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Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) by Linux fortune

        A manager was about to be fired, but a programmer who worked for him
invented a new program that became popular and sold well.  As a result, the
manager retained his job.
        The manager tried to give the programmer a bonus, but the programmer
refused it, saying, "I wrote the program because I though it was an interesting
concept, and thus I expect no reward."
        The manager, upon hearing this, remarked, "This programmer, though he
holds a position of small esteem, understands well the proper duty of an
employee.  Lets promote him to the exalted position of management consultant!"
        But when told this, the programmer once more refused, saying, "I exist
so that I can program.  If I were promoted, I would do nothing but waste
everyone's time.  Can I go now?  I have a program that I'm working on."
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
Dear Emily:
        I recently read an article that said, "reply by mail, I'll summarize."
What should I do?
                -- Doubtful

Dear Doubtful:
        Post your response to the whole net.  That request applies only to
dumb people who don't have something interesting to say.  Your postings are
much more worthwhile than other people's, so it would be a waste to reply by
mail.
                -- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
Overall, the philosophy is to attack the availability problem from two
complementary directions:  to reduce the number of software errors through
rigorous testing of running systems, and to reduce the effect of the remaining
errors by providing for recovery from them.  An interesting footnote to this
design is that now a system failure can usually be considered to be the
result of two program errors:  the first, in the program that started the
problem; the second, in the recovery routine that could not protect the
system.
                -- A.L. Scherr, "Functional Structure of IBM Virtual Storage
                   Operating Systems, Part II: OS/VS-2 Concepts and
                   Philosophies," IBM Systems Journal, Vol. 12, No. 4.
There has also been some work to allow the interesting use of macro names.
For example, if you wanted all of your "creat()" calls to include read
permissions for everyone, you could say

        #define creat(file, mode)        creat(file, mode | 0444)

        I would recommend against this kind of thing in general, since it
hides the changed semantics of "creat()" in a macro, potentially far away
from its uses.
        To allow this use of macros, the preprocessor uses a process that
is worth describing, if for no other reason than that we get to use one of
the more amusing terms introduced into the C lexicon.  While a macro is
being expanded, it is temporarily undefined, and any recurrence of the macro
name is "painted blue" -- I kid you not, this is the official terminology
-- so that in future scans of the text the macro will not be expanded
recursively.  (I do not know why the color blue was chosen; I'm sure it
was the result of a long debate, spread over several meetings.)
                -- From Ken Arnold's "C Advisor" column in Unix Review
Overall, the philosophy is to attack the availability problem from two
complementary directions:  to reduce the number of software errors through
rigorous testing of running systems, and to reduce the effect of the
remaining errors by providing for recovery from them.  An interesting footnote
to this design is that now a system failure can usually be considered to be
the result of two program errors:  the first, in the program that started the
problem; the second, in the recovery routine that could not protect the
system.  -- A. L. Scherr, "Functional Structure of IBM Virtual Storage Operating
Systems, Part II: OS/VS-2 Concepts and Philosophies," IBM Systems Journal,
Vol. 12, No. 4, 1973, pp. 382-400
"Because he's a character who's looking for his own identity, [He-Man is]
an interesting role for an actor."
-- Dolph Lundgren, "actor"
"Interesting survey in the current Journal of Abnormal Psychology: New York
City has a higher percentage of people you shouldn't make any sudden moves
around than any other city in the world."
-- David Letterman
Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.
        -- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy,
           Ecole Superieure de Guerre
If you took all of the grains of sand in the world, and lined
them up end to end in a row, you'd be working for the government!
                -- Mr. Interesting
Interesting poll results reported in today's New York Post: people on the
street in midtown Manhattan were asked whether they approved of the US
invasion of Grenada.  Fifty-three percent said yes; 39 percent said no;
and 8 percent said "Gimme a quarter?"
                -- David Letterman
Join the army, see the world, meet interesting, exciting people, and kill them.
Join the Navy; sail to far-off exotic lands, meet exciting interesting people,
and kill them.
Now Denial:
        To tell oneself that the only time worth living in is the past and
that the only time that may ever be interesting again is the future.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
"I don't mind going nowhere as long as it's an interesting path."
                -- Ronald Mabbitt
I drink to make other people interesting.
                -- George Jean Nathan
I have to think hard to name an interesting man who does not drink.
                -- Richard Burton
I heard a definition of an intellectual, that I thought was very interesting:
a man who takes more words than are necessary to tell more than he knows.
                -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I'm going through my "I want to go back to New York" phase today.  Happens
every six months or so.  So, I thought, perhaps unwisely, that I'd share
it with you.  

> In New York in the winter it is million degrees below zero and
  the wind travels at a million miles an hour down 5th avenue.
> And in LA it's 72.

> In New York in the summer it is a million degrees and the humidity
  is a million percent.
> And in LA it's 72.

> In New York there are a million interesting people.  
> And in LA there are 72.
Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction
listen to weather forecasts and economists?
                -- Kelvin Throop III
My geometry teacher was sometimes acute, and sometimes obtuse, but always,
always, he was right.
        [That's an interesting angle.  I wonder if there are any parallels?]
Your love life will be... interesting.
College football is a game which would be much more interesting if the faculty
played instead of the students, and even more interesting if the trustees
played.  There would be a great increase in broken arms, legs, and necks,
and simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the loss to humanity.
                -- H. L. Mencken
MARTA SAYS THE INTERESTING thing about fly-fishing is that it's two lives
connected by a thin strand.

Come on, Marta, grow up.
                -- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
                Answers to Last Fortune's Questions:

        (1) None.  (Moses didn't have an ark).
        (2) Your mother, by the pigeonhole principle.
        (3) I don't know.
        (4) Who cares?
        (5) 6 (or maybe 4, or else 3).  Mr. Alfred J. Duncan of Podunk,
            Montana, submitted an interesting solution to Problem 5.
        (6) There is an interesting solution to this problem on page 1029 of my
            book, which you can pick up for $23.95 at finer bookstores and
            bathroom supply outlets (or 99 cents at the table in front of
            Papyrus Books).
Decorate your home.  It gives the illusion that your life is more
interesting than it really is.
                -- C. Schulz
I used to be interested in Windows NT, but the more I see of it the more
it looks like traditional Windows with a stabler kernel. I don't find
anything technically interesting there. In my opinion MS is a lot better
at making money than it is at making good operating systems.

   -- Linus Torvalds
Dave Finton gazes into his crystal ball...

January 2099: Rob Malda Finally Gets His Damned Nano-Technology

The Linux hacker community finally breathed a collective sigh of relief
when it was announced that Rob Malda finally got his damned
nanotechnology.

"It's about time!" exclaimed one Dothead. "He been going on about that
crap since god-knows-when. Now that he's got that and those wearable
computers, maybe we can read about something interesting on Slashdot!"

Observers were skeptical, however. Already the now-immortal Rob Malda
nano-cyborg (who reportedly changed his name to "18 of 49, tertiary
adjunct of something-or-other") has picked up a few new causes to shout
about to the high heavens until everyone's ears start bleeding. In one
Slashdot article, Malda writes "Here's an article about the potential of
large greyish high-tech mile-wide cubes flying through space, all
controlled by a collective mind set upon intergalactic conquest.
Personally, I can't wait. Yum."
Jargon Coiner (#2)

An irregular feature that aims to give you advance warning of new jargon
that we've just made up.

* SLASHDUP EFFECT, THE: Accidentally posting two or more duplicate
  comments to Slashdot, usually as the result of hitting ENTER at the
  wrong time or fumbling with the Preview option.

* YOU'VE GOT SLOGAN: The tendency for reporters to parody the stupid
  "You've Got Mail" saying when writing about AOL.

  Example: "You've Got Spam", "You've Got Merger" (the headline for an
  article about the Netscape/AOL Merger From Hell)

* PENGUINIZATION: Ongoing trend to slap a picture of Tux Penguin next to
  anything even remotely related to Linux.

* IDLESURF: Aimless surfing of the Internet; looking for something
  interesting to read while killing time. Often involves reloaded the
  Slashdot homepage every 5 minutes to see if a new article has been
  posted.
As many of you know, I am taking a class here at UNC on Personality.
One of the tests to determine personality in our book was so incredibly
useful and interesting, I just had to share it.

Answer each of the following items "true" or "false"

1. I salivate at the sight of mittens.
2. If I go into the street, I'm apt to be bitten by a horse.
3. Some people never look at me.
4. Spinach makes me feel alone.
5. My sex life is A-okay.
6. When I look down from a high spot, I want to spit.
7. I like to kill mosquitoes.
8. Cousins are not to be trusted.
9. It makes me embarrassed to fall down.
10. I get nauseous from too much roller skating.
11. I think most people would cry to gain a point.
12. I cannot read or write.
13. I am bored by thoughts of death.
14. I become homicidal when people try to reason with me.
15. I would enjoy the work of a chicken flicker.
16. I am never startled by a fish.
17. My mother's uncle was a good man.
18. I don't like it when somebody is rotten.
19. People who break the law are wise guys.
20. I have never gone to pieces over the weekend.
As many of you know, I am taking a class here at UNC on Personality.
One of the tests to determine personality in our book was so incredibly
useful and interesting, I just had to share it.

Answer each of the following items "true" or "false"

1. I think beavers work too hard.
2. I use shoe polish to excess.
3. God is love.
4. I like mannish children.
5. I have always been diturbed by the sight of Lincoln's ears.
6. I always let people get ahead of me at swimming pools.
7. Most of the time I go to sleep without saying goodbye.
8. I am not afraid of picking up door knobs.
9. I believe I smell as good as most people.
10. Frantic screams make me nervous.
11. It's hard for me to say the right thing when I find myself in a room
    full of mice.
12. I would never tell my nickname in a crisis.
13. A wide necktie is a sign of disease.
14. As a child I was deprived of licorice.
15. I would never shake hands with a gardener.
16. My eyes are always cold.
17. Cousins are not to be trusted.
18. When I look down from a high spot, I want to spit.
19. I am never startled by a fish.
20. I have never gone to pieces over the weekend.
It's interesting to think that many quite distinguished people have
bodies similar to yours.
The minute a man is convinced that he is interesting, he isn't.
I never thought that I'd see the day where Netscape is free software and
X11 is proprietary.  We live in interesting times.
        -- Matt Kimball <mkimball@xmission.com>
Some of the most interesting documents from Sweden's middle ages are the
old county laws (well, we never had counties but it's the nearest equivalent
I can find for "landskap").  These laws were written down sometime in the
13th century, but date back even down into Viking times.  The oldest one is
the Vastgota law which clearly has pagan influences, thinly covered with some
Christian stuff.  In this law, we find a page about "lekare", which is the
Old Norse word for a performing artist, actor/jester/musician etc.  Here is
an approximate translation, where I have written "artist" as equivalent of
"lekare".
        "If an artist is beaten, none shall pay fines for it.  If an artist
        is wounded, one such who goes with hurdie-gurdie or travels with
        fiddle or drum, then the people shall take a wild heifer and bring
        it out on the hillside.  Then they shall shave off all hair from the
        heifer's tail, and grease the tail.  Then the artist shall be given
        newly greased shoes.  Then he shall take hold of the heifer's tail,
        and a man shall strike it with a sharp whip.  If he can hold her, he
        shall have the animal.  If he cannot hold her, he shall endure what
        he received, shame and wounds."
"There was an interesting development in the CBS-Westmoreland trial:
both sides agreed that after the trial, Andy Rooney would be allowed to
talk to the jury for three minutes about little things that annoyed him
during the trial."
                -- David Letterman
AP/STT.  Helsinki, Dec 5th, 6:22 AM.  For immediate release.

In order to allay fears about the continuity of the Linux project, Linus
Torvalds together with his manager Tove Monni have released "Linus
v2.0", affectionately known as "Kernel Hacker - The Next Generation".

Linux stock prices on Wall Street rose sharply after the announcement;
as one well-known analyst who wishes to remain anonymous says - "It
shows a long-term commitment, and while we expect a short-term decrease
in productivity, we feel that this solidifies the development in the
long run".

Other analysts downplay the importance of the event, and claim that just
about anybody could have done it.  "I'm glad somebody finally told them
about the birds and the bees" one sceptic comments cryptically.  But
even the skeptics agree that it is an interesting turn of events.

Others bring up other issues with the new version - "I'm especially
intrigued by the fact that the new version is female, and look forward
to seeing what the impact of that will be on future development.  Will
"Red Hat Linux" change to "Pink Hat Linux", for example?"
        -- Linus Torvalds announcing that he became father of a girl
I never thought that I'd see the day where Netscape is free software and
X11 is proprietary.  We live in interesting times.
        -- Matt Kimball <mkimball@xmission.com>
* LG loves czech girls.
<vincent> LG: do they have additional interesting "features" other girls don't have? ;)
        -- #Debian
Lonesome?

Like a change?
Like a new job?
Like excitement?
Like to meet new and interesting people?

JUST SCREW-UP ONE MORE TIME!!!!!!!
Men's skin is different from women's skin.  It is usually bigger, and
it has more snakes tattooed on it.  Also, if you examine a woman's skin
very closely, inch by inch, starting at her shapely ankles, then gently
tracing the slender curve of her calves, then moving up to her ...

[EDITOR'S NOTE: To make room for news articles about important world events
such as agriculture, we're going to delete the next few square feet of the
woman's skin.  Thank you.]

... until finally the two of you are lying there, spent, smoking your
cigarettes, and suddenly it hits you: Human skin is actually made up of
billions of tiny units of protoplasm, called "cells"!  And what is even more
interesting, the ones on the outside are all dying!  This is a fact.  Your
skin is like an aggressive modern corporation, where the older veteran
cells, who have finally worked their way to the top and obtained offices
with nice views, are constantly being shoved out the window head first,
without so much as a pension plan, by younger hotshot cells moving up from
below.
                -- Dave Barry, "Saving Face"
Very few things actually get manufactured these days, because in an
infinitely large Universe, such as the one in which we live, most things one
could possibly imagine, and a lot of things one would rather not, grow
somewhere.  A forest was discovered recently in which most of the trees grew
ratchet screwdrivers as fruit.  The life cycle of the ratchet screwdriver is
quite interesting.  Once picked it needs a dark dusty drawer in which it can
lie undisturbed for years.  Then one night it suddenly hatches, discards its
outer skin that crumbles into dust, and emerges as a totally unidentifiable
little metal object with flanges at both ends and a sort of ridge and a hole
for a screw.  This, when found, will get thrown away.  No one knows what the
screwdriver is supposed to gain from this.  Nature, in her infinite wisdom,
is presumably working on it.
Interestingly enough, since subroutine declarations can come anywhere,
you wouldn't have to put BEGIN {} at the beginning, nor END {} at the
end.  Interesting, no?  I wonder if Henry would like it. :-) --lwall
I'm sure a mathematician would claim that 0 and 1 are both very
interesting numbers.  :-)
             -- Larry Wall in <199707300650.XAA05515@wall.org>
True, it returns "" for false, but "" is an even more interesting
number than 0.
             -- Larry Wall in <199707300650.XAA05515@wall.org>
No guarantee of accuracy or completeness!
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