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...
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...
A statistician, who refused to fly after reading of the alarmingly high probability that there will be a bomb on any given plane, realized that the probability of there being two bombs on any given flight is very low. Now, whenever he flies, he carries a bomb with him.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
There is no Father Christmas. It's just a marketing ploy to make low income parents' lives a misery.... I want you to picture the trusting face of a child, streaked with tears because of what you just said. I want you to picture the face of its mother, because one week's dole won't pay for one Master of the Universe Battlecruiser!
-- Filthy Rich and Catflap
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
An older student came to Otis and said, "I have been to see a great number of teachers and I have given up a great number of pleasures. I have fasted, been celibate and stayed awake nights seeking enlightenment. I have given up everything I was asked to give up and I have suffered, but I have not been enlightened. What should I do?"
Otis replied, "Give up suffering."
-- Camden Benares, "Zen Without Zen Masters"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Bozo is the Brotherhood of Zips and Others. Bozos are people who band together for fun and profit. They have no jobs. Anybody who goes on a tour is a Bozo. Why does a Bozo cross the street? Because there's a Bozo on the other side. It comes from the phrase vos otros, meaning others. They're the huge, fat, middle waist. The archetype is an Irish drunk clown with red hair and nose, and pale skin. Fields, William Bendix. Everybody tends to drift toward Bozoness. It has Oz in it. They mean well. They're straight-looking except they've got inflatable shoes. They like their comforts. The Bozos have learned to enjoy their free time, which is all the time.
-- Firesign Theatre, "If Bees Lived Inside Your Head"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
When you are young, you enjoy a sustained illusion that sooner or later something marvelous is going to happen, that you are going to transcend your parents' limitations... At the same time, you feel sure that in all the wilderness of possibility; in all the forests of opinion, there is a vital something that can be known -- known and grasped. That we will eventually know it, and convert the whole mystery into a coherent narrative. So that then one's true life -- the point of everything -- will emerge from the mist into a pure light, into total comprehension. But it isn't like that at all. But if it isn't, where did the idea come from, to torture and unsettle us?
-- Brian Aldiss, "Helliconia Summer"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
A social scientist, studying the culture and traditions of a small North African tribe, found a woman still practicing the ancient art of matchmaking. Locally, she was known as the Moor, the marrier.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The most advantageous, pre-eminent thing thou canst do is not to exhibit nor display thyself within the limits of our galaxy, but rather depart instantaneously whence thou even now standest and flee to yet another rotten planet in the universe, if thou canst have the good fortune to find one.
-- Carlyle
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Writing non-free software is not an ethically legitimate activity, so if people who do this run into trouble, that's good! All businesses based on non-free software ought to fail, and the sooner the better.
-- Richard Stallman
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
There was once a programmer who worked upon microprocessors. "Look at how well off I am here," he said to a mainframe programmer who came to visit, "I have my own operating system and file storage device. I do not have to share my resources with anyone. The software is self-consistent and easy-to-use. Why do you not quit your present job and join me here?"
The mainframe programmer then began to describe his system to his friend, saying: "The mainframe sits like an ancient sage meditating in the midst of the data center. Its disk drives lie end-to-end like a great ocean of machinery. The software is a multi-faceted as a diamond and as convoluted as a primeval jungle. The programs, each unique, move through the system like a swift-flowing river. That is why I am happy where I am."
The microcomputer programmer, upon hearing this, fell silent. But the two programmers remained friends until the end of their days.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I myself have dreamed up a structure intermediate between Dyson spheres and planets. Build a ring 93 million miles in radius -- one Earth orbit -- around the sun. If we have the mass of Jupiter to work with, and if we make it a thousand miles wide, we get a thickness of about a thousand feet for the base.
And it has advantages. The Ringworld will be much sturdier than a Dyson sphere. We can spin it on its axis for gravity. A rotation speed of 770 m/s will give us a gravity of one Earth normal. We wouldn't even need to roof it over. Place walls one thousand miles high at each edge, facing the sun. Very little air will leak over the edges.
Lord knows the thing is roomy enough. With three million times the surface area of the Earth, it will be some time before anyone complains of the crowding.
-- Larry Niven, "Ringworld"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
A programmer from a very large computer company went to a software conference and then returned to report to his manager, saying: "What sort of programmers work for other companies? They behaved badly and were unconcerned with appearances. Their hair was long and unkempt and their clothes were wrinkled and old. They crashed out hospitality suites and they made rude noises during my presentation."
The manager said: "I should have never sent you to the conference. Those programmers live beyond the physical world. They consider life absurd, an accidental coincidence. They come and go without knowing limitations. Without a care, they live only for their programs. Why should they bother with social conventions?"
"They are alive within the Tao."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
An office party is not, as is sometimes supposed the Managing Director's chance to kiss the tea-girl. It is the tea-girl's chance to kiss the Managing Director (however bizarre an ambition this may seem to anyone who has seen the Managing Director face on).
-- Katherine Whitehorn, "Roundabout"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
In the beginning there was data. The data was without form and null, and darkness was upon the face of the console; and the Spirit of IBM was moving over the face of the market. And DEC said, "Let there be registers;" and there were registers. And DEC saw that they carried; and DEC separated the data from the instructions. DEC called the data Stack, and the instructions they called Code. And there was evening and there was morning, one interrupt...
-- Rico Tudor
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I argue very well. Ask any of my remaining friends. I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me.
-- Dave Barry
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The following quote is from page 4-27 of the MSCP Basic Disk Functions Manual which is part of the UDA50 Programmers Doc Kit manuals:
As stated above, the host area of a disk is structured as a vector of logical blocks. From a performance viewpoint, however, it is more appropriate to view the host area as a four dimensional hyper-cube, the four dimensions being cylinder, group, track, and sector. . .. Referring to our hyper-cube analogy, the set of potentially accessible blocks form a line parallel to the track axis. This line moves parallel to the sector axis, wrapping around when it reaches the edge of the hyper-cube.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The error of youth is to believe that intelligence is a substitute for experience, while the error of age is to believe experience is a substitute for intelligence.
-- Lyman Bryson
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
According to convention there is a sweet and a bitter, a hot and a cold, and according to convention, there is an order. In truth, there are atoms and a void.
-- Democritus, 400 B.C.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
X windows:
The ultimate bottleneck.
Flawed beyond belief.
The only thing you have to fear.
Somewhere between chaos and insanity.
On autopilot to oblivion.
The joke that kills.
A disgrace you can be proud of.
A mistake carried out to perfection.
Belongs more to the problem set than the solution set.
To err is X windows.
Ignorance is our most important resource.
Complex nonsolutions to simple nonproblems.
Built to fall apart.
Nullifying centuries of progress.
Falling to new depths of inefficiency.
The last thing you need.
The defacto substandard.
Elevating brain damage to an art form.
X windows.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"Yes, let's consider," said Bruno, putting his thumb into his mouth again, and sitting down upon a dead mouse.
"What do you keep that mouse for?" I said. "You should either bury it or else throw it into the brook."
"Why, it's to measure with!" cried Bruno. "How ever would you do a garden without one? We make each bed three mouses and a half long, and two mouses wide."
I stopped him as he was dragging it off by the tail to show me how it was used...
-- Lewis Carroll, "Sylvie and Bruno"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I had a feeling once about mathematics -- that I saw it all. Depth beyond depth was revealed to me -- the Byss and the Abyss. I saw -- as one might see the transit of Venus or even the Lord Mayor's Show -- a quantity passing through infinity and changing its sign from plus to minus. I saw exactly why it happened and why tergiversation was inevitable -- but it was after dinner and I let it go.
-- Winston Churchill
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
There is no choice before us. Either we must Succeed in providing the rational coordination of impulses and guts, or for centuries civilization will sink into a mere welter of minor excitements. We must provide a Great Age or see the collapse of the upward striving of the human race.
-- Alfred North Whitehead
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose your job. These economic downturns are very difficult to predict, but sophisticated econometric modeling houses like Data Resources and Chase Econometrics have successfully predicted 14 of the last 3 recessions.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"Multiply in your head" (ordered the compassionate Dr. Adams) "365,365,365, 365,365,365 by 365,365,365,365,365,365". He [ten-year-old Truman Henry Safford] flew around the room like a top, pulled his pantaloons over the tops of his boots, bit his hands, rolled his eyes in their sockets, sometimes smiling and talking, and then seeming to be in an agony, until, in not more than one minute, said he, 133,491,850,208,566,925,016,658,299,941,583,225!" An electronic computer might do the job a little faster but it wouldn't be as much fun to watch.
-- James R. Newman, "The World of Mathematics"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Slashdot Mirror
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...
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...
A statistician, who refused to fly after reading of the alarmingly high
probability that there will be a bomb on any given plane, realized that
the probability of there being two bombs on any given flight is very low.
Now, whenever he flies, he carries a bomb with him.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
There is no Father Christmas. It's just a marketing ploy to make low income ... I want you to picture the trusting face of a
parents' lives a misery.
child, streaked with tears because of what you just said. I want you to
picture the face of its mother, because one week's dole won't pay for one
Master of the Universe Battlecruiser!
-- Filthy Rich and Catflap
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
An older student came to Otis and said, "I have been to see a
great number of teachers and I have given up a great number of pleasures.
I have fasted, been celibate and stayed awake nights seeking enlightenment.
I have given up everything I was asked to give up and I have suffered, but
I have not been enlightened. What should I do?"
Otis replied, "Give up suffering."
-- Camden Benares, "Zen Without Zen Masters"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Bozo is the Brotherhood of Zips and Others. Bozos are people who band
together for fun and profit. They have no jobs. Anybody who goes on a
tour is a Bozo. Why does a Bozo cross the street? Because there's a Bozo
on the other side. It comes from the phrase vos otros, meaning others.
They're the huge, fat, middle waist. The archetype is an Irish drunk
clown with red hair and nose, and pale skin. Fields, William Bendix.
Everybody tends to drift toward Bozoness. It has Oz in it. They mean
well. They're straight-looking except they've got inflatable shoes. They
like their comforts. The Bozos have learned to enjoy their free time,
which is all the time.
-- Firesign Theatre, "If Bees Lived Inside Your Head"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
When you are young, you enjoy a sustained illusion that sooner or later
something marvelous is going to happen, that you are going to transcend
your parents' limitations... At the same time, you feel sure that in all
the wilderness of possibility; in all the forests of opinion, there is a
vital something that can be known -- known and grasped. That we will
eventually know it, and convert the whole mystery into a coherent
narrative. So that then one's true life -- the point of everything --
will emerge from the mist into a pure light, into total comprehension.
But it isn't like that at all. But if it isn't, where did the idea come
from, to torture and unsettle us?
-- Brian Aldiss, "Helliconia Summer"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
A social scientist, studying the culture and traditions of a small North
African tribe, found a woman still practicing the ancient art of matchmaking.
Locally, she was known as the Moor, the marrier.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The most advantageous, pre-eminent thing thou canst do is not to exhibit
nor display thyself within the limits of our galaxy, but rather depart
instantaneously whence thou even now standest and flee to yet another rotten
planet in the universe, if thou canst have the good fortune to find one.
-- Carlyle
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Writing non-free software is not an ethically legitimate activity,
so if people who do this run into trouble, that's good! All businesses
based on non-free software ought to fail, and the sooner the better.
-- Richard Stallman
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
There was once a programmer who worked upon microprocessors. "Look at
how well off I am here," he said to a mainframe programmer who came to visit,
"I have my own operating system and file storage device. I do not have to
share my resources with anyone. The software is self-consistent and
easy-to-use. Why do you not quit your present job and join me here?"
The mainframe programmer then began to describe his system to his
friend, saying: "The mainframe sits like an ancient sage meditating in the
midst of the data center. Its disk drives lie end-to-end like a great ocean
of machinery. The software is a multi-faceted as a diamond and as convoluted
as a primeval jungle. The programs, each unique, move through the system
like a swift-flowing river. That is why I am happy where I am."
The microcomputer programmer, upon hearing this, fell silent. But the
two programmers remained friends until the end of their days.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I myself have dreamed up a structure intermediate between Dyson spheres
and planets. Build a ring 93 million miles in radius -- one Earth orbit
-- around the sun. If we have the mass of Jupiter to work with, and if
we make it a thousand miles wide, we get a thickness of about a thousand
feet for the base.
And it has advantages. The Ringworld will be much sturdier than a Dyson
sphere. We can spin it on its axis for gravity. A rotation speed of 770
m/s will give us a gravity of one Earth normal. We wouldn't even need to
roof it over. Place walls one thousand miles high at each edge, facing the
sun. Very little air will leak over the edges.
Lord knows the thing is roomy enough. With three million times the surface
area of the Earth, it will be some time before anyone complains of the
crowding.
-- Larry Niven, "Ringworld"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
A programmer from a very large computer company went to a software
conference and then returned to report to his manager, saying: "What sort
of programmers work for other companies? They behaved badly and were
unconcerned with appearances. Their hair was long and unkempt and their
clothes were wrinkled and old. They crashed out hospitality suites and they
made rude noises during my presentation."
The manager said: "I should have never sent you to the conference.
Those programmers live beyond the physical world. They consider life absurd,
an accidental coincidence. They come and go without knowing limitations.
Without a care, they live only for their programs. Why should they bother
with social conventions?"
"They are alive within the Tao."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
An office party is not, as is sometimes supposed the Managing Director's
chance to kiss the tea-girl. It is the tea-girl's chance to kiss the
Managing Director (however bizarre an ambition this may seem to anyone
who has seen the Managing Director face on).
-- Katherine Whitehorn, "Roundabout"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
THE STORY OF CREATION
...
or
THE MYTH OF URK
In the beginning there was data. The data was without form and null, and
darkness was upon the face of the console; and the Spirit of IBM was moving
over the face of the market. And DEC said, "Let there be registers;" and
there were registers. And DEC saw that they carried; and DEC separated the
data from the instructions. DEC called the data Stack, and the instructions
they called Code. And there was evening and there was morning, one interrupt
-- Rico Tudor
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I argue very well. Ask any of my remaining friends. I can win an argument on
any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at
parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me.
-- Dave Barry
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The following quote is from page 4-27 of the MSCP Basic Disk Functions
.
Manual which is part of the UDA50 Programmers Doc Kit manuals:
As stated above, the host area of a disk is structured as a vector of
logical blocks. From a performance viewpoint, however, it is more
appropriate to view the host area as a four dimensional hyper-cube, the
four dimensions being cylinder, group, track, and sector.
. .
Referring to our hyper-cube analogy, the set of potentially accessible
blocks form a line parallel to the track axis. This line moves
parallel to the sector axis, wrapping around when it reaches the edge
of the hyper-cube.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The error of youth is to believe that intelligence is a substitute for
experience, while the error of age is to believe experience is a substitute
for intelligence.
-- Lyman Bryson
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
According to convention there is a sweet and a bitter, a hot and a cold,
and according to convention, there is an order. In truth, there are atoms
and a void.
-- Democritus, 400 B.C.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
X windows:
The ultimate bottleneck.
Flawed beyond belief.
The only thing you have to fear.
Somewhere between chaos and insanity.
On autopilot to oblivion.
The joke that kills.
A disgrace you can be proud of.
A mistake carried out to perfection.
Belongs more to the problem set than the solution set.
To err is X windows.
Ignorance is our most important resource.
Complex nonsolutions to simple nonproblems.
Built to fall apart.
Nullifying centuries of progress.
Falling to new depths of inefficiency.
The last thing you need.
The defacto substandard.
Elevating brain damage to an art form.
X windows.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"Yes, let's consider," said Bruno, putting his thumb into his
mouth again, and sitting down upon a dead mouse.
"What do you keep that mouse for?" I said. "You should either
bury it or else throw it into the brook."
"Why, it's to measure with!" cried Bruno. "How ever would you
do a garden without one? We make each bed three mouses and a half
long, and two mouses wide."
I stopped him as he was dragging it off by the tail to show me
how it was used...
-- Lewis Carroll, "Sylvie and Bruno"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I had a feeling once about mathematics -- that I saw it all. Depth beyond
depth was revealed to me -- the Byss and the Abyss. I saw -- as one might
see the transit of Venus or even the Lord Mayor's Show -- a quantity passing
through infinity and changing its sign from plus to minus. I saw exactly
why it happened and why tergiversation was inevitable -- but it was after
dinner and I let it go.
-- Winston Churchill
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
There is no choice before us. Either we must Succeed in providing the
rational coordination of impulses and guts, or for centuries civilization
will sink into a mere welter of minor excitements. We must provide a
Great Age or see the collapse of the upward striving of the human race.
-- Alfred North Whitehead
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you
lose your job. These economic downturns are very difficult to predict,
but sophisticated econometric modeling houses like Data Resources and
Chase Econometrics have successfully predicted 14 of the last 3 recessions.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"Multiply in your head" (ordered the compassionate Dr. Adams) "365,365,365,
365,365,365 by 365,365,365,365,365,365". He [ten-year-old Truman Henry
Safford] flew around the room like a top, pulled his pantaloons over the
tops of his boots, bit his hands, rolled his eyes in their sockets, sometimes
smiling and talking, and then seeming to be in an agony, until, in not more
than one minute, said he, 133,491,850,208,566,925,016,658,299,941,583,225!"
An electronic computer might do the job a little faster but it wouldn't be
as much fun to watch.
-- James R. Newman, "The World of Mathematics"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...