Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
... computer hardware progress is so fast. No other technology since civilization began has seen six orders of magnitude in performance-price gain in 30 years. -- Fred Brooks | |
Did you know that for the price of a 280-Z you can buy two Z-80's? -- P.J. Plauger | |
It isn't easy being the parent of a six-year-old. However, it's a pretty small price to pay for having somebody around the house who understands computers. | |
*** 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. | |
Only the fittest survive. The vanquished acknowledge their unworthiness by placing a classified ad with the ritual phrase "must sell -- best offer," and thereafter dwell in infamy, relegated to discussing gas mileage and lawn food. But if successful, you join the elite sodality that spends hours unpurifying the dialect of the tribe with arcane talk of bits and bytes, RAMS and ROMS, hard disks and baud rates. Are you obnoxious, obsessed? It's a modest price to pay. For you have tapped into the same awesome primal power that produces credit-card billing errors and lost plane reservations. Hail, postindustrial warrior, subduer of Bounceoids, pride of the cosmos, keeper of the silicone creed: Computo, ergo sum. The force is with you -- at 110 volts. May your RAMS be fruitful and multiply. -- Curt Suplee, "Smithsonian", 4/83 | |
Price Wang's programmer was coding software. His fingers danced upon the keyboard. The program compiled without an error message, and the program ran like a gentle wind. Excellent!" the Price exclaimed, "Your technique is faultless!" "Technique?" said the programmer, turning from his terminal, "What I follow is the Tao -- beyond all technique. When I first began to program I would see before me the whole program in one mass. After three years I no longer saw this mass. Instead, I used subroutines. But now I see nothing. My whole being exists in a formless void. My senses are idle. My spirit, free to work without a plan, follows its own instinct. In short, my program writes itself. True, sometimes there are difficult problems. I see them coming, I slow down, I watch silently. Then I change a single line of code and the difficulties vanish like puffs of idle smoke. I then compile the program. I sit still and let the joy of the work fill my being. I close my eyes for a moment and then log off." Price Wang said, "Would that all of my programmers were as wise!" -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" | |
The IBM 2250 is impressive ... if you compare it with a system selling for a tenth its price. -- D. Cohen | |
When the Apple IIc was introduced, the informative copy led off with a couple of asterisked sentences: It weighs less than 8 pounds.* And costs less than $1,300.** In tiny type were these "fuller explanations": * Don't asterisks make you suspicious as all get out? Well, all this means is that the IIc alone weights 7.5 pounds. The power pack, monitor, an extra disk drive, a printer and several bricks will make the IIc weigh more. Our lawyers were concerned that you might not be able to figure this out for yourself. ** The FTC is concerned about price fixing. You can pay more if you really want to. Or less. -- Forbes | |
...computer hardware progress is so fast. No other technology since civilization began has seen six orders of magnitude in performance-price gain in 30 years. - Fred Brooks, Jr. | |
The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side. -- James Baldwin | |
...the Soviets have the capability to try big projects. If there is a goal, such as when Gorbachev states that they are going to have nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, the case is closed -- that is it. They will concentrate on the problem, do a bad job, and later pay the price. They really don't care what the price is. -- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976 "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 100 | |
Trailing Edge Technologies is pleased to announce the following TETflame programme: 1) For a negotiated price (no quatloos accepted) one of our flaming representatives will flame the living shit out of the poster of your choice. The price is inversly proportional to how much of an asshole the target it. We cannot be convinced to flame Dennis Ritchie. Matt Crawford flames are free. 2) For a negotiated price (same arrangement) the TETflame programme is offering ``flame insurence''. Under this arrangement, if one of our policy holders is flamed, we will cancel the offending article and flame the flamer, to a crisp. 3) The TETflame flaming representatives include: Richard Sexton, Oleg Kisalev, Diane Holt, Trish O'Tauma, Dave Hill, Greg Nowak and our most recent aquisition, Keith Doyle. But all he will do is put you in his kill file. Weemba by special arrangement. -- Richard Sexton | |
I prefer the most unjust peace to the most righteous war. -- Cicero Even peace may be purchased at too high a price. -- Poor Richard | |
Taxes are going up so fast, the government is likely to price itself out of the market. | |
The price of greatness is responsibility. | |
The price of seeking to force our beliefs on others is that someday they might force their beliefs on us. -- Mario Cuomo | |
17th Rule of Friendship: A friend will refrain from telling you he picked up the same amount of life insurance coverage you did for half the price when yours is noncancellable. -- Esquire, May 1977 | |
Price's Advice: It's all a game -- play it to have fun. | |
Personality Tithe: A price paid for becoming a couple; previously amusing human beings become boring: "Thanks for inviting us, but Noreen and I are going to look at flatware catalogs tonight. Afterward we're going to watch the shopping channel." -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture" | |
Drinking coffee for instant relaxation? That's like drinking alcohol for instant motor skills. -- Marc Price | |
Why on earth do people buy old bottles of wine when they can get a fresh one for a quarter of the price? | |
Gay shlafen: Yiddish for "go to sleep". Now doesn't "gay shlafen" have a softer, more soothing sound than the harsh, staccato "go to sleep"? Listen to the difference: "Go to sleep, you little wretch!" ... "Gay shlafen, darling." Obvious, isn't it? Clearly the best thing you can do for you children is to start speaking Yiddish right now and never speak another word of English as long as you live. This will, of course, entail teaching Yiddish to all your friends, business associates, the people at the supermarket, and so on, but that's just the point. It has to start with committed individuals and then grow.... Some minor adjustments will have to be made, of course: those signs written in what look like Yiddish letters won't be funny when everything is written in Yiddish. And we'll have to start driving on the left side of the road so we won't be reading the street signs backwards. But is that too high a price to pay for world peace? I think not, my friend, I think not. -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish" | |
TIRED of calculating components of vectors? Displacements along direction of force getting you down? Well, now there's help. Try amazing "Dot-Product", the fast, easy way many professionals have used for years and is now available to YOU through this special offer. Three out of five engineering consultants recommend "Dot-Product" for their clients who use vector products. Mr. Gumbinowitz, mechanical engineer, in a hidden-camera interview... "Dot-Product really works! Calculating Z-axis force components has never been easier." Yes, you too can take advantage of the amazing properties of Dot-Product. Use it to calculate forces, velocities, displacements, and virtually any vector components. How much would you pay for it? But wait, it also calculates the work done in Joules, Ergs, and, yes, even BTU's. Divide Dot-Product by the magnitude of the vectors and it becomes an instant angle calculator! Now, how much would you pay? All this can be yours for the low, low price of $19.95!! But that's not all! If you order before midnight, you'll also get "Famous Numbers of Famous People" as a bonus gift, absolutely free! Yes, you'll get Avogadro's number, Planck's, Euler's, Boltzmann's, and many, many, more!! Call 1-800-DOT-6000. Operators are standing by. That number again... 1-800-DOT-6000. Supplies are limited, so act now. This offer is not available through stores and is void where prohibited by law. | |
... This striving for excellence extends into people's personal lives as well. When '80s people buy something, they buy the best one, as determined by (1) price and (2) lack of availability. Eighties people buy imported dental floss. They buy gourmet baking soda. If an '80s couple goes to a restaurant where they have made a reservation three weeks in advance, and they are informed that their table is available, they stalk out immediately, because they know it is not an excellent restaurant. If it were, it would have an enormous crowd of excellence-oriented people like themselves waiting, their beepers going off like crickets in the night. An excellent restaurant wouldn't have a table ready immediately for anybody below the rank of Liza Minnelli. -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence" | |
And here I wait so patiently Waiting to find out what price You have to pay to get out of Going thru all of these things twice -- Dylan, "Memphis Blues Again" | |
Christmas time is here, by Golly; Kill the turkeys, ducks and chickens; Disapproval would be folly; Mix the punch, drag out the Dickens; Deck the halls with hunks of holly; Even though the prospect sickens, Fill the cup and don't say when... Brother, here we go again. On Christmas day, you can't get sore; Relations sparing no expense'll, Your fellow man you must adore; Send some useless old utensil, There's time to rob him all the more, Or a matching pen and pencil, The other three hundred and sixty-four! Just the thing I need... how nice. It doesn't matter how sincere Hark The Herald-Tribune sings, It is, nor how heartfelt the spirit; Advertising wondrous things. Sentiment will not endear it; God Rest Ye Merry Merchants, What's important is... the price. May you make the Yuletide pay. Angels We Have Heard On High, Let the raucous sleighbells jingle; Tell us to go out and buy. Hail our dear old friend, Kris Kringle, Sooooo... Driving his reindeer across the sky, Don't stand underneath when they fly by! -- Tom Lehrer | |
Come on, Virginia, don't make me wait! Catholic girls start much too late, Ah, but sooner or later, it comes down to fate, I might as well be the one. Well, they showed you a statue, told you to pray, Built you a temple and locked you away, Ah, but they never told you the price that you paid, The things that you might have done. So come on, Virginia, show me a sign, Send up a signal, I'll throw you a line, That stained glass curtain that you're hiding behind, Never lets in the sun. Darling, only the good die young! -- Billy Joel, "Only The Good Die Young" | |
I have lots of things in my pockets; None of them is worth anything. Sociopolitical whines aside, Gan you give me, gratis, free, The price of half a gallon Of Gallo extra bad And most of the bus fare home. | |
Strange things are done to be number one In selling the computer The Druids were entrepreneurs, IBM has their strategem And they built a granite box Which steadily grows acuter, It tracked the moon, warned of monsoons, And Honeywell competes like Hell, And forecast the equinox But the story's missing link Their price was right, their future Is the system old at Stonemenge sold bright, By the firm of Druids, Inc. The prototype was sold; From Stonehenge site their bits and byte Would ship for Celtic gold. The movers came to crate the frame; It weighed a million ton! The traffic folk thought it a joke The man spoke true, and thus to you (the wagon wheels just spun); A warning from the ages; "They'll nay sell that," the foreman Your stock will slip if you can't ship spat, What's in your brochure's pages. "Just leave the wild weeds grow; See if it sells without the bells "It's Druid-kind, over-designed, And strings that ring and quiver; "And belly up they'll go." Druid repute went down the chute Because they couldn't deliver. -- Edward C. McManus, "The Computer at Stonehenge" | |
A long-forgotten loved one will appear soon. Buy the negatives at any price. | |
Mastery of UNIX, like mastery of language, offers real freedom. The price of freedom is always dear, but there's no substitute. Personally, I'd rather pay for my freedom than live in a bitmapped, pop-up-happy dungeon like NT. -- Thomas Scoville, Performance Computing | |
Humorix Holiday Gift Idea #1 Linux-of-the-Month Club Price: US$60 for a one year membership Producer: CheapNybbles; 1-800-LINUX-CD It's the gift that keeps on giving. Every month a CD-ROM with a different Linux distribution or BSD Unix flavor will be sent in the mail. This is the perfect gift for those that have been using Slackware since day one and haven't gotten around to trying another distribution. Or, for those friends or relatives that still cling to Windows, a Linux-of-the-Month club membership is the perfect way to say, "Your OS sucks". | |
Humorix Holiday Gift Idea #2 Nerd Trading Cards Price: $10/pack Producer: Bottomms; 1-800-NRDS-ROK Forget baseball, nerd trading cards are the future. Now your kids can collect and trade cards of their favorite open source hackers and computer industry figures. Some of the cards included feature Linus Torvalds, Richard M. Stallman, and Larry Wall. Also contains cards for companies (Red Hat, Netscape, Transmeta, etc.), specific open source programs (Apache, Perl, Mozilla, etc.), and well-known websites (Slashdot, Freshmeat, etc.). Each card features a full-color picture on the front and complete information and statistics on back. Some of the cards have even been autographed. Quit trying to search eBay.com for a Mark McGwire rookie card and collect nerd cards instead! | |
Humorix Holiday Gift Idea #3 iTux Penguin Computer Price: $999.95 for base model Producer: Orange Computer, Co.; 1-800-GET-ITUX Based on the Slashdot comments, response to the Apple iMac from the Linux community was lukewarm at best. Orange Computer, Co., has picked up where Apple left behind and produced the iTux computer specifically for Linux users who want to "Think a lot different". The self-contained iTux computer system is built in the shape of Tux the Penguin. Its 15 inch monitor (17 inch available next year) is located at Tux's large belly. The penguin's two feet make up the split ergonomic keyboard (without those annoying Windows keys, of course). A 36X CD-ROM drive fits into Tux's mouth. Tux's left eye is actually the reboot button (can be reconfigured for other purposes since it is rarely used) and his right eye is the power button. The iTux case opens up from the back, allowing easy access for screwdriver-wielding nerds into Tux's guts. The US$995.95 model contains an Alpha CPU and all the usual stuff found in a Linux-class machine. More expensive models, to be debuted next year, will feature dual or quad Alpha CPUs and a larger size. | |
Humorix Holiday Gift Idea #4 Microsoft Destruction Kit Price: US$29.95 (more with optional digital camera or shotgun) Producer: The Fuzzier Image; 1-800-BILL-SUX Mix an Internet Explorer CD-ROM, a rocket launcher, and a flamethrower. What do you have? A whole lot of fun! The Microsoft Destruction Kit is the best way to destroy those Microsoft CD-ROMs you no longer need now that you've discovered Linux. You can launch the CD (and registration forms, manuals, retail boxes, license agreements, etc.) and pepper it with bullets, all while capturing the event with a digital camera. Or, you can use the included miniature flamethrower to burn the evil CD to a crisp. The kit comes with a set of IE 4.0 CDs to get you started. Tell Microsoft "where *you* want it to go today" in style with the Microsoft Destruction Kit. | |
Humorix Holiday Gift Idea #5 AbsoluteZero(tm) Cryogenic Refrigerator $29,999.95 for economy model at Cryo-Me-A-River, Inc. The pundits have been hyping new technology allowing your home appliances to have Internet access. Most people aren't too keen with the thought of their refrigerator sharing an IP address with their can opener. But with the new AbsoluteZero(tm) Refrigerator, that might change. This is not a fridge for your food -- it's a fridge for your overclocked, overheating CPU. You stick your computer inside, bolt the door shut, turn the temperature down to 5 degrees Kelvin, and you've got the perfect environment for accelerating your CPU to 1 Terahertz or more. This cryogenic cooling system may not actually reach absolute zero, but it comes mighty close. Unfortunately, the AbsoluteZero(tm) is the size of a small house, consumes a constant stream of liquid nitrogen, and requires it's own nuclear reactor (not included). But that's a small price to pay for the ability to play Quake 3 at 100,000 frames per second. | |
Red Hat Linux 10.0 RALEIGH-DURHAM, NC -- HypeNewsWire -- Red Hat, the producer of the most popular Linux distribution with over 25 million estimated users, is proud to announce the availability of Red Hat Linux 10.0. The latest version contains the new Linux 6.2 kernel, the Z Window System 2.0, full support for legacy Windows 3.x/9x/200x/NT software apps, and more. Copies of Red Hat Linux 10.0 will be available in stores on CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, or GNUDE (GNU Digital Encoding) disks within the next week. Compaq, Dell, Gateway, and several other large computer manufacturers have announced that they will offer computer systems with Red Hat 10.0 pre-installed. "We can sell systems with Red Hat pre-installed for considerably less than systems with Microsoft ActiveWindows 2001. Overall, Red Hat Linux's superior quality, low price, and modest system requirements puts Windows to shame," one Dell spokesperson said at last week's LinDex convention. | |
Jargon Coiner (#10) An irregular feature that aims to give you advance warning of new jargon that we've just made up. * HOBTOB (Hanging Out By The O'Reilly Books): Seeking free Linux technical support at a bookstore by waiting near the computer books for a geek to come by and then casually asking them for help. * MOOLA (Marketing Officially Organizes Linux Adoptance): A press release issued by a Dot Com (or Dot Con?) heralding their "support" for Linux (i.e. "BigPortal.com adopts Linux as their official operating system by adding five Linux-related links to their BigDirectory"); used to inflate their stock price and rake in moola even though none of their employees have ever used Linux and don't really care. * KARMA KOLLECTOR: Slashdot user who treats the acquisition of "karma" as a game; often has a detailed strategy on how to sucker moderators into raising the score of their posts (i.e. posting a comment with a title like "Microsoft Sucks!!! (Score 3, Insightful)" or using "Only a fool would moderate this down" as a signature). See also "Karma Whore". | |
New Linux Companies Hope To Get Rich Quick (#2) Don't throw out that old Red Hat Linux 3.0 CD. A group of entrepreneurs are hording vintage Linux items in the hopes that they will become hot collector's items in the coming decades. The venture, called "Money Grows On Binary Trees", hopes to amass a warehouse full of old Linux distributions, books, stuffed penguins, promotional material, and Linus Torvalds autographs. "Nobody thought pieces of cardstock featuring baseball players would be worth anything..." the founder of Binary Trees said. "That 'Linux For Dummies' book sitting in your trash could be the next Babe Ruth card." The company organized a Linux Collectibles Convention last week in Silicon Valley, drawing in a respectable crowd of 1,500 people and 20 exhibitors. The big attraction was a "Windows For Dummies" book actually signed by Linus Torvalds. "He signed it back at a small Linux conference in '95," the owner explained. "He didn't realize it was a Dummies book because I had placed an O'Reilly cover on it... Somebody at the convention offered me $10,000 for it, but that seemed awfully low. I hope to sell it on eBay next month with a reserve price containing a significant number of zeros." | |
Can you buy friendship? You not only can, you must. It's the only way to obtain friends. Everything worthwhile has a price. -- Robert J. Ringer | |
Old age is too high a price to pay for maturity. | |
"Go on, girl! You'll never get a better chance to buy Jif at this price. *Carpe diem*, babe!" -- "The Naked Consumer", Erik Larson | |
It should be a case of "Just plug in a new kernel, and suddenly your existing filesystem just allows you to do more! 20% more for the same price! AND we'll throw in this useful ginzu knife for just 4.95 for shipping and handling. Absolutely free!" - Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel | |
Linus Torvalds wrote: > It should be a case of "Just plug in a new kernel, and suddenly your > existing filesystem just allows you to do more! 20% more for the same > price! AND we'll throw in this useful ginzu knife for just 4.95 for > shipping and handling. Absolutely free!" ...Linus demonstrates why American culture is a bad influence on you. - Jeff Garzik on linux-kernel | |
Operating Systems Installed: * Debian GNU/Linux 2.1 4 CD Set ($20 from www.chguy.net; price includes taxes, shipping, and a $3 donation to FSF). 2 CDs are binaries, 2 CDs complete source code; * Windows 98 Second Edition Upgrade Version ($136 through Megadepot.com, price does not include taxes/shipping). Surprisingly, no source code is included. -- Bill Stilwell, http://linuxtoday.com/stories/8794.html | |
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Don't go to bed with no price on your head. -- Baretta | |
Loneliness is a terrible price to pay for independence. | |
The price of success in philosophy is triviality. -- C. Glymour. | |
> If you don't need X then little VT-100 terminals are available for real > cheap. Should be able to find decent ones used for around $40 each. > For that price, they're a must for the kitchen, den, bathrooms, etc.. :) You're right. Can you explain this to my wife? -- Seen on c.o.l.development.system, on the subject of extra terminals | |
Sorry for mailing this article, I've obviously made a typo (168!=186) that's the price for being up all night and doing some "quick" checks before you go to bed .... -- Herbert Rosmanith <herp@wildsau.idv.uni-linz.ac.at> | |
... a thing called Ethics, whose nature was confusing but if you had it you were a High-Class Realtor and if you hadn't you were a shyster, a piker and a fly-by-night. These virtues awakened Confidence and enabled you to handle Bigger Propositions. But they didn't imply that you were to be impractical and refuse to take twice the value for a house if a buyer was such an idiot that he didn't force you down on the asking price. -- Sinclair Lewis, "Babbitt" | |
Anything labeled "NEW" and/or "IMPROVED" isn't. The label means the price went up. The label "ALL NEW", "COMPLETELY NEW", or "GREAT NEW" means the price went way up. | |
"Every man has his price. Mine is $3.95." | |
Home centers are designed for the do-it-yourselfer who's willing to pay higher prices for the convenience of being able to shop for lumber, hardware, and toasters all in one location. Notice I say "shop for," as opposed to "obtain." This is the major drawback of home centers: they are always out of everything except artificial Christmas trees. The home center employees have no time to reorder merchandise because they are too busy applying little price stickers to every object -- every board, washer, nail and screw -- in the entire store ... Let's say a piece in your toilet tank breaks, so you remove the broken part, take it to the home center, and ask an employee if he has a replacement. The employee, who has never is his life even seen the inside of a toilet tank, will peer at the broken part in very much the same way that a member of a primitive Amazon jungle tribe would look at an electronic calculator, and then say, "We're expecting a shipment of these sometime around the middle of next week." -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw" | |
One way to make your old car run better is to look up the price of a new model. | |
The best equipment for your work is, of course, the most expensive. However, your neighbor is always wasting money that should be yours by judging things by their price. | |
The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side. -- James Baldwin | |
I'm totally DESPONDENT over the LIBYAN situation and the price of CHICKEN ... |