Dictionary De - En
De - Es
De - Pt| Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
| 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 | |
| As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my own programs. -- Maurice Wilkes, designer of EDSAC, on programming, 1949 | |
| It turned out that the worm exploited three or four different holes in the system. From this, and the fact that we were able to capture and examine some of the source code, we realized that we were dealing with someone very sharp, probably not someone here on campus. -- Dr. Richard LeBlanc, associate professor of ICS, in Georgia Tech's campus newspaper after the Internet worm. | |
| 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 | |
| Now she speaks rapidly. "Do you know *why* you want to program?" He shakes his head. He hasn't the faintest idea. "For the sheer *joy* of programming!" she cries triumphantly. "The joy of the parent, the artist, the craftsman. "You take a program, born weak and impotent as a dimly-realized solution. You nurture the program and guide it down the right path, building, watching it grow ever stronger. Sometimes you paint with tiny strokes, a keystroke added here, a keystroke changed there." She sweeps her arm in a wide arc. "And other times you savage whole *blocks* of code, ripping out the program's very *essence*, then beginning anew. But always building, creating, filling the program with your own personal stamp, your own quirks and nuances. Watching the program grow stronger, patching it when it crashes, until finally it can stand alone -- proud, powerful, and perfect. This is the programmer's finest hour!" Softly at first, then louder, he hears the strains of a Sousa march. "This ... this is your canvas! your clay! Go forth and create a masterwork!" | |
| ...and before I knew what I was doing, I had kicked the typewriter and threw it around the room and made it beg for mercy. At this point the typewriter pleaded for me to dress him in feminine attire but instead I pressed his margin release over and over again until the typewriter lost consciousness. Presently, I regained consciousness and realized with shame what I had done. My shame is gone and now I am looking for a submissive typewriter, any color, or model. No electric typewriters please! --Rick Kleiner | |
| "After one week [visiting Austria] I couldn't wait to go back to the United States. Everything was much more pleasant in the United States, because of the mentality of being open-minded, always positive. Everything you want to do in Europe is just, 'No way. No one has ever done it.' They haven't any more the desire to go out to conquer and achieve -- I realized that I had much more the American spirit." -- Arnold Schwarzenegger | |
| Once there was a marine biologist who loved dolphins. He spent his time trying to feed and protect his beloved creatures of the sea. One day, in a fit of inventive genius, he came up with a serum that would make dolphins live forever! Of course he was ecstatic. But he soon realized that in order to mass produce this serum he would need large amounts of a certain compound that was only found in nature in the metabolism of a rare South American bird. Carried away by his love for dolphins, he resolved that he would go to the zoo and steal one of these birds. Unbeknownst to him, as he was arriving at the zoo an elderly lion was escaping from its cage. The zookeepers were alarmed and immediately began combing the zoo for the escaped animal, unaware that it had simply lain down on the sidewalk and had gone to sleep. Meanwhile, the marine biologist arrived at the zoo and procured his bird. He was so excited by the prospect of helping his dolphins that he stepped absentmindedly stepped over the sleeping lion on his way back to his car. Immediately, 1500 policemen converged on him and arrested him for transporting a myna across a staid lion for immortal porpoises. | |
| The world's most avid baseball fan (an Aggie) had arrived at the stadium for the first game of the World Series only to realize he had left his ticket at home. Not wanting to miss any of the first inning, he went to the ticket booth and got in a long line for another seat. After an hour's wait he was just a few feet from the booth when a voice called out, "Hey, Dave!" The Aggie looked up, stepped out of line and tried to find the owner of the voice -- with no success. Then he realized he had lost his place in line and had to wait all over again. When the fan finally bought his ticket, he was thirsty, so he went to buy a drink. The line at the concession stand was long, too, but since the game hadn't started he decided to wait. Just as he got to the window, a voice called out, "Hey, Dave!" Again the Aggie tried to find the voice -- but no luck. He was very upset as he got back in line for his drink. Finally the fan went to his seat, eager for the game to begin. As he waited for the pitch, he heard the voice calling, "Hey Dave!" once more. Furious, he stood up and yelled at the top of his lungs, "My name isn't Dave!" | |
| A statistician, who refused to fly after reading of the alarmingly high probability that there will be a bomb on any given plane, realized that the probability of there being two bombs on any given flight is very low. Now, whenever he flies, he carries a bomb with him. | |
| Bistromathics is simply a revolutionary new way of understanding the behavior of numbers. Just as Einstein observed that space was not an absolute, but depended on the observer's movement in space, and that time was not an absolute, but depended on the observer's movement in time, so it is now realized that numbers are not absolute, but depend on the observer's movement in restaurants. -- Douglas Adams | |
| The Kosher Dill was invented in 1723 by Joe Kosher and Sam Dill. It is the single most popular pickle variety today, enjoyed throughout the free world by man, woman and child alike. An astounding 350 billion kosher dills are eaten each year, averaging out to almost 1/4 pickle per person per day. New York Times food critic Mimi Sheraton says "The kosher dill really changed my life. I used to enjoy eating McDonald's hamburgers and drinking Iron City Lite, and then I encountered the kosher dill pickle. I realized that there was far more to haute cuisine then I'd ever imagined. And now, just look at me." | |
| Has anyone realized that the purpose of the fortune cookie program is to defuse project tensions? When did you ever see a cheerful cookie, a non-cynical, or even an informative cookie? Perhaps inadvertently, we have a channel for our aggressions. This still begs the question of whether the cookie releases the pressure or only serves to blunt the warning signs. Long live the revolution! Have a nice day. | |
| Linux Rally Held in Pennsylvania HARRISBURG, PA -- Thousands of Linux advocates gathered at the Pennsylvania state capitol building earlier today. They were protesting the state's recent three year deal with Microsoft to install Windows NT on all state computer systems. "Whatever pointy haired boss made this deal ought to be shot on sight," one protestor exclaimed. "Windows NT is a piece of [expletive] compared to Linux. The taxpayers of Pennsylvania are going to be sorry three years from now when this 'deal' concludes. The state has sold its soul to Satan [Bill Gates]." Brief hostilities broke out when a group of police officers armed with riot gear descended on the protestors. After the police threatened to use tear gas, the protestors threw thousands of Linux CDs at them. Once the supply of CDs was depleted, the protest became peaceful again. "I saw several policemen pick up Linux CDs and put them in their pockets," one protestor noted. The protest broke up a few minutes later once it was realized that the state legislature wasn't in session. "We may have wasted our time today," one advocate said, "But we'll be back later." State and Microsoft officials were unavailable for comment at press time. How typical. | |
| I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this. -- Emo Phillips | |
| I have also been a huge Unix fan ever since I realized that SCO was not Unix. -- Dennis Baker | |
| * seeS uses knghtbrd's comments as his signature <knghtbrd> seeS: as soon as I typed them I realized I'd better snip them myself before someone else did ;> | |
| Sorry. I just realized this sentance makes no sense :) -- Ian Main | |
