Eh, that's it, I guess. No 300 million dollar unveiling event for this kernel, I'm afraid, but you're still supposed to think of this as the "happening of the century" (at least until the next kernel comes along).
-- Linus, in the announcement for 1.3.27
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
... there are about 5,000 people who are part of that commitee. These guys have a hard time sorting out what day to meet, and whether to eat croissants or doughnuts for breakfast -- let alone how to define how all these complex layers that are going to be agreed upon.
-- Craig Burton of Novell, Network World
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
...you might as well skip the Xmas celebration completely, and instead sit in front of your linux computer playing with the all-new-and-improved linux kernel version.
-- Linus Torvalds
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings:
(10) Sorry, but that's too useful.
(9) Dammit, little-endian systems *are* more consistent!
(8) I'm on the committee and I *still* don't know what the hell
#pragma is for.
(7) Well, it's an excellent idea, but it would make the compilers too
hard to write.
(6) Them bats is smart; they use radar.
(5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in
here?
(4) How many times do we have to tell you, "No prior art!"
(3) Ha, ha, I can't believe they're actually going to adopt this
sucker.
(2) Thank you for your generous donation, Mr. Wirth.
(1) Gee, I wish we hadn't backed down on 'noalias'.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offence.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
... faster BogoMIPS calculations (yes, it now boots 2 seconds faster than it used to: we're considering changing the name from "Linux" to "InstaBOOT"
-- Linus, in the announcement for 1.3.26
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
... there are about 5,000 people who are part of that commitee. These guys have a hard time sorting out what day to meet, and whether to eat croissants or doughnuts for breakfast -- let alone how to define how all these complex layers that are going to be agreed upon.
-- Craig Burton of Novell, Network World
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The marvels of today's modern technology include the development of a soda can, when discarded will last forever... and a $7,000 car which when properly cared for will rust out in two or three years.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Comparing software engineering to classical engineering assumes that software has the ability to wear out. Software typically behaves, or it does not. It either works, or it does not. Software generally does not degrade, abrade, stretch, twist, or ablate. To treat it as a physical entity, therefore, is misapplication of our engineering skills. Classical engineering deals with the characteristics of hardware; software engineering should deal with the characteristics of *software*, and not with hardware or management.
-- Dan Klein
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The misnaming of fields of study is so common as to lead to what might be general systems laws. For example, Frank Harary once suggested the law that any field that had the word "science" in its name was guaranteed thereby not to be a science. He would cite as examples Military Science, Library Science, Political Science, Homemaking Science, Social Science, and Computer Science. Discuss the generality of this law, and possible reasons for its predictive power.
-- Gerald Weinberg, "An Introduction to General Systems
Thinking"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The so-called "desktop metaphor" of today's workstations is instead an "airplane-seat" metaphor. Anyone who has shuffled a lap full of papers while seated between two portly passengers will recognize the difference -- one can see only a very few things at once.
-- Fred Brooks
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
It has been widely recognized that AI programs require expert knowledge in order to perform well in complex domains. But knowledge alone is not sufficient for some applications; wisdom is needed as well. Accordingly, we have developed a new approach to artificial intelligence which we call "wisdom engineering". As a test of our ideas, we have written IMMANUEL, a wisdom based system for the task domain of western philosophical thought. IMMANUEL was supplied initially with 200 wisdom units which contained wisdom about such elementary concepts as mind, matter, being, nothingness, and so forth. IMMANUEL was then allowed to run freely, guided by the heuristic rules contained in its heterarchically organized meta wisdom base. IMMANUEL succeeded in rediscovering most of the important philosophical ideas developed in western culture over the course of the last 25 centuries, including those underlying Plato's theory of government, Kant's metaphysics, Nietzsche's theory of value, and Husserl's phenomenology. In this seminar, we will describe IMMANUEL's achievements and internal architecture. We will also briefly discuss our recent efforts to apply wisdom engineering to oil exploration.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
> I've hacked the Xaw3d library to give you a Win95 like interface and it > is named Xaw95. You can replace your Xaw3d library. Oh God, this is so disgusting!
-- seen on c.o.l.development.apps, about the "Win95 look-alike"
- 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 only justification for our concepts and systems of concepts is that they serve to represent the complex of our experiences; beyond this they have no legitimacy.
-- Albert Einstein
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
We knew from experience that the essence of communal computing, as supplied by remote-access, time-shared machines, is not just to type programs into a terminal instead of a keypunch, but to encourage close communication.
-- Dennis Ritchie
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
According to a recent and unscientific national survey, smiling is something everyone should do at least 6 times a day. In an effort to increase the national average (the US ranks third among the world's superpowers in smiling), Xerox has instructed all personnel to be happy, effervescent, and most importantly, to smile. Xerox employees agree, and even feel strongly that they can not only meet but surpass the national average... except for Tubby Ackerman. But because Tubby does such a fine job of racing around parking lots with a large butterfly net retrieving floating IC chips, Xerox decided to give him a break. If you see Tubby in a parking lot he may have a sheepish grin. This is where the expression, "Service with a slightly sheepish grin" comes from.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
SOMETIMES THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD is so overwhelming, I just want to throw back my head and gargle. Just gargle and gargle and I don't care who hears me because I am beautiful.
-- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Once, when the secrets of science were the jealously guarded property of a small priesthood, the common man had no hope of mastering their arcane complexities. Years of study in musty classrooms were prerequisite to obtaining even a dim, incoherent knowledge of science.
Today all that has changed: a dim, incoherent knowledge of science is available to anyone.
-- Tom Weller, "Science Made Stupid"
- 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...
It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics and chemistry.
-- H.L. Mencken
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
7,140 pounds on the Sun
97 pounds on Mercury or Mars
255 pounds on Earth
232 pounds on Venus or Uranus
43 pounds on the Moon
648 pounds on Jupiter
275 pounds on Saturn
303 pounds on Neptune
13 pounds on Pluto
-- How much Elvis Presley would weigh at various places
in the solar system.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Too often people have come to me and said, "If I had just one wish for anything in all the world, I would wish for more user-defined equations in the HP-51820A Waveform Generator Software."
-- Instrument News
[Once is too often. Ed.]
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
> Also another major deciding factor is availability of source code. > It just gives everybody a warm fuzzy feeling knowing that there is > source code available to the product you are using. It allows everybody > to improve on the product and fix bugs etc. sooner that the author(s) > would get the time/chance to.
I think this is one the really BIG reasons for the snowball/onslaught of Linux and the wealth of stuff available that gets enhanced faster than the real vendors can keep up.
-- Norman
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
NOTE: No warranties, either express or implied, are hereby given. All software is supplied as is, without guarantee. The user assumes all responsibility for damages resulting from the use of these features, including, but not limited to, frustration, disgust, system abends, disk head-crashes, general malfeasance, floods, fires, shark attack, nerve gas, locust infestation, cyclones, hurricanes, tsunamis, local electromagnetic disruptions, hydraulic brake system failure, invasion, hashing collisions, normal wear and tear of friction surfaces, comic radiation, inadvertent destruction of sensitive electronic components, windstorms, the Riders of Nazgul, infuriated chickens, malfunctioning mechanical or electrical sexual devices, premature activation of the distant early warning system, peasant uprisings, halitosis, artillery bombardment, explosions, cave-ins, and/or frogs falling from the sky.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Slashdot Mirror
Eh, that's it, I guess. No 300 million dollar unveiling event for this
kernel, I'm afraid, but you're still supposed to think of this as the
"happening of the century" (at least until the next kernel comes along).
-- Linus, in the announcement for 1.3.27
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
... there are about 5,000 people who are part of that commitee. These guys
have a hard time sorting out what day to meet, and whether to eat croissants
or doughnuts for breakfast -- let alone how to define how all these complex
layers that are going to be agreed upon.
-- Craig Burton of Novell, Network World
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
...you might as well skip the Xmas celebration completely, and instead
sit in front of your linux computer playing with the all-new-and-improved
linux kernel version.
-- Linus Torvalds
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings:
(10) Sorry, but that's too useful.
(9) Dammit, little-endian systems *are* more consistent!
(8) I'm on the committee and I *still* don't know what the hell
#pragma is for.
(7) Well, it's an excellent idea, but it would make the compilers too
hard to write.
(6) Them bats is smart; they use radar.
(5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in
here?
(4) How many times do we have to tell you, "No prior art!"
(3) Ha, ha, I can't believe they're actually going to adopt this
sucker.
(2) Thank you for your generous donation, Mr. Wirth.
(1) Gee, I wish we hadn't backed down on 'noalias'.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be
regarded as a criminal offence.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
... faster BogoMIPS calculations (yes, it now boots 2 seconds faster than
it used to: we're considering changing the name from "Linux" to "InstaBOOT"
-- Linus, in the announcement for 1.3.26
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
... there are about 5,000 people who are part of that commitee. These guys
have a hard time sorting out what day to meet, and whether to eat croissants
or doughnuts for breakfast -- let alone how to define how all these complex
layers that are going to be agreed upon.
-- Craig Burton of Novell, Network World
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The marvels of today's modern technology include the development of a ... and a $7,000 car which
soda can, when discarded will last forever
when properly cared for will rust out in two or three years.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Comparing software engineering to classical engineering assumes that software
has the ability to wear out. Software typically behaves, or it does not. It
either works, or it does not. Software generally does not degrade, abrade,
stretch, twist, or ablate. To treat it as a physical entity, therefore, is
misapplication of our engineering skills. Classical engineering deals with
the characteristics of hardware; software engineering should deal with the
characteristics of *software*, and not with hardware or management.
-- Dan Klein
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The misnaming of fields of study is so common as to lead to what might be
general systems laws. For example, Frank Harary once suggested the law that
any field that had the word "science" in its name was guaranteed thereby
not to be a science. He would cite as examples Military Science, Library
Science, Political Science, Homemaking Science, Social Science, and Computer
Science. Discuss the generality of this law, and possible reasons for its
predictive power.
-- Gerald Weinberg, "An Introduction to General Systems
Thinking"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The so-called "desktop metaphor" of today's workstations is instead an
"airplane-seat" metaphor. Anyone who has shuffled a lap full of papers
while seated between two portly passengers will recognize the difference --
one can see only a very few things at once.
-- Fred Brooks
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
***** Special AI Seminar (abstract)
It has been widely recognized that AI programs require expert knowledge
in order to perform well in complex domains. But knowledge alone is not
sufficient for some applications; wisdom is needed as well. Accordingly,
we have developed a new approach to artificial intelligence which we call
"wisdom engineering". As a test of our ideas, we have written IMMANUEL, a
wisdom based system for the task domain of western philosophical thought.
IMMANUEL was supplied initially with 200 wisdom units which contained wisdom
about such elementary concepts as mind, matter, being, nothingness, and so
forth. IMMANUEL was then allowed to run freely, guided by the heuristic
rules contained in its heterarchically organized meta wisdom base. IMMANUEL
succeeded in rediscovering most of the important philosophical ideas developed
in western culture over the course of the last 25 centuries, including those
underlying Plato's theory of government, Kant's metaphysics, Nietzsche's theory
of value, and Husserl's phenomenology. In this seminar, we will describe
IMMANUEL's achievements and internal architecture. We will also briefly
discuss our recent efforts to apply wisdom engineering to oil exploration.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
> I've hacked the Xaw3d library to give you a Win95 like interface and it
> is named Xaw95. You can replace your Xaw3d library.
Oh God, this is so disgusting!
-- seen on c.o.l.development.apps, about the "Win95 look-alike"
- 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 only justification for our concepts and systems of concepts is that they
serve to represent the complex of our experiences; beyond this they have
no legitimacy.
-- Albert Einstein
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
We knew from experience that the essence of communal computing, as
supplied by remote-access, time-shared machines, is not just to type
programs into a terminal instead of a keypunch, but to encourage close
communication.
-- Dennis Ritchie
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
According to a recent and unscientific national survey, smiling is something
everyone should do at least 6 times a day. In an effort to increase the
national average (the US ranks third among the world's superpowers in
smiling), Xerox has instructed all personnel to be happy, effervescent, and
most importantly, to smile. Xerox employees agree, and even feel strongly
that they can not only meet but surpass the national average... except for
Tubby Ackerman. But because Tubby does such a fine job of racing around
parking lots with a large butterfly net retrieving floating IC chips, Xerox
decided to give him a break. If you see Tubby in a parking lot he may have
a sheepish grin. This is where the expression, "Service with a slightly
sheepish grin" comes from.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
SOMETIMES THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD is so overwhelming, I just want to throw
back my head and gargle. Just gargle and gargle and I don't care who hears
me because I am beautiful.
-- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Once, when the secrets of science were the jealously guarded property
of a small priesthood, the common man had no hope of mastering their arcane
complexities. Years of study in musty classrooms were prerequisite to
obtaining even a dim, incoherent knowledge of science.
Today all that has changed: a dim, incoherent knowledge of science is
available to anyone.
-- Tom Weller, "Science Made Stupid"
- 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...
It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to
mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics and chemistry.
-- H.L. Mencken
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
7,140 pounds on the Sun
97 pounds on Mercury or Mars
255 pounds on Earth
232 pounds on Venus or Uranus
43 pounds on the Moon
648 pounds on Jupiter
275 pounds on Saturn
303 pounds on Neptune
13 pounds on Pluto
-- How much Elvis Presley would weigh at various places
in the solar system.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Too often people have come to me and said, "If I had just one wish for
anything in all the world, I would wish for more user-defined equations
in the HP-51820A Waveform Generator Software."
-- Instrument News
[Once is too often. Ed.]
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
> Also another major deciding factor is availability of source code.
> It just gives everybody a warm fuzzy feeling knowing that there is
> source code available to the product you are using. It allows everybody
> to improve on the product and fix bugs etc. sooner that the author(s)
> would get the time/chance to.
I think this is one the really BIG reasons for the snowball/onslaught
of Linux and the wealth of stuff available that gets enhanced faster
than the real vendors can keep up.
-- Norman
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
NOTE: No warranties, either express or implied, are hereby given. All
software is supplied as is, without guarantee. The user assumes all
responsibility for damages resulting from the use of these features,
including, but not limited to, frustration, disgust, system abends, disk
head-crashes, general malfeasance, floods, fires, shark attack, nerve
gas, locust infestation, cyclones, hurricanes, tsunamis, local
electromagnetic disruptions, hydraulic brake system failure, invasion,
hashing collisions, normal wear and tear of friction surfaces, comic
radiation, inadvertent destruction of sensitive electronic components,
windstorms, the Riders of Nazgul, infuriated chickens, malfunctioning
mechanical or electrical sexual devices, premature activation of the
distant early warning system, peasant uprisings, halitosis, artillery
bombardment, explosions, cave-ins, and/or frogs falling from the sky.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...