Note that if I can get you to "su and say" something just by asking, you have a very serious security problem on your system and you should look into it.
-- Paul Vixie, vixie-cron 3.0.1 installation notes
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
If you ever want to have a lot of fun, I recommend that you go off and program an imbedded system. The salient characteristic of an imbedded system is that it cannot be allowed to get into a state from which only direct intervention will suffice to remove it. An imbedded system can't permanently trust anything it hears from the outside world. It must sniff around, adapt, consider, sniff around, and adapt again. I'm not talking about ordinary modular programming carefulness here. No. Programming an imbedded system calls for undiluted raging maniacal paranoia. For example, our ethernet front ends need to know what network number they are on so that they can address and route PUPs properly. How do you find out what your network number is? Easy, you ask a gateway. Gateways are required by definition to know their correct network numbers. Once you've got your network number, you start using it and before you can blink you've got it wired into fifteen different sockets spread all over creation. Now what happens when the panic-stricken operator realizes he was running the wrong version of the gateway which was giving out the wrong network number? Never supposed to happen. Tough. Supposing that your software discovers that the gateway is now giving out a different network number than before, what's it supposed to do about it? This is not discussed in the protocol document. Never supposed to happen. Tough. I think you get my drift.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
About the use of language: it is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt ax. It is equally vain to try to do it with ten blunt axes instead.
-- Edsger Dijkstra
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
A well-used door needs no oil on its hinges. A swift-flowing steam does not grow stagnant. Neither sound nor thoughts can travel through a vacuum. Software rots if not used.
These are great mysteries.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people from point B are so keen to get there and what's so great about point B that so many people from point A are so keen to get _____there. They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
As failures go, attempting to recall the past is like trying to grasp the meaning of existence. Both make one feel like a baby clutching at a basketball: one's palms keep sliding off.
-- Joseph Brodsky
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Ever since prehistoric times, wise men have tried to understand what, exactly, make people laugh. That's why they were called "wise men." All the other prehistoric people were out puncturing each other with spears, and the wise men were back in the cave saying: "How about: Would you please take my wife? No. How about: Here is my wife, please take her right now. No How about: Would you like to take something? My wife is available. No. How about..."
-- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction and at such a speed, if feels an impulsion... this is the place to go now. But the sky knows the reasons and the patterns behind all clouds, and you will know, too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons.
-- Messiah's Handbook : Reminders for the Advanced Soul
- 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...
A Severe Strain on the Credulity
As a method of sending a missile to the higher, and even to the highest parts of the earth's atmospheric envelope, Professor Goddard's rocket is a practicable and therefore promising device. It is when one considers the multiple-charge rocket as a traveler to the moon that one begins to doubt... for after the rocket quits our air and really starts on its journey, its flight would be neither accelerated nor maintained by the explosion of the charges it then might have left. Professor Goddard, with his "chair" in Clark College and countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to re-action, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react... Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.
-- New York Times Editorial, 1920
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
[In 'Doctor' mode], I spent a good ten minutes telling Emacs what I thought of it. (The response was, 'Perhaps you could try to be less abusive.')
-- Matt Welsh
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
An American scientist once visited the offices of the great Nobel prize winning physicist, Niels Bohr, in Copenhagen. He was amazed to find that over Bohr's desk was a horseshoe, securely nailed to the wall, with the open end up in the approved manner (so it would catch the good luck and not let it spill out). The American said with a nervous laugh,
"Surely you don't believe the horseshoe will bring you good luck, do you, Professor Bohr? After all, as a scientist --" Bohr chuckled.
"I believe no such thing, my good friend. Not at all. I am scarcely likely to believe in such foolish nonsense. However, I am told that a horseshoe will bring you good luck whether you believe in it or not."
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
SPECIES: Cranial Males SUBSPECIES: The Hacker (homo computatis) Plumage:
All clothes have a slightly crumpled look as though they came off the
top of the laundry basket. Style varies with status. Hacker managers
wear gray polyester slacks, pink or pastel shirts with wide collars,
and paisley ties; staff wears cinched-up baggy corduroy pants, white
or blue shirts with button-down collars, and penholder in pocket.
Both managers and staff wear running shoes to work, and a black
plastic digital watch with calculator.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
So you see Antonio, why worry about one little core dump, eh? In reality all core dumps happen at the same instant, so the core dump you will have tomorrow, why, it already happened. You see, it's just a little universal recursive joke which threads our lives through the infinite potential of the instant. So go to sleep, Antonio, your thread could break any moment and cast you out of the safe security of the instant into the dark void of eternity, the anti-time. So go to sleep...
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
It is imperative when flying coach that you restrain any tendency toward the vividly imaginative. For although it may momentarily appear to be the case, it is not at all likely that the cabin is entirely inhabited by crying babies smoking inexpensive domestic cigars.
-- Fran Lebowitz, "Social Studies"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
When you know absolutely nothing about the topic, make your forecast by asking a carefully selected probability sample of 300 others who don't know the answer either.
-- Edgar R. Fiedler
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
You are transported to a room where you are faced by a wizard who points to you and says, "Them's fighting words!" You immediately get attacked by all sorts of denizens of the museum: there is a cobra chewing on your leg, a troglodyte is bashing your brains out with a gold nugget, a crocodile is removing large chunks of flesh from you, a rhinoceros is goring you with his horn, a sabre-tooth cat is busy trying to disembowel you, you are being trampled by a large mammoth, a vampire is sucking you dry, a Tyranosaurus Rex is sinking his six inch long fangs into various parts of your anatomy, a large bear is dismembering your body, a gargoyle is bouncing up and down on your head, a burly troll is tearing you limb from limb, several dire wolves are making mince meat out of your torso, and the wizard is about to transport you to the corner of Westwood and Broxton. Oh dear, you seem to have gotten yourself killed, as well.
You scored 0 out of 250 possible points. That gives you a ranking of junior beginning adventurer. To achieve the next higher rating, you need to score 32 more points.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I'D LIKE TO BE BURIED INDIAN-STYLE, where they put you up on a high rack, above the ground. That way, you could get hit by meteorites and not even feel it.
-- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
People seem to think that the blanket phrase, "I only work here," absolves them utterly from any moral obligation in terms of the public -- but this was precisely Eichmann's excuse for his job in the concentration camps.
- 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...
The proof that IBM didn't invent the car is that it has a steering wheel and an accelerator instead of spurs and ropes, to be compatible with a horse.
-- Jac Goudsmit
- 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...
N: Phil Lewis E: beans@bucket.ualr.edu D: Promised to send money if I would put his name in the source tree. S: PO Box 371 S: North Little Rock, Arkansas 72115 S: US
--/usr/src/linux/CREDITS
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The problems of business administration in general, and database management in particular are much to difficult for people that think in IBMese, compounded with sloppy english.
-- Edsger Dijkstra
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Slashdot Mirror
Note that if I can get you to "su and say" something just by asking,
you have a very serious security problem on your system and you should
look into it.
-- Paul Vixie, vixie-cron 3.0.1 installation notes
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
If you ever want to have a lot of fun, I recommend that you go off and program
an imbedded system. The salient characteristic of an imbedded system is that
it cannot be allowed to get into a state from which only direct intervention
will suffice to remove it. An imbedded system can't permanently trust anything
it hears from the outside world. It must sniff around, adapt, consider, sniff
around, and adapt again. I'm not talking about ordinary modular programming
carefulness here. No. Programming an imbedded system calls for undiluted
raging maniacal paranoia. For example, our ethernet front ends need to know
what network number they are on so that they can address and route PUPs
properly. How do you find out what your network number is? Easy, you ask a
gateway. Gateways are required by definition to know their correct network
numbers. Once you've got your network number, you start using it and before
you can blink you've got it wired into fifteen different sockets spread all
over creation. Now what happens when the panic-stricken operator realizes he
was running the wrong version of the gateway which was giving out the wrong
network number? Never supposed to happen. Tough. Supposing that your
software discovers that the gateway is now giving out a different network
number than before, what's it supposed to do about it? This is not discussed
in the protocol document. Never supposed to happen. Tough. I think you
get my drift.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
About the use of language: it is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt
ax. It is equally vain to try to do it with ten blunt axes instead.
-- Edsger Dijkstra
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less
obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no
solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid.
There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no
straight lines.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
A well-used door needs no oil on its hinges.
A swift-flowing steam does not grow stagnant.
Neither sound nor thoughts can travel through a vacuum.
Software rots if not used.
These are great mysteries.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to
point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very
fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are
often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people
from point B are so keen to get there and what's so great about point B
that so many people from point A are so keen to get _____there. They often
wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell
they wanted to be.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
As failures go, attempting to recall the past is like trying to grasp
the meaning of existence. Both make one feel like a baby clutching at
a basketball: one's palms keep sliding off.
-- Joseph Brodsky
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Ever since prehistoric times, wise men have tried to understand what, ..."
exactly, make people laugh. That's why they were called "wise men." All the
other prehistoric people were out puncturing each other with spears, and the
wise men were back in the cave saying: "How about: Would you please take my
wife? No. How about: Here is my wife, please take her right now. No How
about: Would you like to take something? My wife is available. No. How
about
-- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction and at such
a speed, if feels an impulsion... this is the place to go now. But the
sky knows the reasons and the patterns behind all clouds, and you will
know, too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons.
-- Messiah's Handbook : Reminders for the Advanced Soul
- 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...
A Severe Strain on the Credulity
As a method of sending a missile to the higher, and even to the
highest parts of the earth's atmospheric envelope, Professor Goddard's rocket
is a practicable and therefore promising device. It is when one considers the
multiple-charge rocket as a traveler to the moon that one begins to doubt...
for after the rocket quits our air and really starts on its journey, its
flight would be neither accelerated nor maintained by the explosion of the
charges it then might have left. Professor Goddard, with his "chair" in
Clark College and countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not
know the relation of action to re-action, and of the need to have something
better than a vacuum against which to react... Of course he only seems to
lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.
-- New York Times Editorial, 1920
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
[In 'Doctor' mode], I spent a good ten minutes telling Emacs what I
thought of it. (The response was, 'Perhaps you could try to be less
abusive.')
-- Matt Welsh
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
An American scientist once visited the offices of the great Nobel prize
winning physicist, Niels Bohr, in Copenhagen. He was amazed to find that
over Bohr's desk was a horseshoe, securely nailed to the wall, with the
open end up in the approved manner (so it would catch the good luck and not
let it spill out). The American said with a nervous laugh,
"Surely you don't believe the horseshoe will bring you good luck,
do you, Professor Bohr? After all, as a scientist --"
Bohr chuckled.
"I believe no such thing, my good friend. Not at all. I am
scarcely likely to believe in such foolish nonsense. However, I am told
that a horseshoe will bring you good luck whether you believe in it or not."
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The FIELD GUIDE to NORTH AMERICAN MALES
SPECIES: Cranial Males
SUBSPECIES: The Hacker (homo computatis)
Plumage:
All clothes have a slightly crumpled look as though they came off the
top of the laundry basket. Style varies with status. Hacker managers
wear gray polyester slacks, pink or pastel shirts with wide collars,
and paisley ties; staff wears cinched-up baggy corduroy pants, white
or blue shirts with button-down collars, and penholder in pocket.
Both managers and staff wear running shoes to work, and a black
plastic digital watch with calculator.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
So you see Antonio, why worry about one little core dump, eh? In reality
all core dumps happen at the same instant, so the core dump you will have
tomorrow, why, it already happened. You see, it's just a little universal
recursive joke which threads our lives through the infinite potential of
the instant. So go to sleep, Antonio, your thread could break any moment
and cast you out of the safe security of the instant into the dark void of
eternity, the anti-time. So go to sleep...
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
It is imperative when flying coach that you restrain any tendency toward
the vividly imaginative. For although it may momentarily appear to be the
case, it is not at all likely that the cabin is entirely inhabited by
crying babies smoking inexpensive domestic cigars.
-- Fran Lebowitz, "Social Studies"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
When you know absolutely nothing about the topic, make your forecast by
asking a carefully selected probability sample of 300 others who don't
know the answer either.
-- Edgar R. Fiedler
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
You are transported to a room where you are faced by a wizard who
points to you and says, "Them's fighting words!" You immediately get
attacked by all sorts of denizens of the museum: there is a cobra
chewing on your leg, a troglodyte is bashing your brains out with a
gold nugget, a crocodile is removing large chunks of flesh from you, a
rhinoceros is goring you with his horn, a sabre-tooth cat is busy
trying to disembowel you, you are being trampled by a large mammoth, a
vampire is sucking you dry, a Tyranosaurus Rex is sinking his six inch
long fangs into various parts of your anatomy, a large bear is
dismembering your body, a gargoyle is bouncing up and down on your
head, a burly troll is tearing you limb from limb, several dire wolves
are making mince meat out of your torso, and the wizard is about to
transport you to the corner of Westwood and Broxton. Oh dear, you seem
to have gotten yourself killed, as well.
You scored 0 out of 250 possible points.
That gives you a ranking of junior beginning adventurer.
To achieve the next higher rating, you need to score 32 more points.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I'D LIKE TO BE BURIED INDIAN-STYLE, where they put you up on a high rack,
above the ground. That way, you could get hit by meteorites and not even
feel it.
-- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
People seem to think that the blanket phrase, "I only work here," absolves
them utterly from any moral obligation in terms of the public -- but this
was precisely Eichmann's excuse for his job in the concentration camps.
- 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...
The proof that IBM didn't invent the car is that it has a steering wheel
and an accelerator instead of spurs and ropes, to be compatible with a horse.
-- Jac Goudsmit
- 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...
N: Phil Lewis /usr/src/linux/CREDITS
E: beans@bucket.ualr.edu
D: Promised to send money if I would put his name in the source tree.
S: PO Box 371
S: North Little Rock, Arkansas 72115
S: US
--
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The problems of business administration in general, and database management in
particular are much to difficult for people that think in IBMese, compounded
with sloppy english.
-- Edsger Dijkstra
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...