speed : Dictionary / Wörterbuch (BEOLINGUS, TU Chemnitz)

Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English)	by Linux fortune

IV. The time required for an object to fall twenty stories is greater than or equal to the time it takes for whoever knocked it off the ledge to spiral down twenty flights to attempt to capture it unbroken. Such an object is inevitably priceless, the attempt to capture it inevitably unsuccessful. V. All principles of gravity are negated by fear. Psychic forces are sufficient in most bodies for a shock to propel them directly away from the earth's surface. A spooky noise or an adversary's signature sound will induce motion upward, usually to the cradle of a chandelier, a treetop, or the crest of a flagpole. The feet of a character who is running or the wheels of a speeding auto need never touch the ground, especially when in flight. VI. As speed increases, objects can be in several places at once. This is particularly true of tooth-and-claw fights, in which a character's head may be glimpsed emerging from the cloud of altercation at several places simultaneously. This effect is common as well among bodies that are spinning or being throttled. A "wacky" character has the option of self-replication only at manic high speeds and may ricochet off walls to achieve the velocity required. -- Esquire, "O'Donnell's Laws of Cartoon Motion", June 1980
clock speed
Change in Earth's rotational speed
Steady movement is more important than speed, much of the time. So long as there is a regular progression of stimuli to get your mental hooks into, there is room for lateral movement. Once this begins, its rate is a matter of discretion. -- Corwin, Prince of Amber
A computer salesman visits a company president for the purpose of selling the president one of the latest talking computers. Salesman: "This machine knows everything. I can ask it any question and it'll give the correct answer. Computer, what is the speed of light?" Computer: 186,282 miles per second. Salesman: "Who was the first president of the United States?" Computer: George Washington. President: "I'm still not convinced. Let me ask a question. Where is my father?" Computer: Your father is fishing in Georgia. President: "Hah!! The computer is wrong. My father died over twenty years ago!" Computer: Your mother's husband died 22 years ago. Your father just landed a twelve pound bass.
=== ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE ======================== Compiler optimizations have been made to macro expand LET into a WITHOUT- INTERRUPTS special form so that it can PUSH things into a stack in the LET-OPTIMIZATION area, SETQ the variables and then POP them back when it's done. Don't worry about this unless you use multiprocessing. Note that LET could have been defined by: (LET ((LET '`(LET ((LET ',LET)) ,LET))) `(LET ((LET ',LET)) ,LET)) This is believed to speed up execution by as much as a factor of 1.01 or 3.50 depending on whether you believe our friendly marketing representatives. This code was written by a new programmer here (we snatched him away from Itty Bitti Machines where he was writing COUGHBOL code) so to give him confidence we trusted his vows of "it works pretty well" and installed it.
Blinding speed can compensate for a lot of deficiencies. -- David Nichols
... in three to eight years we will have a machine with the general intelligence of an average human being ... The machine will begin to educate itself with fantastic speed. In a few months it will be at genius level and a few months after that its powers will be incalculable ... -- Marvin Minsky, LIFE Magazine, November 20, 1970
Proposed Additions to the PDP-11 Instruction Set: PI Punch Invalid POPI Punch Operator Immediately PVLC Punch Variable Length Card RASC Read And Shred Card RPM Read Programmers Mind RSSC reduce speed, step carefully (for improved accuracy) RTAB Rewind tape and break RWDSK rewind disk RWOC Read Writing On Card SCRBL scribble to disk - faster than a write SLC Search for Lost Chord SPSW Scramble Program Status Word SRSD Seek Record and Scar Disk STROM Store in Read Only Memory TDB Transfer and Drop Bit WBT Water Binary Tree
Seems a computer engineer, a systems analyst, and a programmer were driving down a mountain when the brakes gave out. They screamed down the mountain, gaining speed, but finally managed to grind to a halt, more by luck than anything else, just inches from a thousand foot drop to jagged rocks. They all got out of the car: The computer engineer said, "I think I can fix it." The systems analyst said, "No, no, I think we should take it into town and have a specialist look at it." The programmer said, "OK, but first I think we should get back in and see if it does it again."
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.
"Regardless of the legal speed limit, your Buick must be operated at speeds faster than 85 MPH (140kph)." -- 1987 Buick Grand National owners manual.
"Atomic batteries to power, turbines to speed." -- Robin, The Boy Wonder
"Our vision is to speed up time, eventually eliminating it." -- Alex Schure
Question: Is it better to abide by the rules until they're changed or help speed the change by breaking them?
"Ubi non accusator, ibi non judex." (Where there is no police, there is no speed limit.) -- Roman Law, trans. Petr Beckmann (1971)
Computer science: (1) A study akin to numerology and astrology, but lacking the precision of the former and the success of the latter. (2) The protracted value analysis of algorithms. (3) The costly enumeration of the obvious. (4) The boring art of coping with a large number of trivialities. (5) Tautology harnessed in the service of Man at the speed of light. (6) The Post-Turing decline in formal systems theory.
Consultant, n.: [From con "to defraud, dupe, swindle," or, possibly, French con (vulgar) "a person of little merit" + sult elliptical form of "insult."] A tipster disguised as an oracle, especially one who has learned to decamp at high speed in spite of a large briefcase and heavy wallet.
MIPS: Meaningless Indicator of Processor Speed
Pascal Users: To show respect for the 313th anniversary (tomorrow) of the death of Blaise Pascal, your programs will be run at half speed.
Performance: A statement of the speed at which a computer system works. Or rather, might work under certain circumstances. Or was rumored to be working over in Jersey about a month ago.
Question: Is it better to abide by the rules until they're changed or help speed the change by breaking them?
"Speed is subsittute fo accurancy."
A help wanted add for a photo journalist asked the rhetorical question: If you found yourself in a situation where you could either save a drowning man, or you could take a Pulitzer prize winning photograph of him drowning, what shutter speed and setting would you use? -- Paul Harvey
1 Billion dollars of budget deficit = 1 Gramm-Rudman 6.023 x 10 to the 23rd power alligator pears = Avocado's number 2 pints = 1 Cavort Basic unit of Laryngitis = The Hoarsepower Shortest distance between two jokes = A straight line 6 Curses = 1 Hexahex 3500 Calories = 1 Food Pound 1 Mole = 007 Secret Agents 1 Mole = 25 Cagey Bees 1 Dog Pound = 16 oz. of Alpo 1000 beers served at a Twins game = 1 Killibrew 2.4 statute miles of surgical tubing at Yale U. = 1 I.V.League 2000 pounds of chinese soup = 1 Won Ton 10 to the minus 6th power mouthwashes = 1 Microscope Speed of a tortoise breaking the sound barrier = 1 Machturtle 8 Catfish = 1 Octo-puss 365 Days of drinking Lo-Cal beer. = 1 Lite-year 16.5 feet in the Twilight Zone = 1 Rod Serling Force needed to accelerate 2.2lbs of cookies = 1 Fig-newton to 1 meter per second One half large intestine = 1 Semicolon 10 to the minus 6th power Movie = 1 Microfilm 1000 pains = 1 Megahertz 1 Word = 1 Millipicture 1 Sagan = Billions & Billions 1 Angstrom: measure of computer anxiety = 1000 nail-bytes 10 to the 12th power microphones = 1 Megaphone 10 to the 6th power Bicycles = 2 megacycles The amount of beauty required launch 1 ship = 1 Millihelen
Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles, called electrons, that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you have been drinking. Electrons travel at the speed of light, which in most American homes is 110 volts per hour. This is very fast. In the time it has taken you to read this sentence so far, an electron could have traveled all the way from San Francisco to Hackensack, New Jersey, although God alone knows why it would want to. The five main kinds of electricity are alternating current, direct current, lightning, static, and European. Most American homes have alternating current, which means that the electricity goes in one direction for a while, then goes in the other direction. This prevents harmful electron buildup in the wires. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
Going the speed of light is bad for your age.
I myself have dreamed up a structure intermediate between Dyson spheres and planets. Build a ring 93 million miles in radius -- one Earth orbit -- around the sun. If we have the mass of Jupiter to work with, and if we make it a thousand miles wide, we get a thickness of about a thousand feet for the base. And it has advantages. The Ringworld will be much sturdier than a Dyson sphere. We can spin it on its axis for gravity. A rotation speed of 770 m/s will give us a gravity of one Earth normal. We wouldn't even need to roof it over. Place walls one thousand miles high at each edge, facing the sun. Very little air will leak over the edges. Lord knows the thing is roomy enough. With three million times the surface area of the Earth, it will be some time before anyone complains of the crowding. -- Larry Niven, "Ringworld"
Nothing is faster than the speed of light ... To prove this to yourself, try opening the refrigerator door before the light comes on.
"Our vision is to speed up time, eventually eliminating it." -- Alex Schure
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 rate at which a disease spreads through a corn field is a precise measurement of the speed of blight.
The Shuttle is now going five times the sound of speed. -- Dan Rather, first landing of Columbia
The speed of anything depends on the flow of everything.
Just a song before I go, Going through security To whom it may concern, I held her for so long. Traveling twice the speed of sound She finally looked at me in love, It's easy to get burned. And she was gone. When the shows were over Just a song before I go, We had to get back home, A lesson to be learned. And when we opened up the door Traveling twice the speed of sound I had to be alone. It's easy to get burned. She helped me with my suitcase, She stands before my eyes, Driving me to the airport And to the friendly skies. -- Crosby, Stills, Nash, "Just a Song Before I Go"
When in this world the headlines read Of those whose hearts are filled with greed Who rob and steal from those who need The cry goes up with blinding speed for Underdog (UNDERDOG!) Underdog (UNDERDOG!) Speed of lightning, roar of thunder Fighting all who rob or plunder Underdog (ah-ah-ah-ah) Underdog UNDERDOG!
A new 'chutist had just jumped from the plane at 10,000 feet, and soon discovered that all his lines were hopelessly tangled. At about 5,000 feet, still struggling, he noticed someone coming up from the ground at about the same speed as he was going towards the ground. As they passed each other at 3,000 feet, the 'chutist yells, "HEY! DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT PARACHUTES?" The reply came, fading towards the end, "NO! DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT COLEMAN STOVES?"
Anxious after the delay, Gruber doesn't waste any time getting the Koenig [a modified Porsche] up to speed, and almost immediately we are blowing off Alfas, Fiats, and Lancias full of excited Italians. These people love fast cars. But they love sport too and no passing encounter goes unchallenged. Nothing serious, just two wheels into your lane as you're bearing down on them at 130-plus -- to see if you're paying attention. -- Road & Track article about driving two absurdly fast cars across Europe.
HARVARD: Quarterback: Sophomore Dave Strewzinski... likes to pass. And pass he does, with a record 86 attempts (three completions) in 87 plays.... Though Strewzinksi has so far failed to score any points for the Crimson, his jackrabbit speed has made him the least sacked quarterback in the Ivy league. Wide Receiver: The other directional signal in Harvard's offensive machine is senior Phil Yip, who is very fast. Yip is so fast that he has set a record for being fast. Expect to see Yip elude all pursuers and make it into the endzone five or six times, his average for a game. Yip, nicknamed "fumblefingers" and "you asshole" by his teammates, hopes to carry the ball with him at least one of those times. YALE: Defense: On the defensive side, Yale boasts the stingiest line in the Ivies. Primarily responsible are seniors Izzy "Shylock" Bloomberg and Myron Finklestein, the tightest ends in recent Eli history. Also contributing to the powerful defense is junior tackle Angus MacWhirter, a Scotsman who rounds out the offensive ethnic joke. Look for these three to shut down the opening coin toss. -- Harvard Lampoon 1988 Program Parody, distributed at The Game
I just got out of the hospital after a speed reading accident. I hit a bookmark. -- Steven Wright
I took a course in speed reading and was able to read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It's about Russia. -- Woody Allen
I used to live in a house by the freeway. When I went anywhere, I had to be going 65 MPH by the end of my driveway. I replaced the headlights in my car with strobe lights. Now it looks like I'm the only one moving. I was pulled over for speeding today. The officer said, "Don't you know the speed limit is 55 miles an hour?" And I said, "Yes, but I wasn't going to be out that long." I put a new engine in my car, but didn't take the old one out. Now my car goes 500 miles an hour. -- Steven Wright
"I went to a job interview the other day, the guy asked me if I had any questions , I said yes, just one, if you're in a car traveling at the speed of light and you turn your headlights on, does anything happen? He said he couldn't answer that, I told him sorry, but I couldn't work for him then. -- Steven Wright
Are you scared of speed? If so, then try Windows 95.
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
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves. -- From a Slashdot.org post
Statements recently seen on Slashdot: "The Internet interprets advertising as damage and routes around it." "Accept risk. Accept responsibility. Put a lawyer out of business." "A beowulf cluster of Cisco routers? Isn't that the Internet?" "Geeks aren't interested in politics because government doesn't double its efficiency and speed once every 18 months." "Windows 98 hasn't crashed for me once in over a year, either. Oh, wait, I haven't booted it in over a year." "For more than 4 generations the IT Professionals were the guardians of quality and stability in software. Before the dark times. Before Microsoft..." "You can tell how desperate they are by counting the number of times they say 'innovate' in their press releases."
Microsoft Mandatory Survey (#8) 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 8: If you could meet Bill Gates for one minute, what would you say to him? A. "Can you give me a loan for a million or so?" B. "I just love all the new features in Windows 98!" C. "Could you autograph this box of Windows 98 for me?" D. "I really enjoyed reading 'Business @ the Speed of Thought'. It's so cool!" E. "Give the government hell, Bill!"
Brief History Of Linux (#8) Let's all holler for Hollerith In 1890 the US Congress wanted to extend the census to collect exhaustive demographic information on each citizen that could be resold to marketing companies to help pay for the newly installed gold-plated toilets on Capitol Hill. Experts estimated that the 1890 Census wouldn't be completed until 1900. It was hoped that an electronic tabulating machine using punchcards designed by Herman Hollerith would speed up the process. It didn't quite work out that way. An infestation of termites ate their way through the wooden base of Hollerith's machines, and then a wave of insects devoured several stacks of punchcards. Also, some Hollerith models had the propensity to crash at the drop of a hat... literally. In one instance, the operator dropped his hat and when he reached down to pick it up, he bumped the machine, causing it to flip over and crash. These flaws meant that the census was delayed for several years. However, the system was, in the words of one newspaper reporter, "good enough for government work", a guiding principle that lives on to this very day and explains the government's insistence on using Windows-based PCs.
Brief History Of Linux (#10) The AnyQuack Computer One electronic machine, Colossus, was used by the British in World War II to decode Nazi transmissions. The code-breakers were quite successful in their mission, except for the tiny detail that nobody knew how to read German. They had decoded unreadable messages into... unreadable messages. Two years later in 1945, a group of professors and students at the Univ. of Pennsylvania were discussing computing theory. An argument ensued, in which one professor yelled, "Any quack can build an electronic computer! The real challenge is building one that doesn't crash every five minutes." One graduate student, J. Presper Eckert, Jr., responded, "I'm any quack! I'll take you up on that challenge. I'll build a device that can calculate 1,000 digits of pi in one hour... without crashing!" Several professors laughed; "Such high-speed calculations are beyond our level of technology." Eckert and his friends did build such a device. As a joke, he called the machine "AnyQuack", which eventually became ENIAC -- ENIAC's Not Intended As Crashware, the first known example of a self-referential acronym.
Mass Exodus From Hollywood During the past week, over 150 Hollywood actors, musicians, writers, directors, and key grips have quit their day jobs and moved to the Midwest to engage in quieter occupations such as gardening or accounting. All of the these people cite piracy as the reason for giving up their careers. "I simply can't sit by and let my hard work be stolen by some snot nosed punk over the Internet," explained millionaire movie director Steve Bergospiel. "There's absolutely no incentive to create movies if they're going to be transmitted at the speed of light by thousands of infringers. Such criminal acts personally cost me hundreds -- no, thousands -- of dollars. I can't take that kind of fear and abuse anymore." MPAA President Pei Pervue considers the exodus to be proof that Hollywood is waking up to the fact that they are being "held hostage" by copyright infringers. "Without copyright protection and government-backed monopolies on intellectual property, these's absolutely no reason to engage in the creative process. Now the Internet, with its click-and-pirate technology, makes it easy for anybody to flout the law and become a copyright terrorist. With the scales tipped so much in favor of criminals, it's no wonder some of Hollywood's elite have thrown in the towel. What a shame."
Anybody who doesn't cut his speed at the sight of a police car is probably parked.
"But officer, I was only trying to gain enough speed so I could coast to the nearest gas station."
"I may appear to be just sitting here like a bucket of tapioca, but don't let appearances fool you. I'm approaching old age ... at the speed of light." -- Prof. Cosmo Fishhawk
It is equally bad when one speeds on the guest unwilling to go, and when he holds back one who is hastening. Rather one should befriend the guest who is there, but speed him when he wishes. -- Homer, "The Odyssey" [Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when referring to scheduling.]
You know you are getting old when you think you should drive the speed limit. -- E.A. Gilliam
Now, somebody who _isn't_ stupid (and that, of course, is me), immediately goes "well, _duh_, why don't you speed up read() instead?". - Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel
"...It was a lot faster than I thought it was going to be, much faster than NT. If further speed increases are done to the server for the final release, Oracle is going to be able to wipe their ass with SQL SERVER and hand it back to M$ while the Oracle admins ... migrate their databases over to Linux!"
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
<rebelpacket> hey, quick question, is there any way to speed up the performance of uquake-x11? <Deek> rebelpacket: If you want to accelerate it, throw it harder.
Legislation proposed in the Illinois State Legislature, May, 1907: "Speed upon county roads will be limited to ten miles an hour unless the motorist sees a bailiff who does not appear to have had a drink in 30 days, when the driver will be permitted to make what he can."
A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction and at such a speed, if feels an impulsion... this is the place to go now. But the sky knows the reasons and the patterns behind all clouds, and you will know, too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons. -- Messiah's Handbook : Reminders for the Advanced Soul
Life is like a 10 speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use. -- C. Schultz
There is more to life than increasing its speed. -- Mahatma Gandhi
I'm sitting on my SPEED QUEEN ... To me, it's ENJOYABLE ... I'm WARM ... I'm VIBRATORY ...
Fortune's Exercising Truths: 1: Richard Simmons gets paid to exercise like a lunatic. You don't. 2. Aerobic exercises stimulate and speed up the heart. So do heart attacks. 3. Exercising around small children can scar them emotionally for life. 4. Sweating like a pig and gasping for breath is not refreshing. 5. No matter what anyone tells you, isometric exercises cannot be done quietly at your desk at work. People will suspect manic tendencies as you twitter around in your chair. 6. Next to burying bones, the thing a dog enjoys mosts is tripping joggers. 7. Locking four people in a tiny, cement-walled room so they can run around for an hour smashing a little rubber ball -- and each other -- with a hard racket should immediately be recognized for what it is: a form of insanity. 8. Fifty push-ups, followed by thirty sit-ups, followed by ten chin-ups, followed by one throw-up. 9. Any activity that can't be done while smoking should be avoided.