active : Dictionary / Wörterbuch (BEOLINGUS, TU Chemnitz)

Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English)	by Linux fortune

I believe that the moment is near when by a procedure of active paranoiac thought, it will be possible to systematize confusion and contribute to the total discrediting of the world of reality. -- Salvador Dali
Ever wondered about the origins of the term "bugs" as applied to computer technology? U.S. Navy Capt. Grace Murray Hopper has firsthand explanation. The 74-year-old captain, who is still on active duty, was a pioneer in computer technology during World War II. At the C.W. Post Center of Long Island University, Hopper told a group of Long Island public school adminis- trators that the first computer "bug" was a real bug--a moth. At Harvard one August night in 1945, Hopper and her associates were working on the "granddaddy" of modern computers, the Mark I. "Things were going badly; there was something wrong in one of the circuits of the long glass-enclosed computer," she said. "Finally, someone located the trouble spot and, using ordinary tweezers, removed the problem, a two-inch moth. From then on, when anything went wrong with a computer, we said it had bugs in it." Hopper said that when the veracity of her story was questioned recently, "I referred them to my 1945 log book, now in the collection of the Naval Surface Weapons Center, and they found the remains of that moth taped to the page in question." [actually, the term "bug" had even earlier usage in regard to problems with radio hardware. Ed.]
MAXIMUM TERMINALS ACTIVE. TRY AGAIN LATER
"Section 2.4.3.5 AWNS (Acceptor Wait for New Cycle State). In AWNS the AH function indicates that it has received a multiline message byte. In AWNS the RFD message must be sent false and the DAC message must be sent passive true. The AH function must exit the AWNS and enter: (1) The ANRS if DAV is false (2) The AIDS if the ATN message is false and neither: (a) The LADS is active (b) Nor LACS is active" -- from the IEEE Standard Digital Interface for Programmable Instrumentation
Unix Beer: Comes in several different brands, in cans ranging from 8 oz. to 64 oz. Drinkers of Unix Beer display fierce brand loyalty, even though they claim that all the different brands taste almost identical. Sometimes the pop-tops break off when you try to open them, so you have to have your own can opener around for those occasions, in which case you either need a complete set of instructions, or a friend who has been drinking Unix Beer for several years. BSD stout: Deep, hearty, and an acquired taste. The official brewer has released the recipe, and a lot of home-brewers now use it. Hurd beer: Long advertised by the popular and politically active GNU brewery, so far it has more head than body. The GNU brewery is mostly known for printing complete brewing instructions on every can, which contains hops, malt, barley, and yeast ... not yet fermented. Linux brand: A recipe originally created by a drunken Finn in his basement, it has since become the home-brew of choice for impecunious brewers and Unix beer-lovers worldwide, many of whom change the recipe. POSIX ales: Sweeter than lager, with the kick of a stout; the newer batches of a lot of beers seem to blend ale and stout or lager. Solaris brand: A lager, intended to replace Sun brand stout. Unlike most lagers, this one has to be drunk more slowly than stout. Sun brand: Long the most popular stout on the Unix market, it was discontinued in favor of a lager. SysV lager: Clear and thirst-quenching, but lacking the body of stout or the sweetness of ale.
"There is nothing so deadly as not to hold up to people the opportunity to do great and wonderful things, if we wish to stimulate them in an active way." - Dr. Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate in chemistry
"The clergy successfully preached the doctrines of patience and pusillanimity; the active virtues of society were discouraged; and the last remains of a military spirit were buried in the cloister: a large portion of public and private wealth was consecrated to the specious demands of charity and devotion; and the soldiers' pay was lavished on the useless multitudes of both sexes who could only plead the merits of abstinence and chastity." -- Edward Gibbons, _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_
... so long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrranize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men. -- Voltarine de Cleyre
After two or three weeks of this madness, you begin to feel As One with the man who said, "No news is good news." In twenty-eight papers, only the rarest kind of luck will turn up more than two or three articles of any interest... but even then the interest items are usually buried deep around paragraph 16 on the jump (or "Cont. on ...") page... The Post will have a story about Muskie making a speech in Iowa. The Star will say the same thing, and the Journal will say nothing at all. But the Times might have enough room on the jump page to include a line or so that says something like: "When he finished his speech, Muskie burst into tears and seized his campaign manager by the side of the neck. They grappled briefly, but the struggle was kicked apart by an oriental woman who seemed to be in control." Now that's good journalism. Totally objective; very active and straight to the point. -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing '72"
There are two kinds of solar-heat systems: "passive" systems collect the sunlight that hits your home, and "active" systems collect the sunlight that hits your neighbors' homes, too. -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
Keep emotionally active. Cater to your favorite neurosis.
The new "I Love You" virus is not the work of some snot-nosed acne-laced teenager working from a basement in the Phillipines. It's actually part of a conspiracy concocted by the unholy alliance of Microsoft and several well-known and well-despised spammers. You'll notice that the ILOVEYOU, Melissa, and Tuxissa strains all extract email addresses from the victim's system. This is a gold mine for spammers, who are able to use these viruses to harvest active email addresses for them. Everytime ILOVEYOU, for instance, propogates, it keeps track of all the email addresses it has been sent to, so that when it finally boomerangs back to a spammer, they have a nice convenient list of addresses to send "laser printer toner" and "get rich quick!" advertisements to. -- Bob Smith (not his real code-name), in a speech given at the First Annual Connecticut Conspiracy Convention (ConConCon), "the largest ever gathering of conspiracy theorists east of the Mississippi."
"The lymbic system in my brain is so electrically active, it qualifies as a third brain. Normal humans have two brains, left and right. - Jeff Merkey
Humor in the Court: Q: Are you sexually active? A: No, I just lie there.
Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active. -- Leonardo da Vinci