From: Henrique de Moraes Holschuh
"One disk to rule them all,
One disk to find them.
One disk to bring them all and in the darkness grind them.
In the Land of Redmond where the shadows lie."
--- The Silicon Valley Tarot Henrique Holschuh
From: http://investorvillage.com/smbd.asp?mb=1911&mn=123182&pt=msg&mid=13055608
You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to
take pee out of a swimming pool.
From: Geert Uytterhoeven
In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
--- Linus Torvalds
From: anonymous
Home computers are being called upon to perform
many new functions, including the consumption of homework
formerly eaten by the dog.
--- Doug Larson
From: http://beta.investorvillage.com/smbd.asp?mb=1911&mn=116739&pt=msg&mid=11507339
You can trust your important data to the Microsoft Azure Cloud platform.
Azure has the same quality of service, robustness, backup, security and
reliability that you have come to expect from the Microsoft name.
From: http://gamerfront.net/2011/12/n-control-responds-to-ocean-marketing-fiasco/15260
“I can’t worry about the fact that there isn’t a bus big enough for me to
throw Paul Christoforo under. The internet did that for me. I think they
set him on fire too.”
--- Moisés Chiullan
From: http://www.investorvillage.com/smbd.asp?mb=1911&mn=79886&pt=msg&mid=6602241
What I can tell you that is not subject to hearsay, because I -- I
read it an e-mail this morning before I came over here, but I don't --
can't print it out and show you, is that in October of 2007, York, the
managing director we were dealing with, sent me an e-mail saying, "Our
counsel has reviewed your claims in the District Court and we agree with
you that you will have this turned over on appeal."
--- Darl McBride, SCO
From: http://www.investorvillage.com/smbd.asp?mb=1911&mn=25132&pt=msg&mid=1760619
"They say when you play that Microsoft CD backward you can hear
satanic messages.... but that's nothing. If you play it forward
it will install Windows."
--- Hecate
From: Alan Batie
"Using SSL to deliver data between a desktop PC and a typical website is
like using an armored car to deliver money from your sock drawer to a
paper bag taped under a park bench."
From: http://finance.messages.yahoo.com/bbs?action=m&board=1600684464&tid=cald&sid=1600684464&mid=360038
"We will not rest until your business is secure. Period."
--- Brian Valentine, MS VP - Windows Division 10-03-2001
"When we face a choice between adding features and resolving security
issues, we need to choose security. Our products should emphasize
security right out of the box."
--- Bill Gates 1-16-2002
"SP2 is a release that is totally focused on security and in
fact today that is the primary focus on the Windows team."
--- Bill Gates 2-24-2004
"Security is our top priority. I can't see that changing any
time soon."
--- Bill Gates 2-15-2006
"When you are dealing with rootkits and some advanced spyware programs,
the only solution is to rebuild from scratch. In some cases, there
really is no way to recover without nuking the systems from orbit."
--- Mike Danseglio, MS Security Group 4-4-2006
From: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=135829&cid=11340067
All of these so-called companies are just fronts for Communists and
liberal fellow-travellers. Remember, when you buy Apple or download
Linux, you're supporting Communism. Good Americans support real
freedom-loving businesses like Microsoft, SCO, and AMD.
From: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3485972.stm
"We have never had vulnerabilities exploited before the patch was known"
...
"Almost all attacks against our software are against the legacy systems"
--- David Aucsmith, in charge of technology at
Microsoft's security business and
technology unit.
From: http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Quotations/Turing.html
No, I'm not interested in developing a powerful brain. All I'm
after is just a mediocre brain, something like the President of
the American Telephone and Telegraph Company."
From: http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/28619
Important: Just to be clear, it's ok to talk about the leak and
the possible impliations, however we'll nuke you and your family
if you even make the most slight clever hint of where to download
it or even screenshots of it.
From: Alan Batie
I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my
telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone.
--- Bjarne Stroustrup, computer science professor,
designer of C++ programming language (1950- )
From: Alan Batie
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who understand
binary, and those who have friends.
From: "Anders Lind"
The trouble with troubleshooting is that sometimes the trouble
shoots back.
From: Jeff Merth
"The network is the computer"
yes; but we're less interested in computers all the
time. The real topic in astronomy is the cosmos, not
telescopes. The real topic in computing is the
Cybersphere and the cyberstructures in it, not the
computers we use as telescopes and tuners.
From: http://science.slashdot.org/science/03/05/27/0130257.shtml?tid=134
Imagine if Acme had ever made an operating system.
*rubs chin*
Naw, couldn't be...
--- In reference to the supply company of
Wiley E Coyote of the Road Runner cartoons.
From: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.06/battlefield_pr.html
From a discussion about using computers in Gulf War II:
"If a general has a problem with his Web browser, then I fix it," Cluff says.
"How do you fix it?" I ask.
"I consult Microsoft online help," he replies. "We have Premier help,"
he adds, referring to the live operators available to subscribers only.
"But most of the time it's something as simple as telling them they
have to plug in so the battery doesn't run out." And then, with complete
seriousness, he adds, "Without me here, I don't think that we'd be where
we are today."
From: The Splendid Table
Artifical Intelligence is no match for Natural Stupidity.
From: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0140502416/qid=1052205877/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/002-8053280-9636867?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
Book review of a children's book titled "The Story About Ping" written in 1933.
5 out of 5 stars Ping!
Ping! I love that duck!, January 25, 2000
Reviewer: John E. Fracisco (see more about me) from El Segundo
PING! The magic duck!
Using deft allegory, the authors have provided an insightful and
intuitive explanation of one of Unix's most venerable networking
utilities. Even more stunning is that they were clearly working
with a very early beta of the program, as their book first appeared
in 1933, years (decades!) before the operating system and network
infrastructure were finalized.
The book describes networking in terms even a child could understand,
choosing to anthropomorphize the underlying packet structure. The
ping packet is described as a duck, who, with other packets (more
ducks), spends a certain period of time on the host machine (the
wise-eyed boat). At the same time each day (I suspect this is
scheduled under cron), the little packets (ducks) exit the host
(boat) by way of a bridge (a bridge). From the bridge, the packets
travel onto the internet (here embodied by the Yangtze River).
The title character -- er, packet, is called Ping. Ping meanders
around the river before being received by another host (another
boat). He spends a brief time on the other boat, but eventually
returns to his original host machine (the wise-eyed boat) somewhat
the worse for wear.
If you need a good, high-level overview of the ping utility, this
is the book. I can't recommend it for most managers, as the
technical aspects may be too overwhelming and the basic concepts
too daunting.
Problems With This Book
As good as it is, The Story About Ping is not without its faults.
There is no index, and though the ping(8) man pages cover the
command line options well enough, some review of them seems to
be in order. Likewise, in a book solely about Ping, I would have
expected a more detailed overview of the ICMP packet structure.
But even with these problems, The Story About Ping has earned
a place on my bookshelf, right between Stevens' Advanced
Programming in the Unix Environment, and my dog-eared copy of
Dante's seminal work on MS Windows, Inferno. Who can read that
passage on the Windows API ("Obscure, profound it was, and
nebulous, So that by fixing on its depths my sight -- Nothing
whatever I discerned therein."), without shaking their head
with deep understanding. But I digress.
From: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/1877197
For her part, e-mail marketer Sachs says that any such move will only end up
making it harder to run a legitimate business.
"These antispammers should get a life," she said. "Do their fingers hurt too
much from pressing the delete key? How much time does that really take from
their day?"
By contrast, she said: "70 million people have bad credit. Guess what? Now I
can't get mail through to them to help them."
From: www.hcdonline.com/jobs/DisplayJob.asp?ID=32572
HCD Job Board
Job Listing
Email this job to a friend.
Job ID: 32572
Category: New Media
Job Title: eMail ad designer
Job Description: Need a techy or ad person who can jam out killer ads using
front page for eMail campaigns. Easy gig for someone who knows how to
write and cut and paste. Good op for freelance, college, or veteran
Internet or Advertising guru
Job Location: Los Angeles
Phone Number: 323-871-2000x11
Fax Number: 323-871-0625
Email: yurontv@netglobalmarketing.com
From: http://news.com.com/2100-1001-944057.html
A mouse can be just as dangerous as a bullet or a bomb.
From: Joe Schaefer
Rule 5. Data dominates. If you've chosen the right data structures
and organized things well, the algorithms will almost always be
self-evident. Data structures, not algorithms, are central to
programming.
From: CRN 17 Dec 2001 page 4
... Because Hydra [a package from Boracion Technologies] uses a
proprietary operating system, it doesn't have the vulnerabilities
or reliability issues associated with operating systems such as
Windows or Unix, he said.
--- Summary:
Windows isn't a proprietary OS, nor is
Unix. By implication, having a proprietary OS
prevents vulnerabilities and increases reliability,
though it the above passage can be simply read
to mean that they have different issues.
From: "LooseChanj"
If $vendor wants to improve the quality of their products, they could
try cutting down their developers' drug dosages, but if that's not
possible they should at least make sure they're all on the same drugs.
From: "LooseChanj"
Failure is not an option. It's bundled with the software.
From: Kurt Kohler
> How do I read MIME files???
Quietly, while pretending to be trapped in an invisible box. :)
From: Bill Maidment
Windows - Where do you want to go today?
MacOS - Where do you want to be tomorrow?
Linux - Are you coming, or what?
From: Allen Brown
Software means never having to say you're finished.
From: http://combat.uxn.com/
ROWAN v. U. S. POST OFFICE DEPT., 397 U.S. 728, May 4, 1970
"Nothing in the Constitution compels us to listen to or view any
unwanted communication, whatever its merit. We categorically reject
the argument that a vendor has a right under the Constitution or
otherwise to send unwanted material into the home of another. If
this prohibition operates to impede the flow of even valid ideas,
the answer is that no one has a right to press even 'good' ideas
on an unwilling recipient. The asserted right of a mailer,
we repeat, stops at the outer boundary of every person's domain."
"[Spammers] have come to court not because their freedom of
speech is threatened but because their profits are; to
dress up their complaints in First Amendment garb demeans
the principles for which the First Amendment stands."
--- US Federal Judge Stanley Sporkin
From: "Mike Richardson"
"Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid.
Humans beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant.
Together they are powerful beyond imagination."
--- Albert Einstein 1879 - 1955
From: cc
On Sat, 27 Apr 1996, Jeff Johnson wrote:
> I know that this is not the most appropriate place the ask, but is there
> any development on a VMS clone?? A VMS for x86 and other hardware could be
> particularly interesting...
You are a very sick person.
From: "David S. Miller"
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 1996 10:51:55 -0400 (EDT)
From: Harvey Fishman
Ungainly and comical on land, but a thing of
grace and beauty when in its own true element?
I think you've just defined "kernel hacker".
From: David Coble
Internal Sort: The Stomach, Liver, And Kidneys Keep Changing Positions
From: Hui Lee
"Maybe you should telephone the Internet and talk to their tech
support people."
--- Reply from an AOL tech-support rep speaking
to a customer complaining about e-mail that
failed to go through.
SOURCE: Internet World, February 1995, p. 18
From: John Henders
Artificial Intelligence stands no chance against Natural Stupidity.
From: Steve Martin
REALITY.DAT not found.
Atempting to restore Universe.......
REALITY.SYS Corrupted - Unable to recover Universe
--- Press Esc key to reboot Universe, or any other key to continue ---
From: Steve Martin
* User Error! Replace User and strike any key...
From: Cliff W. Draper
"There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to
make is so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the
other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious
deficiencies."
From: Brian Mancuso
Computation is the art of carefully throwing away information.
From: Tim Bass
#include
for(beer=100;beer>1;beer++){
take_one_down();
pass_it_around();
}
back_to_work(); /*never reached */
From: Denis Dimick
"Confused? Don't be. If a subnet mask is used on your network,
your network administrator will provide you with the correct value."
--- TCP/IP Network Administration, p.35
From: anonymous
Modern computers have advanced to the point where they are extremely
intuitive, though obviously you have to spend a lot of time learning
how to use them first.
From: Walter Dnes
A picture is worth a thousand words; unfortunately,
it consumes the bandwidth of ten thousand words.
From: http://www.reuben.org/holbrook/low/weekly.html
"This quote is taken from the Diamondback, the University of Maryland
student newspaper, of Tuesday, 3/10/87.
One disadvantage of the Univac system is that it does not use
Unix, a recently developed program which translates from one
computer language to another and has a built-in editing system
which identifies errors in the original program."
From: Peter Skliarouk
You don't need to be faster than the bear which is chasing
you. You merely need to be faster -- or less tasty -- than
the others running with you.
--- From "Maintaining system security"
From: Wayne Topa
Software, n.:
Formal evening attire for female computer analysts.
From: Steven J. Sobol
"Anyone have Lil-Red's e-mail address?" (Me, on IRC)
"No. If they had it, it wouldn't be hers." (Heller, in reply to me)
From: Eric C Wagner
Applying computer technology is simply finding the right wrench
to pound in the correct screw.
From: anonymous
Programmer - A red-eyed, mumbling mammal capable of conversing with
inanimate objects.
From: David Kelly
Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.
From: Bill Butler
Hint to the Mac user:
When talking to a Windows user, be sure to always adopt a condescending
tone. If you have trouble with this, ask a Unix user.
From: Simon
i'll start coding - you find out what they want.
From: Greg Bacon
It has been discovered that C++ provides a remarkable facility
for concealing the trival details of a program -- such as where
its bugs are.
From: Buzz
This message consists entirely of true bits and false bits!
From: Tom Christiansen
Pointers are sharp tools, and like any such tool, used well they can
be delightfully productive, but used badly they can do great damage
(I sunk a wood chisel into my thumb a few days before writing this).
From: Tom Christiansen
"SPARC" is "CRAPS" backwards
From: Sam Holden
Basically, avoid comments. If your code needs a comment to be
understood, it would be better to rewrite it so it's easier to
understand.
From: Anthony Frost
"The moving finger writes, and having writ, backspaces a bit, deletes
the last word and replaces it with "unctuous", reformats the paragraph,
adjusts the font size, and adds a gigantic sig of a sleeping pussy cat
and a quote from a poem."
--- Omar Khayyam, on his second day on USENET.
From: Rodger Donaldson
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him to
use the Net and he won't bother you for weeks."
From: Michael Brown
"Apparently giving caffeine to spiders makes them spin really
bad webs, whereas giving them LSD makes them more uniform and
better. Imagine what the WWW would have been like if it had
been invented in the 60's"
--- Richard Letts in the Monastery
From: John R. Campbell
As a SysAdmin, yes, I CAN read your e-mail, but I DON'T get that bored!
From: Sergej Roytman
I did not dislike VMS in the brief time that I worked with it. Yes, I
thought it strange, but it looked like something humans could come up
with if they hadn't come up with Unix.
IBM's operating systems, on the other hand, all seem to have been
written by Martians!
From: Rebecca Gray
"Nahh, that impending sound of doom is just the blades
on my leatherman locking."
From: anonymous
Yea, tho I walk thru the valley of the shadow of clues, I shall fear no
luser, for Thou lart with me, Thy chicken and Thy manual, they comfort me.
From: Kirrily 'Skud' Robert
The best book on programming for the layman is 'Alice in Wonderland',
but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman.
From: Sunburst
No lusers were harmed in the making of this .sig.
I will try harder next time, I promise.
From: Tom Christiansen
"C is not a big language, and it's not well served by a big book."
--- Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie,
in "The C programming Language",
Prentice Hall 1988
From: Abigail
I have not had the time to search the patent literature systematically;
indeed, I decry the current tendency to seek patents on algorithms. If
somebody sends me a copy of a relevant patent not presently cited in this
book, I will dutifully refer to it in future editions. However, I want
to encourage people to continue the centuries-old mathematical tradition
of putting newly discovered algorithms into the public domain. There are
better ways to earn a living than to prevent other people from making use
of one's contributions to computer science.
--- Donald E. Knuth. The Art of Computer Programming.
Volume III. 2nd Edition. Preface. p vi.
Addison-Wesley. 1998. ]
#From: Tom Christiansen
#
#I just hate to be pushed around by some fucking machine.
# --- Ken Thompson, on the i960
From: Tom Christiansen
"The reason you subscribe to a mailing list is you don't get all
the crap you get on netnews."
From: Matthias Neeracher
"Using encryption on the Internet is the equivalent of arranging
an armored car to deliver credit-card information from someone
living in a cardboard box to someone living on a park bench."
From: Dave Cinege
I am a regex retard. Behold. Take pity.
From: Jan Dockx
"There's some joke making around about some mathematician
that said that 1000 chimpansees in 1000 years sitting at
1000 typewriters would eventually write the works of
Shakespeare. And the snap around the joke is that the Web
proves this is not so."
--- Kurt Vonnegut about the Internet
in "Vonnegut's Timequake;
All Things Considered,
September 22, 1997;
National Public Radio"
From: Anonymous
All persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental,
and should not be construed.
From: Timothy J. Miller
Undetected errors will be treated as if no error has occurred.
-- IBM's "Think" magazine
From: Frank Sweetser
You can bring any calculator you like to the midterm, as long as it
doesn't dim the lights when you turn it on.
--- Hepler, Systems Design 182
From: bill davidsen
"I think there's a problem with the server power supply."
"Why?"
"There were flames coming out of the cooling fan until it stopped."
--- actual conversation,
on a Friday afternoon of course
From: Fuzzy Fox
"The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but
that men will begin to think like computers."
From: Doug Siebert
If you let the system beat you long enough, eventually it'll get tired.
From: David Simmons
"There is no such thing as sleep deprivation, only caffeine deficiency."
From: Bruce
HELO my name is sendmail.cf. You SIGKILLed my shell. Prepare to vi.
From: Heather Garvey
Sysadmin Barbie! Complete with tiny pager, Leatherman, selection of LARTs,
and makeup kit for that haven't-slept-in-3-days look.
From: Tanuki the Raccoon-dog
"The meek may inherit the earth, but they don't get write permission"
From: Charlie Stross
Getting a SCSI chain working is perfectly simple if you remember that there
must be exactly three terminations: one on one end of the cable, one on the
far end, and the goat, terminated over the SCSI chain with a silver-handled
knife whilst burning *black* candles.
From: Don Maslin
Don Maslin - Keeper of the Dina-SIG CP/M System Disk Archives
Chairman, Dina-SIG of the San Diego Computer Society
Clinging tenaciously to the trailing edge of technology.
Sysop - Elephant's Graveyard (CP/M) - 619-454-8412
From: extlab1.entnem.ufl.edu/IH8PCs/vol2/V2N5.html
Smith & Wesson: The original Point and Click interface.
From: Abigail
Anyone who slaps a "this page is best viewed with Browser X" label
on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the
Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on
another computer, another word processor, or another network.
--- Tim Berners-Lee in Technology Review, July 1996
From: Josh Fishman
ObTechSupport: I could tell you, but then I'd have to bill you.
From: Peter Korsten
'Never EVER mess with a jumper you don't know about, even if it's
labeled "sex and free beer".
--- Dave Haynie, Amiga developer
From: Tom Christiansen
As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error.
From: Alessandro Forghieri
If it stinks, it's chemistry. If it moves, it's biology.
If it does not work, It's computer science.
From: Tom Christiansen
"It has nothing to do with the size of Mr. Alnwick's company. We go after
companies large and small."
--- Rita Black,
spokesperson for IBM, "Unix Today!",
5/29/89, page 51
From: Ricky
System Administators -- Postal workers of the computer industry
From: anonymous
There comes a time in the history of any project when it becomes
necessary to shoot the engineers and begin production.
--- MacUser, November 1990
From: ihnp4!umn-cs!starfire!john (John Lind
"The question 'Can machines think?' is as ill-posed and uninteresting as
the question 'Can submarines swim?'"
--- Dr. E.W. Dijkstra, EWD-854
From: Aaron Crane
ObSig: "Object-oriented programming is an exceptionally bad idea
which could only have originated in California."
From: Tom Christiansen
"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy
is about telescopes."
From: Tom Christiansen
"I discount everything Djikstra has to say because he doesn't actually
run his programs."
--- Rob Pike, On Djikstra's belief
that bugs in your program are a moral
failure to prove your program
mathematically correct.
From: Wayne
Hit any user to continue.
From: Chris Dauer
"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!],
'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures,
will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to
apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke
such a question.
From: Russell Leach {78830}
"Don't anthropomorphize computers. They hate that."
From: Crispin Cowan
"Since this is an exercise divorced from reality,
the usual vehicle was FORTRAN."
--- Ken Thompson, Turing Award Lecture
From: Tom Christiansen
Hi, this is Ken. What's the root password?
From: Terence S. Murphy
"Window: Something out of which you jump when the power
fails and you lose a large program."
From: Andrew J Wilson
Atilla The Hun's Maxim:
If you're going to rape, pillage and burn,
be sure to do things in that order.
--- P. J. Plauger, Programming On Purpose, p147
From: Peter Galbavy
"The 'net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."
From: Christopher Davis
"It's 106 ms to Chicago, we've got a full disk of GIFs, half a meg of
hypertext, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses." "Click it."
From: Victor Lewis
Any spelling errors in the above are due to a known bug in my
wetware. Please route all spelling related flames or spelling
corrections to /dev/null.
Fixed in VictorIIIr2.
From: Michael Lacey
"All workers happy and raring to go.
All systems up and running.
All pigs fed and ready to fly."
From: Tom Christiansen
"Text processing has made it possible to right-justify any idea,
even one which cannot be justified on any other grounds."
From: Charles
Harnad describes the status of Usenet aptly:
a communication medium with revolutionary intellectual
potential being used mostly as a global graffiti board.
[Harnad 1991]
From: Tim Pierce
Unsolicited commercial electronic mail sent to this address will be
proofread at a cost of $200/hour (one half-hour minimum).
From: Kurt A. Seiffert, UCS Database Analyst
'Almost never' ALWAYS arrives sooner than you expect.
From: Wolfram Schlickenrieder (KSC)
Solaris 2.x: it's slow, needs 200M of disk space, at least
64 MB of main menory, comes without C compiler, and makes
the average normal mainframe look like a lame duck, which
makes it remarkably close to MS-Windows.
From: Operator Dude
It breathes fire. -more- | Jim Niemira | We secretly replaced the dilithium
It breathes fire. -more- | System Janitor | crystals in the Enterprise with
You are not happy. -more- | Senior SysApe | Folgers; let's see if they notice.
From: Perry Michael James
"C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes it
harder, but when you do, it blows away your whole leg."
--- Bjarne Stroustrup on C++
From: "David Stabler"
David Stabler 3RRBB Summon Systems Engineer 1/3
(T): to blame other vendors hardware, code, or support dept
(3)(T): to have problem solved no matter who is to blame
"It's not a bug, it's a feature -- no, wait. That's a bug."
From: Karl J Auer
"If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
And the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
And the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
Then the socket packet pocket has an error to report!"
--- networks, Dr Seuss style.
From: John Bell
"Hi ho! Yow! I'm surfing ARPANET!"
--- anagram for "The Information Superhighway"
From: Tom Christiansen
There's no such thing as a simple cache bug.
From: Joe Buck
Anagrams for "information superhighway":
Enormous hairy pig with fan
A rough whimper of insanity
From: Ananda M. Kar
I am Pentium of Borg, Division is futile, You will be Approximated
From: Robert Millner
I am pentium of borg. You will be approximated. Precision is futile.
From: Anselm Lingnau
Before we work on artificial intelligence why don't we do something
about natural stupidity?
From: Doug Sewell
Hardware, n.: The parts of a computer system that can be kicked.
From: Linas Vepstas
You are in a twisty little maze of standards, all conflicting.
From: Rob McCool
It was working ten minutes ago, I swear...
From: Alan Cox
Click here to disable mouse.
From: Nabeel Ibrahim
Ad seen in the January issue of Microtimes (kind of like a Northern
California version of Computer Shopper) for Total Peripherals, Inc.:
"The New Pentium Pro. The only thing faster was probably
your first time."
From: "Jon M. Taylor"
"Television is like a really, really good screen saver."
From: Serge Kolgan
"Well, tough noogies. User interface isn't always my strong point."
--- Tom Christiansen in
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi
From: Bruce Perens
"At least Pixar's second film doesn't have to be backward-compatible
with the first".
From: Lyle J. Mackey
No animals were harmed during the creation of this .signature.
From: dave budd
Actually, Occam wore a beard: philosophers kept borrowing his razor.
From: Charles Addams
Overheard at a funeral: "I know this may be an awkward time, but do
you recall him ever mentioning source code?"
From: Louis Bolduc
Life would be much easier to understand if mother nature
gave us the source code.
From: From orstcs!rutgers!mcdchg!ddsw1!whos Fri Jul 6 20:32:07 PDT 1990
whos@ddsw1.MCS.COM | I don't know, who's at DDSW1? | whos@ddsw1.MCS.COM!
I asked YOU who's at DDSW1! Ok, there's a guy at DDSW1, right? | Right!
Who? | Exactly! | What? | No, he's at lll-winken. | Where? | No, What! | I
don't know! | He's at gargoyle. | Who? | No, he's at DDSW1.MCS.COM!
From: Peter van der Linden
My pappy said, "Son, you're gonna drive me to drinkin'
If you don't start codin' fer dynamic linkin'"
From: Randal L. Schwartz
/=Randal L. Schwartz, Stonehenge Consulting Services (503)777-0095 ==========\
| on contract to Intel's iWarp project, Beaverton, Oregon, USA, Sol III |
| merlyn@iwarp.intel.com ...!any-MX-mailer-like-uunet!iwarp.intel.com!merlyn |
\=Cute Quote: "Intel: putting the 'backward' in 'backward compatible'..."====/
[ note address, as well as the quote. ]
From: Daniel Brahneborg
The best way to accelerate a M*c is by 9.82 m/s^2
From: John Clear
'The best way to accelerate an IBM is at 9.8m/s^2'
'Hard work may not kill me, but why take the chance.'
From: unknown
"On a word boundary, Luke, don't just hack at it. ... The byte-
saber is the ceremonial weapon of the Red-Eye Knight. It is
used to trim offensive lines of code. Handwaving won't get you
anywhere. Attune yourself with the Source."
--- Steve Tarr and Alan Hastings
From: Jonathan Magid) writes:
i'm also reminded of a mad magazine cartoon from circa late 70's:
it shows a random IBM type (white shirt and tie, of course) sitting
in front of a mighty mainframe console, and above it on the wall is
attached a sign bearing this legend: THINK
some manager type approaches and remove the sign, throwing it away,
remarking "That's what we have computers for now." :)
From: Ron Dippold
COBOL programs are an exercise in Artificial Inelegance.
From: atlantis!orstcs!ogicse!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!qt.cs.utexas.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!nighthawk.clearpoint.com!nighthawk.clearpoint.com!daveg
"One, demonstrations always crash. And two, the probability of them
crashing goes up exponentially with the number of people watching."
From: Norman Diamond
"C is the Fortran of the 90's."
"Wrong. C is the Fortran of the 70's."
From: Allen Brown
REAL fortran programmers can program fortran in any language.
From: PeterClaus Gutmann
-- C++ will do for C what Algol 68 did for Algol --
From: Michael C. Matthews
Did you ever notice that those small NeXT stickers just
cover up the Apple logo on a Mac's monitor and keyboard?
From: atlantis!orstcs!rutgers!usc!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!psuvax1!ward Brian Ward
``"editcmap.c", line 131: warning: 123 warnings suppressed by no warn option''
From: Ed McCreary
Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.
From: Jonathan D McCown
"You don't want to get locked into 'open systems'."
From: Michael Saleeba [Zik]
"I knew my father and I lived in different worlds when I mentioned
a `gross hack' and he thought I was referring to his cough."
From: Nicholas Spencer
"I knew three different ways of proving this result, but
unfortunately I chose a fourth way."
From: Hans de Vreught
Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things,
you just get used to them.
From: Frank Whaley, MicroPro Product Development
"I'm told there are better programs [than WordStar],
but I'm also told there are better alphabets."
--- William F. Buckley Jr.
From: Jerry Crow
"Machines should work. People should think."
--- IBM slogan, late '60s
From: Daniel M. Alt
Any sufficiently advanced Magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Any sufficiently advanced Beauracracy is indistinguishable from molasses.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from doubletalk.
From: Tom Christiansen
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a
rigged demo.
From: Abel M. Hernandez
"Any sufficiently advanced BUG is indistinguishable from a Feature."
From: Bill Stewart 908-949-0705 erebus.att.com!wcs
Any technology distinguishable from magic is not
sufficiently advanced ...
From: Paul Phillips
"Any sufficiently advanced cluelessness is indistinguishable from
humour."
--- Francois Souchay
news.admin.policy
From: Gary Oliver
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a Perl script.
From: Anthony J. Albert
Final Exam: Computer Science (30 minutes).
1) Define computer. Define science. How do they relate? Why?
2) Create a generalized algorithm to optimize all computer descisions.
3) Assuming an 1130 CPU supporting 50 terminals, each terminal to
activate your algorithm (of problem 2), design and implement the
communications interface and all of the necessary control
programs.
From: Marc Wiz
> In the beginning, there was the IBM 5150 (PC, to you). It had:
I have to post this again. 5150 is the California law or
some health and safety code for a mentally ill person.
[Yes that really is my last name.]
From: David P. Mikkelson DEC
"The Atari 520 ST is a serious challenge to the Apple Macintosh and
will open up a major fight in the personal computer market."
From: luis
Disk-Claimer: That's not your disk, that's my disk.
From: Tommy Thorn
"People shouldn't work because they love it, they should
work because it hurts."
--- Bob Sparacino, former Xerox executive
From: Michael Nolan
"Software means never having to say you're finished."
--- J. D. Hildebrand in UNIX REVIEW
From: Kenneth D. Johnson
Q. How many computer programmers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A. None. That is a hardware problem.
From: Timothy Y. Chow
Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes
and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000
vacuum tubes and weigh only 1 1/2 tons.
--- Popular Mechanics, March 1949
From: Paul W Schleck KD3FU
"Liking clean systems and hating buggy ones is about as controversial as
preferring a warm puppy to the cholera bacillus."
From: Maurice D Castro
"In hardware engineering, Ohm's law and Maxwell's equations pale
in importance and influence next to Murphy's Law."
From: Doug Jenner
Model: Homo Sapiens, version 0.26, Alpha release
From: Doug Jenner
AnswerBook- because you just can't grep dead trees.
From: Sean Eric Fagan
"One form to rule them all, one form to find them, one
form to bring them all and in the darkness rewrite the
hell out of them."
--- sendmail ruleset 3 comment from DEC.
From: Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey
"Treat your password like your toothbrush. Don't let anybody else
use it-- and get a new one every six months."
From: Tc Wilson
"Programming is an art form that fights back."
From: Jeffrey Alan Foust
"I don't want to finish college. After four years I still won't
know anything."
--- from a TV ad for a computer trade school
From: anonymous
Ring around the Internet
A packet with a bit not set
ENQ ACK ENQ ACK
We all go down!
--- Allon Stern (allon@fgm.com)
From: Stephen C. Trier
Dumb error message of the month:
"Mar 1 18:07:18 ziggy xntpd[65]: Clock appears to
be 86398 seconds slow, something may be wrong"
From: Bob Beauchaine
C: The language that combines the power of assembly language with the
flexibility of assembly language.
Real friends don't let friends use UNIX.
From: Nico E. de Vries
"Unfortunately, the current generation of mail programs do not have
checkers to see if the sender knows what he is talking about"
From: Evan Marshall Manning
Your eyes are weary from staring at the CRT. You feel sleepy.
Notice how restful it is to watch the cursor blink. Close your eyes.
The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you
ever felt otherwise.
From: Mozdzen, Jens-Uwe, 7033 Herrenberg
tcl networks development sites:
"We guarantee fast service -
no matter how long it takes!"
From: Jim Howard
(If I were expressing Cadence's opinions, )
(they'd probably make me wear a tie... )
"Did you ever wish kill files were like little electronic voodoo
dolls, and really did what they said?"
--- Perry Ross in rec.scuba
From: Julie Bixby
Engage Romulan .sig cloaking device.... [note name of computer]
From: Dianne Hackborn
The healthy .sig:
- Low in saturated quotes
- No artificial disclaimers
- 99% splat free
From: "Dr. Steven M. Salberg"
.sig out looking for a cute footnote to date
From: Karthik P Sheka
It's not an optical illusion. It just looks like one.
From: Karthik P Sheka
By "recursion" I mean "defined by recursion".
From: Richard Bielak
"Your brain is a liquid-cooled parallel super-computer".
He pointed to his nose, "This is the fan."
From: Phil G. Fraering
"There are still 201969 unread articles in 1278 groups"
"57 channels and nothing on"
From: Paul Tomblin
"I just posted from babbage.museum.london.uk, and BOY ARE MY ARMS
TIRED!!"
--- Rolf Wilson in alt.folklore.computers
From: H.C. Pulley
Stay away from the DOS side Luke!
From: Brewmeister
Copy this .sig and just say noe to big-brother's monitoring of public bandwidth
*Bush Quayle conspriacy JFK cocaine LSD heroin marijuana AK-47 Iran Iraq Libya*
*Sandinista Contras Panama Noriega FBI CIA NSA Secret Service fixed-elections *
*Neil Bush S&L coverup potatoe wiretaps search & seizure bill of rights dead *
From: Reid Kneeland
Never trust a man who can count to 1,023 on his fingers.
From: anonymous
Systems Analyst, "C" programmer and system administrator on the loose.
All job offers accepted with slobbering, slathering dignity.
I'd think up a pithy thaying for my .thig, but I can't get rid
of thith lithp!
From: Richard Chandler
My god! They broke in and took everything! Even my .sig!
From: Bill Pechter
The postman always pings twice.
From: Keith Rice
Beta Test: To voluntarily entrust one's data, livelihood and sanity
to hardware or software intended to destroy all three.
In earlier days, virgins were selected to beta test
volcanoes.
From: Mark J Balbes
This came directly from a computer and should not be doubted or
disbelieved.
From: Christine Herrmann
"tiggers are wonderful things...their tops are made out of rubber...
their bottoms are made out of strings..."
What sort of warped person ends up with only two News groups in
their account...alt.sex.bondage and rec.arts.disney?
From: Michael Jensen
"I bet the human brain is a kludge."
From: Brian Rice
"Bugs outside, wackos inside--what's the difference?!"
newton@iagu.itd.adelaide.edu.au
'Do not expose your LaserWriter to naked flame...'
--- Apple LaserWriter Manual
From: peter da silva
$ EDIT/TECO LOVE
%TECO-W-OLDJOKE Not war?
From: Peter van der Linden
When solving a "panic" you must first ask yourself what you
were doing that could possibly frighten an operating system.
--- P. van der Linden and his uncustomary theories.
From: Josh 'K' Hopkins
Friends don't let friends derive drunk.
From: Laskowski, Grezegorz
Don't drink and derive!
From: Edward Vielmetti
A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you
didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable.
From: drieux, just drieux
If I have Told You Once, I've Told You a Thousand Times:
To Keep Good Girls From Going Bad,
Put them back in the Refrigerator.
This Also Works for Stale NFS Handles.
From: Bill Garfield
Programming is like sex: One mistake & you support it!
From: The Keymaster
WOMAN.ZIP -- Great program, but where is the documentation?
From: Tomas Ruden
For a nice date: call strftime(3C)
From: Dave Jones
There is no truth to the rumor that:
Lotus are suing Apple for copying the look and feel of their lawsuits.
From: (Wesley J. Chun)
"A computer never does what you want... only what you tell it."
From: Kelly Martin
Most system flaws can be attributed to unwarrantedly
anthropomorphizing the user.
--- T.C.Bennett@syse.salford.ac.uk
From: Matt Chatterley
"Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards,
for they are subtle and quick to anger."
From: jeff wilder
Meddle not in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle,
and will piss on your cyberdeck.
From: http://ftp.logica.com/~stepneys/cyc/m/meddle.htm
Do not meddle in the affairs of Unix,
for it is subtle and quick to core dump.
Do not meddle in the affairs of cats,
for they are subtle and will piss on your computer.
Do not meddle in the affairs of Vorlons,
for they are angry and too quickly subtle.
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.
Do not meddle in the affairs of bards,
for they are unsubtle, and your name scans to Greensleeves.
From: rbrager
Ain't no place like ${HOME}; not even C:\.
From: Warwick Allison
C references are NULL && void*
From: william E Davidsen
Keyboard controller has been disabled, press F1 to continue.
From: Clayton Cramer
C++ is to C, as lung cancer is to lung.
From: Joe Smith
CA license plate: "POPJ P, PDP-10, 36-bits forever!
Humorous disclaimer: "My Amiga 3000 speaks for me."
From: dan goldwater
PLAN: TO GET MORE FLEGAMOPS AND BEGAMYTES THAN ANYONE ELSE.
From: Roger Ivie
"My God! That computer is full of Pentium!
It's a wonder that you haven't been turned into mutants!"
From: Mike Steele
This posting printed using 100% recycled electrons.
From: Darryl Okahata
Organization: Hewlett-Packard / Center for Primal Scream Therapy
From: M.L.M.Veraart
"If all else fails, show pretty pictures and animated videos,
and don't talk about performance"
From: anonymous
Actually, unix is a very user-friendly system. Its just that it is
particular about which users it chooses to be friendly with.
Programmers and programs alike need die gracefully upon failure,
and exit with no system disruption.
From: Damien P. Neil
"Until somebody debugs reality, the best
I can do is a quick patch here and there."
From: Eric Holtman
Beer and Wheaties - Breakfast of Champions
Jolt and Twinkies - Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner of programmers
everywhere...
From: Jonathan Bradshaw
"If any girl rejects you, don't you doubt it's part of the .plan"
From: James Hsieh
Disclaimer: Just a programmer with a one-bit brain and a parity error...
From: Richard Stueven
Only users lose drugs.
From: Bob Bickford
"I recognize that a class of criminals and juvenile delinquents has
taken to calling themselves 'hackers', but I consider them irrelevant
to the true meaning of the word; just as the Mafia calls themselves
'businessmen' but nobody pays that fact any attention."
From: Matt Welsh
"That kernel's got a mean streak A MILE WIDE!!"
From: Charles Parr
Within the span of the last few weeks I have heard elements of
separate threads which, in that they have been conjoined in time,
struck together to form a new chord within my hollow and echoing
gourd.
From: Randell Jesup
GNU Emacs is a LISP operating system disguised as a word processor.
--- Doug Mohney, in comp.arch
From: Tony Pelliccio
"Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea --
massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a
source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least
expect it."
From: Ted Schuerzinger
My .sig has low self-esteem and doesn't think it's worth putting in
this space.
From: Jay Maynard
"I'm waiting for that "National data superhighway" to install
an onramp in my house..."
From: Tim Tyler
"I'm just an innocent little frog, trying to
hop my way across the Information Superhighway"
From: Don Whiteside
"If I want to take a drive on Al Gore's National Data
Superhighway, will I need to have packet collision insurance?"
From: Andrew Bulhak
"I was afraid someone would raise the spectre of RFC-822. I will
confess at the outset that I find RFC-822 nearly unintelligible."
From: Mike Johns
"If you want to do buzzword oriented programming you must use
a strongly hyped language."
--- author unknown (to me, not to him)
From: The Prisoner
"Dehydration - 34%. Recollection of previous evening: 2%.
Embarrassment factor: 91%!
Advise repair schedule: Off-line for 36 hours, re-boot startup disk,
and replace head. I've got to stop reading Usenet ..."
From: David Fox
Thanks for letting me change the magnetic images on your hard drive.
From: Muhammad Masroor Ali
Beware of bugs in the above program. I proved it correct,
I did not try it.
From: Karel Kubat
"Premature optimzation is the root of all evil.."
From: Vaddadi Sekhar
An Elephant is a mouse with an Operating System.
From: Doug Mohney
Software engineering? That's like military intelligence, isn't it?
From: Joerg Heitkoetter
Computer Scientist, n.:
A device that turns coffee into programs.
From: steve armijo
It's a windowing system named X, not a system named X windows.
Unspoiled by progress,Mac,X,Unix,MsDos,Amiga,I-net, or raisins.
From: Andy
Bill Gates should limit his salary to the number of bytes addressable by the
latest version of MS-DOS, and be taxed based on the number of bytes of RAM
needed by the latest version of MS-Windows.
"Hey, it's Unix! I know this!"
Apples has been a problem ever since eden.
Don't walk in front of me, I might be unable to follow you.
Don't walk after me, I might be unable to lead you.
Just walk by my side and be my friend.
From: Malcolm Beattie
I'm not a kernel hacker
I'm a kernel hacker's mate
And I'm only hacking kernels
'Cos the kernel hacker's late
From: Peter Wemm
If it's broke, fix it (The MS-DOS way)
If it ain't broke, don't touch it (The Unix way)
If we can't fix it, it ain't broke (Maintainer's Motto)
Hey, break it anyway, then we'll learn how it really works (Systems Programmer)
From: jason downs
"Infinity is not part of the VAX architecture."
From: Dan Wallach
"One of the most attractive features of a Connection Machine
is the array of blinking lights on the faces of its cabinet."
--- CM Paris Ref. Manual, v6.0, p48.
From: anonymous
Dizzyclaimer:
If you believe this is in any way, shape, or form actual official
information or opinion, then you are probably as confused if not
more so than I am... I think...
From: Ferry van 't Groenewoud (I87)
Mac. The noise of a wrong calibration. PS/2. You can't see the new thing.
IBM. The toys of a dead generation. Sun. You can't feel the beating.
NeXT. The choice cause of bad information. Atari. You'll need some healing.
Amiga. For boys with real imagination. __ Amiga. You can reach the ceiling.
__/ /
Ferry van het Groenewoud \__/ groenewo@fwi.uva.nl
From: jason downs
"So when they cut the ribbon on the Information Highway, I probably
won't be there. I'll be at the lake, maybe. The water's old, and
it's slow, but cool and wide and occasionally deep."
From: John Rudolph
"Will you be roadkill on the Information Highway?"
From: Phil G. Fraering
"And so it went. Tens of thousands of messages, hundreds of points of
view. It was not called the Net of a Million Lies for nothing."
From: Ron "Asbestos" Dippold
%SCHEDP: Overloaded. Please throw yourself on your sword.
From: anonymous
grep meaning life | more
From: Wolfgang Henke
Data lanes not car pool lanes
From: Christophe Pettus
"You may not be interested in computers, but there are computers
interested in you."
From: Liem Bahneman
Outside of a dog, computers are a man's best friend,
inside a dog it's too dark to type.
From: Tom Horsley
What's this I hear about computers that are faster than people?
They don't seem too fast to me. I have to wait on them all the time.
From: Eliot Frick
"The proverbial German phenomenon of the 'verb-at-the-end', about
which droll tales of absentminded professors who would begin a
sentence, ramble on for an entire lecture, and then finish up by
rattling off a string of verbs by which their audience, for whom the
stack had long since lost its coherence, would be totally nonplussed,
are told, is an excellent example of linguistic recursion."
From: John Macdonald
That is 27 years ago, or about half an eternity in computer years.
From: Tom Bates
"Tom, we need that Design Specification NOW! But captain, I'm typing
as fast as I can!"
From: Richard Todd
"If your terminal is on fire, unplug it."
--- from an official USGS memo.
From: Jay Stratton
The Computer is your friend.
The Computer wants you to be happy.
Are you happy citizen?
Happiness is mandatory.
From: Colin Plumb
"The [Usenet] computers and software have only one agenda: to get the
traffic through. A censorship attempt is treated as a system failure."
--- Civil Liberties and the Electronic Frontier:
Mapping the Terrain
From: Jesper Christiansen
Documentation is like sex:
When it is good, it is very, very good;
and when it is bad, it is better than nothing.
From: Clint Chamberlin
"Not tonite, honey... I have a modem"
From: Paul Murgatroyd
"Arguments for margins are always in inches, regrdless of your
cuntry setting."
--- MS Excel 4.0 Function Reference Manual, p.312
From: Roger Ivie
Don't think of it as a 'new' computer, think of it as 'obsolete-ready'
From: Eric Youngdale
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep,
And lines to code before I sleep, And lines to code before I sleep."
From: Donald H. Locker
No Parking
0700 to 1100 UTC
sig cleaning
From: Doug McLaren
"The so-called media co-opted the term 'news' to mean something very
different from Usenet. Does this mean that we now need to find some
other term (like 'utter nonsense') for what you are posting to
Usenet?"
From: Joe Faurote
BNR, the company that I work for, does not support my idle ramblings.
The opposite, it goes without saying, is true as well.
From: John Henders
Segments are for Worms
From: Kai Voigt
"Some people run 'biff' to alert them that they have new email.
I run '/bin/true'."
From: Jim Carroll
As seen on some t=shirts:
Reading the Internet is like trying to drink from a firehouse.
Posting to the Internet is like shouting at people as they go
by on a roller coaster.
Archiving/Indexing the net is like trying to wash toilet paper.
From: William Burrow
Canada's federal regulator says it may regulate content on the Internet to
provide for more Canadian content.
--- Ottawa Citizen 15 Nov 96 D15
From: Gene Mangum
OS/2 ver 2 - Increased productivity through the
use of a "dead" operating system.
From: Christian Holtje
God is real -- unless declared integer
From: Neal W. Miller
"This Side Up - Not Plummet Please!"
--- the box for my Taiwanese CPU fan
From: Kriston Rehberg
"Your lack of common decency reminds me of a computer!"
From: Matthew Rhoten
"I'm not sure I remember HOW to sleep."
From: Gerry George
Not tonight honey, I have a modem....
Let's talk about HEX, Baby, let's talk about TCP.
From: Charles Hope
A couch potato is a cathode-ray tuber.
From: Cheryl Lins
"Programmers can get themselves into trouble in any language."
From: Ronald van Loon
More computing sins are committed in the name of efficiciency
(without necessarily achieving it) than for any other single
reason - including blind stupidity.
--- attributed to W.A. Wulf
From: Nicholas Ambrose
The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its
capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system.
From: Lars Wirzenius
Humans are unreliable, computers are non-deterministically reliable.
From: Brandon S. Allbery
Do not taunt Happy Fun Coder. (seen on the Net...)
From: Elf Sternberg
PC Bulletin: Henceforth, sentient computers would like to be known as
"Silicon Intelligences." "Artificial Intelligence" is a pejorative
term invented by humans based on the mistaken belief that computers
are somehow not "natural."
From: Michael A. Traffanstead
Hardware : n, The part of the computer you can kick
From: -=| Bantolph |=-
"Ninety percent of computer users use DOS.
I'd rather tell them to do drugs."
--- Scott McNealy, CEO, Sun Microsytems
From: McArthur E. Sandridge III
Backup my hard drive? I can't find the reverse switch!
From: Marc WANDSCHNEIDER
Barney the Dinosaur sings!
You faint... Barney sings! Barney sings! --More--
You Die... --More--
From: Jamie Rishaw
"I hate you.. you hate me.. let's hang Barney from a tree; then we'll
get a 2 x 4 and beat him black and blue.. Won't you say you hate
him too?"
From: Bill Karwin
"If you've seen one picture of the Mandelbrot set, you've seen
them all!"
From: Paul Tomblin
This is not an official statement of Gandalf, or of Vicki Robinson.
"To err is human, but to really foul things up requires the root
password"
From: Joe Gross
A computer terminal is not some clunky old television with a
typewriter in front of it. It is an interface where the mind and
body can connect with the universe and move bits of it about.
--- D. Adams, Mostly Harmless
From: Andreas Turanski
"This terminal is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone
to meet its maker. This is a late terminal. It's a stiff. Bereft of
life, it rests in peace. If you hadn't nailed it to the bench, it
would be pushing up the daisies. It's run down the curtain and
joined the choir invisible. This is an X-Terminal!"
From: Brant Katkansky
"Electricity is made up of very small particles called electrons,
which you cannot see unless you have been drinking."
From: Gregory Ade
What's the difference between a SysOp and God?
God doesn't think he's a SysOp...
From: K. Bruner
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
From: Buster S. Bunny
WARNING: REALITY.SYS has been corrupted. Reboot universe? (y/n/a)
From: La'szlo' Lada'nyi
God made one mistake when he created man:
He wrote self-modifying code ...
From: Paul Robichaux
Out the 10Base-T port, through the router, over the leased
line, off the bridge, past the firewall... nothing but net.
From: Jeff Dalton
"If it were easy to read, it wouldn't be called code."
From: Norman Walsh
The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree,
is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer
professionals. We cause accidents.
From: anonymous
Keyboard error: keyboard not detected. Press F1 to continue.
From: Mark Skopinsky
"Nine megs for the secretaries fair,
Seven megs for the hackers scarce,
Five megs for the grads in smoky lairs,
Three megs for system source;
One disk to rule them all,
One disk to bind them,
One disk to hold the files
And in the darkness grind'em."
From: Loves 2 Look
Misspelled? Impossible. My modem is error correcting.
From: David Barr
"Gopher is the Model T of the Information Superhighway. It's small,
trusty, underpowered, modified to do things it was never designed to
do, and available in every color of OS, as long as you like text"
From: Joe Janakovic
"ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI!"
From: Richard Stone
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"
"If it *is* broke, pay us to fix it!"
2-FOR-1 DEAL: "We'll break it for you and then fix it;
for one low price!"
From: Phil Howard
The drive spec says the capacity is 600mb unformatted and
525mb formatted. So where do I find an unformat utility?
From: H. Peter Anvin
init: Received SIGNUKE, killing all users.
From: Thumper.. ask my fiancee!
"Apple is a low cost producer of the Mac."
--- an executive at Packard Bell
From: Patrick Martin
Our program, who art in memory, HELLO by thy name,
Forgive us our I/O errors as we forgive those whose logic circuits are
faulty.
Load us not into frustration,and deliver us from power surges.
For thine is the algorithm, the application and the solution,
looping forever and ever. RETURN.'"
From: Jeffrey Charles Schave
"Lazy Programmers know that if a thing is worth doing, it's worth
doing well -- unless doing it well takes so long that isn't worth
doing any more. Then you just do it 'good enough'"
--- Programming Perl, p 282.
From: Dale Shuttleworth
"One day there will be a completely secure computer system. It will
also be completely useless."
From: John R. Campbell
John R. Campbell soup@penrij.UUCP
Speaker to Machines Resident Heckler
Guns don't kill people. GNUs, however, are Not Unix.
When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl.
From: Darren S. Embry
``A computer without COBOL and FORTRAN is like a piece of chocolate
cake without katchup or mustard.''
--- John Krueger in a.r.k
From: Darren S. Embry
"Auto save and garbage collection happenly only when you are typing,
never when you are idle. This is to make them more like affectionate
pets. Think of them as cats that like to sit on your terminal only
when you are working there."
--- from the GNU Emacs 19.19 documentation
From: Darren S. Embry
"What the net needs now are kill files that actually kill."
--- Craig Dickson, in alt.religion.kibology
From: Norman Walsh
Unable to locate coffee---operator halted.
From: Aldy Hernandez
Organization: 0xC0FFEE (drinkers anonymous)
From: hejza_leo
Life would be so much simpler if I could just look at the source code.
From: Paul Johnson
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
From: bunnybunnybunnybunnybunny
\ ____ "the bunny did not get the job because the bunny is cute.
\ /\ lteril the bunny got the job because the bunny knows wordperfect."
(~) lwho?l ---the new yorker
__/_\_/_____] please send mail to terihu@uclink2.berkeley.edu
From: Bob Agnew
Dennis Ritchie is often quoted as having said something like
(I paraphrase):
"Pascal is for children, C is for consenting adults, and Ada is for
Criminals."
I wonder what he has to add about C++?
My own version is "and C++ is for Masochistic-Sadists."
From: Dave Bullis
"I didn't know the terminals were haunted.
The salesman didn't tell us."
From: Paul M. Tyma
"I don't care if you ARE getting a PhD in it!
Get away from that damn computer and go find a woman!"
From: Evan Leibovitch
PCMCIA: People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms
From: Kai Voigt
"sendmail.cf looks like a context diff of two core files."
--- sjm@ra12.curtin.edu.au (Simon Mackinlay)
From: Joseph Julicher
"The ideal situation is to have massive computing power right at home.
Something that dims the streetlights and shrinks the picture on the
neighbors' TVs when you boot it up.
From: Chris Adams
Abandon all hope, ye who PRESS ENTER here.
From: GERNOT_KATZER
Q How does a system manager change a light bulb?
A He doesn't. He just denies access to everyone to
the area served by the light bulb in question.
From: Paul Hillman
How many MS engineers does Bill need to change a bulb?
None, he declares darkness an Industry Standard.
From: Richard T Kaul
Engineer #1: "It's state of the art!"
Engineer #2: "But it doesn't work!"
Engineer #1: "Yes, that's the state of the art."
From: "Stuart J w ekins"
~BillGates(); // Thanks Roger :-)
From: Paul Pomes
The Net is a dangerous place to send naive students. You may as well
send them to the nearest laundromat to learn about quantum mechanics.
They might get lucky, but they're more likely to return as members of
a new church.
From: Bob Kirkpatrick
The Internet is too dangerous a tool to fall into the hands of people.
Our government should control it completely because it's always right
and it never lies.
From: Who me
To: All internet Newcomers (and AOL) -- We got rules around here,
in order to learn 'em ya gotta do more work with your ears than
with your mouth.
--- _cool hand luke_ Also think beforest thy type!
From: Hammond Andrew
"To know recursion, you must first know recursion."
From: Darin Johnson
"Here was a man who knew what to do with 2000 pounds of ammonium
nitrate, fuel oil, a 64 K-processor CM5 and a few blasting caps."
From: Hans Mulder
One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that,
lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination
of their C programs.
From: J.S. van Oosten
Sometimes I wonder if this whole universe isn't anything more than a
simulation on a BIG computer. And they just might press Ctrl-C any
time now...
From: Sigurdur Asgeirsson
"Well you know, C isn't that hard, void (*(*f[])())() for instance
declares f as an array of unspecified size, of pointers to functions
that return pointers to functions that return void... I think"
From: fred smith
"The locus of computing has clearly moved from the useful
manipulation of information to the painting of icons and the
tracking of mouse balls."
--- Stan Kelly-Bootle, Unix Review, Feb '95
From: Darin Johnson
The full name of the compiler is "Compiler Language With No
Pronounceable Acronym", which is, for obvious reasons,
abbreviated "INTERCAL".
From: Scot W. Stevenson
Television is what will happen to you if you don't have a computer
From: Jeff Dege
Nearly every electrical engineer believes deep in his heart that he
is a better at writing computer programs than any computer programmer,
and can show as proof the fact that he has written a number of small
applications, each of which was done quickly, easily, and exactly met
his needs.
From: Henry Wertz
It's reported that Canter & Siegel search for and archive all articles
that contain their names or "Green Card". This .sig is to help them.
From: Phil Howard
Absolutely no trees were killed to produce this sig. Well, OK, we
had to tie one up and torture it. Then the cat got sick. Several
kitchen appliances were dented in and the bath water was spilled.
That's it.
From: Matt Sottile
"The sort of person who uses phrases like `incompletely socialized'
usually thinks hackers are. Hackers regard such people with contempt
when they notice them at all."
From: Eric Pilcher
"IRC... is the hang out of the Internet's version
of whores, thugs, and vandals."
From: Caleb Cullen
"If it ain't dysfunctional, don't attempt pre-emptive
preventative maintenance on it."
Other quotes