products" : Dictionary / Wörterbuch (BEOLINGUS, TU Chemnitz)

Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English)	by Linux fortune

We're constantly being bombarded by insulting and humiliating music, which people are making for you the way they make those Wonder Bread products. Just as food can be bad for your system, music can be bad for your spirtual and emotional feelings. It might taste good or clever, but in the long run, it's not going to do anything for you. -- Bob Dylan, "LA Times", September 5, 1984
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
"... all the good computer designs are bootlegged; the formally planned products, if they are built at all, are dogs!" -- David E. Lundstrom, "A Few Good Men From Univac", MIT Press, 1987
... it is easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all. In other words... their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws. -- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, on the products of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.
`Lasu' Releases SAG 0.3 -- Freeware Book Takes Paves For New World Order by staff writers ... The SAG is one of the major products developed via the Information Superhighway, the brain child of Al Gore, US Vice President. The ISHW is being developed with massive govenment funding, since studies show that it already has more than four hundred users, three years before the first prototypes are ready. Asked whether he was worried about the foreign influence in an expensive American Dream, the vice president said, ``Finland? Oh, we've already bought them, but we haven't told anyone yet. They're great at building model airplanes as well. And _I can spell potato.'' House representatives are not mollified, however, wanting to see the terms of the deal first, fearing another Alaska. Rumors about the SAG release have imbalanced the American stock market for weeks. Several major publishing houses reached an all time low in the New York Stock Exchange, while publicly competing for the publishing agreement with Mr. Wirzenius. The negotiations did not work out, tough. ``Not enough dough,'' says the author, although spokesmen at both Prentice-Hall and Playboy, Inc., claim the author was incapable of expressing his wishes in a coherent form during face to face talks, preferring to communicate via e-mail. ``He kept muttering something about jiffies and pegs,'' they say. ... -- Lars Wirzenius <wirzeniu@cs.helsinki.fi> [comp.os.linux.announce]
There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence. -- Jeremy S. Anderson
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.
"...all the good computer designs are bootlegged; the formally planned products, if they are built at all, are dogs!" -- David E. Lundstrom, "A Few Good Men From Univac", MIT Press, 1987
"The argument that the literal story of Genesis can qualify as science collapses on three major grounds: the creationists' need to invoke miracles in order to compress the events of the earth's history into the biblical span of a few thousand years; their unwillingness to abandon claims clearly disproved, including the assertion that all fossils are products of Noah's flood; and their reliance upon distortion, misquote, half-quote, and citation out of context to characterize the ideas of their opponents." -- Stephen Jay Gould, "The Verdict on Creationism", The Skeptical Inquirer, Winter 87/88, pg. 186
"I am convinced that the manufacturers of carpet odor removing powder have included encapsulated time released cat urine in their products. This technology must be what prevented its distribution during my mom's reign. My carpet smells like piss, and I don't have a cat. Better go by some more." -- timw@zeb.USWest.COM, in alt.conspiracy
Connector Conspiracy, n: [probably came into prominence with the appearance of the KL-10, none of whose connectors match anything else] The tendency of manufacturers (or, by extension, programmers or purveyors of anything) to come up with new products which don't fit together with the old stuff, thereby making you buy either all new stuff or expensive interface devices.
Underdogging: The tendency to almost invariably side with the underdog in a given situation. The consumer expression of this trait is the purchasing of less successful, "sad," or failing products: "I know these Vienna franks are heart failure on a stick, but they were so sad looking up against all the other yuppie food items that I just had to buy them." -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture"
"Reintegration complete," ZORAC advised. "We're back in the universe again..." An unusually long pause followed, "...but I don't know which part. We seem to have changed our position in space." A spherical display in the middle of the floor illuminated to show the starfield surrounding the ship. "Several large, artificial constructions are approaching us," ZORAC announced after a short pause. "The designs are not familiar, but they are obviously the products of intelligence. Implications: we have been intercepted deliberately by a means unknown, for a purpose unknown, and transferred to a place unknown by a form of intelligence unknown. Apart from the unknowns, everything is obvious." -- James P. Hogan, "Giants Star"
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.
... we must be wary of granting too much power to natural selection by viewing all basic capacities of our brain as direct adaptations. I do not doubt that natural selection acted in building our oversized brains -- and I am equally confident that our brains became large as an adaptation for definite roles (probably a complex set of interacting functions). But these assumptions do not lead to the notion, often uncritically embraced by strict Darwinians, that all major capacities of the brain must arise as direct products of natural selection. -- S.J. Gould, "The Mismeasure of Man"
Ever Onward! Ever Onward! That's the sprit that has brought us fame. We're big but bigger we will be, We can't fail for all can see, that to serve humanity Has been our aim. Our products now are known in every zone. Our reputation sparkles like a gem. We've fought our way thru And new fields we're sure to conquer, too For the Ever Onward IBM! -- Ever Onward, from the 1940 IBM Songbook
"The reason for the success of this somewhat communist-sounding strategy, while the failure of communism itself is visible around the world, is that the economics of information are fundamentaly different from those of other products." -- Bruce Perens, on Open Source software. (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
It's trivial to make fun of Microsoft products, but it takes a real man to make them work, and a god to make them do anything useful.
We are very nervous about the release of Windows 2000. This OS takes up gigabytes of hard drive space. When users 'upgrade' to Win2K, they won't have any space on their hard drive for our products! We really hate Chairman Bill. -- An anonymous spokesperson for Corel
Q: What do you call 50 Microsoft products at the bottom of the ocean? A: A darned good start.
Microsoft should switch to the vacuum cleaner business where people actually want products that suck. -- Bruno Bratti
The relative speed of a computer, regardless of CPU architecture, is inversely proportional to the number of Microsoft products installed. -- From a Slashdot.org post
Why would people waste their time developing viruses for Microsoft products when Microsoft does such a good job itself of adding in bugs which crash your system? -- From a Slashdot.org post
You all have to admit that Microsoft products provide a quality unmatched by any other company. That is why I am switching to 100% pure shredded Microsoft certificates of authenticity in my hamster's cage. -- From a Slashdot.org post
Certain things are too horrible to auction on the Web. Consider that eBay recently halted auctions on: Human Remains Human Parts Humans Microsoft Products Pretty soon they're gonna ban sales on pentagrams and demon-summoning paraphenalia. Is there anywhere on the web where it's still safe to sell Evil Things? -- From a Slashdot.org post in response to eBay voiding auctions of legitimate second-hand Microsoft products
Good programmers treat Microsoft products as damage and route around them. -- From a Slashdot.org post
Linux Advocacy Crackdown SHERIDAN, WY -- In an unprecedented blow to Linux advocacy, Aaron McAdams, an employee at the Sheridan Try-N-Save Discount Store, was fired last week. According to the store's general manager, McAdams was fired because "he constantly rearranged items on shelves so that Linux-related books and software boxes would be displayed more prominently than Windows merchandise." McAdams' boss added, "If he would have spent as much time actually working as he did hiding Windows books at the back of shelves, he wouldn't have received the pink slip." The general manager supplied Humorix with videotapes from the store's security cameras showing McAdams in action. In one scene, he takes a whole stack of "...For Dummies" books and buries them in the Cheap Romance section, an area of the store rarely visited by computer users. In another, McAdams can be plainly seen setting copies of Red Hat Linux in front of a large, eye-catching display of various Microsoft products at the front of the store. Finally, at one point McAdams can be seen slapping huge tags reading "DEMO DISPLAY BOX -- NOT AVAILABLE UNTIL 1999" on boxes of Windows 98. McAdams disputes his bosses accusations. "If he would spend more time actually working instead of peering over security camera footage for hours on end, this store might actually turn a profit for a change."
Microsoft ActivePromo Campaign: "State Innovation Day" Microsoft has successfully lobbied for the State of Washington to declare August 24th as State Innovation Day. Efforts are underway to lobby the US Congress to decree a similar designation nationally. Several events are scheduled on August 24, 1999 to showcase "innovation" in the computer industry (in other words, Microsoft), including: * An "Innovation Day Parade" held in downtown Seattle, featuring floats and helium-filled balloons representing various Microsoft products (Dancing Paper Clip, Microsoft Bob, Flying Windows Logo, etc.) * An "Innovation is Cool" essay contest for high school and college students. Possible topics include "Why IE Should Be Integrated in Windows", "Why Bill Gates Is My Hero", "Government Intervention is Evil", and "Why Monopolies Improve Product Quality and Lower Prices". * A 24-hour "Innovation in Education" telethon on NBC to raise money for school districts nationwide to buy new Wintel computer systems and Internet access through the Microsoft Network.
Is Windows Antique? SILICON VALLEY -- The first ever antique mall devoted to computers has opened its doors deep in the heart of Silicon Valley. Named "Stacks of Antiqueues", the new mall features obsolete hardware, old software, and other curiosities that only a nerd would want to buy. The mall also features a whole collection of Microsoft software, which, as can be expected, has the Redmond giant up in arms. The mall, founded by a group of Linux, FreeBSD, and BeOS users, has a whole section devoted to Microsoft "antiques". Offerings range from a rare (and expensive) copy of Windows 1.0 all the way up to Windows 98. All versions of DOS from 1.0 up are available, in addition to such Microsoft products as Bob, Profit, and Multiplan. Bob Hinesdorf, one of the mall's founders, defends the decision to include Microsoft products in its selection of antique computer stuff. "Windows 98 is surely antique; it's based on 16 bit Windows 3.x code, which was based on 16 bit DOS code, which was based loosely on 8 bit CP/M."
Microsoft Mandatory Survey (#13) 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 13: Which of the following new Microsoft products do you plan on buying within the next 6 months? A. Windows For Babies(tm) - Using an enhanced "click-n-drool" interface, babies will be able to learn how to use a Wintel computer, giving them a head start in living in a Microsoft-led world. B. Where In Redmond Is Carmen Sandiego?(tm) - The archvillian Sandiego has stolen the Windows source code and must be stopped before she can publish it on the Net. C. ActiveKeyboard 2000(tm) - An ergonomic keyboard that replaces useless keys like SysRq and Scroll Lock with handy keys like "Play Solitaire" and "Visit Microsoft.com". D. Visual BatchFile(tm) - An IDE and compiler for the MS-DOS batch file language. MSNBC calls it "better than Perl".
This telethon isn't just about helping disenfranchised geeks. We're also here for the betterment of mankind through our research into finding a Cure for Windows. Each day, millions of man-hours are wasted due to design flaws in Microsoft Windows. Each day, millions of dollars are sent by business and individuals like yourself into a huge black hole known as "Microsoft" for exorbitantly priced software products that should be free. But don't worry. We've almost found a Cure for Windows. Geeks worldwide have toiled endlessly for the past eight years working on a replacement operating system called Linux. It's almost ready. Now we need to convince the world to use our creation and eliminate the virus known as Windows. -- Excerpt from Eric S. Raymond's speech during the Geek Grok '99 telethon held in Silicon Valley
New Linux Companies Hope To Get Rich Quick (#1) Adopt-A-Beowulf: the latest company to hop the Linux bandwagon as it tramples down Wall Street. Every geek dreams of owning their own Beowulf supercomputer. Very few people (except for dotcom billionnaires) can afford to build one, but the folks at Adopt-a-Beowulf can provide the next best thing: a virtual beowulf. For US$49.95, you can "adopt" your own 256-node Beowulf cluster. You won't own it, or even get to see it in person, but you will receive photos of the cluster, a monthly newsletter about its operation, and a limited shell account on it. The company hopes to branch out into other fields. Some slated products include Adopt-A-Penguin, Lease-A-Camel (for Perl mongers), and Adopt-A-Distro (in which your name will be used as the code-name for a beta release of a major Linux distribution or other Open Source project).
Brief History Of Linux (#26) On the surface, Transmeta was a secretive startup that hired Linus Torvalds in 1996 as their Alpha Geek to help develop some kind of microprocessor. Linus, everyone found out later, was actually hired as part of a low-budget yet high-yield publicity stunt. While other dotcoms were burning millions on glitzy marketing campaigns nobody remembers and Superbowl ads displayed while jocks went to the bathroom, Transmeta was spending only pocket change on marketing. Most of that pocket change went towards hosting the Transmeta website (the one that wasn't there yet) which, incidentally, contained more original content and received more visitors than the typical dotcom portal. Microsoft relies on vaporware and certain ahem stipends given to journalists in order to generate buzz and hype for new products, but Transmeta only needed Non-Disclosure Agreements and the Personality Cult of Linus to build up its buzz. When the secret was finally unveiled, the Slashdot crowd was all excited about low-power mobile processors and code-morphing algorithms -- for a couple days. Then everyone yawned and went back to playing Quake. It's still not entirely clear when Transmeta is actually supposed to start selling something.
NEWSFLASH: Colonel Panic's Software Bazaar in Yakima, Washington has instituted a new policy requiring customers to undergo a five-day waiting period before purchasing any Microsoft products.
Bill Gates Sends Out Desperate Plea For Help REDMOND -- In a shocking development, Chief Bloatware Architect Bill Gates admitted today that Microsoft is in severe financial difficulty and desperately needs donations to stay afloat through the next month. "The dismal state of the economy, the lackluster sales of Windows ME, and the pending anti-trust lawsuit have placed significant financial stress on Microsoft," Gates said at a press conference. "We can't continue to develop and maintain our innovative solutions without financial contributions from users like you." The company spent the remaining $10,000 in its coffers to send out letters to registered Windows users pleading for donations. "For just pennies a day, you can help support the world's most innovative company in its quest to discover the cure for the Blue Screen of Death," the letter announces. "Or you can help fund research and development into improving the security of our products against such sinister forces as script kiddies, crackers, and Linux freaks."
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
Solving The Virus Problem Once And For All System administrators across the globe have tried installing anti-virus software. They've tried lecturing employees not to open unsolicited email attachments. They've tried installing firewalls and the latest security patches. But even with these precautions, email viruses continue to rank third only to Solitaire and the Blue Screen Of Death in the amount of lost productivity they cause. Meanwhile, Microsoft Exchange and LookOut! remain as the number one virus delivery products on the market today. But maybe not for much longer. A group of disgruntled administrators have teamed up to produce and sell a brand new way to fight viruses, one that attacks the root of the problem: stupid users. Salivating Dogs, Inc. of Ohio has unveiled the "Clue Delivery System" (CDS), a small device that plugs into the back of a standard PC keyboard and delivers a mild electric shock whenever the luser does something stupid. The device is triggered by a Windows program that detects when the luser attempts to open an unsolicited email attachment or perform another equally dangerous virus-friendly action.
Patches benefit all mankind. Products benefit the vendor. - Richard Gooch on linux-kernel
"I am convinced that the manufacturers of carpet odor removing powder have included encapsulated time released cat urine in their products. This technology must be what prevented its distribution during my mom's reign. My carpet smells like piss, and I don't have a cat. Better go buy some more." -- timw@zeb.USWest.COM
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
XVI: In the year 2054, the entire defense budget will purchase just one aircraft. This aircraft will have to be shared by the Air Force and Navy 3-1/2 days each per week except for leap year, when it will be made available to the Marines for the extra day. XVII: Software is like entropy. It is difficult to grasp, weighs nothing, and obeys the Second Law of Thermodynamics, i.e., it always increases. XVIII: It is very expensive to achieve high unreliability. It is not uncommon to increase the cost of an item by a factor of ten for each factor of ten degradation accomplished. XIX: Although most products will soon be too costly to purchase, there will be a thriving market in the sale of books on how to fix them. XX: In any given year, Congress will appropriate the amount of funding approved the prior year plus three-fourths of whatever change the administration requests -- minus 4-percent tax. -- Norman Augustine
Why I Can't Go Out With You: I'd LOVE to, but ... -- I have to floss my cat. -- I've dedicated my life to linguini. -- I need to spend more time with my blender. -- it wouldn't be fair to the other Beautiful People. -- it's my night to pet the dog/ferret/goldfish. -- I'm going downtown to try on some gloves. -- I have to check the freshness dates on my dairy products. -- I'm going down to the bakery to watch the buns rise. -- I have an appointment with a cuticle specialist. -- I have some really hard words to look up. -- I've got a Friends of the Lowly Rutabaga meeting. -- I promised to help a friend fold road maps.