Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
** MAXIMUM TERMINALS ACTIVE. TRY AGAIN LATER ** | |
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. | |
Why do we want intelligent terminals when there are so many stupid users? | |
If a system is administered wisely, its users will be content. They enjoy hacking their code and don't waste time implementing labor-saving shell scripts. Since they dearly love their accounts, they aren't interested in other machines. There may be telnet, rlogin, and ftp, but these don't access any hosts. There may be an arsenal of cracks and malware, but nobody ever uses them. People enjoy reading their mail, take pleasure in being with their newsgroups, spend weekends working at their terminals, delight in the doings at the site. And even though the next system is so close that users can hear its key clicks and biff beeps, they are content to die of old age without ever having gone to see it. | |
Once there was a little nerd who loved to read your mail, And then yank back the i-access times to get hackers off his tail, And once as he finished reading from the secretary's spool, He wrote a rude rejection to her boyfriend (how uncool!) And this as delivermail did work and he ran his backfstat, He heard an awful crackling like rat fritters in hot fat, And hard errors brought the system down 'fore he could even shout! And the bio bug'll bring yours down too, ef you don't watch out! And once they was a little flake who'd prowl through the uulog, And when he went to his blit that night to play at being god, The ops all heard him holler, and they to the console dashed, But when they did a ps -ut they found the system crashed! Oh, the wizards adb'd the dumps and did the system trace, And worked on the file system 'til the disk head was hot paste, But all they ever found was this: "panic: never doubt", And the bio bug'll crash your box too, ef you don't watch out! When the day is done and the moon comes out, And you hear the printer whining and the rk's seems to count, When the other desks are empty and their terminals glassy grey, And the load is only 1.6 and you wonder if it'll stay, You must mind the file protections and not snoop around, Or the bio bug'll getcha and bring the system down! | |
> 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 |