One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to
do and always a clever thing to say.
-- Will Durant
I dunno, I dream in Perl sometimes...
-- Larry Wall in <8538@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
QOTD:
If you're looking for trouble, I can offer you a wide selection.
Buck-passing usually turns out to be a boomerang.
An aphorism is never exactly true; it is either a half-truth or
one-and-a-half truths.
-- Karl Kraus
If someone says he will do something "without fail", he won't.
Do your part to help preserve life on Earth -- by trying to preserve your own.
Max told his friend that he'd just as soon not go hiking in the hills.
Said he, "I'm an anti-climb Max."
[So is that punchline.]
Q: What is the sound of one cat napping?
A: Mu.
Boss: You forgot to assign the result of your map!
Hacker: Dang, I'm always forgetting my assignations...
Boss: And what's that "goto" doing there?!?
Hacker: Er, I guess my finger slipped when I was typing "getservbyport"...
Boss: Ah well, accidents will happen. Maybe we should have picked APL.
-- Larry Wall in <199710311732.JAA19169@wall.org>
"Now I've got the bead on you with MY disintegrating gun. And when it
disintegrates, it disintegrates. (pulls trigger) Well, what you do know,
it disintegrated."
-- Duck Dodgers in the 24th and a half century
All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that the parts
you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if you can't get
them together again, there must be a reason. By all means, do not use a hammer.
-- IBM maintenance manual, 1925
I went over to my friend, he was eatin' a pickle.
I said "Hi, what's happenin'?"
He said "Nothin'."
Try to sing this song with that kind of enthusiasm;
As if you just squashed a cop.
-- Arlo Guthrie, "Motorcycle Song"
If we want something nice to get born in nine months, then sex has to
happen. We want to have the kind of sex that is acceptable and fun for both
people, not the kind where someone is getting screwed. Let's get some cross
fertilization, but not someone getting screwed.
-- Larry Wall
"I'd love to go out with you, but my favorite commercial is on TV."
My parents went to Niagara Falls and all I got was this crummy life.
better !pout !cry
better watchout
lpr why
santa claus < north pole > town
cat /etc/passwd > list
ncheck list
ncheck list
cat list | grep naughty > nogiftlist
cat list | grep nice > giftlist
santa claus < north pole > town
who | grep sleeping
who | grep awake
who | grep bad || good
for (goodness sake) {
be good
}
Lots of people drink from the wrong bottle sometimes.
-- Edith Keeler, "The City on the Edge of Forever",
stardate unknown
Caution: breathing may be hazardous to your health.
The IBM 2250 is impressive ...
if you compare it with a system selling for a tenth its price.
-- D. Cohen
OK, enough hype.
-- Larry Wall in the perl man page
Alone, adj.:
In bad company.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
If it happens once, it's a bug.
If it happens twice, it's a feature.
If it happens more than twice, it's a design philosophy.
The magic of our first love is our ignorance that it can ever end.
-- Benjamin Disraeli
<Silvrbear> Oxymorons? I saw one yesterday - the pamphlet on "Taco Bell
Nutritional Information"
An Ada exception is when a routine gets in trouble and says
'Beam me up, Scotty'.
Fifth Law of Applied Terror:
If you are given an open-book exam, you will forget your book.
Corollary:
If you are given a take-home exam, you will forget where you live.
If you want to know what god thinks of money, just look at the people he gave
it to.
-- Dorthy Parker
I base my fashion taste on what doesn't itch.
-- Gilda Radner
One is not born a woman, one becomes one.
-- Simone de Beauvoir
Oh, give me a locus where the gravitons focus
Where the three-body problem is solved,
Where the microwaves play down at three degrees K,
And the cold virus never evolved. (chorus)
We eat algea pie, our vacuum is high,
Our ball bearings are perfectly round.
Our horizon is curved, our warheads are MIRVed,
And a kilogram weighs half a pound. (chorus)
If we run out of space for our burgeoning race
No more Lebensraum left for the Mensch
When we're ready to start, we can take Mars apart,
If we just find a big enough wrench. (chorus)
I'm sick of this place, it's just McDonald's in space,
And living up here is a bore.
Tell the shiggies, "Don't cry," they can kiss me goodbye
'Cause I'm moving next week to L4! (chorus)
CHORUS: Home, home on LaGrange,
Where the space debris always collects,
We possess, so it seems, two of Man's greatest dreams:
Solar power and zero-gee sex.
-- to Home on the Range
intoxicated, adj.:
When you feel sophisticated without being able to pronounce it.
Science is to computer science as hydrodynamics is to plumbing.
He played the king as if afraid someone else would play the ace.
-- John Mason Brown, drama critic
When a girl can read the handwriting on the wall, she may be in the wrong
rest room.
This login session: $13.99
<marcus> dunham: You know how real numbers are constructed from rational
numbers by equivalence classes of convergent sequences?
<dunham> marcus: yes.
Dave Mack: "Your stupidity, Allen, is simply not up to par."
Allen Gwinn: "Yours is."
Try to have as good a life as you can under the circumstances.
Cleanliness is next to impossible.
<Manoj> I *like* the chicken
Status Substitution:
Using an object with intellectual or fashionable cachet to
substitute for an object that is merely pricey: "Brian, you left your
copy of Camus in your brother's BMW."
-- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
Culture"
"I am ... a woman ... and ... technically a parasitic uterine growth"
-- Sean Doran the Younger [allegedly]
"... an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite often
picturesque liar."
-- Mark Twain
Nobody ever forgets where he buried the hatchet.
-- Kin Hubbard
X windows:
It's not how slow you make it. It's how you make it slow.
The windowing system preferred by masochists 3 to 1.
Built to take on the world... and lose!
Don't try it 'til you've knocked it.
Power tools for Power Fools.
Putting new limits on productivity.
The closer you look, the cruftier we look.
Design by counterexample.
A new level of software disintegration.
No hardware is safe.
Do your time.
Rationalization, not realization.
Old-world software cruftsmanship at its finest.
Gratuitous incompatibility.
Your mother.
THE user interference management system.
You can't argue with failure.
You haven't died 'til you've used it.
The environment of today... tomorrow!
X windows.
Science is built up of facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection
of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.
-- Jules Henri Poincar'e
The answer to the question of Life, the Universe, and Everything is...
Four day work week,
Two ply toilet paper!
A lady is one who never shows her underwear unintentionally.
-- Lillian Day
Be open to other people -- they may enrich your dream.
Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get.
What kind of love is that? Not to be loved; never to have shown love.
-- Commissioner Nancy Hedford, "Metamorphosis",
stardate 3219.8
Say something you'll be sorry for, I love receiving apologies.
I distrust a man who says when. If he's got to be careful not to drink
too much, it's because he's not to be trusted when he does.
-- Sidney Greenstreet, "The Maltese Falcon"
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
-- Oscar Wilde
I used to be disgusted, now I find I'm just amused.
-- Elvis Costello
Oatmeal raisin.
Those who have had no share in the good fortunes of the mighty
Often have a share in their misfortunes.
-- Bertolt Brecht, "The Caucasian Chalk Circle"
Semper Fi, dude.
Hi! You have reached 555-0129. None of us are here to answer the phone and
the cat doesn't have opposing thumbs, so his messages are illegible. Please
leave your name and message after the beep...
Immanuel doesn't pun, he Kant.
Hat check girl:
"Goodness! What lovely diamonds!"
Mae West:
"Goodness had nothin' to do with it, dearie."
-- "Night After Night", 1932
"Everybody is talking about the weather but nobody does anything about it."
-- Mark Twain
A gangster assembled an engineer, a chemist, and a physicist. He explained
that he was entering a horse in a race the following week and the three
assembled guys had the job of assuring that the gangster's horse would win.
They were to reconvene the day before the race to tell the gangster how they
each propose to ensure a win. When they reconvened the gangster started with
the engineer:
Gangster: OK, Mr. engineer, what have you got?
Engineer: Well, I've invented a way to weave metallic threads into the saddle
blanket so that they will act as the plates of a battery and provide
electrical shock to the horse.
G: That's very good! But let's hear from the chemist.
Chemist: I've synthesized a powerful stimulant that disolves
into simple blood sugars after ten minutes and therefore
cannot be detected in post-race tests.
G: Excellent, excellent! But I want to hear from the physicist before
I decide what to do. Physicist?
Physicist: Well, first consider a spherical horse in simple harmonic motion...
No small art is it to sleep: it is necessary for that purpose to keep
awake all day.
-- Nietzsche
Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as satisfying
as an income tax refund.
-- F. J. Raymond
For a young man, not yet: for an old man, never at all.
-- Diogenes, asked when a man should marry
When should a man marry? A young man, not yet; an elder man, not at all.
-- Sir Francis Bacon, "Of Marriage and Single Life"
My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people's.
-- Oscar Wilde
Never call a man a fool. Borrow from him.
Since before the Earth was formed and before the sun burned hot in space,
cosmic forces of inexorable power have been working relentlessly toward
this moment in space-time -- your receiving this fortune.
When you're married to someone, they take you for granted ... when
you're living with someone it's fantastic ... they're so frightened
of losing you they've got to keep you satisfied all the time.
-- Nell Dunn, "Poor Cow"
We all live in a state of ambitious poverty.
-- Decimus Junius Juvenalis
The best you get is an even break.
-- Franklin Adams
Creating computer software is always a demanding and painstaking
process -- an exercise in logic, clear expression, and almost fanatical
attention to detail. It requires intelligence, dedication, and an
enormous amount of hard work. But, a certain amount of unpredictable
and often unrepeatable inspiration is what usually makes the difference
between adequacy and excellence.
The world is coming to an end! Repent and return those library books!
If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner.
-- Tallulah Bankhead
Now, if the leaders of the world -- people who are leaders by virtue of
political, military or financial power, and not necessarily wisdom or
consideration for mankind -- if these leaders manage not to pull us
over the brink into planetary suicide, despite their occasional pompous
suggestions that they may feel obliged to do so, we may survive beyond
1988.
-- George Rostky, EE Times, June 20, 1988 p. 45
C++ is the best example of second-system effect since OS/360.
Your lucky color has faded.
No matter who you are, some scholar can show you the great idea you had
was had by someone before you.
"Gee, Toto, I don't think we are in Kansas anymore."
Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man.
-- Trotsky
Is this going to involve RAW human ecstasy?
The makers may make
and the users may use,
but the fixers must fix
with but minimal clues
You are fighting for survival in your own sweet and gentle way.
"I'd love to go out with you, but I have to floss my cat."
"Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk ?"
Microsoft spel chekar vor sail, worgs grate !!
(By
leitner@inf.fu-berlin.de, Felix von Leitner)
The state law of Pennsylvania prohibits singing in the bathtub.
Fess: Well, you must admit there is something innately humorous about
a man chasing an invention of his own halfway across the galaxy.
Rod: Oh yeah, it's a million yuks, sure. But after all, isn't that the
basic difference between robots and humans?
Fess: What, the ability to form imaginary constructs?
Rod: No, the ability to get hung up on them.
-- Christopher Stasheff, "The Warlock in Spite of Himself"
Executive ability is prominent in your make-up.
The most exquisite peak in culinary art is conquered when you do right by a
ham, for a ham, in the very nature of the process it has undergone since last
it walked on its own feet, combines in its flavor the tang of smoky autumnal
woods, the maternal softness of earthy fields delivered of their crop children,
the wineyness of a late sun, the intimate kiss of fertilizing rain, and the
bite of fire. You must slice it thin, almost as thin as this page you hold
in your hands. The making of a ham dinner, like the making of a gentleman,
starts a long, long time before the event.
-- W.B. Courtney, "Reflections of Maryland Country Ham",
from "Congress Eate It Up"
After 14 non-maintainer releases, I'm the S-Lang non-maintainer.
-- Ray Dassen
Dinosaurs aren't extinct. They've just learned to hide in the trees.
The hatred of relatives is the most violent.
-- Tacitus (c.55 - c.117)
The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep. -W.C. Fields
[May one] doubt whether, in cheese and timber, worms are generated,
or, if beetles and wasps, in cow-dung, or if butterflies, locusts,
shellfish, snails, eels, and such life be procreated of putrefied
matter, which is to receive the form of that creature to which it
is by formative power disposed[?] To question this is to question
reason, sense, and experience. If he doubts this, let him go to
Egypt, and there he will find the fields swarming with mice begot
of the mud of the Nylus, to the great calamity of the inhabitants.
A seventeenth century opinion quoted by L. L. Woodruff,
in *The Evolution of Earth and Man*, 1929
[From the operation manual for the CI-300 Dot Matrix Line Printer, made
in Japan]:
The excellent output machine of MODEL CI-300 as extraordinary DOT MATRIX
LINE PRINTER, built in two MICRO-PROCESSORs as well as EAROM, is featured by
permitting wonderful co-existence such as; "high quality against low cost,"
"diversified functions with compact design," "flexibility in accessibleness
and durability of approx. 2000,000,00 Dot/Head," "being sophisticated in
mechanism but possibly agile operating under noises being extremely
suppressed" etc.
And as a matter of course, the final goal is just simply to help achieve
"super shuttle diplomacy" between cool data, perhaps earned by HOST
COMPUTER, and warm heart of human being.
Finally, Zippy drives his 1958 RAMBLER METROPOLITAN into the faculty
dining room.
Words are the voice of the heart.
The basic idea behind malls is that they are more convenient than cities.
Cities contain streets, which are dangerous and crowded and difficult to
park in. Malls, on the other hand, have parking lots, which are also
dangerous and crowded and difficult to park in, but -- here is the big
difference -- in mall parking lots, THERE ARE NO RULES. You're allowed to
do anything. You can drive as fast as you want in any direction you want.
I was once driving in a mall parking lot when my car was struck by a pickup
truck being driven backward by a squat man with a tattoo that said "Charlie"
on his forearm, who got out and explained to me, in great detail, why the
accident was my fault, his reasoning being that he was violent and muscular,
whereas I was neither. This kind of reasoning is legally valid in mall
parking lots.
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"