Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spats in their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of the moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter -- for they had a machine, a dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every respect. And they lived with it, and on it, and under it, and inside it, for it was all they had -- first they saved up all their atoms, then they put them all together, and if one didn't fit, why they chipped at it a bit, and everything was just fine...
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
NEW YORK-- Kraft Foods, Inc. announced today that its board of directors unanimously rejected the $11 billion takeover bid by Philip Morris and Co. A Kraft spokesman stated in a press conference that the offer was rejected because the $90-per-share bid did not reflect the true value of the company.
Wall Street insiders, however, tell quite a different story. Apparently, the Kraft board of directors had all but signed the takeover agreement when they learned of Philip Morris' marketing plans for one of their major Middle East subsidiaries. To a person, the board voted to reject the bid when they discovered that the tobacco giant intended to reorganize Israeli Cheddar, Ltd., and name the new company Cheeses of Nazareth.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
All of the people in my building are insane. The guy above me designs synthetic hairballs for ceramic cats. The lady across the hall tried to rob a department store... with a pricing gun... She said, "Give me all of the money in the vault, or I'm marking down everything in the store."
-- Steven Wright
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Ooh, mommy, mommy, what I have now doesn't work in this extremely unlikely circumstance, so I'll just throw it away and write something completely new.
-- Linus Torvalds
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
If the designers of X-window built cars, there would be no fewer than five steering wheels hidden about the cockpit, none of which followed the same prinicples -- but you'd be able to shift gears with your car stereo. Useful feature, that.
-- From the programming notebooks of a heretic, 1990.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Welcome to UNIX! Enjoy your session! Have a great time! Note the use of exclamation points! They are a very effective method for demonstrating excitement, and can also spice up an otherwise plain-looking sentence! However, there are drawbacks! Too much unnecessary exclaiming can lead to a reduction in the effect that an exclamation point has on the reader! For example, the sentence
Jane went to the store to buy bread
should only be ended with an exclamation point if there is something sensational about her going to the store, for example, if Jane is a cocker spaniel or if Jane is on a diet that doesn't allow bread or if Jane doesn't exist for some reason! See how easy it is?! Proper control of exclamation points can add new meaning to your life! Call now to receive my free pamphlet, "The Wonder and Mystery of the Exclamation Point!"! Enclose fifteen(!) dollars for postage and handling! Operators are standing by! (Which is pretty amazing, because they're all cocker spaniels!)
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
If the vendors started doing everything right, we would be out of a job. Let's hear it for OSI and X! With those babies in the wings, we can count on being employed until we drop, or get smart and switch to gardening, paper folding, or something.
-- C. Philip Wood
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
As part of the conversion, computer specialists rewrote 1,500 programs; a process that traditionally requires some debugging.
-- USA Today, referring to the Internal Revenue Service
conversion to a new computer system.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Nitwit ideas are for emergencies. You use them when you've got nothing else to try. If they work, they go in the Book. Otherwise you follow the Book, which is largely a collection of nitwit ideas that worked.
-- Larry Niven, "The Mote in God's Eye"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
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.
-- Charles Babbage
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but the mark of a fake messiah. The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in awhile and watch your answers change.
-- Messiah's Handbook : Reminders for the Advanced Soul
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
... Jesus cried with a loud voice: Lazarus, come forth; the bug hath been found and thy program runneth. And he that was dead came forth...
-- John 11:43-44 [version 2.0?]
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
A sheet of paper crossed my desk the other day and as I read it, realization of a basic truth came over me. So simple! So obvious we couldn't see it. John Knivlen, Chairman of Polamar Repeater Club, an amateur radio group, had discovered how IC circuits work. He says that smoke is the thing that makes ICs work because every time you let the smoke out of an IC circuit, it stops working. He claims to have verified this with thorough testing.
I was flabbergasted! Of course! Smoke makes all things electrical work. Remember the last time smoke escaped from your Lucas voltage regulator Didn't it quit working? I sat and smiled like an idiot as more of the truth dawned. It's the wiring harness that carries the smoke from one device to another in your Mini, MG or Jag. And when the harness springs a leak, it lets the smoke out of everything at once, and then nothing works. The starter motor requires large quantities of smoke to operate properly, and that's why the wire going to it is so large.
Feeling very smug, I continued to expand my hypothesis. Why are Lucas electronics more likely to leak than say Bosch? Hmmm... Aha!!! Lucas is British, and all things British leak! British convertible tops leak water, British engines leak oil, British displacer units leak hydrostatic fluid, and I might add Brititsh tires leak air, and the British defense unit leaks secrets... so naturally British electronics leak smoke.
-- Jack Banton, PCC Automotive Electrical School
[Ummm... IC circuits? Integrated circuit circuits?]
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
... Any resemblance between the above views and those of my employer, my terminal, or the view out my window are purely coincidental. Any resemblance between the above and my own views is non-deterministic. The question of the existence of views in the absence of anyone to hold them is left as an exercise for the reader. The question of the existence of the reader is left as an exercise for the second god coefficient. (A discussion of non-orthogonal, non-integral polytheism is beyond the scope of this article.)
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
After the Children of Israel had wandered for thirty-nine years in the wilderness, Ferdinand Feghoot arrived to make sure that they would finally find and enter the Promised Land. With him, he brought his favorite robot, faithful old Yewtoo Artoo, to carry his gear and do assorted camp chores.
The Israelites soon got over their initial fear of the robot and, as the months passed, became very fond of him. Patriarchs took to discussing abtruse theological problems with him, and each evening the children all gathered to hear the many stories with which he was programmed. Therefore it came as a great shock to them when, just as their journey was ending, he abruptly wore out. Even Feghoot couldn't console them.
"It may be true, Ferdinand Feghoot," said Moses, "that our friend Yewtoo Artoo was soulless, but we cannot believe it. He must be properly interred. We cannot embalm him as do the Egyptians. Nor have we wood for a coffin. But I do have a most splendid skin from one of Pharoah's own cattle. We shall bury him in it."
Feghoot agreed. "Yes, let this be his last rusting place."
"Rusting?" Moses cried. "Not in this dreadful dry desert!"
"Ah!" sighed Ferdinand Feghoot, shedding a tear, "I fear you do not realize the full significance of Pharoah's oxhide!"
-- Grendel Briarton "Through Time & Space With Ferdinand
Feghoot!"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Does biff in bo work coz it biffin doesn't beep an if biff in bo is broke then biff in bo I will delete
I've tried biff in bo with 'y' I've tried biff in bo with '-y' no biffin output does it show so poor wee biff is gonna go.
-- John Spence on debian-user
- 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...
Scotty: Captain, we din' can reference it! Kirk: Analysis, Mr. Spock? Spock: Captain, it doesn't appear in the symbol table. Kirk: Then it's of external origin? Spock: Affirmative. Kirk: Mr. Sulu, go to pass two. Sulu: Aye aye, sir, going to pass two.
- 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...
"Linux was made by foreign terrorists to take money from true US companies like Microsoft." - Some AOL'er. "To this end we dedicate ourselves..." -Don
-- From the sig of "Don", don@cs.byu.edu
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
One promising concept that I came up with right away was that you could manufacture personal air bags, then get a law passed requiring that they be installed on congressmen to keep them from taking trips. Let's say your congressman was trying to travel to Paris to do a fact-finding study on how the French government handles diseases transmitted by sherbet. Just when he got to the plane, his mandatory air bag, strapped around his waist, would inflate -- FWWAAAAAAPPPP -- thus rendering him too large to fit through the plane door. It could also be rigged to inflate whenever the congressman proposed a law. ("Mr. Speaker, people ask me, why should October be designated as Cuticle Inspection Month? And I answer that FWWAAAAAAPPPP.") This would save millions of dollars, so I have no doubt that the public would violently support a law requiring airbags on congressmen. The problem is that your potential market is very small: there are only around 500 members of Congress, and some of them, such as House Speaker "Tip" O'Neil, are already too large to fit on normal aircraft.
-- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Exporting beer from Finnland doesn't seem to be that much of a hassle, as the Lenigrad Cowboys brought a lot of their brew to the concerts in Austria.
-- Otmar Lendl
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
My God, I'm depressed! Here I am, a computer with a mind a thousand times as powerful as yours, doing nothing but cranking out fortunes and sending mail about softball games. And I've got this pain right through my ALU. I've asked for it to be replaced, but nobody ever listens. I think it would be better for us both if you were to just log out again.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Slashdot Mirror
Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the ...
Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spats in
their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of the
moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter -- for they had a machine, a
dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every respect.
And they lived with it, and on it, and under it, and inside it, for it
was all they had -- first they saved up all their atoms, then they put
them all together, and if one didn't fit, why they chipped at it a bit,
and everything was just fine
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
NEW YORK-- Kraft Foods, Inc. announced today that its board of
directors unanimously rejected the $11 billion takeover bid by Philip
Morris and Co. A Kraft spokesman stated in a press conference that the
offer was rejected because the $90-per-share bid did not reflect the
true value of the company.
Wall Street insiders, however, tell quite a different story.
Apparently, the Kraft board of directors had all but signed the takeover
agreement when they learned of Philip Morris' marketing plans for one of
their major Middle East subsidiaries. To a person, the board voted to
reject the bid when they discovered that the tobacco giant intended to
reorganize Israeli Cheddar, Ltd., and name the new company Cheeses of Nazareth.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
All of the people in my building are insane. The guy above me designs
synthetic hairballs for ceramic cats. The lady across the hall tried to
rob a department store... with a pricing gun... She said, "Give me all
of the money in the vault, or I'm marking down everything in the store."
-- Steven Wright
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Ooh, mommy, mommy, what I have now doesn't work in this extremely
unlikely circumstance, so I'll just throw it away and write something
completely new.
-- Linus Torvalds
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
If the designers of X-window built cars, there would be no fewer than five
steering wheels hidden about the cockpit, none of which followed the same
prinicples -- but you'd be able to shift gears with your car stereo. Useful
feature, that.
-- From the programming notebooks of a heretic, 1990.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Excerpt from a conversation between a customer support person and a
customer working for a well-known military-affiliated research lab:
Support: "You're not our only customer, you know."
Customer: "But we're one of the few with tactical nuclear weapons."
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Welcome to UNIX! Enjoy your session! Have a great time! Note the
use of exclamation points! They are a very effective method for
demonstrating excitement, and can also spice up an otherwise plain-looking
sentence! However, there are drawbacks! Too much unnecessary exclaiming
can lead to a reduction in the effect that an exclamation point has on
the reader! For example, the sentence
Jane went to the store to buy bread
should only be ended with an exclamation point if there is something
sensational about her going to the store, for example, if Jane is a
cocker spaniel or if Jane is on a diet that doesn't allow bread or if
Jane doesn't exist for some reason! See how easy it is?! Proper control
of exclamation points can add new meaning to your life! Call now to receive
my free pamphlet, "The Wonder and Mystery of the Exclamation Point!"!
Enclose fifteen(!) dollars for postage and handling! Operators are
standing by! (Which is pretty amazing, because they're all cocker spaniels!)
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
If the vendors started doing everything right, we would be out of a job.
Let's hear it for OSI and X! With those babies in the wings, we can count
on being employed until we drop, or get smart and switch to gardening,
paper folding, or something.
-- C. Philip Wood
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
As part of the conversion, computer specialists rewrote 1,500 programs;
a process that traditionally requires some debugging.
-- USA Today, referring to the Internal Revenue Service
conversion to a new computer system.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The New Testament offers the basis for modern computer coding theory,
in the form of an affirmation of the binary number system.
But let your communication be Yea, yea; nay, nay:
for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.
-- Matthew 5:37
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Nitwit ideas are for emergencies. You use them when you've got nothing
else to try. If they work, they go in the Book. Otherwise you follow
the Book, which is largely a collection of nitwit ideas that worked.
-- Larry Niven, "The Mote in God's Eye"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
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.
-- Charles Babbage
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being
true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but the
mark of a fake messiah. The simplest questions are the most profound.
Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What
are you doing? Think about these once in awhile and watch your answers
change.
-- Messiah's Handbook : Reminders for the Advanced Soul
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
... Jesus cried with a loud voice: Lazarus, come forth; the bug hath been
found and thy program runneth. And he that was dead came forth...
-- John 11:43-44 [version 2.0?]
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
A sheet of paper crossed my desk the other day and as I read it,
... IC circuits? Integrated circuit circuits?]
realization of a basic truth came over me. So simple! So obvious we couldn't
see it. John Knivlen, Chairman of Polamar Repeater Club, an amateur radio
group, had discovered how IC circuits work. He says that smoke is the thing
that makes ICs work because every time you let the smoke out of an IC circuit,
it stops working. He claims to have verified this with thorough testing.
I was flabbergasted! Of course! Smoke makes all things electrical
work. Remember the last time smoke escaped from your Lucas voltage regulator
Didn't it quit working? I sat and smiled like an idiot as more of the truth
dawned. It's the wiring harness that carries the smoke from one device to
another in your Mini, MG or Jag. And when the harness springs a leak, it lets
the smoke out of everything at once, and then nothing works. The starter motor
requires large quantities of smoke to operate properly, and that's why the wire
going to it is so large.
Feeling very smug, I continued to expand my hypothesis. Why are Lucas
electronics more likely to leak than say Bosch? Hmmm... Aha!!! Lucas is
British, and all things British leak! British convertible tops leak water,
British engines leak oil, British displacer units leak hydrostatic fluid, and
I might add Brititsh tires leak air, and the British defense unit leaks
secrets... so naturally British electronics leak smoke.
-- Jack Banton, PCC Automotive Electrical School
[Ummm
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
... Any resemblance between the above views and those of my employer,
my terminal, or the view out my window are purely coincidental. Any
resemblance between the above and my own views is non-deterministic. The
question of the existence of views in the absence of anyone to hold them
is left as an exercise for the reader. The question of the existence of
the reader is left as an exercise for the second god coefficient. (A
discussion of non-orthogonal, non-integral polytheism is beyond the scope
of this article.)
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
After the Children of Israel had wandered for thirty-nine years
in the wilderness, Ferdinand Feghoot arrived to make sure that they would
finally find and enter the Promised Land. With him, he brought his
favorite robot, faithful old Yewtoo Artoo, to carry his gear and do
assorted camp chores.
The Israelites soon got over their initial fear of the robot and,
as the months passed, became very fond of him. Patriarchs took to
discussing abtruse theological problems with him, and each evening the
children all gathered to hear the many stories with which he was programmed.
Therefore it came as a great shock to them when, just as their journey was
ending, he abruptly wore out. Even Feghoot couldn't console them.
"It may be true, Ferdinand Feghoot," said Moses, "that our friend
Yewtoo Artoo was soulless, but we cannot believe it. He must be properly
interred. We cannot embalm him as do the Egyptians. Nor have we wood for
a coffin. But I do have a most splendid skin from one of Pharoah's own
cattle. We shall bury him in it."
Feghoot agreed. "Yes, let this be his last rusting place."
"Rusting?" Moses cried. "Not in this dreadful dry desert!"
"Ah!" sighed Ferdinand Feghoot, shedding a tear, "I fear you do not
realize the full significance of Pharoah's oxhide!"
-- Grendel Briarton "Through Time & Space With Ferdinand
Feghoot!"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Does biff in bo work
coz it biffin doesn't beep
an if biff in bo is broke
then biff in bo I will delete
I've tried biff in bo with 'y'
I've tried biff in bo with '-y'
no biffin output does it show
so poor wee biff is gonna go.
-- John Spence on debian-user
- 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...
Scotty: Captain, we din' can reference it!
Kirk: Analysis, Mr. Spock?
Spock: Captain, it doesn't appear in the symbol table.
Kirk: Then it's of external origin?
Spock: Affirmative.
Kirk: Mr. Sulu, go to pass two.
Sulu: Aye aye, sir, going to pass two.
- 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...
"Linux was made by foreign terrorists to take money from true US companies
like Microsoft." - Some AOL'er.
"To this end we dedicate ourselves..." -Don
-- From the sig of "Don", don@cs.byu.edu
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
One promising concept that I came up with right away was that you could
manufacture personal air bags, then get a law passed requiring that they be
installed on congressmen to keep them from taking trips. Let's say your
congressman was trying to travel to Paris to do a fact-finding study on how
the French government handles diseases transmitted by sherbet. Just when he
got to the plane, his mandatory air bag, strapped around his waist, would
inflate -- FWWAAAAAAPPPP -- thus rendering him too large to fit through the
plane door. It could also be rigged to inflate whenever the congressman
proposed a law. ("Mr. Speaker, people ask me, why should October be
designated as Cuticle Inspection Month? And I answer that FWWAAAAAAPPPP.")
This would save millions of dollars, so I have no doubt that the public
would violently support a law requiring airbags on congressmen. The problem
is that your potential market is very small: there are only around 500
members of Congress, and some of them, such as House Speaker "Tip" O'Neil,
are already too large to fit on normal aircraft.
-- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Exporting beer from Finnland doesn't seem to be that much of a hassle,
as the Lenigrad Cowboys brought a lot of their brew to the concerts in
Austria.
-- Otmar Lendl
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
My God, I'm depressed! Here I am, a computer with a mind a thousand times
as powerful as yours, doing nothing but cranking out fortunes and sending
mail about softball games. And I've got this pain right through my ALU.
I've asked for it to be replaced, but nobody ever listens. I think it would
be better for us both if you were to just log out again.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...