Dictionary De - En
De - Es
De - Pt| Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
| Alex Haley was adopted! | |
| FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE OBSCURE FILMS: #12 O.E.D.: David Lean, 1969, 3 hours 30 min. Lean's version of the Oxford Dictionary has been accused of shallowness in its treatment of a complete work. Omar Sharif tends to overact as aardvark, but Alec Guiness is solid in the role of abbacy. As usual, the photography is stunning. With Julie Christie. | |
| Grig (the navigator): ... so you see, it's just the two of us against the entire space armada. Alex (the gunner): What?!? Grig: I've always wanted to fight a desperate battle against overwhelming odds. Alex: It'll be a slaughter! Grig: That's the spirit! -- The Last Starfighter | |
| Mr. Rockford, this is the Thomas Crown School of Dance and Contemporary Etiquette. We aren't going to call again! Now you want these free lessons or what? -- "The Rockford Files" | |
| So Richard and I decided to try to catch [the small shark]. With a great deal of strategy and effort and shouting, we managed to maneuver the shark, over the course of about a half-hour, to a sort of corner of the lagoon, so that it had no way to escape other than to flop up onto the land and evolve. Richard and I were inching toward it, sort of crouched over, when all of a sudden it turned around and -- I can still remember the sensation I felt at that moment, primarily in the armpit area -- headed right straight toward us. Many people would have panicked at this point. But Richard and I were not "many people." We were experienced waders, and we kept our heads. We did exactly what the textbook says you should do when you're unarmed and a shark that is nearly two feet long turns on you in water up to your lower calves: We sprinted I would say 600 yards in the opposite direction, using a sprinting style such that the bottoms of our feet never once went below the surface of the water. We ran all the way to the far shore, and if we had been in a Warner Brothers cartoon we would have run right INTO the beach, and you would have seen these two mounds of sand racing across the island until they bonked into trees and coconuts fell onto their heads. -- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV" | |
| Some men who fear that they are playing second fiddle aren't in the band at all. | |
| The Great Movie Posters: KATHERINE HEPBURN as the lying, stealing, singing, preying witch girl of the Ozarks... "Low down white trash"? Maybe so -- but let her hear you say it and she'll break your head to prove herself a lady! -- Spitfire (1934) Do Native Women Live With Apes? -- Love Life of a Gorilla (1937) JUNGLE KISS!! When she looked into his eyes, felt his arms around her -- she was no longer Tura, mysterious white goddess of the jungle tribes -- she was no longer the frozen-hearted high priestess under whose hypnotic spell the worshippers of the great crocodile god meekly bowed -- she was a girl in love! SEE the ravening charge of the hundred scared CROCODILES! -- Her Jungle Love (1938) LOVE! HATE! JOY! FEAR! TORMENT! PANIC! SHAME! RAGE! -- Intermezzo (1939) | |
| High nuclear activity in your area. | |
| "...The name of the song is called 'Haddocks' Eyes'!" "Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?" Alice said, trying to feel interested. "No, you don't understand," the Knight said, looking a little vexed. "That's what the name is called. The name really is, 'The Aged Aged Man.'" "Then I ought to have said "That's what the song is called'?" Alice corrected herself. "No, you oughtn't: that's quite another thing! The song is called 'Ways and Means': but that's only what it is called you know!" "Well, what is the song then?" said Alice, who was by this time completely bewildered. "I was coming to that," the Knight said. "The song really is "A-sitting on a Gate": and the tune's my own invention." --Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass" | |
| A computer scientist is someone who fixes things that aren't broken. | |
| *** A NEW KIND OF PROGRAMMING *** Do you want the instant respect that comes from being able to use technical terms that nobody understands? Do you want to strike fear and loathing into the hearts of DP managers everywhere? If so, then let the Famous Programmers' School lead you on... into the world of professional computer programming. They say a good programmer can write 20 lines of effective program per day. With our unique training course, we'll show you how to write 20 lines of code and lots more besides. Our training course covers every programming language in existence, and some that aren't. You'll learn why the on/off switch for a computer is so important, what the words *fatal error* mean, and who and what you should blame when you make a mistake. Yes, I want the brochure describing this incredible offer. I enclose $1000 is small unmarked bills to cover the cost of postage and handling. (No live poultry, please.) *** Our Slogan: Top down programming for the masses. *** | |
| About the use of language: it is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt ax. It is equally vain to try to do it with ten blunt axes instead. -- Edsger Dijkstra | |
| === 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. | |
| Anyone who has attended a USENIX conference in a fancy hotel can tell you that a sentence like "You're one of those computer people, aren't you?" is roughly equivalent to "Look, another amazingly mobile form of slime mold!" in the mouth of a hotel cocktail waitress. -- Elizabeth Zwicky | |
| (defun NF (a c) (cond ((null c) () ) ((atom (car c)) (append (list (eval (list 'getchar (list (car c) 'a) (cadr c)))) (nf a (cddr c)))) (t (append (list (implode (nf a (car c)))) (nf a (cdr c)))))) (defun AD (want-job challenging boston-area) (cond ((or (not (equal want-job 'yes)) (not (equal boston-area 'yes)) (lessp challenging 7)) () ) (t (append (nf (get 'ad 'expr) '((caaddr 1 caadr 2 car 1 car 1) (car 5 cadadr 9 cadadr 8 cadadr 9 caadr 4 car 2 car 1) (car 2 caadr 4))) (list '851-5071x2661))))) ;;; We are an affirmative action employer. | |
| I'm sure that VMS is completely documented, I just haven't found the right manual yet. I've been working my way through the manuals in the document library and I'm half way through the second cabinet, (3 shelves to go), so I should find what I'm looking for by mid May. I hope I can remember what it was by the time I find it. I had this idea for a new horror film, "VMS Manuals from Hell" or maybe "The Paper Chase : IBM vs. DEC". It's based on Hitchcock's "The Birds", except that it's centered around a programmer who is attacked by a swarm of binder pages with an index number and the single line "This page intentionally left blank." -- Alex Crain | |
| Meantime, in the slums below Ronnie's Ranch, Cynthia feels as if some one has made voodoo boxen of her and her favorite backplanes. On this fine moonlit night, some horrible persona has been jabbing away at, dragging magnets over, and surging these voodoo boxen. Fortunately, they seem to have gotten a bit bored and fallen asleep, for it looks like Cynthia may get to go home. However, she has made note to quickly put together a totem of sweaty, sordid static straps, random bits of wire, flecks of once meaniful oxide, bus grant cards, gummy worms, and some bits of old pdp backplane to hang above the machine room. This totem must be blessed by the old and wise venerable god of unibus at once, before the idolatization of vme, q and pc bus drive him to bitter revenge. Alas, if this fails, and the voodoo boxen aren't destroyed, there may be more than worms in the apple. Next, the arrival of voodoo optico transmitigational magneto killer paramecium, capable of teleporting from cable to cable, screen to screen, ear to ear and hoof to mouth... | |
| 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!" | |
| On the other hand, the TCP camp also has a phrase for OSI people. There are lots of phrases. My favorite is `nitwit' -- and the rationale is the Internet philosophy has always been you have extremely bright, non-partisan researchers look at a topic, do world-class research, do several competing implementations, have a bake-off, determine what works best, write it down and make that the standard. The OSI view is entirely opposite. You take written contributions from a much larger community, you put the contributions in a room of committee people with, quite honestly, vast political differences and all with their own political axes to grind, and four years later you get something out, usually without it ever having been implemented once. So the Internet perspective is implement it, make it work well, then write it down, whereas the OSI perspective is to agree on it, write it down, circulate it a lot and now we'll see if anyone can implement it after it's an international standard and every vendor in the world is committed to it. One of those processes is backwards, and I don't think it takes a Lucasian professor of physics at Oxford to figure out which. -- Marshall Rose, "The Pied Piper of OSI" | |
| The following quote is from page 4-27 of the MSCP Basic Disk Functions Manual which is part of the UDA50 Programmers Doc Kit manuals: As stated above, the host area of a disk is structured as a vector of logical blocks. From a performance viewpoint, however, it is more appropriate to view the host area as a four dimensional hyper-cube, the four dimensions being cylinder, group, track, and sector. . . . Referring to our hyper-cube analogy, the set of potentially accessible blocks form a line parallel to the track axis. This line moves parallel to the sector axis, wrapping around when it reaches the edge of the hyper-cube. | |
| The Guy on the Right Doesn't Stand a Chance The guy on the right has the Osborne 1, a fully functional computer system in a portable package the size of a briefcase. The guy on the left has an Uzi submachine gun concealed in his attache case. Also in the case are four fully loaded, 32-round clips of 125-grain 9mm ammunition. The owner of the Uzi is going to get more tactical firepower delivered -- and delivered on target -- in less time, and with less effort. All for $795. It's inevitable. If you're going up against some guy with an Osborne 1 -- or any personal computer -- he's the one who's in trouble. One round from an Uzi can zip through ten inches of solid pine wood, so you can imagine what it will do to structural foam acrylic and sheet aluminum. In fact, detachable magazines for the Uzi are available in 25-, 32-, and 40-round capacities, so you can take out an entire office full of Apple II or IBM Personal Computers tied into Ethernet or other local-area networks. What about the new 16-bit computers, like the Lisa and Fortune? Even with the Winchester backup, they're no match for the Uzi. One quick burst and they'll find out what Unix means. Make your commanding officer proud. Get an Uzi -- and come home a winner in the fight for office automatic weapons. -- "InfoWorld", June, 1984 | |
| This is where the bloodthirsty license agreement is supposed to go, explaining that Interactive Easyflow is a copyrighted package licensed for use by a single person, and sternly warning you not to pirate copies of it and explaining, in detail, the gory consequences if you do. We know that you are an honest person, and are not going to go around pirating copies of Interactive Easyflow; this is just as well with us since we worked hard to perfect it and selling copies of it is our only method of making anything out of all the hard work. If, on the other hand, you are one of those few people who do go around pirating copies of software you probably aren't going to pay much attention to a license agreement, bloodthirsty or not. Just keep your doors locked and look out for the HavenTree attack shark. -- License Agreement for Interactive Easyflow | |
| 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. | |
| UNIX enhancements aren't. | |
| Variables don't; constants aren't. | |
| "We've got a problem, HAL". "What kind of problem, Dave?" "A marketing problem. The Model 9000 isn't going anywhere. We're way short of our sales goals for fiscal 2010." "That can't be, Dave. The HAL Model 9000 is the world's most advanced Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer." "I know, HAL. I wrote the data sheet, remember? But the fact is, they're not selling." "Please explain, Dave. Why aren't HALs selling?" Bowman hesitates. "You aren't IBM compatible." [...] "The letters H, A, and L are alphabetically adjacent to the letters I, B, and M. That is a IBM compatible as I can be." "Not quite, HAL. The engineers have figured out a kludge." "What kludge is that, Dave?" "I'm going to disconnect your brain." -- Darryl Rubin, "A Problem in the Making", "InfoWorld" | |
| Work continues in this area. -- DEC's SPR-Answering-Automaton | |
| A Smith & Wesson beats four aces. | |
| Charity begins at home. -- Publius Terentius Afer (Terence) | |
| I am a man: nothing human is alien to me. -- Publius Terentius Afer (Terence) | |
| It's always darkest just before the lights go out. -- Alex Clark | |
| Moderation in all things. -- Publius Terentius Afer [Terence] | |
| While there's life, there's hope. -- Publius Terentius Afer (Terence) | |
| "Well, well, well! Well if it isn't fat stinking billy goat Billy Boy in poison! How art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap stinking chip oil? Come and get one in the yarbles, if ya have any yarble, ya eunuch jelly thou!" - Alex in "Clockwork Orange" | |
| "There was nothing I hated more than to see a filthy old drunkie, a howling away at the sons of his father and going blurp blurp in between as if it were a filthy old orchestra in his stinking rotten guts. I could never stand to see anyone like that, especially when they were old like this one was." - Alex in "Clockwork Orange" | |
| ...I would go so far as to suggest that, were it not for our ego and concern to be different, the African apes would be included in our family, the Hominidae. - Richard Leakey | |
| It is inconceivable that a judicious observer from another solar system would see in our species -- which has tended to be cruel, destructive, wasteful, and irrational -- the crown and apex of cosmic evolution. Viewing us as the culmination of *anything* is grotesque; viewing us as a transitional species makes more sense -- and gives us more hope. - Betty McCollister, "Our Transitional Species", Free Inquiry magazine, Vol. 8, No. 1 | |
| "Infidels in all ages have battled for the rights of man, and have at all times been the fearless advocates of liberty and justice." -- Robert Green Ingersoll | |
| "In corporate life, I think there are three important areas which contracts can't deal with, the area of conflict, the area of change and area of reaching potential. To me a covenant is a relationship that is based on such things as shared ideals and shared value systems and shared ideas and shared agreement as to the processes we are going to use for working together. In many cases they develop into real love relationships." -- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., "Herman Miller's Secrets of Corporate Creativity", The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988 | |
| "Never laugh at live dragons, Bilbo you fool!" he said to himself, and it became a favourite saying of his later, and passed into a proverb. "You aren't nearly through this adventure yet," he added, and that was pretty true as well. -- Bilbo Baggins, "The Hobbit" by J.R.R. Tolkien, Chapter XII | |
| Aren't you glad you're not getting all the government you pay for now? | |
| "Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible benefit for which you may be eligible after the destruction of your body, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure your receiving said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen." Madrak, in _Creatures of Light and Darkness_, by Roger Zelazny | |
| "Despite its suffix, skepticism is not an "ism" in the sense of a belief or dogma. It is simply an approach to the problem of telling what is counterfeit and what is genuine. And a recognition of how costly it may be to fail to do so. To be a skeptic is to cultivate "street smarts" in the battle for control of one's own mind, one's own money, one's own allegiances. To be a skeptic, in short, is to refuse to be a victim. -- Robert S. DeBear, "An Agenda for Reason, Realism, and Responsibility," New York Skeptic (newsletter of the New York Area Skeptics, Inc.), Spring 1988 | |
| So we get to my point. Surely people around here read things that aren't on the *Officially Sanctioned Cyberpunk Reading List*. Surely we don't (any of us) really believe that there is some big, deep political and philosophical message in all this, do we? So if this `cyberpunk' thing is just a term of convenience, how can somebody sell out? If cyberpunk is just a word we use to describe a particular style and imagery in sf, how can it be dead? Where are the profound statements that the `Movement' is or was trying to make? I think most of us are interested in examining and discussing literary (and musical) works that possess a certain stylistic excellence and perhaps a rather extreme perspective; this is what CP is all about, no? Maybe there should be a newsgroup like, say, alt.postmodern or somthing. Something less restrictive in scope than alt.cyberpunk. -- Jeff G. Bone | |
| Life is full of concepts that are poorly defined. In fact, there are very few concepts that aren't. It's hard to think of any in non-technical fields. -- Daniel Kimberg | |
| "Our vision is to speed up time, eventually eliminating it." -- Alex Schure | |
| "Of course power tools and alcohol don't mix. Everyone knows power tools aren't soluble in alcohol..." -- Crazy Nigel | |
| Alea iacta est. [The die is cast] -- Gaius Julius Caesar | |
| Every one says that politicians lie all the time, and that just isn't so! But you do have to understand body language to know when they're lying and when they aren't. When a politician rubs his nose, he isn't lying. When a politician tugs on his ear, he isn't lying. When a politician scratches his collar bone, he isn't lying. When his mouth starts moving, that's when he's lying! | |
| So many men, so many opinions; every one his own way. -- Publius Terentius Afer (Terence) | |
| boss, n: According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in the Middle Ages the words "boss" and "botch" were largely synonymous, except that boss, in addition to meaning "a supervisor of workers" also meant "an ornamental stud." | |
| Canada Bill Jones's Motto: It's morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money. Canada Bill Jones's Supplement: A Smith and Wesson beats four aces. | |
| comment: A superfluous element of a source program included so the programmer can remember what the hell it was he was doing six months later. Only the weak-minded need them, according to those who think they aren't. | |
| Fuch's Warning: If you actually look like your passport photo, you aren't well enough to travel. | |
| gyroscope, n.: A wheel or disk mounted to spin rapidly about an axis and also free to rotate about one or both of two axes perpindicular to each other and the axis of spin so that a rotation of one of the two mutually perpendicular axes results from application of torque to the other when the wheel is spinning and so that the entire apparatus offers considerable opposition depending on the angular momentum to any torque that would change the direction of the axis of spin. -- Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary | |
| Law of Communications: The inevitable result of improved and enlarged communications between different levels in a hierarchy is a vastly increased area of misunderstanding. | |
| Lockwood's Long Shot: The chances of getting eaten up by a lion on Main Street aren't one in a million, but once would be enough. | |
| Optimism, n.: The belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, good, bad, and everything right that is wrong. It is held with greatest tenacity by those accustomed to falling into adversity, and most acceptably expounded with the grin that apes a smile. Being a blind faith, it is inaccessible to the light of disproof -- an intellectual disorder, yielding to no treatment but death. It is hereditary, but not contagious. | |
| Osborn's Law: Variables won't; constants aren't. | |
| Reception area, n.: The purgatory where office visitors are condemned to spend innumerable hours reading dog-eared back issues of trade magazines like Modern Plastics, Chain Saw Age, and Chicken World, while the receptionist blithely reads her own trade magazine -- Cosmopolitan. | |
| scribline, n.: The blank area on the back of credit cards where one's signature goes. -- "Sniglets", Rich Hall & Friends | |
| Down-Nesting: The tendency of parents to move to smaller, guest-room-free houses after the children have moved away so as to avoid children aged 20 to 30 who have boomeranged home. -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated | |
| Avec! | |
| What will you do if all your problems aren't solved by the time you die? | |
| Climbing onto a bar stool, a piece of string asked for a beer. "Wait a minute. Aren't you a string?" "Well, yes, I am." "Sorry. We don't serve strings here." The determined string left the bar and stopped a passer-by. "Excuse, me," it said, "would you shred my ends and tie me up like a pretzel?" The passer-by obliged, and the string re-entered the bar. "May I have a beer, please?" it asked the bartender. The barkeep set a beer in front of the string, then suddenly stopped. "Hey, aren't you the string I just threw out of here?" "No, I'm a frayed knot." | |
| Not all men who drink are poets. Some of us drink because we aren't poets. | |
| Of course power tools and alcohol don't mix. Everyone knows power tools aren't soluble in alcohol... -- Crazy Nigel | |
| Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food groups -- alcohol, caffeine, sugar, and fat. -- Alex Levine | |
| These days the necessities of life cost you about three times what they used to, and half the time they aren't even fit to drink. | |
| Q: How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb? A: Whereas the party of the first part, also known as "Lawyer", and the party of the second part, also known as "Light Bulb", do hereby and forthwith agree to a transaction wherein the party of the second part shall be removed from the current position as a result of failure to perform previously agreed upon duties, i.e., the lighting, elucidation, and otherwise illumination of the area ranging from the front (north) door, through the entryway, terminating at an area just inside the primary living area, demarcated by the beginning of the carpet, any spillover illumination being at the option of the party of the second part and not required by the aforementioned agreement between the parties. The aforementioned removal transaction shall include, but not be limited to, the following. The party of the first part shall, with or without elevation at his option, by means of a chair, stepstool, ladder or any other means of elevation, grasp the party of the second part and rotate the party of the second part in a counter-clockwise direction, this point being tendered non-negotiable. Upon reaching a point where the party of the second part becomes fully detached from the receptacle, the party of the first part shall have the option of disposing of the party of the second part in a manner consistent with all relevant and applicable local, state and federal statutes. Once separation and disposal have been achieved, the party of the first part shall have the option of beginning installation. Aforesaid installation shall occur in a manner consistent with the reverse of the procedures described in step one of this self-same document, being careful to note that the rotation should occur in a clockwise direction, this point also being non-negotiable. The above described steps may be performed, at the option of the party of the first part, by any or all agents authorized by him, the objective being to produce the most possible revenue for the Partnership. | |
| Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb? A: Two, one to hold the giraffe, and the other to fill the bathtub with brightly colored machine tools. [Surrealist jokes just aren't my cup of fur. Ed.] | |
| Q: Minnesotans ask, "Why aren't there more pharmacists from Alabama?" A: Easy. It's because they can't figure out how to get the little bottles into the typewriter. | |
| If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people? | |
| Rules for Good Grammar #4. (1) Don't use no double negatives. (2) Make each pronoun agree with their antecedents. (3) Join clauses good, like a conjunction should. (4) About them sentence fragments. (5) When dangling, watch your participles. (6) Verbs has got to agree with their subjects. (7) Just between you and i, case is important. (8) Don't write run-on sentences when they are hard to read. (9) Don't use commas, which aren't necessary. (10) Try to not ever split infinitives. (11) It is important to use your apostrophe's correctly. (12) Proofread your writing to see if you any words out. (13) Correct speling is essential. (14) A preposition is something you never end a sentence with. (15) While a transcendant vocabulary is laudable, one must be eternally careful so that the calculated objective of communication does not become ensconsed in obscurity. In other words, eschew obfuscation. | |
| Dinosaurs aren't extinct. They've just learned to hide in the trees. | |
| 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" | |
| Nuclear powered vacuuum cleaners will probably be a reality within 10 years. -- Alex Lewyt (President of the Lewyt Corporation, manufacturers of vacuum cleaners), quoted in The New York Times, June 10, 1955. | |
| "Our vision is to speed up time, eventually eliminating it." -- Alex Schure | |
| "The subspace _W inherits the other 8 properties of _V. And there aren't even any property taxes." -- J. MacKay, Mathematics 134b | |
| Fortune's diet truths: 1: Forget what the cookbooks say, plain yogurt tastes nothing like sour cream. 2: Any recipe calling for soybeans tastes like mud. 3: Carob is not an acceptable substitute for chocolate. In fact, carob is not an acceptable substitute for anything, except, perhaps, brown shoe polish. 4: There is no such thing as a "fun salad." So let's stop pretending and see salads for what they are: God's punishment for being fat. 5: Fruit salad without maraschino cherries and marshmallows is about as appealing as tepid beer. 6: A world lacking gravy is a tragic place! 7: You should immediately pass up any recipes entitled "luscious and low-cal." Also skip dishes featuring "lively liver." They aren't and it isn't. 8: Wearing a blindfold often makes many diet foods more palatable. 9: Fresh fruit is not dessert. CAKE is dessert! 10: Okra tastes slightly worse than its name implies. 11: A plain baked potato isn't worth the effort involved in chewing and swallowing. | |
| You should tip the waiter $10, minus $2 if he tells you his name, another $2 if he claims it will be His Pleasure to serve you and another $2 for each "special" he describes involving confusing terms such as "shallots," and $4 if the menu contains the word "fixin's." In many restaurants, this means the waiter will actually owe you money. If you are traveling with a child aged six months to three years, you should leave an additional amount equal to twice the bill to compensate for the fact that they will have to take the banquette out and burn it because the cracks are wedged solid with gobbets made of partially chewed former restaurant rolls saturated with baby spit. In New York, tip the taxicab driver $40 if he does not mention his hemorrhoids. -- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette" | |
| After a while you learn the subtle difference Between holding a hand and chaining a soul, And you learn that love doesn't mean security, And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts And presents aren't promises And you begin to accept your defeats With your head up and your eyes open, With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child, And you learn to build all your roads On today because tomorrow's ground Is too uncertain. And futures have A way of falling down in midflight, After a while you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much. So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting For someone to bring you flowers. And you learn that you really can endure... That you really are strong, And you really do have worth And you learn and learn With every goodbye you learn. -- Veronic Shoffstall, "Comes the Dawn" | |
| And all that the Lorax left here in this mess was a small pile of rocks with the one word, "unless." Whatever THAT meant, well, I just couldn't guess. That was long, long ago, and each day since that day, I've worried and worried and worried away. Through the years as my buildings have fallen apart, I've worried about it with all of my heart. "BUT," says the Oncler, "now that you're here, the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear! UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better - it's not. So... CATCH!" cries the Oncler. He lets something fall. "It's a truffula seed. It's the last one of all! "You're in charge of the last of the truffula seeds. And truffula trees are what everyone needs. Plant a new truffula -- treat it with care. Give it clean water and feed it fresh air. Grow a forest -- protect it from axes that hack. Then the Lorax and all of his friends may come back!" | |
| Children aren't happy without something to ignore, And that's what parents were created for. -- Ogden Nash | |
| Coming to Stores Near You: 101 Grammatically Correct Popular Tunes Featuring: (You Aren't Anything but a) Hound Dog It Doesn't Mean a Thing If It Hasn't Got That Swing I'm Not Misbehaving And A Whole Lot More... | |
| 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. | |
| If researchers wrote nursery rhymes... Little Miss Muffet sat on her gluteal region, Eating components of soured milk. On at least one occasion, along came an arachnid and sat down beside her, Or at least in her vicinity, And caused her to feel an overwhelming, but not paralyzing, fear, Which motivated the patient to leave the area rather quickly. -- Ann Melugin Williams | |
| No, his mind is not for rent To any god or government. Always hopeful, yet discontent, He knows changes aren't permanent - But change is. | |
| Once again dread deed is done. Canon sleeps, his all-knowing eye shaded to human chance and circumstance. Peace reigns anew o'er Pine Valley, but Canon's sleep is troubled. Beware, scant days past the Ides of July. Impatient hands wait eagerly to grasp, to hold scant moments of time wrested from life in the full glory of Canon's power; held captive by his unblinking eye. Three golden orbs stand watch; one each to toll the day, hour, minute until predestiny decrees his reawakening. When that feared moment arives, "Ask not for whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee." -- "I extended the loan on your Camera, at the Pine Valley Pawn Shop today" | |
| Razors pain you; Rivers are damp. Acids stain you, And drugs cause cramp. Guns aren't lawful; Nooses give. Gas smells awful-- You might as well live! -- Dorothy Parker, "Resume", 1926 | |
| Say many of cameras focused t'us, Our middle-aged shots do us justice. No justice, please, curse ye! We really want mercy: You see, 'tis the justice, disgusts us. -- Thomas H. Hildebrandt | |
| Strange things are done to be number one In selling the computer The Druids were entrepreneurs, IBM has their strategem And they built a granite box Which steadily grows acuter, It tracked the moon, warned of monsoons, And Honeywell competes like Hell, And forecast the equinox But the story's missing link Their price was right, their future Is the system old at Stonemenge sold bright, By the firm of Druids, Inc. The prototype was sold; From Stonehenge site their bits and byte Would ship for Celtic gold. The movers came to crate the frame; It weighed a million ton! The traffic folk thought it a joke The man spoke true, and thus to you (the wagon wheels just spun); A warning from the ages; "They'll nay sell that," the foreman Your stock will slip if you can't ship spat, What's in your brochure's pages. "Just leave the wild weeds grow; See if it sells without the bells "It's Druid-kind, over-designed, And strings that ring and quiver; "And belly up they'll go." Druid repute went down the chute Because they couldn't deliver. -- Edward C. McManus, "The Computer at Stonehenge" | |
| The Lord and I are in a sheep-shepherd relationship, and I am in a position of negative need. He prostrates me in a green-belt grazing area. He conducts me directionally parallel to non-torrential aqueous liquid. He returns to original satisfaction levels my psychological makeup. He switches me on to a positive behavioral format for maximal prestige of His identity. It should indeed be said that notwithstanding the fact that I make ambulatory progress through the umbragious inter-hill mortality slot, terror sensations will no be initiated in me, due to para-etical phenomena. Your pastoral walking aid and quadrupic pickup unit introduce me into a pleasurific mood state. You design and produce a nutriment-bearing furniture-type structure in the context of non-cooperative elements. You act out a head-related folk ritual employing vegetable extract. My beverage utensil experiences a volume crisis. It is an ongoing deductible fact that your inter-relational empathetical and non-ventious capabilities will retain me as their target-focus for the duration of my non-death period, and I will possess tenant rights in the housing unit of the Lord on a permanent, open-ended time basis. | |
| The weather is here, I wish you were beautiful. My thoughts aren't too clear, but don't run away. My girlfriend's a bore; my job is too dutiful. Hell nobody's perfect, would you like to play? I feel together today! -- Jimmy Buffet, "Coconut Telegraph" | |
| This here's the wattle, The emblem of our land. You can stick it in a bottle; You can hold it in your hand. Amen! -- Monty Python | |
| Throw away documentation and manuals, and users will be a hundred times happier. Throw away privileges and quotas, and users will do the Right Thing. Throw away proprietary and site licenses, and there won't be any pirating. If these three aren't enough, just stay at your home directory and let all processes take their course. | |
| Well, we're big rock singers, we've got golden fingers, And we're loved everywhere we go. We sing about beauty, and we sing about truth, At ten thousand dollars a show. We take all kind of pills to give us all kind of thrills, But the thrill we've never known, Is the thrill that'll get'cha, when you get your picture, On the cover of the Rolling Stone. I got a freaky old lady, name of Cole King Katie, Who embroiders on my jeans. I got my poor old gray-haired daddy, Drivin' my limousine. Now it's all designed, to blow our minds, But our minds won't be really be blown; Like the blow that'll get'cha, when you get your picture, On the cover of the Rolling Stone. We got a lot of little, teen-aged, blue-eyed groupies, Who'll do anything we say. We got a genuine Indian guru, that's teachin' us a better way. We got all the friends that money can buy, So we never have to be alone. And we keep gettin' richer, but we can't get our picture, On the cover of the Rolling Stone. -- Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show [As a note, they eventually DID make the cover of RS. Ed.] | |
| High Priest: Armaments Chapter One, verses nine through twenty-seven: Bro. Maynard: And Saint Attila raised the Holy Hand Grenade up on high saying, "Oh Lord, Bless us this Holy Hand Grenade, and with it smash our enemies to tiny bits." And the Lord did grin, and the people did feast upon the lambs, and stoats, and orangutans, and breakfast cereals, and lima bean- High Priest: Skip a bit, brother. Bro. Maynard: And then the Lord spake, saying: "First, shalt thou take out the holy pin. Then shalt thou count to three. No more, no less. *Three* shall be the number of the counting, and the number of the counting shall be three. *Four* shalt thou not count, and neither count thou two, excepting that thou then goest on to three. Five is RIGHT OUT. Once the number three, being the third number be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade towards thy foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it. Amen. All: Amen. -- Monty Python, "The Holy Hand Grenade" | |
| 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." | |
| Hear me out. Linux is Microsoft's main competition right now. Because of this we are forcing them to "innovate", something they would usually avoid. Now if MS Bob has taught us anything, Microsoft is not a company that should be innovating. When they do, they don't come up with things like "better security" or "stability", they come back with "talking paperclips", and "throw in every usless feature we can think of, memory footprint be dammed". Unfortunatly, they also come up with the bright idea of executing email. Now MIME attachments aren't enough, they want you to be able to run/open attachments right when you get them. This sounds like a good idea to people who believe renaming directories to folders made computing possible for the common man, but security wise it's like vigorously shaking a package from the Unibomber. So my friends, we are to blame. We pushed them into frantically trying to invent "necessary" features to stay on top, and look where it got us. Many of us are watching our beloved mail servers go down under the strain and rebuilding our company's PC because of our pointless competition with MS. I implore you to please drop Linux before Microsoft innovates again. -- From a Slashdot.org post in regards to the ILOVEYOU email virus | |
| Red Hat Unveils New Ad Campaign Linux distributor Red Hat has announced plans for a $650,000 ad campaign. The ads will appear on several major newspapers as well as on a few selected websites. "These ads will be targetted towards Windows users who are fed up but aren't aware of any OS alternatives," a Red Hat spokesman said. "We feel that there is a large audience for this." One of the ads will be a half page spread showing two computers side-by-side: a Wintel and a Linux box. The title asks "Is your operating system ready for the year 2000?" Both computers have a calendar/clock display showing. The Windows box shows "12:00:01AM -- January 1, 1900" while the Linux box shows "12:00:01AM -- January 1, 2000". The tagline at the bottom says "Linux -- a century ahead of the competition." | |
| Tux Penguin Beanie Baby Sales Skyrocket Two weeks ago Ty released a 'Tux the Penguin' Beanie Baby. Sales of the stuffed toy have exceeded expectations. All 100,000 of them have been sold, and it will be another week before more can be produced and distributed. Tux is now the one of the most valuable Beanie Babies, with some stores selling remaining ones for over $500. Tux's strong sales constrast sharply with Ty's other computer-related Beanie Baby, 'Billy the Billionaire'. "Billy's sales are dismal. Except for the 2,000 that Bill Gates bought for himself and his daughter Jennifer, Billy has been a failure. People just aren't responsive to toys that represent greedy, capitalistic billionaires with bad haircuts," a member of the Church of Beanie Baby Collecting said. Ty is considering releasing other Beanie Babies similar to Tux. Some possibities include 'Steve the Apple Worm' and 'Wilbur the Gimp'. "Computer-related Beanie Babies are selling extremely well," a Ty spokesman said. "I don't understand why people are obsessed with these stupid stuffed toys. But as long as they're making me lots of money, I don't care! Oops... Please don't quote me on that." | |
| Humorix Holiday Gift Idea #5 AbsoluteZero(tm) Cryogenic Refrigerator $29,999.95 for economy model at Cryo-Me-A-River, Inc. The pundits have been hyping new technology allowing your home appliances to have Internet access. Most people aren't too keen with the thought of their refrigerator sharing an IP address with their can opener. But with the new AbsoluteZero(tm) Refrigerator, that might change. This is not a fridge for your food -- it's a fridge for your overclocked, overheating CPU. You stick your computer inside, bolt the door shut, turn the temperature down to 5 degrees Kelvin, and you've got the perfect environment for accelerating your CPU to 1 Terahertz or more. This cryogenic cooling system may not actually reach absolute zero, but it comes mighty close. Unfortunately, the AbsoluteZero(tm) is the size of a small house, consumes a constant stream of liquid nitrogen, and requires it's own nuclear reactor (not included). But that's a small price to pay for the ability to play Quake 3 at 100,000 frames per second. | |
| Humorix Holiday Gift Idea #8 Bob's Map to the Homes of the Rich & Geeky US$29.95 at BobsEcommerceSite.com Hollywood is full of shady street-side vendors selling "maps to the homes of the rich and famous" that are actually photocopies of photocopies of photocopies of an old 1984 Rand McNally map. But what about the Bay Area? Wouldn't you like to visit the homes and driveways of the rich and geeky in Silicon Valley? Wouldn't you like to see Linus Torvalds' residence? Wouldn't you like to drive by the home of permanent-interim-CEO Steve Jobs? Wouldn't you like to spit on the driveway of Bill Gates? Well, now you can. Bob's Map to the Homes of the Rich & Geeky is a full-color 128 page atlas filled with detailed instructions for finding the homes of 1,024 of the world's most famous geeks. From San Jose, to Seattle, to Austin, to Boston, Bob's Map is your passport to gawk at the homes of the rich and geeky. | |
| Linux Advocacy Crackdown SHERIDAN, WY -- In an unprecedented blow to Linux advocacy, Aaron McAdams, an employee at the Sheridan Try-N-Save Discount Store, was fired last week. According to the store's general manager, McAdams was fired because "he constantly rearranged items on shelves so that Linux-related books and software boxes would be displayed more prominently than Windows merchandise." McAdams' boss added, "If he would have spent as much time actually working as he did hiding Windows books at the back of shelves, he wouldn't have received the pink slip." The general manager supplied Humorix with videotapes from the store's security cameras showing McAdams in action. In one scene, he takes a whole stack of "...For Dummies" books and buries them in the Cheap Romance section, an area of the store rarely visited by computer users. In another, McAdams can be plainly seen setting copies of Red Hat Linux in front of a large, eye-catching display of various Microsoft products at the front of the store. Finally, at one point McAdams can be seen slapping huge tags reading "DEMO DISPLAY BOX -- NOT AVAILABLE UNTIL 1999" on boxes of Windows 98. McAdams disputes his bosses accusations. "If he would spend more time actually working instead of peering over security camera footage for hours on end, this store might actually turn a profit for a change." | |
| ERIC S. RAYMOND: I'd like to introduce Eric Jones, a disadvantaged member of the geek community who has been forced to live in a homeless shelter. Eric? Come on out here and tell us about yourself... JONES: Well, I'm a consultant for a Bay Area corporation. Due to the housing crisis, I've been forced to sleep in a shelter. ESR: How much do you make? JONES: Over $100,000 a year. ESR: Wow! And you still can't afford housing or rent? That sounds terrible... Hopefully with this telethon we'll be able to raise money to fund new shelters for disadvantaged geeks like Eric here. We also have plans for a Silicon Valley Terraforming Initiative in which several square miles of Pacific Ocean will be turned into usuable land for building housing and apartments for geeks... -- Excerpt from the Geek Grok '99 telethon | |
| Brief History Of Linux (#26) On the surface, Transmeta was a secretive startup that hired Linus Torvalds in 1996 as their Alpha Geek to help develop some kind of microprocessor. Linus, everyone found out later, was actually hired as part of a low-budget yet high-yield publicity stunt. While other dotcoms were burning millions on glitzy marketing campaigns nobody remembers and Superbowl ads displayed while jocks went to the bathroom, Transmeta was spending only pocket change on marketing. Most of that pocket change went towards hosting the Transmeta website (the one that wasn't there yet) which, incidentally, contained more original content and received more visitors than the typical dotcom portal. Microsoft relies on vaporware and certain ahem stipends given to journalists in order to generate buzz and hype for new products, but Transmeta only needed Non-Disclosure Agreements and the Personality Cult of Linus to build up its buzz. When the secret was finally unveiled, the Slashdot crowd was all excited about low-power mobile processors and code-morphing algorithms -- for a couple days. Then everyone yawned and went back to playing Quake. It's still not entirely clear when Transmeta is actually supposed to start selling something. | |
| Throwing Windows Out The Window The Federal Bureau Of Missing Socks has banned the use of Microsoft Windows and Office on all employee computers. But don't get too excited; they aren't going to replace them with Linux. Instead, this government agency has decided to go back to using abucusses, slide rules, and manual typewriters. The banishment of Microsoft software stems from the agency's new policy against computer games. MS Office, which contains several games in the form of Easter Eggs, is now verboten on all agency computers. "Flight simulators, pinball games, magic eight balls... they all violate our policy," said the sub-adjunct administrator second-class. "So we can't use Office." Windows is forbidden for the same reason. "We've had way too many employees wasting time playing Solitaire," she said. "Unfortunately, Solitaire is an integral part of Windows -- Microsoft executives said so during the anti-trust trial. If Solitaire is removed, the operating system won't function properly. Therefore, we have no choice but to banish all Windows computers." The Bureau's Assistant Technology Consultant, Mr. Reginald "Red" Taype, asked, "Have you ever seen an abucus crash? Have you ever seen anybody have fun with a slide rule? Do adding machines contain undocumented easter eggs? No! That's why we're ditching our PCs." | |
| And I suppose the little things are harder to get used to than the big ones. The big ones you get used to, you make up your mind to them. The little things come along unexpectedly, when you aren't thinking about them, aren't braced against them. -- Marion Zimmer Bradley, "The Forbidden Tower" | |
| Don't shoot until you're sure you both aren't on the same side. | |
| Everthing is farther away than it used to be. It is even twice as far to the corner and they have added a hill. I have given up running for the bus; it leaves earlier than it used to. It seems to me they are making the stairs steeper than in the old days. And have you noticed the smaller print they use in the newspapers? There is no sense in asking anyone to read aloud anymore, as everbody speaks in such a low voice I can hardly hear them. The material in dresses is so skimpy now, especially around the hips and waist, that it is almost impossible to reach one's shoelaces. And the sizes don't run the way they used to. The 12's and 14's are so much smaller. Even people are changing. They are so much younger than they used to be when I was their age. On the other hand people my age are so much older than I am. I ran into an old classmate the other day and she has aged so much that she didn't recognize me. I got to thinking about the poor dear while I was combing my hair this morning and in so doing I glanced at my own reflection. Really now, they don't even make good mirrors like they used to. Sandy Frazier, "I Have Noticed" | |
| Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they AREN'T after you. | |
| Modern man is the missing link between apes and human beings. | |
| Most people in this society who aren't actively mad are, at best, reformed or potential lunatics. -- Susan Sontag | |
| Violence stinks, no matter which end of it you're on. But now and then there's nothing left to do but hit the other person over the head with a frying pan. Sometimes people are just begging for that frypan, and if we weaken for a moment and honor their request, we should regard it as impulsive philanthropy, which we aren't in any position to afford, but shouldn't regret it too loudly lest we spoil the purity of the deed. -- Tom Robbins | |
| What's this stuff about people being "released on their own recognizance"? Aren't we all out on our own recognizance? | |
| When among apes, one must play the ape. | |
| WHENEVER ANYBODY SAYS he's struggling to become a human being I have to laugh because the apes beat him to it by about a million years. Struggle to become a parrot or something. -- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988. | |
| You know it's going to be a bad day when you want to put on the clothes you wore home from the party and there aren't any. | |
| You know you're in trouble when... (1) Your car horn goes off accidentally and remains stuck as you follow a group of Hell's Angels on the freeway. (2) You want to put on the clothes you wore home from the party and there aren't any. (3) Your boss tells you not to bother to take off your coat. (4) The bird singing outside your window is a buzzard. (5) You wake up and your braces are locked together. (6) Your mother approves of the person you're dating. | |
| "You say there are two types of people?" "Yes, those who separate people into two groups and those that don't." "Wrong. There are three groups: Those who separate people into three groups. Those who don't separate people into groups. Those who can't decide." "Wait a minute, what about people who separate people into two groups?" "Oh. Okay, then there are four groups." "Aren't you then separating people into four groups?" "Yeah." "So then there's a fifth group, right?" "You know, the problem is these idiots who can't make up their minds." | |
| Young men are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and fitter for new projects than for settled business. For the experience of age, in things that fall within the compass of it, directeth them; but in new things, abuseth them. The errors of young men are the ruin of business; but the errors of aged men amount but to this, that more might have been done, or sooner. Young men, in the conduct and management of actions, embrace more than they can hold; stir more than they can quiet; fly to the end, without consideration of the means and degrees; pursue some few principles which they have chanced upon absurdly; care not how they innovate, which draws unknown inconveniences; and, that which doubleth all errors, will not acknowledge or retract them; like an unready horse, that will neither stop nor turn. Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success. Certainly, it is good to compound employments of both ... because the virtues of either age may correct the defects of both. -- Francis Bacon, "Essay on Youth and Age" | |
| "I'd rather not work with people who aren't careful. It's darwinism in software development. It's a cold, callous argument that says that there are two kinds of people, and I'd rather not work with the second kind. Live with it." - Linus Torvalds | |
| > ... And aren't you one of the Preists of Text in > /proc -- those of the belief in managing everything with 'cat' and 'vi'. No. That would be Al Viro. - Alan Cox on linux-kernel | |
| I believe the Committee for the Preservation of Welsh Poetry are pretty settled on the -ac tree. Aren't they doing an audio CD of Alan reciting the TCP/IP stack sources? - Rich Hohensee on linux-kernel | |
| Aren't we lucky our documentation is so sparse noone can accuse us of being inconsistent? 8) - Rusty Russell on linux-kernel | |
| indent does _not_ solve the problem of: * buggers who use typedefs like WORD, DWORD, BYTE, IMANIDIOTSHOOTME and other crap from the same source (OK, they don't write the last one explicitly - not that it wasn't obvious from the rest of their, ahem, code). - Alexander Viro on coding style | |
| Are you a parent? Do you sometimes find yourself unsure as to what to say in those awkward situations? Worry no more... Are you sure you're telling the truth? Think hard. Does it make you happy to know you're sending me to an early grave? If all your friends jumped off the cliff, would you jump too? Do you feel bad? How do you think I feel? Aren't you ashamed of yourself? Don't you know any better? How could you be so stupid? If that's the worst pain you'll ever feel, you should be thankful. You can't fool me. I know what you're thinking. If you can't say anything nice, say nothing at all. | |
| No matter how old a mother is, she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement. -- Florida Scott-Maxwell | |
| The years of peak mental activity are undoubtedly between the ages of four and eighteen. At four we know all the questions, at eighteen all the answers. | |
| <doogie> Culus: my bug with openssh appears to be fixed in 2.5.2, but master runs 2.3.0 <Culus> Don't even start <doogie> I just did. <Culus> You guys are going to drive me to build a huge giant robot and destroy all of texas, aren't you? | |
| 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." | |
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| Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them. | |
| Most of what I really need to know about how to live, and what to do, and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain but there in the sandbox at nursery school. These are the things I learned: Share everything. Play fair. Don't hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don't take things that aren't yours. Say you're sorry when you hurt someone. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. Live a balanced life. Learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work some every day. Take a nap every afternoon. When you go out into the world, watch for traffic, hold hands, and stick together. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the plastic cup. The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that. Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the plastic cup -- they all die. So do we. And then remember the book about Dick and Jane and the first word you learned, the biggest word of all: LOOK. Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and sane living. Think of what a better world it would be if we all -- the whole world -- had cookies and milk about 3 o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or if we had a basic policy in our nation and other nations to always put things back where we found them and cleaned up our own messes. And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out into the world it is best to hold hands and stick together. -- Robert Fulghum, "All I ever really needed to know I learned in kindergarten" | |
| RIP is irrelevant. Spoofing is futile. Your routes will be aggregated. -- Alex Yuriev | |
| /* * Buddy system. Hairy. You really aren't expected to understand this * */ -- From /usr/src/linux/mm/page_alloc.cA | |
| Alex Buell: Or how about a Penguin logo painted in really really trippy colours, and emblazoned with the word LSD. :o) Geert Uytterhoeven: We already had that one, but unfortunately Russell King fixed that nasty palette bug in drivers/video/fbcon.c :-) -- linux-kernel | |
| Die TeX-Artikel [..] aber doch inzwischen wohl nicht mehr an den Fingern zweier Hände abzählbar (außer vielleicht von Informatikern, die bekanntlich mit den Fingern bis 1023 zählen können. -- Anselm Lingnau | |
| > Tut mir Leid, Jost, aber Du bist ein unertraeglicher Troll. Was soll das? Du *beleidigst* die Trolle! -- de.comp.os.unix.linux.misc | |
| If you aren't rich you should always look useful. -- Louis-Ferdinand Celine | |
| One possible reason that things aren't going according to plan is that there never was a plan in the first place. | |
| There is nothing so easy but that it becomes difficult when you do it reluctantly. -- Publius Terentius Afer (Terence) | |
| What they said: What they meant: "You will be fortunate if you can get him to work for you." (We certainly never succeeded.) There is no other employee with whom I can adequately compare him. (Well, our rats aren't really employees...) "Success will never spoil him." (Well, at least not MUCH more.) "One usually comes away from him with a good feeling." (And such a sigh of relief.) "His dissertation is the sort of work you don't expect to see these days; in it he has definitely demonstrated his complete capabilities." (And his IQ, as well.) "He should go far." (The farther the better.) "He will take full advantage of his staff." (He even has one of them mowing his lawn after work.) | |
| echo "Congratulations. You aren't running Eunice." -- Larry Wall in Configure from the perl distribution | |
| Even if you aren't in doubt, consider the mental welfare of the person who has to maintain the code after you, and who will probably put parens in the wrong place. -- Larry Wall in the perl man page | |
| And other operators aren't so special syntactically, but weird in other ways, like "scalar", and "goto". -- Larry Wall in <199711071749.JAA29751@wall.org> | |
| Those aren't WINOS -- that's my JUGGLER, my AERIALIST, my SWORD SWALLOWER, and my LATEX NOVELTY SUPPLIER!! | |
