The world is your exercise-book, the pages on which you do your sums. It is not reality, although you can express reality there if you wish. You are also free to write nonsense, or lies, or to tear the pages.
-- Messiah's Handbook : Reminders for the Advanced Soul
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Well, since MS cant be sure of the username of someone downloading things, they are going to play it safe and have everything dowloaded and executed by Explorer as suid root. That way, it will run on ANY system anywhere.:)
-- George Bonser
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Real computer scientists only write specs for languages that might run on future hardware. Nobody trusts them to write specs for anything homo sapiens will ever be able to fit on a single planet.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?
-- Plato
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
A biologist, a statistician, a mathematician and a computer scientist are on a photo-safari in Africa. As they're driving along the savannah in their jeep, they stop and scout the horizon with their binoculars.
The biologist: "Look! A herd of zebras! And there's a white zebra!
Fantastic! We'll be famous!" The statistician: "Hey, calm down, it's not significant. We only know
there's one white zebra." The mathematician: "Actually, we only know there exists a zebra, which is
white on one side." The computer scientist : "Oh, no! A special case!"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
(1) Beware of lightning that lurketh in an uncharged condenser
lest it cause thee to bounce upon thy buttocks in a most
embarrassing manner. (2) Cause thou the switch that supplieth large quantities of juice to
be opened and thusly tagged, that thy days may be long in this
earthly vale of tears. (3) Prove to thyself that all circuits that radiateth, and upon
which the worketh, are grounded and thusly tagged lest they lift
thee to a radio frequency potential and causeth thee to make like
a radiator too. (4) Tarry thou not amongst these fools that engage in intentional
shocks for they are not long for this world and are surely
unbelievers.
- 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...
It's a bird.. It's a plane.. No, it's KernelMan, faster than a speeding bullet, to your rescue. Doing new kernel versions in under 5 seconds flat..
-- Linus, in the announcement for 1.3.27
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The universe, they said, depended for its operation on the balance of four forces which they identified as charm, persuasion, uncertainty and bloody-mindedness.
-- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
It's simply unbelievable how much energy and creativity people have invested into creating contradictory, bogus and stupid licenses...
--- Sven Rudolph about licences in debian/non-free.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Two men came before Nasrudin when he was magistrate. The first man said, "This man has bitten my ear -- I demand compensation." The second man said, "He bit it himself." Nasrudin withdrew to his chambers, and spent an hour trying to bite his own ear. He succeeded only in falling over and bruising his forehead. Returning to the courtroom, Nasrudin pronounced, "Examine the man whose ear was bitten. If his forehead is bruised, he did it himself and the case is dismissed. If his forehead is not bruised, the other man did it and must pay three silver pieces."
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I still maintain the point that designing a monolithic kernel in 1991 is a fundamental error. Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a high grade for such a design:-)
-- Andrew Tanenbaum to Linus Torvalds
- 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...
Archeologists find PDP-11/24 inside brain cavity of fossilized dinosaur skeleton! Many Digital users fear that RSX-11M may be even more primitive than DEC admits. Price adjustments at 11:00.
- 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...
Seems a computer engineer, a systems analyst, and a programmer were driving down a mountain when the brakes gave out. They screamed down the mountain, gaining speed, but finally managed to grind to a halt, more by luck than anything else, just inches from a thousand foot drop to jagged rocks. They all got out of the car:
The computer engineer said, "I think I can fix it."
The systems analyst said, "No, no, I think we should take it into town and have a specialist look at it."
The programmer said, "OK, but first I think we should get back in and see if it does it again."
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"Has anyone had problems with the computer accounts?"
"Yes, I don't have one."
"Okay, you can send mail to one of the tutors..."
-- E. D'Azevedo, Computer Science 372
- 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...
But the greatest Electrical Pioneer of them all was Thomas Edison, who was a brilliant inventor despite the fact that he had little formal education and lived in New Jersey. Edison's first major invention in 1877, was the phonograph, which could soon be found in thousands of American homes, where it basically sat until 1923, when the record was invented. But Edison's greatest achievement came in 1879, when he invented the electric company. Edison's design was a brilliant adaptation of the simple electrical circuit: the electric company sends electricity through a wire to a customer, then immediately gets the electricity back through another wire, then (this is the brilliant part) sends it right back to the customer again.
This means that an electric company can sell a customer the same batch of electricity thousands of times a day and never get caught, since very few customers take the time to examine their electricity closely. In fact the last year any new electricity was generated in the United States was 1937; the electric companies have been merely re-selling it ever since, which is why they have so much free time to apply for rate increases.
-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Sorry for mailing this article, I've obviously made a typo (168!=186) that's the price for being up all night and doing some "quick" checks before you go to bed....
-- Herbert Rosmanith
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
A man from AI walked across the mountains to SAIL to see the Master, Knuth. When he arrived, the Master was nowhere to be found. "Where is the wise one named Knuth?" he asked a passing student.
"Ah," said the student, "you have not heard. He has gone on a pilgrimage across the mountains to the temple of AI to seek out new disciples."
Hearing this, the man was Enlightened.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
It is a period of system war. User programs, striking from a hidden directory, have won their first victory against the evil Administrative Empire. During the battle, User spies managed to steal secret source code to the Empire's ultimate program: the Are-Em Star, a privileged root program with enough power to destroy an entire file structure. Pursued by the Empire's sinister audit trail, Princess _LPA0 races ~ aboard her shell script, custodian of the stolen listings that could save her people, and restore freedom and games to the network...
-- DECWARS
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer.
-- Fred Brooks
- 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...
Slashdot Mirror
The world is your exercise-book, the pages on which you do your sums.
It is not reality, although you can express reality there if you wish.
You are also free to write nonsense, or lies, or to tear the pages.
-- Messiah's Handbook : Reminders for the Advanced Soul
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Well, since MS cant be sure of the username of someone downloading :)
things, they are going to play it safe and have everything dowloaded
and executed by Explorer as suid root. That way, it will run on ANY
system anywhere.
-- George Bonser
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Real computer scientists only write specs for languages that might run
on future hardware. Nobody trusts them to write specs for anything homo
sapiens will ever be able to fit on a single planet.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our
thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another
in the waking state?
-- Plato
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
A biologist, a statistician, a mathematician and a computer scientist are on
a photo-safari in Africa. As they're driving along the savannah in their
jeep, they stop and scout the horizon with their binoculars.
The biologist: "Look! A herd of zebras! And there's a white zebra!
Fantastic! We'll be famous!"
The statistician: "Hey, calm down, it's not significant. We only know
there's one white zebra."
The mathematician: "Actually, we only know there exists a zebra, which is
white on one side."
The computer scientist : "Oh, no! A special case!"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The Commandments of the EE:
(1) Beware of lightning that lurketh in an uncharged condenser
lest it cause thee to bounce upon thy buttocks in a most
embarrassing manner.
(2) Cause thou the switch that supplieth large quantities of juice to
be opened and thusly tagged, that thy days may be long in this
earthly vale of tears.
(3) Prove to thyself that all circuits that radiateth, and upon
which the worketh, are grounded and thusly tagged lest they lift
thee to a radio frequency potential and causeth thee to make like
a radiator too.
(4) Tarry thou not amongst these fools that engage in intentional
shocks for they are not long for this world and are surely
unbelievers.
- 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...
It's a bird..
It's a plane..
No, it's KernelMan, faster than a speeding bullet, to your rescue.
Doing new kernel versions in under 5 seconds flat..
-- Linus, in the announcement for 1.3.27
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The universe, they said, depended for its operation on the balance of four
forces which they identified as charm, persuasion, uncertainty and
bloody-mindedness.
-- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
It's simply unbelievable how much energy and creativity people have
invested into creating contradictory, bogus and stupid licenses...
--- Sven Rudolph about licences in debian/non-free.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Two men came before Nasrudin when he was magistrate. The first man said,
"This man has bitten my ear -- I demand compensation." The second man said,
"He bit it himself." Nasrudin withdrew to his chambers, and spent an hour
trying to bite his own ear. He succeeded only in falling over and bruising
his forehead. Returning to the courtroom, Nasrudin pronounced, "Examine the
man whose ear was bitten. If his forehead is bruised, he did it himself and
the case is dismissed. If his forehead is not bruised, the other man did it
and must pay three silver pieces."
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I still maintain the point that designing a monolithic kernel in 1991 is a :-)
fundamental error. Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a
high grade for such a design
-- Andrew Tanenbaum to Linus Torvalds
- 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...
*** NEWS FLASH ***
Archeologists find PDP-11/24 inside brain cavity of fossilized dinosaur
skeleton! Many Digital users fear that RSX-11M may be even more primitive
than DEC admits. Price adjustments at 11:00.
- 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...
> Yeah, Linus is in the US.
...... ;-)
>
> His source trees are in Finland.
OK, someone give him access -fast-
-- babydr@nwrain.net, because of problems with the kernel
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Seems a computer engineer, a systems analyst, and a programmer were
driving down a mountain when the brakes gave out. They screamed down the
mountain, gaining speed, but finally managed to grind to a halt, more by
luck than anything else, just inches from a thousand foot drop to jagged
rocks. They all got out of the car:
The computer engineer said, "I think I can fix it."
The systems analyst said, "No, no, I think we should take it
into town and have a specialist look at it."
The programmer said, "OK, but first I think we should get back
in and see if it does it again."
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"Has anyone had problems with the computer accounts?" ..."
"Yes, I don't have one."
"Okay, you can send mail to one of the tutors
-- E. D'Azevedo, Computer Science 372
- 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...
But the greatest Electrical Pioneer of them all was Thomas Edison, who was a
brilliant inventor despite the fact that he had little formal education and
lived in New Jersey. Edison's first major invention in 1877, was the
phonograph, which could soon be found in thousands of American homes, where
it basically sat until 1923, when the record was invented. But Edison's
greatest achievement came in 1879, when he invented the electric company.
Edison's design was a brilliant adaptation of the simple electrical circuit:
the electric company sends electricity through a wire to a customer, then
immediately gets the electricity back through another wire, then (this is
the brilliant part) sends it right back to the customer again.
This means that an electric company can sell a customer the same batch of
electricity thousands of times a day and never get caught, since very few
customers take the time to examine their electricity closely. In fact the
last year any new electricity was generated in the United States was 1937;
the electric companies have been merely re-selling it ever since, which is
why they have so much free time to apply for rate increases.
-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Sorry for mailing this article, I've obviously made a typo (168!=186) ....
that's the price for being up all night and doing some "quick"
checks before you go to bed
-- Herbert Rosmanith
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
A man from AI walked across the mountains to SAIL to see the Master,
Knuth. When he arrived, the Master was nowhere to be found. "Where is the
wise one named Knuth?" he asked a passing student.
"Ah," said the student, "you have not heard. He has gone on a
pilgrimage across the mountains to the temple of AI to seek out new
disciples."
Hearing this, the man was Enlightened.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
It is a period of system war. User programs, striking from a hidden
directory, have won their first victory against the evil Administrative Empire.
During the battle, User spies managed to steal secret source code to the
Empire's ultimate program: the Are-Em Star, a privileged root program with
enough power to destroy an entire file structure. Pursued by the Empire's
sinister audit trail, Princess _LPA0 races ~ aboard her shell script,
custodian of the stolen listings that could save her people, and restore
freedom and games to the network...
-- DECWARS
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because
God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software
engineer.
-- Fred Brooks
- 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...