Brian Kernighan has an automobile which he helped design. Unlike most automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gauge, nor any of the numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver. Rather, if the driver makes any mistake, a giant "?" lights up in the center of the dashboard. "The experienced driver", he says, "will usually know what's wrong."
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Feel free to contact me (flames about my english and the useless of this driver will be redirected to/dev/null, oh no, it's full...).
-- Michael Beck, describing the PC-speaker sound device
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels.
Most importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a non-hitchhiker discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, flask, gnat spray, space suit, etc., etc. Furthermore, the non-hitchhiker will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that he may have "lost". After all, any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The last time somebody said, "I find I can write much better with a word processor.", I replied, "They used to say the same thing about drugs."
-- Roy Blount, Jr.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
This is an especially good time for you vacationers who plan to fly, because the Reagan administration, as part of the same policy under which it recently sold Yellowstone National Park to Wayne Newton, has "deregulated" the airline industry. What this means for you, the consumer, is that the airlines are no longer required to follow any rules whatsoever. They can show snuff movies. They can charge for oxygen. They can hire pilots right out of Vending Machine Refill Person School. They can conserve fuel by ejecting husky passengers over water. They can ram competing planes in mid-air. These innovations have resulted in tremendous cost savings which have been passed along to you, the consumer, in the form of flights with amazingly low fares, such as $29. Of course, certain restrictions do apply, the main one being that all these flights take you to Newark, and you must pay thousands of dollars if you want to fly back out.
-- Dave Barry, "Iowa -- Land of Secure Vacations"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
A little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software systems have been designed by committees and built as part of multipart projects, those software systems that have excited passionate fans are those that are the products of one or a few designing minds, great designers. Consider Unix, APL, Pascal, Modula, the Smalltalk interface, even Fortran; and contrast them with Cobol, PL/I, Algol, MVS/370, and MS-DOS.
-- Fred Brooks
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Try to find the real tense of the report you are reading: Was it done, is it being done, or is something to be done? Reports are now written in four tenses: past tense, present tense, future tense, and pretense. Watch for novel uses of CONGRAM (CONtractor GRAMmar), defined by the imperfect past, the insufficient present, and the absolutely perfect future.
-- Amrom Katz
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Oh, and this is another kernel in that great and venerable "BugFree(tm)" series of kernels. So be not afraid of bugs, but go out in the streets and deliver this message of joy to the masses.
-- Linus, in the announcement for 1.3.27
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The ark lands after The Flood. Noah lets all the animals out. Says he, "Go and multiply." Several months pass. Noah decides to check up on the animals. All are doing fine except a pair of snakes. "What's the problem?" says Noah. "Cut down some trees and let us live there", say the snakes. Noah follows their advice. Several more weeks pass. Noah checks on the snakes again. Lots of little snakes, everybody is happy. Noah asks, "Want to tell me how the trees helped?" "Certainly", say the snakes. "We're adders, and we need logs to multiply."
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Suppose for a moment that the automobile industry had developed at the same rate as computers and over the same period: how much cheaper and more efficient would the current models be? If you have not already heard the analogy, the answer is shattering. Today you would be able to buy a Rolls-Royce for $2.75, it would do three million miles to the gallon, and it would deliver enough power to drive the Queen Elizabeth II. And if you were interested in miniaturization, you could place half a dozen of them on a pinhead.
-- Christopher Evans
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Risch's decision procedure for integration, not surprisingly, uses a recursion on the number and type of the extensions from the rational functions needed to represent the integrand. Although the algorithm follows and critically depends upon the appropriate structure of the input, as in the case of multivariate factorization, we cannot claim that the algorithm is a natural one. In fact, the creator of differential algebra, Ritt, committed suicide in the early 1950's, largely, it is claimed, because few paid attention to his work. Probably he would have received more attention had he obtained the algorithm as well.
-- Joel Moses, "Algorithms and Complexity", ed. J.F. Traub
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Earl Wiener, 55, a University of Miami professor of management science, telling the Airline Pilots Association (in jest) about 21st century aircraft:
"The crew will consist of one pilot and a dog. The pilot will
nurture and feed the dog. The dog will be there to bite the
pilot if he touches anything.
-- Fortune, Sept. 26, 1988
[the *magazine*, silly!]
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
*** DO YOU HAVE A RESTLESS URGE TO PROGRAM? *** Do you want the instant respect that comes from being able to use technical terms that nobody understands? Do you want to strike fear and loathing into the hearts of DP managers everywhere? If so, then let the Famous Programmers' School lead you on... into the world of professional computer programming.
*** IS PROGRAMMING FOR YOU? *** Programming is not for everyone. But, if you have the desire to learn, we can help you get started. All you need is the Famous Programmers' Course and enough money to keep those lessons coming month after month.
*** TAKE OUR FREE APTITUDE TEST *** To help determine if you are qualified to be a programmer, take a moment to try this simple test:
(1) Write down the numbers from zero to nine and the first six letters
of the alphabet (Hint: 0123456789ABCDEF).
(2) Whose picture is on the back of a twenty-dollar bill?
(3) What is the state capital of Idaho? If you managed to read all three questions without wondering why we asked them, you may have a future as a computer programmer.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Two men are in a hot-air balloon. Soon, they find themselves lost in a canyon somewhere. One of the three men says, "I've got an idea. We can call for help in this canyon and the echo will carry our voices to the end of the canyon. Someone's bound to hear us by then!"
So he leans over the basket and screams out, "Helllloooooo! Where are we?" (They hear the echo several times).
Fifteen minutes later, they hear this echoing voice: "Helllloooooo! You're lost!"
The shouter comments, "That must have been a mathematician."
Puzzled, his friend asks, "Why do you say that?"
"For three reasons. First, he took a long time to answer, second, he was absolutely correct, and, third, his answer was absolutely useless."
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
(9) Trifle thee not with radioactive tubes and substances lest thou
commence to glow in the dark like a lightning bug, and thy wife be
frustrated and have not further use for thee except for thy wages. (10) Commit thou to memory all the words of the prophets which are
written down in thy Bible which is the National Electrical Code,
and giveth out with the straight dope and consoleth thee when
thou hast suffered a ream job by the chief electrician. (11) When thou muckest about with a device in an unthinking and/or
unknowing manner, thou shalt keep one hand in thy pocket. Better
that thou shouldest keep both hands in thy pockets than
experimentally determine the electrical potential of an
innocent-seeming device.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
What is the difference between a Turing machine and the modern computer? It's the same as that between Hillary's ascent of Everest and the establishment of a Hilton on its peak.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I:
The best way to make a silk purse from a sow's ear is to begin
with a silk sow. The same is true of money. II:
If today were half as good as tomorrow is supposed to be, it would
probably be twice as good as yesterday was. III:
There are no lazy veteran lion hunters. IV:
If you can afford to advertise, you don't need to. V:
One-tenth of the participants produce over one-third of the output.
Increasing the number of participants merely reduces the average
output.
-- Norman Augustine
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
In short, at least give the penguin a fair viewing. If you still don't like it, that's ok: that's why I'm boss. I simply know better than you do.
-- Linus "what, me arrogant?" Torvalds, on c.o.l.advocacy
- 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...
The seven deadly sins... Food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven milestones from man's neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the milestones are lifted.
-- George Bernard Shaw
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Unix gives you just enough rope to hang yourself -- and then a couple of more feet, just to be sure.
-- Eric Allman... We make rope.
-- Rob Gingell on Sun Microsystem's new virtual memory.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
* dpkg hands stu a huge glass of vbeer * Joey takes the beer from stu, you're too young;) * Cylord takes the beer from Joey, you're too drunk. * Cylord gives the beer to muggles.
-- #Debian, celebrating the 5th anniversary
- 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...
X windows:
Something you can be ashamed of.
30% more entropy than the leading window system.
The first fully modular software disaster.
Rome was destroyed in a day.
Warn your friends about it.
Climbing to new depths. Sinking to new heights.
An accident that couldn't wait to happen.
Don't wait for the movie.
Never use it after a big meal.
Need we say less?
Plumbing the depths of human incompetence.
It'll make your day.
Don't get frustrated without it.
Power tools for power losers.
A software disaster of Biblical proportions.
Never had it. Never will.
The software with no visible means of support.
More than just a generation behind.
Hindenburg. Titanic. Edsel.
X windows.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Slashdot Mirror
Brian Kernighan has an automobile which he helped design.
Unlike most automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gauge, nor
any of the numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver.
Rather, if the driver makes any mistake, a giant "?" lights up in the
center of the dashboard. "The experienced driver", he says, "will
usually know what's wrong."
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Feel free to contact me (flames about my english and the useless of this /dev/null, oh no, it's full...).
driver will be redirected to
-- Michael Beck, describing the PC-speaker sound device
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on
the subject of towels.
Most importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For
some reason, if a non-hitchhiker discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel
with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a
toothbrush, washcloth, flask, gnat spray, space suit, etc., etc. Furthermore,
the non-hitchhiker will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or
a dozen other items that he may have "lost". After all, any man who can
hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, struggle against terrible odds,
win through and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be
reckoned with.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Why are programmers non-productive?
Because their time is wasted in meetings.
Why are programmers rebellious?
Because the management interferes too much.
Why are the programmers resigning one by one?
Because they are burnt out.
Having worked for poor management, they no longer value their jobs.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The last time somebody said, "I find I can write much better with a word
processor.", I replied, "They used to say the same thing about drugs."
-- Roy Blount, Jr.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
This is an especially good time for you vacationers who plan to fly, because
the Reagan administration, as part of the same policy under which it
recently sold Yellowstone National Park to Wayne Newton, has "deregulated"
the airline industry. What this means for you, the consumer, is that the
airlines are no longer required to follow any rules whatsoever. They can
show snuff movies. They can charge for oxygen. They can hire pilots right
out of Vending Machine Refill Person School. They can conserve fuel by
ejecting husky passengers over water. They can ram competing planes in
mid-air. These innovations have resulted in tremendous cost savings which
have been passed along to you, the consumer, in the form of flights with
amazingly low fares, such as $29. Of course, certain restrictions do apply,
the main one being that all these flights take you to Newark, and you must
pay thousands of dollars if you want to fly back out.
-- Dave Barry, "Iowa -- Land of Secure Vacations"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
A little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software systems
have been designed by committees and built as part of multipart projects,
those software systems that have excited passionate fans are those that are
the products of one or a few designing minds, great designers. Consider Unix,
APL, Pascal, Modula, the Smalltalk interface, even Fortran; and contrast them
with Cobol, PL/I, Algol, MVS/370, and MS-DOS.
-- Fred Brooks
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Try to find the real tense of the report you are reading: Was it done, is
it being done, or is something to be done? Reports are now written in four
tenses: past tense, present tense, future tense, and pretense. Watch for
novel uses of CONGRAM (CONtractor GRAMmar), defined by the imperfect past,
the insufficient present, and the absolutely perfect future.
-- Amrom Katz
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Oh, and this is another kernel in that great and venerable "BugFree(tm)"
series of kernels. So be not afraid of bugs, but go out in the streets
and deliver this message of joy to the masses.
-- Linus, in the announcement for 1.3.27
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The ark lands after The Flood. Noah lets all the animals out. Says he, "Go
and multiply." Several months pass. Noah decides to check up on the animals.
All are doing fine except a pair of snakes. "What's the problem?" says Noah.
"Cut down some trees and let us live there", say the snakes. Noah follows
their advice. Several more weeks pass. Noah checks on the snakes again.
Lots of little snakes, everybody is happy. Noah asks, "Want to tell me how
the trees helped?" "Certainly", say the snakes. "We're adders, and we need
logs to multiply."
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Suppose for a moment that the automobile industry had developed at the same
rate as computers and over the same period: how much cheaper and more
efficient would the current models be? If you have not already heard the
analogy, the answer is shattering. Today you would be able to buy a
Rolls-Royce for $2.75, it would do three million miles to the gallon, and
it would deliver enough power to drive the Queen Elizabeth II. And if you
were interested in miniaturization, you could place half a dozen of them on
a pinhead.
-- Christopher Evans
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Risch's decision procedure for integration, not surprisingly,
uses a recursion on the number and type of the extensions from the
rational functions needed to represent the integrand. Although the
algorithm follows and critically depends upon the appropriate structure
of the input, as in the case of multivariate factorization, we cannot
claim that the algorithm is a natural one. In fact, the creator of
differential algebra, Ritt, committed suicide in the early 1950's,
largely, it is claimed, because few paid attention to his work. Probably
he would have received more attention had he obtained the algorithm as well.
-- Joel Moses, "Algorithms and Complexity", ed. J.F. Traub
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Earl Wiener, 55, a University of Miami professor of management science,
telling the Airline Pilots Association (in jest) about 21st century aircraft:
"The crew will consist of one pilot and a dog. The pilot will
nurture and feed the dog. The dog will be there to bite the
pilot if he touches anything.
-- Fortune, Sept. 26, 1988
[the *magazine*, silly!]
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
*** DO YOU HAVE A RESTLESS URGE TO PROGRAM? ***
Do you want the instant respect that comes from being able to use technical
terms that nobody understands? Do you want to strike fear and loathing into
the hearts of DP managers everywhere? If so, then let the Famous Programmers'
School lead you on... into the world of professional computer programming.
*** IS PROGRAMMING FOR YOU? ***
Programming is not for everyone. But, if you have the desire to learn, we can
help you get started. All you need is the Famous Programmers' Course and
enough money to keep those lessons coming month after month.
*** TAKE OUR FREE APTITUDE TEST ***
To help determine if you are qualified to be a programmer, take a moment to
try this simple test:
(1) Write down the numbers from zero to nine and the first six letters
of the alphabet (Hint: 0123456789ABCDEF).
(2) Whose picture is on the back of a twenty-dollar bill?
(3) What is the state capital of Idaho?
If you managed to read all three questions without wondering why we asked
them, you may have a future as a computer programmer.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Two men are in a hot-air balloon. Soon, they find themselves lost in a
canyon somewhere. One of the three men says, "I've got an idea. We can
call for help in this canyon and the echo will carry our voices to the
end of the canyon. Someone's bound to hear us by then!"
So he leans over the basket and screams out, "Helllloooooo! Where
are we?" (They hear the echo several times).
Fifteen minutes later, they hear this echoing voice: "Helllloooooo!
You're lost!"
The shouter comments, "That must have been a mathematician."
Puzzled, his friend asks, "Why do you say that?"
"For three reasons. First, he took a long time to answer, second,
he was absolutely correct, and, third, his answer was absolutely useless."
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The Commandments of the EE:
(9) Trifle thee not with radioactive tubes and substances lest thou
commence to glow in the dark like a lightning bug, and thy wife be
frustrated and have not further use for thee except for thy wages.
(10) Commit thou to memory all the words of the prophets which are
written down in thy Bible which is the National Electrical Code,
and giveth out with the straight dope and consoleth thee when
thou hast suffered a ream job by the chief electrician.
(11) When thou muckest about with a device in an unthinking and/or
unknowing manner, thou shalt keep one hand in thy pocket. Better
that thou shouldest keep both hands in thy pockets than
experimentally determine the electrical potential of an
innocent-seeming device.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
What is the difference between a Turing machine and the modern computer?
It's the same as that between Hillary's ascent of Everest and the
establishment of a Hilton on its peak.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I:
The best way to make a silk purse from a sow's ear is to begin
with a silk sow. The same is true of money.
II:
If today were half as good as tomorrow is supposed to be, it would
probably be twice as good as yesterday was.
III:
There are no lazy veteran lion hunters.
IV:
If you can afford to advertise, you don't need to.
V:
One-tenth of the participants produce over one-third of the output.
Increasing the number of participants merely reduces the average
output.
-- Norman Augustine
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
In short, at least give the penguin a fair viewing. If you still don't
like it, that's ok: that's why I'm boss. I simply know better than you do.
-- Linus "what, me arrogant?" Torvalds, on c.o.l.advocacy
- 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...
The seven deadly sins ... Food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability
and children. Nothing can lift those seven milestones from man's neck but
money; and the spirit cannot soar until the milestones are lifted.
-- George Bernard Shaw
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Unix gives you just enough rope to hang yourself -- and then a couple ... We make rope.
of more feet, just to be sure.
-- Eric Allman
-- Rob Gingell on Sun Microsystem's new virtual memory.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
* dpkg hands stu a huge glass of vbeer ;)
* Joey takes the beer from stu, you're too young
* Cylord takes the beer from Joey, you're too drunk.
* Cylord gives the beer to muggles.
-- #Debian, celebrating the 5th anniversary
- 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...
X windows:
Something you can be ashamed of.
30% more entropy than the leading window system.
The first fully modular software disaster.
Rome was destroyed in a day.
Warn your friends about it.
Climbing to new depths. Sinking to new heights.
An accident that couldn't wait to happen.
Don't wait for the movie.
Never use it after a big meal.
Need we say less?
Plumbing the depths of human incompetence.
It'll make your day.
Don't get frustrated without it.
Power tools for power losers.
A software disaster of Biblical proportions.
Never had it. Never will.
The software with no visible means of support.
More than just a generation behind.
Hindenburg. Titanic. Edsel.
X windows.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...