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...
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...
The salesman and the system analyst took off to spend a weekend in the forest, hunting bear. They'd rented a cabin, and, when they got there, took their backpacks off and put them inside. At which point the salesman turned to his friend, and said, "You unpack while I go and find us a bear."
Puzzled, the analyst finished unpacking and then went and sat down on the porch. Soon he could hear rustling noises in the forest. The noises got nearer -- and louder -- and suddenly there was the salesman, running like hell across the clearing toward the cabin, pursued by one of the largest and most ferocious grizzly bears the analyst had ever seen.
"Open the door!", screamed the salesman.
The analyst whipped open the door, and the salesman ran to the door, suddenly stopped, and stepped aside. The bear, unable to stop, continued through the door and into the cabin. The salesman slammed the door closed and grinned at his friend. "Got him!", he exclaimed, "now, you skin this one and I'll go rustle us up another!"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
And the next time you consider complaining that running Lucid Emacs 19.05 via NFS from a remote Linux machine in Paraguay doesn't seem to get the background colors right, you'll know who to thank.
-- Matt Welsh
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I have travelled the length and breadth of this country, and have talked with the best people in business administration. I can assure you on the highest authority that data processing is a fad and won't last out the year.
-- Editor in charge of business books at Prentice-Hall
publishers, responding to Karl V. Karlstrom (a junior
editor who had recommended a manuscript on the new
science of data processing), c. 1957
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"I assure you the thought never even crossed my mind, lord."
"Indeed? Then if I were you I'd sue my face for slander."
-- Terry Pratchett, "The Colour of Magic"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
AP/STT. Helsinki, Dec 5th, 6:22 AM. For immediate release.
In order to allay fears about the continuity of the Linux project, Linus Torvalds together with his manager Tove Monni have released "Linus v2.0", affectionately known as "Kernel Hacker - The Next Generation".
Linux stock prices on Wall Street rose sharply after the announcement; as one well-known analyst who wishes to remain anonymous says - "It shows a long-term commitment, and while we expect a short-term decrease in productivity, we feel that this solidifies the development in the long run".
Other analysts downplay the importance of the event, and claim that just about anybody could have done it. "I'm glad somebody finally told them about the birds and the bees" one sceptic comments cryptically. But even the skeptics agree that it is an interesting turn of events.
Others bring up other issues with the new version - "I'm especially intrigued by the fact that the new version is female, and look forward to seeing what the impact of that will be on future development. Will "Red Hat Linux" change to "Pink Hat Linux", for example?"
-- Linus Torvalds announcing that he became father of a girl
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"Picture the sun as the origin of two intersecting 6-dimensional hyperplanes from which we can deduce a certain transformational sequence which gives us the terminal velocity of a rubber duck..."
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
By long-standing tradition, I take this opportunity to savage other designers in the thin disguise of good, clean fun.
-- P.J. Plauger, "Computer Language", 1988, April
Fool's column.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I will be known as Ian Black, Ean can be Ian Red, Netgod Ian Blue,
Che gets Ian Yellow, CQ is Ian Purple and Joey is Ian Indigo
-- Some #Debian channel
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The problem with engineers is that they tend to cheat in order to get results.
The problem with mathematicians is that they tend to work on toy problems in order to get results.
The problem with program verifiers is that they tend to cheat at toy problems in order to get results.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Very few things actually get manufactured these days, because in an infinitely large Universe, such as the one in which we live, most things one could possibly imagine, and a lot of things one would rather not, grow somewhere. A forest was discovered recently in which most of the trees grew ratchet screwdrivers as fruit. The life cycle of the ratchet screwdriver is quite interesting. Once picked it needs a dark dusty drawer in which it can lie undisturbed for years. Then one night it suddenly hatches, discards its outer skin that crumbles into dust, and emerges as a totally unidentifiable little metal object with flanges at both ends and a sort of ridge and a hole for a screw. This, when found, will get thrown away. No one knows what the screwdriver is supposed to gain from this. Nature, in her infinite wisdom, is presumably working on it.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The programmers of old were mysterious and profound. We cannot fathom their thoughts, so all we do is describe their appearance.
Aware, like a fox crossing the water. Alert, like a general on the battlefield. Kind, like a hostess greeting her guests. Simple, like uncarved blocks of wood. Opaque, like black pools in darkened caves.
Who can tell the secrets of their hearts and minds?
The answer exists only in the Tao.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Look, we trade every day out there with hustlers, deal-makers, shysters, con-men. That's the way businesses get started. That's the way this country was built.
-- Hubert Allen
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Well, he thought, since neither Aristotelian Logic nor the disciplines of Science seemed to offer much hope, it's time to go beyond them...
Drawing a few deep even breaths, he entered a mental state practiced only by Masters of the Universal Way of Zen. In it his mind floated freely, able to rummage at will among the bits and pieces of data he had absorbed, undistracted by any outside disturbances. Logical structures no longer inhibited him. Pre-conceptions, prejudices, ordinary human standards vanished. All things, those previously trivial as well as those once thought important, became absolutely equal by acquiring an absolute value, revealing relationships not evident to ordinary vision. Like beads strung on a string of their own meaning, each thing pointed to its own common ground of existence, shared by all. Finally, each began to melt into each, staying itself while becoming all others. And Mind no longer contemplated Problem, but became Problem, destroying Subject-Object by becoming them.
Time passed, unheeded.
Eventually, there was a tentative stirring, then a decisive one, and Nakamura arose, a smile on his face and the light of laughter in his eyes.
-- Wayfarer
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Puns are little "plays on words" that a certain breed of person loves to spring on you and then look at you in a certain self-satisfied way to indicate that he thinks that you must think that he is by far the cleverest person on Earth now that Benjamin Franklin is dead, when in fact what you are thinking is that if this person ever ends up in a lifeboat, the other passengers will hurl him overboard by the end of the first day even if they have plenty of food and water.
-- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"I assure you the thought never even crossed my mind, lord."
"Indeed? Then if I were you I'd sue my face for slander."
-- Terry Pratchett, "The Colour of Magic"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
If just one piece of mail gets lost, well, they'll just think they forgot to send it. But if *two* pieces of mail get lost, hell, they'll just think the other guy hasn't gotten around to answering his mail. And if *fifty* pieces of mail get lost, can you imagine it, if *fifty* pieces of mail get lost, why they'll think someone *else* is broken! And if 1Gb of mail gets lost, they'll just *know* that Arpa [ucbarpa.berkeley.edu] is down and think it's a conspiracy to keep them from their God given right to receive Net Mail...
-- Casey Leedom
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Making files is easy under the UNIX operating system. Therefore, users tend to create numerous files using large amounts of file space. It has been said that the only standard thing about all UNIX systems is the message-of-the-day telling users to clean up their files.
-- System V.2 administrator's guide
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
How many seconds are there in a year? If I tell you there are 3.155 x 10^7, you won't even try to remember it. On the other hand, who could forget that, to within half a percent, pi seconds is a nanocentury.
-- Tom Duff, Bell Labs
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Or is it supposed to be one of those recursive acronyms? Diety Is Excellent To You. Deity Eats Icecream That's Yellow. Diety Is Eloping To Yokohama. I'll stop now.
-- Guy Maor
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Not me, guy. I read the Bash man page each day like a Jehovah's Witness reads the Bible. No wait, the Bash man page IS the bible. Excuse me...
-- More on confusing aliases, taken from comp.os.linux.misc
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Who wants to remember that escape-x-alt-control-left shift-b puts you into super-edit-debug-compile mode?
-- Discussion on the intuitiveness of commands, especially Emacs
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
A disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he was eating his morning meal. "I would like to give you this personality test", said the outsider, "because I want you to be happy."
Drescher took the paper that was offered him and put it into the toaster -- "I wish the toaster to be happy too".
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Creating computer software is always a demanding and painstaking process -- an exercise in logic, clear expression, and almost fanatical attention to detail. It requires intelligence, dedication, and an enormous amount of hard work. But, a certain amount of unpredictable and often unrepeatable inspiration is what usually makes the difference between adequacy and excellence.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Slashdot Mirror
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...
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...
The salesman and the system analyst took off to spend a weekend in the
forest, hunting bear. They'd rented a cabin, and, when they got there, took
their backpacks off and put them inside. At which point the salesman turned
to his friend, and said, "You unpack while I go and find us a bear."
Puzzled, the analyst finished unpacking and then went and sat down
on the porch. Soon he could hear rustling noises in the forest. The noises
got nearer -- and louder -- and suddenly there was the salesman, running like
hell across the clearing toward the cabin, pursued by one of the largest and
most ferocious grizzly bears the analyst had ever seen.
"Open the door!", screamed the salesman.
The analyst whipped open the door, and the salesman ran to the door,
suddenly stopped, and stepped aside. The bear, unable to stop, continued
through the door and into the cabin. The salesman slammed the door closed
and grinned at his friend. "Got him!", he exclaimed, "now, you skin this
one and I'll go rustle us up another!"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
And the next time you consider complaining that running Lucid Emacs
19.05 via NFS from a remote Linux machine in Paraguay doesn't seem to
get the background colors right, you'll know who to thank.
-- Matt Welsh
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I have travelled the length and breadth of this country, and have talked with
the best people in business administration. I can assure you on the highest
authority that data processing is a fad and won't last out the year.
-- Editor in charge of business books at Prentice-Hall
publishers, responding to Karl V. Karlstrom (a junior
editor who had recommended a manuscript on the new
science of data processing), c. 1957
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"I assure you the thought never even crossed my mind, lord."
"Indeed? Then if I were you I'd sue my face for slander."
-- Terry Pratchett, "The Colour of Magic"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
AP/STT. Helsinki, Dec 5th, 6:22 AM. For immediate release.
In order to allay fears about the continuity of the Linux project, Linus
Torvalds together with his manager Tove Monni have released "Linus
v2.0", affectionately known as "Kernel Hacker - The Next Generation".
Linux stock prices on Wall Street rose sharply after the announcement;
as one well-known analyst who wishes to remain anonymous says - "It
shows a long-term commitment, and while we expect a short-term decrease
in productivity, we feel that this solidifies the development in the
long run".
Other analysts downplay the importance of the event, and claim that just
about anybody could have done it. "I'm glad somebody finally told them
about the birds and the bees" one sceptic comments cryptically. But
even the skeptics agree that it is an interesting turn of events.
Others bring up other issues with the new version - "I'm especially
intrigued by the fact that the new version is female, and look forward
to seeing what the impact of that will be on future development. Will
"Red Hat Linux" change to "Pink Hat Linux", for example?"
-- Linus Torvalds announcing that he became father of a girl
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"Picture the sun as the origin of two intersecting 6-dimensional ..."
hyperplanes from which we can deduce a certain transformational
sequence which gives us the terminal velocity of a rubber duck
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
By long-standing tradition, I take this opportunity to savage other
designers in the thin disguise of good, clean fun.
-- P.J. Plauger, "Computer Language", 1988, April
Fool's column.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I will be known as Ian Black, Ean can be Ian Red, Netgod Ian Blue,
Che gets Ian Yellow, CQ is Ian Purple and Joey is Ian Indigo
-- Some #Debian channel
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The problem with engineers is that they tend to cheat in order to
get results.
The problem with mathematicians is that they tend to work on toy
problems in order to get results.
The problem with program verifiers is that they tend to cheat at
toy problems in order to get results.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Very few things actually get manufactured these days, because in an
infinitely large Universe, such as the one in which we live, most things one
could possibly imagine, and a lot of things one would rather not, grow
somewhere. A forest was discovered recently in which most of the trees grew
ratchet screwdrivers as fruit. The life cycle of the ratchet screwdriver is
quite interesting. Once picked it needs a dark dusty drawer in which it can
lie undisturbed for years. Then one night it suddenly hatches, discards its
outer skin that crumbles into dust, and emerges as a totally unidentifiable
little metal object with flanges at both ends and a sort of ridge and a hole
for a screw. This, when found, will get thrown away. No one knows what the
screwdriver is supposed to gain from this. Nature, in her infinite wisdom,
is presumably working on it.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The programmers of old were mysterious and profound. We cannot fathom
their thoughts, so all we do is describe their appearance.
Aware, like a fox crossing the water. Alert, like a general on the
battlefield. Kind, like a hostess greeting her guests. Simple, like uncarved
blocks of wood. Opaque, like black pools in darkened caves.
Who can tell the secrets of their hearts and minds?
The answer exists only in the Tao.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Look, we trade every day out there with hustlers, deal-makers, shysters,
con-men. That's the way businesses get started. That's the way this
country was built.
-- Hubert Allen
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Well, he thought, since neither Aristotelian Logic nor the disciplines
of Science seemed to offer much hope, it's time to go beyond them...
Drawing a few deep even breaths, he entered a mental state practiced
only by Masters of the Universal Way of Zen. In it his mind floated freely,
able to rummage at will among the bits and pieces of data he had absorbed,
undistracted by any outside disturbances. Logical structures no longer
inhibited him. Pre-conceptions, prejudices, ordinary human standards vanished.
All things, those previously trivial as well as those once thought important,
became absolutely equal by acquiring an absolute value, revealing relationships
not evident to ordinary vision. Like beads strung on a string of their own
meaning, each thing pointed to its own common ground of existence, shared by
all. Finally, each began to melt into each, staying itself while becoming
all others. And Mind no longer contemplated Problem, but became Problem,
destroying Subject-Object by becoming them.
Time passed, unheeded.
Eventually, there was a tentative stirring, then a decisive one, and
Nakamura arose, a smile on his face and the light of laughter in his eyes.
-- Wayfarer
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Puns are little "plays on words" that a certain breed of person loves to
spring on you and then look at you in a certain self-satisfied way to
indicate that he thinks that you must think that he is by far the cleverest
person on Earth now that Benjamin Franklin is dead, when in fact what you
are thinking is that if this person ever ends up in a lifeboat, the other
passengers will hurl him overboard by the end of the first day even if they
have plenty of food and water.
-- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"I assure you the thought never even crossed my mind, lord."
"Indeed? Then if I were you I'd sue my face for slander."
-- Terry Pratchett, "The Colour of Magic"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
If just one piece of mail gets lost, well, they'll just think they forgot ...
to send it. But if *two* pieces of mail get lost, hell, they'll just think
the other guy hasn't gotten around to answering his mail. And if *fifty*
pieces of mail get lost, can you imagine it, if *fifty* pieces of mail get
lost, why they'll think someone *else* is broken! And if 1Gb of mail gets
lost, they'll just *know* that Arpa [ucbarpa.berkeley.edu] is down and
think it's a conspiracy to keep them from their God given right to receive
Net Mail
-- Casey Leedom
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Making files is easy under the UNIX operating system. Therefore, users
tend to create numerous files using large amounts of file space. It has
been said that the only standard thing about all UNIX systems is the
message-of-the-day telling users to clean up their files.
-- System V.2 administrator's guide
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
How many seconds are there in a year? If I tell you there are
3.155 x 10^7, you won't even try to remember it. On the other hand,
who could forget that, to within half a percent, pi seconds is a
nanocentury.
-- Tom Duff, Bell Labs
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Uh... deity is a word, and diety isn't.
Or is it supposed to be one of those recursive acronyms? Diety Is
Excellent To You. Deity Eats Icecream That's Yellow. Diety Is
Eloping To Yokohama. I'll stop now.
-- Guy Maor
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Not me, guy. I read the Bash man page each day like a Jehovah's Witness reads
the Bible. No wait, the Bash man page IS the bible. Excuse me...
-- More on confusing aliases, taken from comp.os.linux.misc
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Who wants to remember that escape-x-alt-control-left shift-b puts you into
super-edit-debug-compile mode?
-- Discussion on the intuitiveness of commands, especially Emacs
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
A disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he was eating
his morning meal. "I would like to give you this personality test", said
the outsider, "because I want you to be happy."
Drescher took the paper that was offered him and put it into the
toaster -- "I wish the toaster to be happy too".
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Creating computer software is always a demanding and painstaking
process -- an exercise in logic, clear expression, and almost fanatical
attention to detail. It requires intelligence, dedication, and an
enormous amount of hard work. But, a certain amount of unpredictable
and often unrepeatable inspiration is what usually makes the difference
between adequacy and excellence.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...