies * Our well-behaved golf professionals * Fabulous babes coast to coast
Absolute: Independent, irresponsible. An absolute monarchy is one in which the sovereign does as he pleases so long as he pleases the assassins. Not many absolute monarchies are left, most of them having been replaced by limited monarchies, where the soverign's power for evil (and for good) is greatly curtailed, and by republics, which are governed by chance. -- Ambrose Bierce
Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing. -- Ambrose Bierce
Inadmissible: Not competent to be considered. Said of certain kinds of testimony which juries are supposed to be unfit to be entrusted with, and which judges, therefore, rule out, even of proceedings before themselves alone. Hearsay evidence is inadmissible because the person quoted was unsworn and is not before the court for examination; yet most momentous actions, military, political, commercial and of every other kind, are daily undertaken on hearsay evidence. There is no religion in the world that has any other basis than hearsay evidence. Revelation is hearsay evidence; that the Scriptures are the word of God we have only the testimony of men long dead whose identy is not clearly established and who are not known to have been sworn in any sense. Under the rules of evidence as they now exist in this country, no single assertion in the Bible has in its support any evidence admissible in a court of law... But as records of courts of justice are admissible, it can easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges' decisions based on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value. --Ambrose Bierce
Many aligators will be slain, but the swamp will remain.
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 have a friend who just got back from the Soviet Union, and told me the people there are hungry for information about the West. He was asked about many things, but I will give you two examples that are very revealing about life in the Soviet Union. The first question he was asked was if we had exploding television sets. You see, they have a problem with the picture tubes on color television sets, and many are exploding. They assumed we must be having problems with them too. The other question he was asked often was why the CIA had killed Samantha Smith, the little girl who visited the Soviet Union a few years ago; their propaganda is very effective. -- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976 "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 100
"Remember Kruschev: he tried to do too many things too fast, and he was removed in disgrace. If Gorbachev tries to destroy the system or make too many fundamental changes to it, I believe the system will get rid of him. I am not a political scientist, but I understand the system very well. I believe he will have a "heart attack" or retire or be removed. He is up against a brick wall. If you think they will change everything and become a free, open society, forget it!" -- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976 "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 110
"In corporate life, I think there are three important areas which contracts can't deal with, the area of conflict, the area of change and area of reaching potential. To me a covenant is a relationship that is based on such things as shared ideals and shared value systems and shared ideas and shared agreement as to the processes we are going to use for working together. In many cases they develop into real love relationships." -- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., "Herman Miller's Secrets of Corporate Creativity", The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
The essential ideas of Algol 68 were that the whole language should be precisely defined and that all the pieces should fit together smoothly. The basic idea behind Pascal was that it didn't matter how vague the language specification was (it took years to clarify) or how many rough edges there were, as long as the CDC Pascal compiler was fast. -- Richard A. O'Keefe
"A commercial, and in some respects a social, doubt has been started within the last year or two, whether or not it is right to discuss so openly the security or insecurity of locks. Many well-meaning persons suppose that the discus- sion respecting the means for baffling the supposed safety of locks offers a premium for dishonesty, by showing others how to be dishonest. This is a fal- lacy. Rogues are very keen in their profession, and already know much more than we can teach them respecting their several kinds of roguery. Rogues knew a good deal about lockpicking long before locksmiths discussed it among them- selves, as they have lately done. If a lock -- let it have been made in what- ever country, or by whatever maker -- is not so inviolable as it has hitherto been deemed to be, surely it is in the interest of honest persons to know this fact, because the dishonest are tolerably certain to be the first to apply the knowledge practically; and the spread of knowledge is necessary to give fair play to those who might suffer by ignorance. It cannot be too ear- nestly urged, that an acquaintance with real facts will, in the end, be better for all parties." -- Charles Tomlinson's Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks, published around 1850
"How many teamsters does it take to screw in a light bulb?" "FIFTEEN!! YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT?"
How many Unix hacks does it take to change a light bulb? Let's see, can you use a shell script for that or does it need a C program?
...At that time [the 1960s], Bell Laboratories scientists projected that computer speeds as high as 30 million floating-point calculations per second (megaflops) would be needed for the Army's ballistic missile defense system. Many computer experts -- including a National Academy of Sciences panel -- said achieving such speeds, even using multiple processors, was impossible. Today, new generation supercomputers operate at billions of operations per second (gigaflops). -- Aviation Week & Space Technology, May 9, 1988, "Washington Roundup", pg 13
Work was impossible. The geeks had broken my spirit. They had done too many things wrong. It was never like this for Mencken. He lived like a Prussian gambler -- sweating worse than Bryan on some nights and drunker than Judas on others. It was all a dehumanized nightmare...and these raddled cretins have the gall to complain about my deadlines. -- Hunter Thompson, "Bad Nerves in Fat City", _Generation of Swine_
Q: How can I choose what groups to post in? ... Q: How about an example? A: Ok. Let's say you want to report that Gretzky has been traded from the Oilers to the Kings. Now right away you might think rec.sport.hockey would be enough. WRONG. Many more people might be interested. This is a big trade! Since it's a NEWS article, it belongs in the news.* hierarchy as well. If you are a news admin, or there is one on your machine, try news.admin. If not, use news.misc. The Oilers are probably interested in geology, so try sci.physics. He is a big star, so post to sci.astro, and sci.space because they are also interested in stars. Next, his name is Polish sounding. So post to soc.culture.polish. But that group doesn't exist, so cross-post to news.groups suggesting it should be created. With this many groups of interest, your article will be quite bizarre, so post to talk.bizarre as well. (And post to comp.std.mumps, since they hardly get any articles there, and a "comp" group will propagate your article further.) You may also find it is more fun to post the article once in each group. If you list all the newsgroups in the same article, some newsreaders will only show the the article to the reader once! Don't tolerate this. -- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_
How many Zen Buddhist does it take to change a light bulb? Two. One to change it and one not to change it.
The Seventh Edition licensing procedures are, I suppose, still in effect, though I doubt that tapes are available from AT&T. At any rate, whatever restrictions the license imposes still exist. These restrictions were and are reasonable for places that just want to run the system, but don't allow many of the things that Minix was written for, like study of the source in classes, or by individuals not in a university or company. I've always thought that Minix was a fine idea, and competently done. As for the size of v7, wc -l /usr/sys//.[chs] is 19271. -- Dennis Ritchie, 1989
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_
"Well I don't see why I have to make one man miserable when I can make so many men happy." -- Ellyn Mustard, about marriage
"Cable is not a luxury, since many areas have poor TV reception." -- The mayor of Tucson, Arizona, 1989 [apparently, good TV reception is a basic necessity -- at least in Tucson -kl]
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures. -- Daniel Webster
"Cable is not a luxury, since many areas have poor TV reception." -- The mayor of Tucson, Arizona, 1989
Census Taker to Housewife: Did you ever have the measles, and, if so, how many?
Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few. -- G.B. Shaw
Leadership involves finding a parade and getting in front of it; what is happening in America is that those parades are getting smaller and smaller -- and there are many more of them. -- John Naisbitt, "Megatrends"
Many a bum show has been saved by the flag. -- George M. Cohan
No, my friend, the way to have good and safe government, is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly the functions he is competent to. It is by dividing and subdividing these republics from the national one down through all its subordinations, until it ends in the administration of every man's farm by himself; by placing under every one what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best. -- Thomas Jefferson, to Joseph Cabell, 1816
O'Brien held up his left hand, its back toward Winston, with the thumb hidden and the four fingers extended. "How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?" "Four." "And if the Party says that it is not four but five -- then how many?" "Four." The word ended in a gasp of pain. -- George Orwell
Poverty must have its satisfactions, else there would not be so many poor people. -- Don Herold
President Reagan has noted that there are too many economic pundits and forecasters and has decided on an excess prophets tax.
So from the depths of its enchantment, Terra was able to calculate a course of action. Here at last was an opportunity to consort with Dirbanu on a friendly basis -- great Durbanu which, since it had force fields which Earth could not duplicate, must of necessity have many other things Earth could use; mighty Durbanu before whom we would kneel in supplication (with purely- for-defense bombs hidden in our pockets) with lowered heads (making invisible the knife in our teeth) and ask for crumbs from their table (in order to extrapolate the location of their kitchens). -- Theodore Sturgeon, "The World Well Lost"
So many men, so many opinions; every one his own way. -- Publius Terentius Afer (Terence)
The trouble with this country is that there are too many politicians who believe, with a conviction based on experience, that you can fool all of the people all of the time. -- Franklin Adams
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. -- Frederick Douglass
We should have a great many fewer disputes in the world if only words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves. -- John Locke
What does it take for Americans to do great things; to go to the moon, to win wars, to dig canals linking oceans, to build railroads across a continent? In independent thought about this question, Neil Armstrong and I concluded that it takes a coincidence of four conditions, or in Neil's view, the simultaneous peaking of four of the many cycles of American life. First, a base of technology must exist from which to do the thing to be done. Second, a period of national uneasiness about America's place in the scheme of human activities must exist. Third, some catalytic event must occur that focuses the national attention upon the direction to proceed. Finally, an articulate and wise leader must sense these first three conditions and put forth with words and action the great thing to be accomplished. The motivation of young Americans to do what needs to be done flows from such a coincidence of conditions. ... The Thomas Jeffersons, The Teddy Roosevelts, The John Kennedys appear. We must begin to create the tools of leadership which they, and their young frontiersmen, will require to lead us onward and upward. -- Dr. Harrison H. Schmidt
When we jumped into Sicily, the units became separated, and I couldn't find anyone. Eventually I stumbled across two colonels, a major, three captains, two lieutenants, and one rifleman, and we secured the bridge. Never in the history of war have so few been led by so many. -- General James Gavin
cerebral atrophy, n: The phenomena which occurs as brain cells become weak and sick, and impair the brain's performance. An abundance of these "bad" cells can cause symptoms related to senility, apathy, depression, and overall poor academic performance. A certain small number of brain cells will deteriorate due to everday activity, but large amounts are weakened by intense mental effort and the assimilation of difficult concepts. Many college students become victims of this dread disorder due to poor habits such as overstudying. cerebral darwinism, n: The theory that the effects of cerebral atrophy can be reversed through the purging action of heavy alcohol consumption. Large amounts of alcohol cause many brain cells to perish due to oxygen deprivation. Through the process of natural selection, the weak and sick brain cells will die first, leaving only the healthy cells. This wonderful process leaves the imbiber with a healthier, more vibrant brain, and increases mental capacity. Thus, the devastating effects of cerebral atrophy are reversed, and academic performance actually increases beyond previous levels.
Godwin's Law (prov. [Usenet]): As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups.
Hanson's Treatment of Time: There are never enough hours in a day, but always too many days before Saturday.
Lee's Law: Mother said there would be days like this, but she never said that there'd be so many!
MAFIA, n: [Acronym for Mechanized Applications in Forced Insurance Accounting.] An extensive network with many on-line and offshore subsystems running under OS, DOS, and IOS. MAFIA documentation is rather scanty, and the MAFIA sales office exhibits that testy reluctance to bona fide inquiries which is the hallmark of so many DP operations. From the little that has seeped out, it would appear that MAFIA operates under a non-standard protocol, OMERTA, a tight-lipped variant of SNA, in which extended handshakes also perform complex security functions. The known timesharing aspects of MAFIA point to a more than usually autocratic operating system. Screen prompts carry an imperative, nonrefusable weighting (most menus offer simple YES/YES options, defaulting to YES) that precludes indifference or delay. Uniquely, all editing under MAFIA is performed centrally, using a powerful rubout feature capable of erasing files, filors, filees, and entire nodal aggravations. -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
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: "It seems to me that your antenna doesn't bring in too many stations anymore."
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."'"
The Heineken Uncertainty Principle: You can never be sure how many beers you had last night.
timesharing, n: An access method whereby one computer abuses many people.
Historical Slumming: The act of visiting locations such as diners, smokestack industrial sites, rural villages -- locations where time appears to have been frozen many years back -- so as to experience relief when one returns back to "the present." -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture"
Bread and Circuits: The electronic era tendency to view party politics as corny -- no longer relevant of meaningful or useful to modern societal issues, and in many cases dangerous. -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture"
[I plan] to see, hear, touch, and destroy everything in my path, including beets, rutabagas, and most random vegetables, but excluding yams, as I am absolutely terrified of yams... Actually, I think my fear of yams began in my early youth, when many of my young comrades pelted me with same for singing songs of far-off lands and deep blue seas in a language closely resembling that of the common sow. My psychosis was further impressed into my soul as I reached adolescence, when, while skipping through a field of yams, light-heartedly tossing flowers into the stratosphere, a great yam-picking machine tore through the fields, pursuing me to the edge of the great plantation, where I escaped by diving into a great ditch filled with a mixture of water and pig manure, which may explain my tendency to scream, "Here come the Martians! Hide the eggs!" every time I have pork. But I digress. The fact remains that I cannot rationally deal with yams, and pigs are terrible conversationalists.
Eggnog is a traditional holiday drink invented by the English. Many people wonder where the word "eggnog" comes from. The first syllable comes from the English word "egg", meaning "egg". I don't know where the "nog" comes from. To make eggnog, you'll need rum, whiskey, wine gin and, if they are in season, eggs...
Symptom: Drinking fails to give taste and satisfaction, beer is unusually pale and clear. Problem: Glass empty. Action Required: Find someone who will buy you another beer. Symptom: Drinking fails to give taste and satisfaction, and the front of your shirt is wet. Fault: Mouth not open when drinking or glass applied to wrong part of face. Action Required: Buy another beer and practice in front of mirror. Drink as many as needed to perfect drinking technique. -- Bar Troubleshooting
Q: How many Bell Labs Vice Presidents does it take to change a light bulb? A: That's proprietary information. Answer available from AT&T on payment of license fee (binary only).
Q: How many bureaucrats does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: Two. One to assure everyone that everything possible is being done while the other screws the bulb into the water faucet.
Q: How many Californians does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: Five. One to screw in the light bulb and four to share the experience. (Actually, Californians don't screw in light bulbs, they screw in hot tubs.) Q: How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: Three. One to screw in the light bulb and two to fend off all those Californians trying to share the experience.
Q: How many college football players does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: Only one, but he gets three credits for it.
Q: How many DEC repairman does it take to fix a flat? A: Five; four to hold the car up and one to swap tires. Q: How long does it take? A: It's indeterminate. It will depend upon how many flats they've brought with them. Q: What happens if you've got TWO flats? A: They replace your generator.
Q: How many elephants can you fit in a VW Bug? A: Four. Two in the front, two in the back. Q: How can you tell if an elephant is in your refrigerator? A: There's a footprint in the mayo. Q: How can you tell if two elephants are in your refrigerator? A: There's two footprints in the mayo. Q: How can you tell if three elephants are in your refrigerator? A: The door won't shut. Q: How can you tell if four elephants are in your refrigerator? A: There's a VW Bug in your driveway.
Q: How many existentialists does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: Two. One to screw it in and one to observe how the light bulb itself symbolizes a single incandescent beacon of subjective reality in a netherworld of endless absurdity reaching out toward a maudlin cosmos of nothingness.
Q: How many gradual (sorry, that's supposed to be "graduate") students does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: "I'm afraid we don't know, but make my stipend tax-free, give my advisor a $30,000 grant of the taxpayer's money, and I'm sure he can tell me how to do the shit work for him so he can take the credit for answering this incredibly vital question."
Q: How many hardware engineers does it take to change a light bulb? A: None. We'll fix it in software. Q: How many system programmers does it take to change a light bulb? A: None. The application can work around it. Q: How many software engineers does it take to change a light bulb? A: None. We'll document it in the manual. Q: How many tech writers does it take to change a light bulb? A: None. The user can figure it out.
Q: How many Harvard MBA's does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: Just one. He grasps it firmly and the universe revolves around him.
Q: How many IBM 370's does it take to execute a job? A: Four, three to hold it down, and one to rip its head off.
Q: How many IBM CPU's does it take to do a logical right shift? A: 33. 1 to hold the bits and 32 to push the register.
Q: How many IBM types does it take to change a light bulb? A: Fifteen. One to do it, and fourteen to write document number GC7500439-0001, Multitasking Incandescent Source System Facility, of which 10% of the pages state only "This page intentionally left blank", and 20% of the definitions are of the form "A:..... consists of sequences of non-blank characters separated by blanks".
Q: How many journalists does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: Three. One to report it as an inspired government program to bring light to the people, one to report it as a diabolical government plot to deprive the poor of darkness, and one to win a Pulitzer prize for reporting that Electric Company hired a light bulb-assassin to break the bulb in the first place.
Q: How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb? A: One. Only it's his light bulb when he's done.
Q: How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb? A: Whereas the party of the first part, also known as "Lawyer", and the party of the second part, also known as "Light Bulb", do hereby and forthwith agree to a transaction wherein the party of the second part shall be removed from the current position as a result of failure to perform previously agreed upon duties, i.e., the lighting, elucidation, and otherwise illumination of the area ranging from the front (north) door, through the entryway, terminating at an area just inside the primary living area, demarcated by the beginning of the carpet, any spillover illumination being at the option of the party of the second part and not required by the aforementioned agreement between the parties. The aforementioned removal transaction shall include, but not be limited to, the following. The party of the first part shall, with or without elevation at his option, by means of a chair, stepstool, ladder or any other means of elevation, grasp the party of the second part and rotate the party of the second part in a counter-clockwise direction, this point being tendered non-negotiable. Upon reaching a point where the party of the second part becomes fully detached from the receptacle, the party of the first part shall have the option of disposing of the party of the second part in a manner consistent with all relevant and applicable local, state and federal statutes. Once separation and disposal have been achieved, the party of the first part shall have the option of beginning installation. Aforesaid installation shall occur in a manner consistent with the reverse of the procedures described in step one of this self-same document, being careful to note that the rotation should occur in a clockwise direction, this point also being non-negotiable. The above described steps may be performed, at the option of the party of the first part, by any or all agents authorized by him, the objective being to produce the most possible revenue for the Partnership.
Q: How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb? A: You won't find a lawyer who can change a light bulb. Now, if you're looking for a lawyer to screw a light bulb...
Q: How many marketing people does it take to change a light bulb? A: I'll have to get back to you on that.
Q: How many Martians does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: One and a half.
Q: How many Marxists does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: None: The light bulb contains the seeds of its own revolution.
Q: How many mathematicians does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: One. He gives it to six Californians, thereby reducing the problem to the earlier joke.
Q: How many members of the U.S.S. Enterprise does it take to change a light bulb? A: Seven. Scotty has to report to Captain Kirk that the light bulb in the Engineering Section is getting dim, at which point Kirk will send Bones to pronounce the bulb dead (although he'll immediately claim that he's a doctor, not an electrician). Scotty, after checking around, realizes that they have no more new light bulbs, and complains that he "canna" see in the dark. Kirk will make an emergency stop at the next uncharted planet, Alpha Regula IV, to procure a light bulb from the natives, who, are friendly, but seem to be hiding something. Kirk, Spock, Bones, Yeoman Rand and two red shirt security officers beam down to the planet, where the two security officers are promply killed by the natives, and the rest of the landing party is captured. As something begins to develop between the Captain and Yeoman Rand, Scotty, back in orbit, is attacked by a Klingon destroyer and must warp out of orbit. Although badly outgunned, he cripples the Klingon and races back to the planet in order to rescue Kirk et. al. who have just saved the natives' from an awful fate and, as a reward, been given all light bulbs they can carry. The new bulb is then inserted and the Enterprise continues on its five year mission.
Q: How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: Three. One to screw in the light bulb and two to fend off all those Californians trying to share the experience.
Q: How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? A: Only one, but it takes a long time, and the light bulb has to really want to change.
Q: How many supply-siders does it take to change a light bulb? A: None. The darkness will cause the light bulb to change by itself.
Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb? A: Two, one to hold the giraffe, and the other to fill the bathtub with brightly colored machine tools. [Surrealist jokes just aren't my cup of fur. Ed.]
Q: How many WASPs does it take to change a light bulb? A: One.
Q: How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master stays out of the way.
Q: What's the contour integral around Western Europe? A: Zero, because all the Poles are in Eastern Europe! Addendum: Actually, there ARE some Poles in Western Europe, but they are removable! Q: An English mathematician (I forgot who) was asked by his very religious colleague: Do you believe in one God? A: Yes, up to isomorphism! Q: What is a compact city? A: It's a city that can be guarded by finitely many near-sighted policemen! -- Peter Lax
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James
Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher. -- Flannery O'Connor
Ignorance must certainly be bliss or there wouldn't be so many people so resolutely pursuing it.
Never have so many understood so little about so much. -- James Burke
One cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs -- but it is amazing how many eggs one can break without making a decent omelette. -- Professor Charles P. Issawi
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
The USA is so enormous, and so numerous are its schools, colleges and religious seminaries, many devoted to special religious beliefs ranging from the unorthodox to the dotty, that we can hardly wonder at its yielding a more bounteous harvest of gobbledegook than the rest of the world put together. -- Sir Peter Medawar
Where do I find the time for not reading so many books? -- Karl Kraus
Climate and Surgery R C Gilchrist, who was shot by J Sharp twelve days ago, and who received a derringer ball in the right breast, and who it was supposed at the time could not live many hours, was on the street yesterday and the day before -- walking several blocks at a time. To those who design to be riddled with bullets or cut to pieces with Bowie-knives, we cordially recommend our Sacramento climate and Sacramento surgery. -- Sacramento Daily Union, September 11, 1861
David Letterman's "Things we can be proud of as Americans": * Greatest number of citizens who have actually boarded a UFO * Many newspapers feature "JUMBLE" * Hourly motel rates * Vast majority of Elvis movies made here * Didn't just give up right away during World War II like some countries we could mention * Goatees & Van Dykes thought to be worn only by weenies * Our well-behaved golf professionals * Fabulous babes coast to coast
How many priests are needed for a Boston Mass?
Inglish Spocken Hier: some mangled translations Sign on a cabin door of a Soviet Black Sea cruise liner: Helpsavering apparata in emergings behold many whistles! Associate the stringing apparata about the bosums and meet behind, flee then to the indifferent lifesaveringshippen obedicing the instructs of the vessel. On the door in a Belgrade hotel: Let us know about any unficiency as well as leaking on the service. Our utmost will improve it. -- Colin Bowles
It's odd, and a little unsettling, to reflect upon the fact that English is the only major language in which "I" is capitalized; in many other languages "You" is capitalized and the "i" is lower case. -- Sydney J. Harris
Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops. -- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Minnesota -- home of the blonde hair and blue ears. mosquito supplier to the free world. come fall in love with a loon. where visitors turn blue with envy. one day it's warm, the rest of the year it's cold. land of many cultures -- mostly throat. where the elite meet sleet. glove it or leave it. many are cold, but few are frozen. land of the ski and home of the crazed. land of 10,000 Petersons.
After the Children of Israel had wandered for thirty-nine years in the wilderness, Ferdinand Feghoot arrived to make sure that they would finally find and enter the Promised Land. With him, he brought his favorite robot, faithful old Yewtoo Artoo, to carry his gear and do assorted camp chores. The Israelites soon got over their initial fear of the robot and, as the months passed, became very fond of him. Patriarchs took to discussing abtruse theological problems with him, and each evening the children all gathered to hear the many stories with which he was programmed. Therefore it came as a great shock to them when, just as their journey was ending, he abruptly wore out. Even Feghoot couldn't console them. "It may be true, Ferdinand Feghoot," said Moses, "that our friend Yewtoo Artoo was soulless, but we cannot believe it. He must be properly interred. We cannot embalm him as do the Egyptians. Nor have we wood for a coffin. But I do have a most splendid skin from one of Pharoah's own cattle. We shall bury him in it." Feghoot agreed. "Yes, let this be his last rusting place." "Rusting?" Moses cried. "Not in this dreadful dry desert!" "Ah!" sighed Ferdinand Feghoot, shedding a tear, "I fear you do not realize the full significance of Pharoah's oxhide!" -- Grendel Briarton "Through Time & Space With Ferdinand Feghoot!"
An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician find themselves in an anecdote, indeed an anecdote quite similar to many that you have no doubt already heard. After some observations and rough calculations the engineer realizes the situation and starts laughing. A few minutes later the physicist understands too and chuckles to himself happily as he now has enough experimental evidence to publish a paper. This leaves the mathematician somewhat perplexed, as he had observed right away that he was the subject of an anecdote, and deduced quite rapidly the presence of humour from similar anecdotes, but considers this anecdote to be too trivial a corollary to be significant, let alone funny.
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. There are many examples of outsiders who eventually overthrew entrenched scientific orthodoxies, but they prevailed with irrefutable data. More often, egregious findings that contradict well-established research turn out to be artifacts. I have argued that accepting psychic powers, reincarnation, "cosmic conciousness," and the like, would entail fundamental revisions of the foundations of neuroscience. Before abandoning materialist theories of mind that have paid handsome dividends, we should insist on better evidence for psi phenomena than presently exists, especially when neurology and psychology themselves offer more plausible alternatives. -- Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Conciousness: Implications for Psi Phenomena".
Here is a simple experiment that will teach you an important electrical lesson: On a cool, dry day, scuff your feet along a carpet, then reach your hand into a friend's mouth and touch one of his dental fillings. Did you notice how your friend twitched violently and cried out in pain? This teaches us that electricity can be a very powerful force, but we must never use it to hurt others unless we need to learn an important electrical lesson. It also teaches us how an electrical circuit works. When you scuffed your feet, you picked up batches of "electrons", which are very small objects that carpet manufacturers weave into carpets so they will attract dirt. The electrons travel through your bloodstream and collect in your finger, where they form a spark that leaps to your friend's filling, then travels down to his feet and back into the carpet, thus completing the circuit. Amazing Electronic Fact: If you scuffed your feet long enough without touching anything, you would build up so many electrons that your finger would explode! But this is nothing to worry about unless you have carpeting. -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
How many weeks are there in a light year?
If you steal from one author it's plagiarism; if you steal from many it's research. -- Wilson Mizner
Lucas is the source of many of the components of the legendarily reliable British automotive electrical systems. Professionals call the company "The Prince of Darkness". Of course, if Lucas were to design and manufacture nuclear weapons, World War III would never get off the ground. The British don't like warm beer any more than the Americans do. The British drink warm beer because they have Lucas refrigerators.
One day this guy is finally fed up with his middle-class existence and decides to do something about it. He calls up his best friend, who is a mathematical genius. "Look," he says, "do you suppose you could find some way mathematically of guaranteeing winning at the race track? We could make a lot of money and retire and enjoy life." The mathematician thinks this over a bit and walks away mumbling to himself. A week later his friend drops by to ask the genius if he's had any success. The genius, looking a little bleary-eyed, replies, "Well, yes, actually I do have an idea, and I'm reasonably sure that it will work, but there a number of details to be figured out. After the second week the mathematician appears at his friend's house, looking quite a bit rumpled, and announces, "I think I've got it! I still have some of the theory to work out, but now I'm certain that I'm on the right track." At the end of the third week the mathematician wakes his friend by pounding on his door at three in the morning. He has dark circles under his eyes. His hair hasn't been combed for many days. He appears to be wearing the same clothes as the last time. He has several pencils sticking out from behind his ears and an almost maniacal expression on his face. "WE CAN DO IT! WE CAN DO IT!!" he shrieks. "I have discovered the perfect solution!! And it's so EASY! First, we assume that horses are perfect spheres in simple harmonic motion..."
Review Questions (1) If Nerd on the planet Nutley starts out in his spaceship at 20 KPH, and his speed doubles every 3.2 seconds, how long will it be before he exceeds the speed of light? How long will it be before the Galactic Patrol picks up the pieces of his spaceship? (2) If Roger Rowdy wrecks his car every week, and each week he breaks twice as many bones as before, how long will it be before he breaks every bone in his body? How long will it be before they cut off his insurance? Where does he get a new car every week? (3) If Johnson drinks one beer the first hour (slow start), four beers the next hour, nine beers the next, etc., and stacks the cans in a pyramid, how soon will Johnson's pyramid be larger than King Tut's? When will it fall on him? Will he notice?
The astronomer Francesco Sizi, a contemporary of Galileo, argues that Jupiter can have no satellites: There are seven windows in the head, two nostrils, two ears, two eyes, and a mouth; so in the heavens there are two favorable stars, two unpropitious, two luminaries, and Mercury alone undecided and indifferent. From which and many other similar phenomena of nature such as the seven metals, etc., which it were tedious to enumerate, we gather that the number of planets is necessarily seven. [...] Moreover, the satellites are invisible to the naked eye and therefore can have no influence on the earth and therefore would be useless and therefore do not exist.
The startling truth finally became apparent, and it was this: Numbers written on restaurant checks within the confines of restaurants do not follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces of paper in any other parts of the Universe. This single statement took the scientific world by storm. So many mathematical conferences got held in such good restaurants that many of the finest minds of a generation died of obesity and heart failure, and the science of mathematics was put back by years. -- Douglas Adams
There are three schools of magic. One: State a tautology, then ring the changes on its corollaries; that's philosophy. Two: Record many facts. Try to find a pattern. Then make a wrong guess at the next fact; that's science. Three: Be aware that you live in a malevolent Universe controlled by Murphy's Law, sometimes offset by Brewster's Factor; that's engineering.
This is clearly another case of too many mad scientists, and not enough hunchbacks.
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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"
You should not use your fireplace, because scientists now believe that, contrary to popular opinion, fireplaces actually remove heat from houses. Really, that's what scientists believe. In fact many scientists actually use their fireplaces to cool their houses in the summer. If you visit a scientist's house on a sultry August day, you'll find a cheerful fire roaring on the hearth and the scientist sitting nearby, remarking on how cool he is and drinking heavily. -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
Fortune's diet truths: 1: Forget what the cookbooks say, plain yogurt tastes nothing like sour cream. 2: Any recipe calling for soybeans tastes like mud. 3: Carob is not an acceptable substitute for chocolate. In fact, carob is not an acceptable substitute for anything, except, perhaps, brown shoe polish. 4: There is no such thing as a "fun salad." So let's stop pretending and see salads for what they are: God's punishment for being fat. 5: Fruit salad without maraschino cherries and marshmallows is about as appealing as tepid beer. 6: A world lacking gravy is a tragic place! 7: You should immediately pass up any recipes entitled "luscious and low-cal." Also skip dishes featuring "lively liver." They aren't and it isn't. 8: Wearing a blindfold often makes many diet foods more palatable. 9: Fresh fruit is not dessert. CAKE is dessert! 10: Okra tastes slightly worse than its name implies. 11: A plain baked potato isn't worth the effort involved in chewing and swallowing.
God must have loved calories, she made so many of them.
How many hors d'oeuvres you are allowed to take off a tray being carried by a waiter at a nice party? Two, but there are ways around it, depending on the style of the hors d'oeuvre. If they're those little pastry things where you can't tell what's inside, you take one, bite off about two-thirds of it, then say: "This is cheese! I hate cheese!" Then you put the rest of it back on the tray and bite another one and go, "Darn it! Another cheese!" and so on. -- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette"
Lobster: Everyone loves these delectable crustaceans, but many cooks are squeamish about placing them into boiling water alive, which is the only proper method of preparing them. Frankly, the easiest way to eliminate your guilt is to establish theirs by putting them on trial before they're cooked. The fact is, lobsters are among the most ferocious predators on the sea floor, and you're helping reduce crime in the reefs. Grasp the lobster behind the head, look it right in its unmistakably guilty eyestalks and say, "Where were you on the night of the 21st?", then flourish a picture of a scallop or a sole and shout, "Perhaps this will refresh that crude neural apparatus you call a memory!" The lobster will squirm noticeably. It may even take a swipe at you with one of its claws. Incorrigible. Pop it into the pot. Justice has been served, and shortly you and your friends will be, too. -- Dave Barry, "Cooking: The Art of Using Appliances and Utensils into Excuses and Apologies"
Why do so many foods come packaged in plastic? It's quite uncanny.
You can always tell the Christmas season is here when you start getting incredibly dense, tinfoil-and-ribbon- wrapped lumps in the mail. Fruitcakes make ideal gifts because the Postal Service has been unable to find a way to damage them. They last forever, largely because nobody ever eats them. In fact, many smart people save the fruitcakes they receive and send them back to the original givers the next year; some fruitcakes have been passed back and forth for hundreds of years. The easiest way to make a fruitcake is to buy a darkish cake, then pound some old, hard fruit into it with a mallet. Be sure to wear safety glasses. -- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"
You should tip the waiter $10, minus $2 if he tells you his name, another $2 if he claims it will be His Pleasure to serve you and another $2 for each "special" he describes involving confusing terms such as "shallots," and $4 if the menu contains the word "fixin's." In many restaurants, this means the waiter will actually owe you money. If you are traveling with a child aged six months to three years, you should leave an additional amount equal to twice the bill to compensate for the fact that they will have to take the banquette out and burn it because the cracks are wedged solid with gobbets made of partially chewed former restaurant rolls saturated with baby spit. In New York, tip the taxicab driver $40 if he does not mention his hemorrhoids. -- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette"
All the world's a VAX, And all the coders merely butchers; They have their exits and their entrails; And one int in his time plays many widths, His sizeof being _N bytes. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the Regent's arms. And then the whining schoolboy, with his Sun, And shining morning face, creeping like slug Unwillingly to school. -- A Very Annoyed PDP-11
An Hacker there was, one of the finest sort Who controlled the system; graphics was his sport. A manly man, to be a wizard able; Many a protected file he had sitting on his table. His console, when he typed, a man might hear Clicking and feeping wind as clear, Aye, and as loud as does the machine room bell Where my lord Hacker was Prior of the cell. The Rule of good St Savage or St Doeppnor As old and strict he tended to ignore; He let go by the things of yesterday And took the modern world's more spacious way. He did not rate that text as a plucked hen Which says that Hackers are not holy men. And that a hacker underworked is a mere Fish out of water, flapping on the pier. That is to say, a hacker out of his cloister. That was a text he held not worth an oyster. And I agreed and said his views were sound; Was he to study till his head wend round Poring over books in the cloisters? Must he toil As Andy bade and till the very soil? Was he to leave the world upon the shelf? Let Andy have his labor to himself! -- Chaucer [well, almost. Ed.]
As I was passing Project MAC, I met a Quux with seven hacks. Every hack had seven bugs; Every bug had seven manifestations; Every manifestation had seven symptoms. Symptoms, manifestations, bugs, and hacks, How many losses at Project MAC?
Big M, Little M, many mumbling mice Are making midnight music in the moonlight, Mighty nice!
Black shiny mollies and bright colored guppies, Shy little angels as gentle as puppies, Swimming and diving with scarcely a swish, They were just some of my tropical fish. Then I got mantas that sting in the water, Deadly piranhas that itch for a slaughter, Savage male betas that bite with a squish, Now I have many less tropical fish. If you think that Fish are peaceful That's an empty wish. Just dump them together And leave them alone, And soon you will have -- no fish. -- To My Favorite Things
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded. Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed. Everybody knows the war is over. Everybody knows the good guys lost. Everybody knows the fight was fixed: the poor stay poor, the rich get rich. That's how it goes. Everybody knows. Everybody knows that the boat is leaking. Everybody knows the captain lied. Everybody got this broken feeling like their father or their dog just died. Everybody talking to their pockets. Everybody wants a box of chocolates and long stem rose. Everybody knows. Everybody knows that you love me, baby. Everybody knows that you really do. Everybody knows that you've been faithful, give or take a night or two. Everybody knows you've been discreet, but there were so many people you just had to meet without your clothes. And everybody knows. And everybody knows it's now or never. Everybody knows that it's me or you. And everybody knows that you live forever when you've done a line or two. Everybody knows the deal is rotten: Old Black Joe's still pickin' cotton for you ribbons and bows. And everybody knows. -- Leonard Cohen, "Everybody Knows"
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"
"Had he and I but met By some old ancient inn, But ranged as infantry, We should have sat us down to wet And staring face to face, Right many a nipperkin! I shot at him as he at me, And killed him in his place. I shot him dead because -- Because he was my foe, He thought he'd 'list, perhaps, Just so: my foe of course he was; Off-hand-like -- just as I -- That's clear enough; although Was out of work -- had sold his traps No other reason why. Yes; quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down You'd treat, if met where any bar is Or help to half-a-crown." -- Thomas Hardy
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?"
Ho! Ho! Ho! to the bottle I go To heal my heart and drown my woe. Rain may fall and wind may blow, And many miles be still to go, But under a tall tree I will lie, And let the clouds go sailing by. -- J. R. R. Tolkien
I never saw a purple cow I never hope to see one But I can tell you anyhow I'd rather see than be one. -- Gellett Burgess I've never seen a purple cow I never hope to see one But from the milk we're getting now There certainly must be one -- Odgen Nash Ah, yes, I wrote "The Purple Cow" I'm sorry now I wrote it But I can tell you anyhow I'll kill you if you quote it. -- Gellett Burgess, many years later
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round: And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; And here were forest ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. -- S.T. Coleridge, "Kubla Kahn"
It was one time too many One word too few It was all too much for me and you There was one way to go Nothing more we could do One time too many One word too few -- Meredith Tanner
Meanehwael, baccat meaddehaele, monstaer lurccen; Fulle few too many drincce, hie luccen for fyht. [D]en Hreorfneorht[d]hwr, son of Hrwaerow[p]heororthwl, AEsccen aewful jeork to steop outsyd. [P]hud! Bashe! Crasch! Beoom! [D]e bigge gye Eallum his bon brak, byt his nose offe; Wicced Godsylla waeld on his asse. Monstaer moppe fleor wy[p] eallum men in haelle. Beowulf in bacceroome fonecall bemaccen waes; Hearen sond of ruccus saed, "Hwaet [d]e helle?" Graben sheold strang ond swich-blaed scharp Sond feorth to fyht [d]e grimlic foe. "Me," Godsylla saed, "mac [d]e minsemete." Heoro cwyc geten heold wi[p] faemed half-nelson Ond flyng him lic frisbe bac to fen. Beowulf belly up to meaddehaele bar, Saed, "Ne foe beaten mie faersom cung-fu." Eorderen cocca-colha yce-coeld, [d]e reol [p]yng. -- Not Chaucer, for certain
Old Mother Hubbard lived in a shoe, She had so many children, She didn't know what to do. So she moved to Atlanta.
Once upon this midnight incoherent, While you pondered sentient and crystalline, Over many a broken and subordinate Volume of gnarly lore, While I pestered, nearly singing, Sudddenly there came a hewing, As of someone profusely skulking, Skulking at my chamber door.
Say many of cameras focused t'us, Our middle-aged shots do us justice. No justice, please, curse ye! We really want mercy: You see, 'tis the justice, disgusts us. -- Thomas H. Hildebrandt
St. Patrick was a gentleman who through strategy and stealth drove all the snakes from Ireland. Here's a toasting to his health -- but not too many toastings lest you lose yourself and then forget the good St. Patrick and see all those snakes again.
The Road goes ever on and on Down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, And I must follow, if I can, Pursuing it with eager feet, Until it joins some larger way Where many paths and errands meet. And whither then? I cannot say. -- J. R. R. Tolkien
The Worst American Poet Julia Moore, "the Sweet Singer of Michigan" (1847-1920) was so bad that Mark Twain said her first book gave him joy for 20 years. Her verse was mainly concerned with violent death -- the great fire of Chicago and the yellow fever epidemic proved natural subjects for her pen. Whether death was by drowning, by fits or by runaway sleigh, the formula was the same: Have you heard of the dreadful fate Of Mr. P.P. Bliss and wife? Of their death I will relate, And also others lost their life (in the) Ashbula Bridge disaster, Where so many people died. Even if you started out reasonably healthy in one of Julia's poems, the chances are that after a few stanzas you would be at the bottom of a river or struck by lightning. A critic of the day said she was "worse than a Gatling gun" and in one slim volume counted 21 killed and 9 wounded. Incredibly, some newspapers were critical of her work, even suggesting that the sweet singer was "semi-literate". Her reply was forthright: "The Editors that has spoken in this scandalous manner have went beyond reason." She added that "literary work is very difficult to do". -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
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.
Troll sat alone on his seat of stone, And munched and mumbled a bare old bone; For many a year he had gnawed it near, For meat was hard to come by. Done by! Gum by! In a cave in the hills he dwelt alone, And meat was hard to come by. Up came Tom with his big boots on. Said he to Troll: "Pray, what is youn? For it looks like the shin o' my nuncle Tim, As should be a-lyin in graveyard. Caveyard! Paveyard! This many a year has Tim been gone, And I thought he were lyin' in graveyard." "My lad," said Troll, "this bone I stole. But what be bones that lie in a hole? Thy nuncle was dead as a lump o' lead, Afore I found his shinbone. Tinbone! Thinbone! He can spare a share for a poor old troll For he don't need his shinbone." Said Tom: "I don't see why the likes o' thee Without axin' leave should go makin' free With the shank or the shin o' my father's kin; So hand the old bone over! Rover! Trover! Though dead he be, it belongs to he; So hand the old bnone over!" -- J. R. R. Tolkien
Under the wide and heavy VAX Dig my grave and let me relax Long have I lived, and many my hacks And I lay me down with a will. These be the words that tell the way: "Here he lies who piped 64K, Brought down the machine for nearly a day, And Rogue playing to an awful standstill."
Upon the hearth the fire is red, Beneath the roof there is a bed; But not yet weary are our feet, Still round the corner we may meet A sudden tree or standing stone That none have seen but we alone. Still round the corner there may wait Tree and flower and leaf and grass, A new road or a secret gate, Let them pass! Let them pass! And though we pass them by today Hill and water under sky, Tomorrow we may come this way Pass them by! Pass them by! And take the hidden paths that run Towards the Moon or to the Sun, Home is behind, the world ahead, Apple, thorn, and nut and sloe, And there are many paths to tread Let them go! Let them go! Through shadows to the edge of night, Sand and stone and pool and dell, Until the stars are all alight. Fare you well! Fare you well! Then world behind and home ahead, We'll wander back to home and bed. Mist and twilight, cloud and shade, Away shall fade! Away shall fade! Fire and lamp, and meat and bread, And then to bed! And then to bed! -- J. R. R. Tolkien
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
Many changes of mind and mood; do not hesitate too long.
You have many friends and very few living enemies.
You never know how many friends you have until you rent a house on the beach.
You will have good luck and overcome many hardships.
You will step on the night soil of many countries.
Your step will soil many countries.
Although written many years ago, Lady Chatterley's Lover has just been reissued by the Grove Press, and this pictorial account of the day-to-day life of an English gamekeeper is full of considerable interest to outdoor minded readers, as it contains many passages on pheasant-raising, the apprehending of poachers, ways to control vermin, and other chores and duties of the professional gamekeeper. Unfortunately, one is obliged to wade through many pages of extraneous material in order to discover and savour those sidelights on the management of a midland shooting estate, and in this reviewer's opinion the book cannot take the place of J. R. Miller's "Practical Gamekeeping." -- Ed Zern, "Field and Stream" (Nov. 1959)
Harry is heavily into camping, and every year in the late fall, he makes us all go to Assateague, which is an island on the Atlantic Ocean famous for its wild horses. I realize that the concept of wild horses probably stirs romantic notions in many of you, but this is because you have never met any wild horses in person. In person, they are like enormous hooved rats. They amble up to your camp site, and their attitude is: "We're wild horses. We're going to eat your food, knock down your tent and poop on your shoes. We're protected by federal law, just like Richard Nixon." -- Dave Barry, "Tenting Grandpa Bob"
THE OLD POOL SHOOTER had won many a game in his life. But now it was time to hang up the cue. When he did, all the other cues came crashing go the floor. "Sorry," he said with a smile. -- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
Another war ... must it always be so? How many comrades have we lost in this way? ... Obedience. Duty. Death, and more death ... -- Romulan Commander, "Balance of Terror", stardate 1709.2
Many Myths are based on truth -- Spock, "The Way to Eden", stardate 5832.3
"There are of course many problems connected with life, of which some of the most popular are `Why are people born?' `Why do they die?' `Why do they spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches?'" - The Book.
A large spider in an old house built a beautiful web in which to catch flies. Every time a fly landed on the web and was entangled in it the spider devoured him, so that when another fly came along he would think the web was a safe and quiet place in which to rest. One day a fairly intelligent fly buzzed around above the web so long without lighting that the spider appeared and said, "Come on down." But the fly was too clever for him and said, "I never light where I don't see other flies and I don't see any other flies in your house." So he flew away until he came to a place where there were a great many other flies. He was about to settle down among them when a bee buzzed up and said, "Hold it, stupid, that's flypaper. All those flies are trapped." "Don't be silly," said the fly, "they're dancing." So he settled down and became stuck to the flypaper with all the other flies. Moral: There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else. -- James Thurber, "The Fairly Intelligent Fly"
Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people from point B are so keen to get there and what's so great about point B that so many people from point A are so keen to get _____there. They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be. -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much -- the wheel, New York, wars and so on -- whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons. Curiously enough, the dolphins had long known of the impending destruction of the of the planet Earth and had made many attempts to alert mankind to the danger; but most of their communications were misinterpreted ... -- Douglas Admas "The Hitchhikers' Guide To The Galaxy"
"Many have seen Topaxci, God of the Red Mushroom, and they earn the name of shaman," he said. Some have seen Skelde, spirit of the smoke, and they are called sorcerers. A few have been privileged to see Umcherrel, the soul of the forest, and they are known as spirit masters. But none have seen a box with hundreds of legs that looked at them without eyes, and they are known as idio--" The interruption was caused by a sudden screaming noise and a flurry of snow and sparks that blew the fire across the dark hut; there was a brief blurred vision and then the opposite wall was blasted aside and the apparition vanished. There was a long silence. Then a slightly shorter silence. Then the old shaman said carefully, "You didn't just see two men go through upside down on a broomstick, shouting and screaming at each other, did you?" The boy looked at him levelly. "Certainly not," he said. The old man heaved a sigh of relief. "Thank goodness for that," he said. "Neither did I." -- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic"
Many years ago in a period commonly know as Next Friday Afternoon, there lived a King who was very Gloomy on Tuesday mornings because he was so Sad thinking about how Unhappy he had been on Monday and how completely Mournful he would be on Wednesday.... -- Walt Kelly
The Three Major Kind of Tools * Tools for hittings things to make them loose or to tighten them up or jar their many complex, sophisticated electrical parts in such a manner that they function perfectly. (These are your hammers, maces, bludgeons, and truncheons.) * Tools that, if dropped properly, can penetrate your foot. (Awls) * Tools that nobody should ever use because the potential danger is far greater than the value of any project that could possibly result. (Power saws, power drills, power staplers, any kind of tool that uses any kind of power more advanced than flashlight batteries.) -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
"But the most reliable indication of the future of Open Source is its past: in just a few years, we have gone from nothing to a robust body of software that solves many different problems and is reaching the million-user count. There's no reason for us to slow down now." -- Bruce Perens, on the future of Open Source software. (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
After they got rid of capital punishment, they had to hang twice as many people as before.
Q: How many Pentium designers does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: 1.99904274017, but that's close enough for non-technical people.
Q: How many Bill Gateses does it take to change a light bulb? A: One. He puts the bulb in and lets the world revolve around him. A: None. He declares Darkness(tm) the new industry standard.
Q: How many Microsoft support staff does it take to change a light bulb? A: Four. One to ask "What is the registration number of the light bulb?", one to ask "Have you tried rebooting it?", another to ask "Have you tried reinstalling it?" and the last one to say "It must be your hardware because the light bulb in our office works fine..."
Q: How many Microsoft vice presidents does it take to change a light bulb? A: Eight. One to work the bulb, and seven to make sure that Microsoft gets $2 for every light bulb ever changed anywhere in the world.
Q: How many Microsoft tech writers does it take to change a lightbulb? A: Twelve. One to work the bulb, and eleven to write a 1,123 page guide to changing lightbulbs ("Learn Lightbulb Management in 21 Days").
Q: How many Micro$oft programmers does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: 472. One to write WinGetLightBulbHandle. One to write WinQueryStatusLightBulb. One to write WinGetLightSwitch-Handle...
Q: How many Internet Explorer programmers does it take to change a lightbulb? A: None. Their light bulbs are integrated in to the fixtures and can not be changed.
All of you people should be ashamed of yourselves! MicroSoft is the reason there are so many people in my IS department, and the reason half of us have jobs. If Sun had won, we could probably get by with two people sleeping like the Maytag man. But because of MS, there are eight people gainfully employed as highly paid contracters, looking busy, feeding their kids. And the way it looks, I stand to be employed and wealthy for a long, long time. -- From Slashdot.org
What you end up with, after running an operating system concept through these many marketing coffee filters, is something not unlike plain hot water. -- Matt Welsh
Everyone seems so impatient and angry these days. I think it's because so many people use Windows at work -- do you think you'd be Politeness Man after working on Windows 8 hrs. or more? -- Chip Atkinson
Q: How many Microsoft Programmers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A: It cannot be done. You will need to upgrade your house. Q: How many Linux users does it take to change a lightbulb? A: Two. One to write the HOWTO-LIGHTBULB-CRONJOB, and another to read it. -- Geoff Johnson
Hear me out. Linux is Microsoft's main competition right now. Because of this we are forcing them to "innovate", something they would usually avoid. Now if MS Bob has taught us anything, Microsoft is not a company that should be innovating. When they do, they don't come up with things like "better security" or "stability", they come back with "talking paperclips", and "throw in every usless feature we can think of, memory footprint be dammed". Unfortunatly, they also come up with the bright idea of executing email. Now MIME attachments aren't enough, they want you to be able to run/open attachments right when you get them. This sounds like a good idea to people who believe renaming directories to folders made computing possible for the common man, but security wise it's like vigorously shaking a package from the Unibomber. So my friends, we are to blame. We pushed them into frantically trying to invent "necessary" features to stay on top, and look where it got us. Many of us are watching our beloved mail servers go down under the strain and rebuilding our company's PC because of our pointless competition with MS. I implore you to please drop Linux before Microsoft innovates again. -- From a Slashdot.org post in regards to the ILOVEYOU email virus
'Kitchen Sink' OS Announced Coding has begun on a new operating system code named 'Kitchen Sink'. The new OS will be based entirely on GNU Emacs. One programmer explained, "Since many hackers spend a vast amount of their time in Emacs, why not just make it the operating system?" When asked about the name, he responded, "Well, it has been often said that Emacs has everything except a kitchen sink. Now it will." One vi advocate said, "What the hell?!?! Those Emacs people are nuts. It seems that even with a programming language, a web browser, and God only knows what else built into their text editor, they're still not satisfied. Now they want it to be an operating system. Hell, even Windows ain't that bloated!"
Stallman's Latest Proclamation Richard M. Stallman doesn't want you to say "Windows" anymore. He is now advocating that people call this OS by its real name: Microsoft-Xerox-Apple-Windows. This proclamation comes on the heels of his controversial stand that Linux should be called GNU/Linux. RMS explained in a Usenet posting, "Calling Microsoft's OS 'Windows' is a grave inaccuracy. Xerox and Apple both contributed significant ideas and innovations to this OS. Why should Microsoft get all the credit?" RMS also hinted that people shouldn't refer to Microsoft's web browser as IE. "It should really be called Microsoft-Spyglass-Mosaic-Internet-Explorer. Again, how much credit does Microsoft really deserve for this product? Much of the base code was licensed from Spyglass." Many industry pundits are less than thrilled about RMS' proclamation. The editor of Windows Magazine exclaimed, "What?!?! Yeah, we'll rename our magazine Microsoft-Xerox-Apple-Windows Magazine. That just rolls off the tongue!" A Ziff-Davis columnist noted, "Think of all the wasted space this would cause. If we spelled out everything like this, we'd have headlines like, 'Microsoft Releases Service Pack 5 for Microsoft-Xerox-Apple-Windows Neutered Technology 4.0' Clearly this is unacceptable."
Operation Desert Slash WASHINGTON, D.C. -- High officials in the US military are planning on putting the 'Slashdot Effect' to use against Iraq. Pentagon computer experts think that the Slashdot Effect could topple key Net-connected Iraqi computer systems. Such a Denial of Service attack could prove instrumental when the US invades. One Pentagon official said, "If I had a million dollars for every server that crashed as a result of being linked on Slashdot, I'd be richer than Bill Gates. The Slashdot Effect is a very powerful weapon that the US military wants to tap into." Rob Malda has been contacted by top military brass. According to anonymous sources, Malda will play a key part in the so-called "Operation Desert Slash". Supposedly Malda will post several Slashdot articles with links to critical Iraqi websites right when the US invasion is set to begin. Meanwhile, Pentagon operatives will begin a series of Denial of Service attacks on other key Iraqi computer systems. One source notes, "Since many Iraqi systems rely on Microsoft software, this task should be relatively simple."
Microsoft ActivePromo Campaign: "Frequent Upgrade Points" Microsoft's PR masterminds are planning a massive marketing campaign, code-named "ActivePromo 2000", to promote the upcoming release of Windows 2000 (scheduled for February 2001). This marketing campaign will include a "Frequent Upgrade Points" promotion. Customers who purchase upgrades to Windows, Office, or other Microsoft "solutions" will receive "frequent upgrade points" (FUPs) when they register online. These points, like Frequent Flyer Miles, can be redeemed in the future for discounts on other Microsoft upgrades. This program, combined with the fact that older versions of some Microsoft programs have glaring Y2K problems, should be enough to convince many people to shell out big bucks to upgrade to a more bloated Microsoft operating system. The company hopes to eradicate 99% of Windows 3.x installations by 2003.
Open Source Irrational Constant BREEZEWOOD, PA -- In a revelation that could rock the foundations of science, a researcher in Pennsylvania has discovered that the digits of the irrational constant PI encode a version of the Linux kernel. "I can't believe it," the researcher, Neil Hoffman, exclaimed. "And yet, here I am staring at what appears to be the source code for Linux kernel 5.0.0. Needless to say, my whole world-view has changed..." Hoffman explained, "My algorithm, which applies several dozen conversions and manipulations to each digit of PI, spits out plain vanilla ASCII characters that happen to form the source code for the Linux kernel." Many members of the scientific community are skeptical. One One mathematician who has memorized the digits of PI to 10,000 places said, "This is the kind of nonsense one would expect to find in a tabloid such as the National Mathematics Enquirer. Or a Linux fortune(6) file. Hoffman's 'discovery' is obviously a hoax designed to secure government research grants." In a related matter, we have received an unconfirmed report that a region of the Mandelbrot fractal contains what appear to be the words "LINUS TORVALDS WAS HERE". In addition, the words "TRANSMETA: THIS SECRET MESSAGE IS NOT HERE YET" supposedly appear within the depths of the Julia Set.
New Crime Identified: "Tech Rage" HARRISBURG, IL -- The police department in this Illinois town has coined a new term for a growing trend in crime: "tech rage". Tech rage shares many similarities with another modern crime, "road rage", but instead of affecting drivers, tech rage is experienced by disgruntled computer users. The first documented case of tech rage involves a Microsoft salesman, Bob Glutzfield, who convinced the local TV station to "upgrade" its computer systems from Macintosh to Wintel. While the migration seemed successful at first, the Blue Screen became more prevalent during the following months. Then, in January, the entire computer system crashed in the middle of the weather forecast during the 10 o'clock evening news. Viewers could plainly see the Blue Screen of Death showing in the monitors behind James Roland, the chief meteorologist. The instability of Windows 98 stretched Roland's patience until he snapped last week and succumbed to tech rage. Roland tracked down the Microsoft salesman and followed him one evening to his apartment. The weatherman yelled at the bewildered Microserf, "You [expletive]! Because of you, I'm the [expletive] laughing stock of Southern Illinois!" and then proceeded to beat him up. Roland is currently out on bond pending trial next month.
The War Against Linux A significant obstacle on the path to Linux World Domination has emerged. A reactionary grass-roots movement has formed to fight, as they call it, "The War Against Linux". This movement, code-named "LinSux", is composed of people (mostly Microsoft stockholders and commercial software developers) who want to maintain the status quo. They are fighting back against the rise of Linux and free software which they see as a threat to their financial independence. The most damaging attack the LinSux folks have launched is "Three Mile Island", a Windows macro virus designed to inflict damage on computers that contain a partition devoted to a non-Microsoft OS. When the victim computer is booted into Windows, the virus activates and deletes any non-Microsoft partitions. Ironically, the many security flaws in Windows allow the virus to damage alternative operating systems but leave Windows unscathed. "The War Against Linux" has also been fought in more subtle ways. Time-tested methods of Linux advocacy have been turned into subtle forms of anti-Linux advocacy by the LinSux crowd. MSCEs are smuggling NT boxes into companies that predominantly use Linux or Unix. LinSux "freedom fighters" are rearranging books and software boxes on store shelves so that Microsoft offerings are displayed more prominently.
Microsoft Mandatory Survey (#4) Customers who want to upgrade to Windows 98 Second Edition must now fill out a Microsoft survey online before they can order the bugfix/upgrade. Question 4: What is your favorite Microsoft Office feature? A. Dancing Paper Clip B. Takes up enough hard drive space to prevent my children from installing violent video games or downloading pornography C. Everyone else has it, so I can easily exchange documents with others D. I have so many favorites, I can't choose just one!
Jargon Coiner (#13) An irregular feature that aims to give you advance warning of new jargon that we've just made up. * NINETY-NINERS: In 1849, a horde of people ("Forty-niners") headed to California to pan gold and get rich quick. In 1999, a horde of people ("Ninety-niners") headed to California to invest in Linux companies and get rich quick. Some things never change. * ZOO: The ubiquitous shelf of O'Reilly Animal Books that many nerds keep next to their computer * THEY'RE MULTIPLYING LIKE PORTALS: The proliferation of Linux portals that have the latest headlines from Slashdot and LinuxToday but offer little original content. * YOU CAN SPELL EVIL WITHOUT vi: A curse uttered by freshman Computer Science students struggling with vi's insert mode for the first time.
Treaty of Helsinki Signed HELSINKI, FINLAND -- A cease-fire in the flame war between Linux and FreeBSD has been reached. A group of two dozen Linux and FreeBSD zealots met in Helsinki to ratify a treaty bringing a temporary end to the hostile fighting between both camps. "Today is a good day for peace," one observer noted. "Now both sides can lay down their keyboards and quit flaming the opposing side on Usenet and Slashdot." The cease-fire is a response to the sudden increase in fighting that has occured over the past two weeks. The Slashdot server became a victim of the cross-fire this week when thousands of Anonymous Cowards and Geek Zealots posted inflammatory comments that amounted to, "My OS is better than your OS!" Many nerds, suffering withdrawl symptoms when the Slashdot site slowed to a crawl, demanded that the bickering stop. "I can't take it anymore! It takes two minutes to download the Slashdot homepage -- assuming the site is actually online. I must have my 'News for Nerds' now! The fighting must stop," one Anonymous Coward ranted.
Alan Cox Releases Quantum Kernel Submitted by Dave Finton A surprising development in the linux-kernel mailing list surfaced when Alan Cox announced the release of a 2.2 Linux kernel existing both as an official stable kernel and as a prepatch kernel. This immediately spurred the creation of two different realities (and hence two different Alan Coxes), where a kernel would not settle down to one or the other state until someone looked at it. "I think this resulted from the large number of 'final' prepatch kernels prior to the 2.2.14 release," said David Miller, kernel networking guru and gas station attendent (he'll settle down to one or the other state when someone looks at him). When word of this development spread to Microsoft, Bill Gates was extremely delighted. The Redmond, WA campus has been plagued with quantum fluctuations ever since the inception of Windows 2000 back in 1992. "Our release date has been existing in infinitely many states since the very beginning," said a Microsoft spokesperson. "This just shows the Linux operating system cannot scale to multiple realities as well as our OS."
Excerpts From The First Annual Nerd Bowl (#4) BRYANT DUMBELL: Welcome back. After Round 1, the Mad Hatters are ahead 15 to 12. Round 2, the Caffeine Craziness event, is now underway. JOHN SPLADDEN: This is my favorite part of the Nerdbowl. Each player tries to consume as many gallons of caffeinated beverages within one minute, and then points are awarded based on the redness of their eyes. DUMBELL: I like this event too... I must admit, it's much better than the "Crash It" event that was played in the Zeroth Annual Nerdbowl last year. Players were each seated in front of a PC running Windows 98... points were awarded based on how fast the player could cause a Blue Screen. SPLADDEN: Ah, yes, I remember that. Everybody complained that the event was too easy. "Where the hell is the challenge?" yelled Chris DiBona while doing a victory dance after the VA Linux Rich Penguins beat the SuSE Cats In The Hats last year 121-96.
Affordable Virtual Beowulf Cluster Every nerd drools over Beowulf clusters, but very few have even seen one, much less own one. Until now, that is. Eric Gylgen, the open source hacker famous for EviL (the dancing ASCII paperclip add-on to vi), is working on a program that will emulate Beowulf clusters on a standard desktop PC. "Of course," he added candidly, "the performance of my virtual cluster will be many orders of magnitude less than a real cluster, but that's not really the point. I just want to be able to brag that I run a 256 node cluster. Nobody has to know I only spent $500 on the hardware it uses." Eric has prior experience in this field. Last month he successfully built a real 32 node Beowulf cluster out of Palm Pilots, old TI-8x graphing calculators, various digital cameras, and even some TRS-80s. He demonstrated a pre-alpha version of his VirtualEpicPoem software to us yesterday. His Athlon machine emulated a 256 node Beowulf cluster in which each node, running Linux, was emulating its own 16 node cluster in which each node, running Bochs, was emulating VMWare to emulate Linux running old Amiga software. The system was extremely slow, but it worked.
Brief History Of Linux (#4) Walls & Windows Most people don't realize that many of the technological innovations taken for granted in the 20th Century date back centuries ago. The concept of a network "firewall", for instance, is a product of the Great Wall of China, a crude attempt to keep raging forest fires out of Chinese territory. It was soon discovered that the Wall also kept Asian intruders ("steppe kiddies") out, just as modern-day firewalls keep network intruders ("script kiddies") out. Meanwhile, modern terminology for graphical user interfaces originated from Pre-Columbian peoples in Central and South America. These natives would drag-and-drop icons (sculptures of the gods) into vast pits of certain gooey substances during a ritual in which "mice" (musical instruments that made a strange clicking sound) were played to an eerie beat.
Brief History Of Linux (#9) Edison's most important invention One of Thomas Edison's most profound inventions was that of patent litigation. Edison used his many patents on motion pictures to monopolize the motion picture industry. One could argue that Edison was an early pioneer for the business tactics employed by Microsoft and the MPAA. Indeed, Edison's company, the Motion Picture Patent Company (MPPC), formed in 1908, bears a striking resemblance to the modern-day Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Similar initials, different people, same evil. The MPCC, with the help of hired thugs, ensured that all motion picture producers paid tribute to Edison and played by his rules. The MPAA, with the help of hired lawyers, ensures that all motion picture producers pay tribute and play by their rules. Ironically, filmmakers that found themselves facing Edison patent litigation (or worse) fled to Texas, California, and Mexico. Those same filmmakers outlasted Edison's monopoly and eventually banded together to form the MPAA! History has a tendency to repeat itself; so it seems likely that today's DVD lawsuit victims may well come to power in the future -- and soon become the evil establishment, thus completing another cycle.
Brief History Of Linux (#15) Too many hyphens: Traf-O-Data and Micro-soft Bill Gates and Paul Allen attended an exclusive private school in Seattle. In 1968, after raising $3,000 from a yard sale, they gained access to a timeshare computer and became addicted. After depleting their money learning BASIC and playing Solitaire, they convinced a company to give them free computer time in exchange for reporting bugs -- ironically, an early form of Open Source development! The two then founded a small company called Traf-O-Data that collected and analyzed traffic counts for municipalities using a crude device based on the Intel "Pretanium" 8008 CPU. They had some success at first, but ran into problems when they were unable to deliver their much hyped next-generation device called "TrafficX". An engineer is quoted as saying that "Traf-O-Data is the local leader in vaporware", the first documented usage of the term that has come to be synonymous with Bill Gates. Soon thereafter, the two developed their own BASIC interpreter, and sold it to MITS for their new Altair computer. April 4, 1975 is the fateful day that Micro-soft was founded in Albuquerque, NM as a language vendor.
Brief History Of Linux (#23) Linus Torvalds certainly wasn't the only person to create their own operating system from scratch. Other people working from their leaky basements did create their own systems and now they are sick that they didn't become an Alpha Geek like Torvalds or a Beta Geek like Alan Cox. Linus had one advantage not many else did: Internet access. The world was full of half-implemented-Unix-kernels at the time, but they were sitting isolated on some hacker's hard drive, destined to be destroyed by a hard drive crash. Thankfully that never happened to Linux, mostly because everyone with Net access could download a copy instead of paying shipping charges to receive the code on a huge stack of unreliable floppy disks. Indeed, buried deep within a landfill in Lansing, Michigan sits a stack of still-readable 5-1/4 floppies containing the only known copy of "Windows Killer", a fully functional Unix kernel so elegant, so efficient, so easy-to-use that Ken Thompson himself would be jealous of its design. Unfortunately the author's mother threw out the stack of floppies in a bout of spring cleaning. The 14 year old author's talents were lost forever as his parents sent him to Law School.
Brief History Of Linux (#29) "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" is credited by many (especially ESR himself) as the reason Netscape announced January 22, 1998 the release of the Mozilla source code. In addition, Rob Malda of Slashdot has also received praise because he had recently published an editorial ("Give us the damn source code so we can fix Netscape's problems ourselves!") Of course, historians now know the true reason behind the landmark decision: Netscape engineers were scared to death that a large multi-national corporation would acquire them and crush Mozilla. Which indeed did happen much later, although everybody thought the conqueror would be Microsoft, not AOL (America's Online Lusers). The Netscape announcement prompted a strategy session among Linux bigwigs on February 3rd. They decided a new term to replace 'free software' was needed; some rejected suggestions included "Free Source", "Ajar Source", "World Domination Source", "bong-ware" (Bong's Obviously Not GNU), and "Nude Source". We can thank Chris Peterson for coining "Open Source", which became the adopted term and later sparked the ugly "Free Software vs. Open Source", "Raymond vs. Stallman" flame-a-thons.
Throwing Windows Out The Window The Federal Bureau Of Missing Socks has banned the use of Microsoft Windows and Office on all employee computers. But don't get too excited; they aren't going to replace them with Linux. Instead, this government agency has decided to go back to using abucusses, slide rules, and manual typewriters. The banishment of Microsoft software stems from the agency's new policy against computer games. MS Office, which contains several games in the form of Easter Eggs, is now verboten on all agency computers. "Flight simulators, pinball games, magic eight balls... they all violate our policy," said the sub-adjunct administrator second-class. "So we can't use Office." Windows is forbidden for the same reason. "We've had way too many employees wasting time playing Solitaire," she said. "Unfortunately, Solitaire is an integral part of Windows -- Microsoft executives said so during the anti-trust trial. If Solitaire is removed, the operating system won't function properly. Therefore, we have no choice but to banish all Windows computers." The Bureau's Assistant Technology Consultant, Mr. Reginald "Red" Taype, asked, "Have you ever seen an abucus crash? Have you ever seen anybody have fun with a slide rule? Do adding machines contain undocumented easter eggs? No! That's why we're ditching our PCs."
Microsoft Website Crashes, World Does Not Come To An End REDMOND, WA -- In a crushing blow to Bill Gates' ego, world civilization did not collapse when the Microsoft website was offline for an extended period last week. During the anti-trust trial, Microsoft's lawyers repeatedly warned that if the company was broken up or dealt any other penalty (no matter how trivial), it would not only cost the tech industry billions of dollars, but it could decimate the entire world economy and even bring about the start of World War III. At the risk of sounding like a biased, slanted, overzealous journalist, let me just say: Yeah, right! The stunning realization that the world does not revolve around Redmond (yet) has plunged many Microsoft executives into shock. "But microsoft.com is the single most important website in the world! And Microsoft is the single most important company in the Universe! This can't be happening! Why isn't civilization teetering on the edge right now?" said one depressed President Of Executive Vice.
"Oops," Says MPAA President Recently, the United States filed a legal brief in support of the MPAA's argument that linking to the DeCSS source code is not protected by the First Amendment. At the time, the MPAA was ecstatic. But not any longer. The tables have turned: the Federal government has filed a lawsuit against the movie industry, arguing that many Hollywood-produced movies 'link' to illegal content. The MPAA is now desperately wrapping itself up in the Bill of Rights. "Murder is illegal. Showing a murder in a movie -- or, rather, 'linking' to it -- is also illegal," explained a spokesperson for the Coalition Of Angry Soccer Moms In Support Of Brow-Beating Movie Industry Executives, an interest group that has backed the government's lawsuit.
The Blue Screen Of Advocacy The Federal Bureau of Investigation & Privacy Violations has issued a national advisory warning computer stores to be on the lookout for the "Bluescreen Bandits". These extreme Linux zealots go from store to store and from computer to computer typing in "C:\CON\CON" and causing the demo machines to crash and display the Blue Screen Of Death. Efforts to apprehend the bandits have so far been unsuccessful. The outlaws were caught on tape at a CompUSSR location in Southern California, but in an ironic twist, the surveillance system bluescreened just before the penguinistas came into clear view. "We don't have many clues. It's not clear whether a small group is behind the bluescreen vandalism, or whether hundreds or even thousands of geek zealots are involved," said the manager of a Capacitor City store. The manager has good reason to be upset. The bluescreen raid was the top story in the local newspaper and quickly became a hot topic of discussion. As a result, the local school board halted its controversial plans to migrate their computers from Macs to PCs.
NEW YORK -- Publishers from all across the country met this week at the first annual Book Publishers Assocation of America (BPAA) meeting. Many of the booths on the showroom floor were devoted to the single most important issue facing the publishing industry: fighting copyright violations. From "End Reader License Agreements" to age-decaying ink, the anti-copying market has exploded into a multi-million dollar enterprise. "How can authors and publishers hope to make ends meet when the country is rapidly filling with evil libraries that distribute our products for free to the general public?" asked the chairman of the BPAA during his keynote address. "That blasted Andrew Carnegie is spending all kinds of his own ill-gotten money to open libraries in cities nationwide. He calls it charity. I call it anti-competitive business practices hoping to bankrupt the entire publishing industry. We must fight these anti-profit, pro-copying librarians and put an end to this scourge!" -- from the February 4, 1895 edition of the New York Democrat-Republican
Severe Acronym Shortage Cripples Computer Industry SILICON VALLEY, CALIFORNIA (SVC) -- According to a recent study by the Blartner Group, 99.5% of all possible five letter combinations have already been appropriated for computer industry acronyms. The impending shortage of 5LC's is casting a dark shadow over the industry, which relies heavily on short, easy-to-remember acronyms for everything. "Acronym namespace collisions (ANCs) are increasing at a fantastic rate and threaten the very fabric of the computing world," explained one ZD pundit. "For example, when somebody talks about XP, I don't know whether they mean eXtreme Programming or Microsoft's eXceptionally Pathetic operating system. We need to find a solution now or chaos will result." Leaders of several SVC companies have floated the idea of an "industry-wide acronym conservation protocol" (IWACP -- one of the few 5LCs not already appropriated). Explained Bob Smith, CTO of IBM, "If companies would voluntarily limit the creation of new acronyms while recycling outdated names, we could reduce much of the pollution within the acronym namespace ourselves. The last thing we want is for Congress to get involved and try to impose a solution for this SAS (Severe Acronym Shortage) that would likely only create many new acronyms in the process."
Animals can be driven crazy by putting too many in too small a pen. Homo sapiens is the only animal that voluntarily does this to himself. -- Lazarus Long
"Anyone can say 'no'. It is the first word a child learns and often the first word he speaks. It is a cheap word because it requires no explanation, and many men and women have acquired a reputation for intelligence who know only this word and have used it in place of thought on every occasion." -- Chuck Jones (Warner Bros. animation director.)
As many of you know, I am taking a class here at UNC on Personality. One of the tests to determine personality in our book was so incredibly useful and interesting, I just had to share it. Answer each of the following items "true" or "false" 1. I salivate at the sight of mittens. 2. If I go into the street, I'm apt to be bitten by a horse. 3. Some people never look at me. 4. Spinach makes me feel alone. 5. My sex life is A-okay. 6. When I look down from a high spot, I want to spit. 7. I like to kill mosquitoes. 8. Cousins are not to be trusted. 9. It makes me embarrassed to fall down. 10. I get nauseous from too much roller skating. 11. I think most people would cry to gain a point. 12. I cannot read or write. 13. I am bored by thoughts of death. 14. I become homicidal when people try to reason with me. 15. I would enjoy the work of a chicken flicker. 16. I am never startled by a fish. 17. My mother's uncle was a good man. 18. I don't like it when somebody is rotten. 19. People who break the law are wise guys. 20. I have never gone to pieces over the weekend.
As many of you know, I am taking a class here at UNC on Personality. One of the tests to determine personality in our book was so incredibly useful and interesting, I just had to share it. Answer each of the following items "true" or "false" 1. I think beavers work too hard. 2. I use shoe polish to excess. 3. God is love. 4. I like mannish children. 5. I have always been diturbed by the sight of Lincoln's ears. 6. I always let people get ahead of me at swimming pools. 7. Most of the time I go to sleep without saying goodbye. 8. I am not afraid of picking up door knobs. 9. I believe I smell as good as most people. 10. Frantic screams make me nervous. 11. It's hard for me to say the right thing when I find myself in a room full of mice. 12. I would never tell my nickname in a crisis. 13. A wide necktie is a sign of disease. 14. As a child I was deprived of licorice. 15. I would never shake hands with a gardener. 16. My eyes are always cold. 17. Cousins are not to be trusted. 18. When I look down from a high spot, I want to spit. 19. I am never startled by a fish. 20. I have never gone to pieces over the weekend.
Do you realize how many holes there could be if people would just take the time to take the dirt out of them?
Fortune finishes the great quotations, #2 If at first you don't succeed, think how many people you've made happy.
God must love the common man; He made so many of them.
How many "coming men" has one known! Where on earth do they all go to? -- Sir Arthur Wing Pinero
"I don't know what you mean by 'glory'," Alice said. Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't -- till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!'" "But glory doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument'," Alice objected. "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master -- that's all." -- Lewis Carrol, "Through the Looking Glass"
It's amazing how many people you could be friends with if only they'd make the first approach.
It's hard not to like a man of many qualities, even if most of them are bad.
It's interesting to think that many quite distinguished people have bodies similar to yours.
Many a family tree needs trimming.
Many a man that can't direct you to a corner drugstore will get a respectful hearing when age has further impaired his mind. -- Finley Peter Dunne
Many mental processes admit of being roughly measured. For instance, the degree to which people are bored, by counting the number of their fidgets. I not infrequently tried this method at the meetings of the Royal Geographical Society, for even there dull memoirs are occasionally read. [...] The use of a watch attracts attention, so I reckon time by the number of my breathings, of which there are 15 in a minute. They are not counted mentally, but are punctuated by pressing with 15 fingers successively. The counting is reserved for the fidgets. These observations should be confined to persons of middle age. Children are rarely still, while elderly philosophers will sometimes remain rigid for minutes altogether. -- Francis Galton, 1909
Many people are desperately looking for some wise advice which will recommend that they do what they want to do.
Many people are secretly interested in life.
Many people feel that if you won't let them make you happy, they'll make you suffer.
Many people feel that they deserve some kind of recognition for all the bad things they haven't done.
Many people resent being treated like the person they really are.
Many receive advice, few profit by it. -- Publilius Syrus
One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim. -- Henry Brook Adams
One of the worst of my many faults is that I'm too critical of myself.
People need good lies. There are too many bad ones. -- Bokonon, "Cat's Cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
The Lord prefers common-looking people. That is the reason that He makes so many of them. -- Abraham Lincoln
There are many people today who literally do not have a close personal friend. They may know something that we don't. They are probably avoiding a great deal of pain.
Your Co-worker Could Be a Space Alien, Say Experts ...Here's How You Can Tell Many Americans work side by side with space aliens who look human -- but you can spot these visitors by looking for certain tip-offs, say experts. They listed 10 signs to watch for: (3) Bizarre sense of humor. Space aliens who don't understand earthly humor may laugh during a company training film or tell jokes that no one understands, said Steiger. (6) Misuses everyday items. "A space alien may use correction fluid to paint its nails," said Steiger. (8) Secretive about personal life-style and home. "An alien won't discuss details or talk about what it does at night or on weekends." (10) Displays a change of mood or physical reaction when near certain high-tech hardware. "An alien may experience a mood change when a microwave oven is turned on," said Steiger. The experts pointed out that a co-worker would have to display most if not all of these traits before you can positively identify him as a space alien. -- National Enquirer, Michael Cassels, August, 1984. [I thought everybody laughed at company training films. Ed.]
The horizon of many people is a circle with a radius of zero. They call this their point of view. -- Albert Einstein
"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
Also, I've been getting a _lot_ of patches, and if yours didn't show up it's because I got too many. Never fear, there's always tomorrow. Except in this case it's "in a week or two". - Linus Torvalds announcing his holiday on linux-kernel
What is it about so many mail system authors and lacking sense of humour. - Alan Cox on linux-kernel
(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
The last time I looked, Solaris and AIX and all the rest of the "scalable" systems were absolute pigs on smaller hardware, and the "scalability" in them often translates into "we scale linearly to many CPU's by being really bad even on one". - Linus Torvalds
> I got a kernel crash when dial up. But I am using > 2.4.0-rmk1 and pppd-2.4.1. Is there any known ppp problem > in that release? Will it help if I upgrade my kernel? Who knows, we're now many versions ahead, many bugs have been fixed, and a lot of work has been done. - Russell King on linux-arm-kernel
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
Good weapons are instruments of fear; all creatures hate them. Therefore followers of Tao never use them. The wise man prefers the left. The man of war prefers the right. Weapons are instruments of fear; they are not a wise man's tools. He uses them only when he has no choice. Peace and quiet are dear to his heart, And victory no cause for rejoicing. If you rejoice in victory, then you delight in killing; If you delight in killing, you cannot fulfill yourself. On happy occasions precedence is given to the left, On sad occasions to the right. In the army the general stands on the left, The commander-in-chief on the right. This means that war is conducted like a funeral. When many people are being killed, They should be mourned in heartfelt sorrow. That is why a victory must be observed like a funeral.
Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principal one was, that they escaped teething. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
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.
Are you a parent? Do you sometimes find yourself unsure as to what to say in those awkward situations? Worry no more... You wouldn't understand. You ask too many questions. In order to be a man, you have to learn to follow orders. That's for me to know and you to find out. Don't let those bullies push you around. Go in there and stick up for yourself. You're acting too big for your britches. Well, you broke it. Now are you satisfied? Wait till your father gets home. Bored? If you're bored, I've got some chores for you. Shape up or ship out.
May you have many beautiful and obedient daughters.
May you have many handsome and obedient sons.
You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance. -- Franklin P. Jones
How many months are we going to be behind them [Redhat] with a glibc release?" -- Jim Pick, 8 months before Debian 2.0 is finally released
* Culus thinks we should go to trade shows and see how many people we can kill by throwing debian cds at them
> >I don't really regard bible-kjv-text as a technical document, > > but... :) > It's a manual -- for living. But it hasn't been updated in a long time, many would say that it's sadly out of date, and the upstream maintainer doesn't respond to his email. :-) -- Branden Robinson, Oliver Elphick, and Chris Waters in a message to debian-policy
In fact.. based on this model of what the NSA is and isn't... many of the people reading this are members of the NSA... /. is afterall 'News for Nerds'. NSA MONDAY MORNING {at the coffee machine): NSA AGENT 1: Hey guys, did you check out slashdot over the weekend? AGENT 2: No, I was installing Mandrake 6.1 and I coulnd't get the darn ppp connection up.. AGENT 1: Well check it out... they're on to us. -- Chris Moyer <cdmoyer@starmail.com>
Granted, Win95's look wasn't all that new either - Apple tried to sue Microsoft for copying the Macintosh UI / trash can icon, until Microsoft pointed out that Apple got many of its Mac ideas (including the trash can icon) from Xerox ParcPlace. Xerox is probably still wondering why everyone is interested in their trash cans. -- Danny Thorpe, Borland Delphi R&R
<Oskuro> Overfiend: many patches on top of 4.0.1 already? <Overfiend> Oskuro: a few <Overfiend> only 152 megs
* wolfie ponders how many debianites it takes to screw in a lightbulb <Viiru> wolfie: Somewhere around 600? One screw's the bulb, and the rest flame him for doing it wrong. <part> wolfie: is the bulb free software? <Tv> Can we vote on whether to screw it or not?
A Dublin lawyer died in poverty and many barristers of the city subscribed to a fund for his funeral. The Lord Chief Justice of Orbury was asked to donate a shilling. "Only a shilling?" exclaimed the man. "Only a shilling to bury an attorney? Here's a guinea; go and bury twenty of them."
Attorney General Edwin Meese III explained why the Supreme Court's Miranda decision (holding that subjects have a right to remain silent and have a lawyer present during questioning) is unnecessary: "You don't have many suspects who are innocent of a crime. That's contradictory. If a person is innocent of a crime, then he is not a suspect." -- U.S. News and World Report, 10/14/85
... but as records of courts and justice are admissible, it can easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges' decisions based on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Fortune's nomination for All-Time Champion and Protector of Youthful Morals goes to Representative Clare E. Hoffman of Michigan. During an impassioned House debate over a proposed bill to "expand oyster and clam research," a sharp-eared informant transcribed the following exchange between our hero and Rep. John D. Dingell, also of Michigan. DINGELL: There are places in the world at the present time where we are having to artificially propagate oysters and clams. HOFFMAN: You mean the oysters I buy are not nature's oysters? DINGELL: They may or may not be natural. The simple fact of the matter is that female oysters through their living habits cast out large amounts of seed and the male oysters cast out large amounts of fertilization ... HOFFMAN: Wait a minute! I do not want to go into that. There are many teenagers who read The Congressional Record.
Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #19: Q: Doctor, how many autopsies have you performed on dead people? A: All my autopsies have been performed on dead people.
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.
Marijuana will be legal some day, because the many law students who now smoke pot will someday become congressmen and legalize it in order to protect themselves. -- Lenny Bruce
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** GROWTH CENTER REPAIR SERVICE For those who have had too much of Esalen, Topanga, and Kairos. Tired of being genuine all the time? Would you like to learn how to be a little phony again? Have you disclosed so much that you're beginning to avoid people? Have you touched so many** people that they're all beginning to feel the same? Like to be a little dependent? Are perfect orgasms beginning to bore you? Would you like, for once, not to express a feeling? Or better yet, not be in touch with it at all? Come to us. We promise to relieve you of the burden of your great potential.
If I had my life to live over, I'd try to make more mistakes next time. I would relax, I would limber up, I would be sillier than I have been this trip. I know of very few things I would take seriously. I would be crazier. I would climb more mountains, swim more rivers and watch more sunsets. I'd travel and see. I would have more actual troubles and fewer imaginary ones. You see, I am one of those people who lives prophylactically and sensibly and sanely, hour after hour, day after day. Oh, I have had my moments and, if I had it to do over again, I'd have more of them. In fact, I'd try to have nothing else. Just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead each day. I have been one of those people who never go anywhere without a thermometer, a hotwater bottle, a gargle, a raincoat and a parachute. If I had it to do over again, I would go places and do things and travel lighter than I have. If I had my life to live over, I would start bare-footed earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. I would play hooky more. I probably wouldn't make such good grades, but I'd learn more. I would ride on more merry-go-rounds. I'd pick more daisies.
The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions. -- Alfred Adler
Once upon a time there was a DOS user who saw Unix, and saw that it was good. After typing cp on his DOS machine at home, he downloaded GNU's unix tools ported to DOS and installed them. He rm'd, cp'd, and mv'd happily for many days, and upon finding elvis, he vi'd and was happy. After a long day at work (on a Unix box) he came home, started editing a file, and couldn't figure out why he couldn't suspend vi (w/ ctrl-z) to do a compile. -- Erik Troan, ewt@tipper.oit.unc.edu
What you end up with, after running an operating system concept through these many marketing coffee filters, is something not unlike plain hot water. -- Matt Welsh
The good thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from. -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum
* Jes wonders why so many people in here uses fooZZZZZ and foo_sleeping nicks <peter> Jes: Because they are sleeping? -- Seen on #Linux
How many chunks could checkchunk check if checkchunk could check chunks? -- Alan Cox
"How many people work here?" "Oh, about half."
If you sell diamonds, you cannot expect to have many customers. But a diamond is a diamond even if there are no customers. -- Swami Prabhupada
If you're like most homeowners, you're afraid that many repairs around your home are too difficult to tackle. So, when your furnace explodes, you call in a so-called professional to fix it. The "professional" arrives in a truck with lettering on the sides and deposits a large quantity of tools and two assistants who spend the better part of the week in your basement whacking objects at random with heavy wrenches, after which the "professional" returns and gives you a bill for slightly more money than it would cost you to run a successful campaign for the U.S. Senate. And that's why you've decided to start doing things yourself. You figure, "If those guys can fix my furnace, then so can I. How difficult can it be?" Very difficult. In fact, most home projects are impossible, which is why you should do them yourself. There is no point in paying other people to screw things up when you can easily screw them up yourself for far less money. This article can help you. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
Management: How many feet do mice have? Reply: Mice have four feet. M: Elaborate! R: Mice have five appendages, and four of them are feet. M: No discussion of fifth appendage! R: Mice have five appendages; four of them are feet; one is a tail. M: What? Feet with no legs? R: Mice have four legs, four feet, and one tail per unit-mouse. M: Confusing -- is that a total of 9 appendages? R: Mice have four leg-foot assemblies and one tail assembly per body. M: Does not fully discuss the issue! R: Each mouse comes equipped with four legs and a tail. Each leg is equipped with a foot at the end opposite the body; the tail is not equipped with a foot. M: Descriptive? Yes. Forceful NO! R: Allotment of appendages for mice will be: Four foot-leg assemblies, one tail. Deviation from this policy is not permitted as it would constitute misapportionment of scarce appendage assets. M: Too authoritarian; stifles creativity! R: Mice have four feet; each foot is attached to a small leg joined integrally with the overall mouse structural sub-system. Also attached to the mouse sub-system is a thin tail, non-functional and ornamental in nature. M: Too verbose/scientific. Answer the question! R: Mice have four feet.
Many people are unenthusiastic about their work.
Many people are unenthusiastic about your work.
Many people write memos to tell you they have nothing to say.
One man's brain plus one other will produce one half as many ideas as one man would have produced alone. These two plus two more will produce half again as many ideas. These four plus four more begin to represent a creative meeting, and the ratio changes to one quarter as many ... -- Anthony Chevins
Plumbing is one of the easier of do-it-yourself activities, requiring only a few simple tools and a willingness to stick your arm into a clogged toilet. In fact, you can solve many home plumbing problems, such as annoying faucet drip, merely by turning up the radio. But before we get into specific techniques, let's look at how plumbing works. A plumbing system is very much like your electrical system, except that instead of electricity, it has water, and instead of wires, it has pipes, and instead of radios and waffle irons, it has faucets and toilets. So the truth is that your plumbing systems is nothing at all like your electrical system, which is good, because electricity can kill you. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
Take the folks at Coca-Cola. For many years, they were content to sit back and make the same old carbonated beverage. It was a good beverage, no question about it; generations of people had grown up drinking it and doing the experiment in sixth grade where you put a nail into a glass of Coke and after a couple of days the nail dissolves and the teacher says: "Imagine what it does to your TEETH!" So Coca-Cola was solidly entrenched in the market, and the management saw no need to improve ... -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
There are many of us in this old world of ours who hold that things break about even for all of us. I have observed, for example, that we all get about the same amount of ice. The rich get it in the summer and the poor get it in the winter. -- Bat Masterson
This planet has -- or rather had -- a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. -- Douglas Adams
Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem more afraid of life than death. -- James F. Byrnes
We have some absolutely irrefutable statistics to show exactly why you are so tired. There are not as many people actually working as you may have thought. The population of this country is 200 million. 84 million are over 60 years of age, which leaves 116 million to do the work. People under 20 years of age total 75 million, which leaves 41 million to do the work. There are 22 million who are employed by the government, which leaves 19 million to do the work. Four million are in the Armed Services, which leaves 15 million to do the work. Deduct 14,800,000, the number in the state and city offices, leaving 200,000 to do the work. There are 188,000 in hospitals, insane asylums, etc., so that leaves 12,000 to do the work. Now it may interest you to know that there are 11,998 people in jail, so that leaves just 2 people to carry the load. That is you and me, and brother, I'm getting tired of doing everything myself!
What they said: What they meant: "I recommend this candidate with no qualifications whatsoever." (Yes, that about sums it up.) "The amount of mathematics she knows will surprise you." (And I recommend not giving that school a dime...) "I simply can't say enough good things about him." (What a screw-up.) "I am pleased to say that this candidate is a former colleague of mine." (I can't tell you how happy I am that she left our firm.) "When this person left our employ, we were quite hopeful he would go a long way with his skills." (We hoped he'd go as far as possible.) "You won't find many people like her." (In fact, most people can't stand being around her.) "I cannot reccommend him too highly." (However, to the best of my knowledge, he has never committed a felony in my presence.)
What they said: What they meant: "If you knew this person as well as I know him, you would think as much of him as I do." (Or as little, to phrase it slightly more accurately.) "Her input was always critical." (She never had a good word to say.) "I have no doubt about his capability to do good work." (And it's nonexistent.) "This candidate would lend balance to a department like yours, which already has so many outstanding members." (Unless you already have a moron.) "His presentation to my seminar last semester was truly remarkable: one unbelievable result after another." (And we didn't believe them, either.) "She is quite uniform in her approach to any function you may assign her." (In fact, to life in general...)
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
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>
At many levels, Perl is a "diagonal" language. -- Larry Wall in <199709021854.LAA12794@wall.org>
He who is in love with himself has at least this advantage -- he won't encounter many rivals. -- Georg Lichtenberg, "Aphorisms"
Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs. -- Rebecca West
Love tells us many things that are not so. -- Krainian Proverb
Why I Can't Go Out With You: I'd LOVE to, but... -- I have to draw "Cubby" for an art scholarship. -- I have to sit up with a sick ant. -- I'm trying to be less popular. -- My bathroom tiles need grouting. -- I'm waiting to see if I'm already a winner. -- My subconscious says no. -- I just picked up a book called "Glue in Many Lands" and I can't seem to put it down. -- My favorite commercial is on TV. -- I have to study for my blood test. -- I've been traded to Cincinnati. -- I'm having my baby shoes bronzed. -- I have to go to court for kitty littering.
How many retured bricklayers from FLORIDA are out purchasing PENCIL SHARPENERS right NOW??
I have many CHARTS and DIAGRAMS..
I'm in direct contact with many advanced fun CONCEPTS.
LBJ, LBJ, how many JOKES did you tell today??!