BBW Branch Both Ways BEW Branch Either Way BBBF Branch on Bit Bucket Full BH Branch and Hang BMR Branch Multiple Registers BOB Branch On Bug BPO Branch on Power Off BST Backspace and Stretch Tape CDS Condense and Destroy System CLBR Clobber Register CLBRI Clobber Register Immediately CM Circulate Memory CMFRM Come From -- essential for truly structured programming CPPR Crumple Printer Paper and Rip CRN Convert to Roman Numerals
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The idea that an arbitrary naive human should be able to properly use a given tool without training or understanding is even more wrong for computing than it is for other tools (e.g. automobiles, airplanes, guns, power saws).
-- Doug Gwyn
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
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
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Windows 3.1 Beer: The world's most popular. Comes in a 16-oz. can that looks a lot like Mac Beer's. Requires that you already own a DOS Beer. Claims that it allows you to drink several DOS Beers simultaneously, but in reality you can only drink a few of them, very slowly, especially slowly if you are drinking the Windows Beer at the same time. Sometimes, for apparently no reason, a can of Windows Beer will explode when you open it.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Hardware met Software on the road to Changtse. Software said: "You are the Yin and I am the Yang. If we travel together we will become famous and earn vast sums of money." And so the pair set forth together, thinking to conquer the world.
Presently, they met Firmware, who was dressed in tattered rags, and hobbled along propped on a thorny stick. Firmware said to them: "The Tao lies beyond Yin and Yang. It is silent and still as a pool of water. It does not seek fame, therefore nobody knows its presence. It does not seeks fortune, for it is complete within itself. It exists beyond space and time."
Software and Hardware, ashamed, returned to their homes.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
You or I must yield up his life to Ahrimanes. I would rather it were you. I should have no hesitation in sacrificing my own life to spare yours, but we take stock next week, and it would not be fair on the company.
-- J. Wellington Wells
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The idea that an arbitrary naive human should be able to properly use a given tool without training or understanding is even more wrong for computing than it is for other tools (e.g. automobiles, airplanes, guns, power saws).
-- Doug Gwyn
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
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
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I've seen people with new children before, they go from ultra happy to looking like something out of a zombie film in about a week.
-- Alan Cox about Linus after his 2nd daughter
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Systems have sub-systems and sub-systems have sub-systems and so on ad infinitum -- which is why we're always starting over.
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Oxygen is a very toxic gas and an extreme fire hazard. It is fatal in concentrations of as little as 0.000001 p.p.m. Humans exposed to the oxygen concentrations die within a few minutes. Symptoms resemble very much those of cyanide poisoning (blue face, etc.). In higher concentrations, e.g. 20%, the toxic effect is somewhat delayed and it takes about 2.5 billion inhalations before death takes place. The reason for the delay is the difference in the mechanism of the toxic effect of oxygen in 20% concentration. It apparently contributes to a complex process called aging, of which very little is known, except that it is always fatal.
However, the main disadvantage of the 20% oxygen concentration is in the fact it is habit forming. The first inhalation (occurring at birth) is sufficient to make oxygen addiction permanent. After that, any considerable decrease in the daily oxygen doses results in death with symptoms resembling those of cyanide poisoning.
Oxygen is an extreme fire hazard. All of the fires that were reported in the continental U.S. for the period of the past 25 years were found to be due to the presence of this gas in the atmosphere surrounding the buildings in question.
Oxygen is especially dangerous because it is odorless, colorless and tasteless, so that its presence can not be readily detected until it is too late.
-- Chemical & Engineering News February 6, 1956
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"Reintegration complete," ZORAC advised. "We're back in the universe again..." An unusually long pause followed, "...but I don't know which part. We seem to have changed our position in space." A spherical display in the middle of the floor illuminated to show the starfield surrounding the ship.
"Several large, artificial constructions are approaching us," ZORAC announced after a short pause. "The designs are not familiar, but they are obviously the products of intelligence. Implications: we have been intercepted deliberately by a means unknown, for a purpose unknown, and transferred to a place unknown by a form of intelligence unknown. Apart from the unknowns, everything is obvious."
-- James P. Hogan, "Giants Star"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle: when the sun comes up, you'd better be running.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
One day the King decided that he would force all his subjects to tell the truth. A gallows was erected in front of the city gates. A herald announced, "Whoever would enter the city must first answer the truth to a question which will be put to him." Nasrudin was first in line. The captain of the guard asked him, "Where are you going? Tell the truth -- the alternative is death by hanging."
"I am going," said Nasrudin, "to be hanged on that gallows."
"I don't believe you."
"Very well, if I have told a lie, then hang me!"
"But that would make it the truth!"
"Exactly," said Nasrudin, "your truth."
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #10: SIMPLE
SIMPLE is an acronym for Sheer Idiot's Monopurpose Programming Language Environment. This language, developed at the Hanover College for Technological Misfits, was designed to make it impossible to write code with errors in it. The statements are, therefore, confined to BEGIN, END and STOP. No matter how you arrange the statements, you can't make a syntax error. Programs written in SIMPLE do nothing useful. Thus they achieve the results of programs written in other languages without the tedious, frustrating process of testing and debugging.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
When properly administered, vacations do not diminish productivity: for every week you're away and get nothing done, there's another when your boss is away and you get twice as much done.
-- Daniel B. Luten
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Two hundred years ago today, Irma Chine of White Plains, New York, was performing her normal housekeeping routines. She was interrupted by British soldiers who, rallying to the call of their supervisor, General Hughes, sought to gain control of the voter registration lists kept in her home. Masking her fear and thinking fast, Mrs. Chine quickly divided a nearby apple in two and deftly stored the list in its center. Upon entering, the British blatantly violated every conceivable convention, and, though they went through the house virtually bit by bit, their search was fruitless. They had to return empty handed. Word of the incident propagated rapidly through the region. This historic event became the first documented use of core storage for the saving of registers.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Alan Cox wrote: >> On any procmail new enough not to be full of security holes you set >Brain on, Imeant majordomo of course 8) You got me worried there for a brief (very brief) moment:-).
-- Stephen R. van den Berg (AKA BuGless)
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
DOS: n., A small annoying boot virus that causes random spontaneous system
crashes, usually just before saving a massive project. Easily cured by
UNIX. See also MS-DOS, IBM-DOS, DR-DOS.
-- David Vicker's.plan
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The Analytical Engine weaves Algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves.
-- Ada Augusta, Countess of Lovelace, the first programmer
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I have a switch in my apartment that doesn't do anything. Every once in a while I turn it on and off. On and off. On and off. One day I got a call from a woman in France who said "Cut it out!"
-- Steven Wright
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
When you are about to do an objective and scientific piece of investigation of a topic, it is well to gave the answer firmly in hand, so that you can proceed forthrightly, without being deflected or swayed, directly to the goal.
-- Amrom Katz
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Before he became a hermit, Zarathud was a young Priest, and
took great delight in making fools of his opponents in front of his followers.
One day Zarathud took his students to a pleasant pasture and there he confronted The Sacred Chao while She was contentedly grazing.
"Tell me, you dumb beast," demanded the Priest in his commanding voice, "why don't you do something worthwhile? What is your Purpose in Life, anyway?"
Munching the tasty grass, The Sacred Chao replied "MU". (The Chinese ideogram for NO-THING.)
Upon hearing this, absolutely nobody was enlightened.
Primarily because nobody understood Chinese.
-- Camden Benares, "Zen Without Zen Masters"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one instruction -- from which, by induction, one can deduce that every program can be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Slashdot Mirror
Proposed Additions to the PDP-11 Instruction Set:
BBW Branch Both Ways
BEW Branch Either Way
BBBF Branch on Bit Bucket Full
BH Branch and Hang
BMR Branch Multiple Registers
BOB Branch On Bug
BPO Branch on Power Off
BST Backspace and Stretch Tape
CDS Condense and Destroy System
CLBR Clobber Register
CLBRI Clobber Register Immediately
CM Circulate Memory
CMFRM Come From -- essential for truly structured programming
CPPR Crumple Printer Paper and Rip
CRN Convert to Roman Numerals
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The idea that an arbitrary naive human should be able to properly use a given
tool without training or understanding is even more wrong for computing than
it is for other tools (e.g. automobiles, airplanes, guns, power saws).
-- Doug Gwyn
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
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
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Windows 3.1 Beer: The world's most popular. Comes in a 16-oz. can that
looks a lot like Mac Beer's. Requires that you already own a DOS Beer.
Claims that it allows you to drink several DOS Beers simultaneously, but
in reality you can only drink a few of them, very slowly, especially
slowly if you are drinking the Windows Beer at the same time. Sometimes,
for apparently no reason, a can of Windows Beer will explode when you
open it.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate
into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Hardware met Software on the road to Changtse. Software said: "You
are the Yin and I am the Yang. If we travel together we will become famous
and earn vast sums of money." And so the pair set forth together, thinking
to conquer the world.
Presently, they met Firmware, who was dressed in tattered rags, and
hobbled along propped on a thorny stick. Firmware said to them: "The Tao
lies beyond Yin and Yang. It is silent and still as a pool of water. It does
not seek fame, therefore nobody knows its presence. It does not seeks fortune,
for it is complete within itself. It exists beyond space and time."
Software and Hardware, ashamed, returned to their homes.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
You or I must yield up his life to Ahrimanes. I would rather it were you.
I should have no hesitation in sacrificing my own life to spare yours, but
we take stock next week, and it would not be fair on the company.
-- J. Wellington Wells
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The idea that an arbitrary naive human should be able to properly use a given
tool without training or understanding is even more wrong for computing than
it is for other tools (e.g. automobiles, airplanes, guns, power saws).
-- Doug Gwyn
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
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
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I've seen people with new children before, they go from ultra happy to
looking like something out of a zombie film in about a week.
-- Alan Cox about Linus after his 2nd daughter
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Systems have sub-systems and sub-systems have sub-systems and so on ad
infinitum -- which is why we're always starting over.
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Oxygen is a very toxic gas and an extreme fire hazard. It is fatal in
concentrations of as little as 0.000001 p.p.m. Humans exposed to the
oxygen concentrations die within a few minutes. Symptoms resemble very
much those of cyanide poisoning (blue face, etc.). In higher
concentrations, e.g. 20%, the toxic effect is somewhat delayed and it
takes about 2.5 billion inhalations before death takes place. The reason
for the delay is the difference in the mechanism of the toxic effect of
oxygen in 20% concentration. It apparently contributes to a complex
process called aging, of which very little is known, except that it is
always fatal.
However, the main disadvantage of the 20% oxygen concentration is in the
fact it is habit forming. The first inhalation (occurring at birth) is
sufficient to make oxygen addiction permanent. After that, any
considerable decrease in the daily oxygen doses results in death with
symptoms resembling those of cyanide poisoning.
Oxygen is an extreme fire hazard. All of the fires that were reported in
the continental U.S. for the period of the past 25 years were found to be
due to the presence of this gas in the atmosphere surrounding the buildings
in question.
Oxygen is especially dangerous because it is odorless, colorless and
tasteless, so that its presence can not be readily detected until it is
too late.
-- Chemical & Engineering News February 6, 1956
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"Reintegration complete," ZORAC advised. "We're back in the
universe again..." An unusually long pause followed, "...but I don't
know which part. We seem to have changed our position in space." A
spherical display in the middle of the floor illuminated to show the
starfield surrounding the ship.
"Several large, artificial constructions are approaching us,"
ZORAC announced after a short pause. "The designs are not familiar, but
they are obviously the products of intelligence. Implications: we have
been intercepted deliberately by a means unknown, for a purpose unknown,
and transferred to a place unknown by a form of intelligence unknown.
Apart from the unknowns, everything is obvious."
-- James P. Hogan, "Giants Star"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster
than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up.
It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.
It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle: when the sun comes
up, you'd better be running.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
One day the King decided that he would force all his subjects to tell the
truth. A gallows was erected in front of the city gates. A herald announced,
"Whoever would enter the city must first answer the truth to a question
which will be put to him." Nasrudin was first in line. The captain of the
guard asked him, "Where are you going? Tell the truth -- the alternative
is death by hanging."
"I am going," said Nasrudin, "to be hanged on that gallows."
"I don't believe you."
"Very well, if I have told a lie, then hang me!"
"But that would make it the truth!"
"Exactly," said Nasrudin, "your truth."
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #10: SIMPLE
SIMPLE is an acronym for Sheer Idiot's Monopurpose Programming Language
Environment. This language, developed at the Hanover College for
Technological Misfits, was designed to make it impossible to write code
with errors in it. The statements are, therefore, confined to BEGIN,
END and STOP. No matter how you arrange the statements, you can't make
a syntax error. Programs written in SIMPLE do nothing useful. Thus
they achieve the results of programs written in other languages without
the tedious, frustrating process of testing and debugging.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
When properly administered, vacations do not diminish productivity: for
every week you're away and get nothing done, there's another when your boss
is away and you get twice as much done.
-- Daniel B. Luten
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Two hundred years ago today, Irma Chine of White Plains, New York, was
performing her normal housekeeping routines. She was interrupted by
British soldiers who, rallying to the call of their supervisor, General
Hughes, sought to gain control of the voter registration lists kept in
her home. Masking her fear and thinking fast, Mrs. Chine quickly divided
a nearby apple in two and deftly stored the list in its center. Upon
entering, the British blatantly violated every conceivable convention,
and, though they went through the house virtually bit by bit, their
search was fruitless. They had to return empty handed. Word of the
incident propagated rapidly through the region. This historic event
became the first documented use of core storage for the saving of registers.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Alan Cox wrote: :-).
>> On any procmail new enough not to be full of security holes you set
>Brain on, Imeant majordomo of course 8)
You got me worried there for a brief (very brief) moment
-- Stephen R. van den Berg (AKA BuGless)
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
DOS: n., A small annoying boot virus that causes random spontaneous system .plan
crashes, usually just before saving a massive project. Easily cured by
UNIX. See also MS-DOS, IBM-DOS, DR-DOS.
-- David Vicker's
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The Analytical Engine weaves Algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard
loom weaves flowers and leaves.
-- Ada Augusta, Countess of Lovelace, the first programmer
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I have a switch in my apartment that doesn't do anything. Every once
in a while I turn it on and off. On and off. On and off. One day I
got a call from a woman in France who said "Cut it out!"
-- Steven Wright
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
When you are about to do an objective and scientific piece of investigation
of a topic, it is well to gave the answer firmly in hand, so that you can
proceed forthrightly, without being deflected or swayed, directly to the goal.
-- Amrom Katz
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Before he became a hermit, Zarathud was a young Priest, and
took great delight in making fools of his opponents in front of
his followers.
One day Zarathud took his students to a pleasant pasture and
there he confronted The Sacred Chao while She was contentedly grazing.
"Tell me, you dumb beast," demanded the Priest in his
commanding voice, "why don't you do something worthwhile? What is your
Purpose in Life, anyway?"
Munching the tasty grass, The Sacred Chao replied "MU". (The
Chinese ideogram for NO-THING.)
Upon hearing this, absolutely nobody was enlightened.
Primarily because nobody understood Chinese.
-- Camden Benares, "Zen Without Zen Masters"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one
instruction -- from which, by induction, one can deduce that every
program can be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...