Like you, I am frequently haunted by profound questions related to man's place in the Scheme of Things. Here are just a few:
Q -- Is there life after death?
A -- Definitely. I speak from personal experience here. On New Year's Eve, 1970, I drank a full pitcher of a drink called "Black Russian", then crawled out on the lawn and died within a matter of minutes, which was fine with me because I had come to realize that if I had lived I would have spent the rest of my life in the grip of the most excruciatingly painful headache. Thanks to the miracle of modern orange juice, I was brought back to life several days later, but in the interim I was definitely dead. I guess my main impression of the afterlife is that it isn't so bad as long as you keep the television turned down and don't try to eat any solid foods.
-- Dave Barry
- 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...
If addiction is judged by how long a dumb animal will sit pressing a lever to get a "fix" of something, to its own detriment, then I would conclude that netnews is far more addictive than cocaine.
-- Rob Stampfli
- 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...
Alan Turing thought about criteria to settle the question of whether machines can think, a question of which we now know that it is about as relevant as the question of whether submarines can swim.
-- Dijkstra
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
... Another writer again agreed with all my generalities, but said that as an inveterate skeptic I have closed my mind to the truth. Most notably I have ignored the evidence for an Earth that is six thousand years old. Well, I haven't ignored it; I considered the purported evidence and *then* rejected it. There is a difference, and this is a difference, we might say, between prejudice and postjudice. Prejudice is making a judgment before you have looked at the facts. Postjudice is making a judgment afterwards. Prejudice is terrible, in the sense that you commit injustices and you make serious mistakes. Postjudice is not terrible. You can't be perfect of course; you may make mistakes also. But it is permissible to make a judgment after you have examined the evidence. In some circles it is even encouraged.
-- Carl Sagan, "The Burden of Skepticism"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The Analytical Engine weaves Algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves.
-- Ada Augusta, Countess of Lovelace, the first programmer
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The only really good reason I can think to not release specs is embarrassment on just how crappy some hardware out there is, or just how buggy it is.
-- Chris Wedgwood
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Audience: What will become of Linux when the Hurd is ready? Eric Youngdale: Err... is Richard Stallman here?
-- From the Linux conference in spring '95, Berlin
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I tell ya, gambling never agreed with me. Last week I went to the track and they shot my horse with the opening gun.
Well, just last week I was at a Chinese restaurant and when I opened my fortune cookie I found the guy's check sitting at the next table. I said, "Hey, buddy, I got your check", he said, "Thanks."
-- Rodney Dangerfield
- 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...
[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...
Several years ago, some smart businessmen had an idea: Why not build a big store where a do-it-yourselfer could get everything he needed at reasonable prices? Then they decided, nah, the hell with that, let's build a home center. And before long home centers were springing up like crabgrass all over the United States.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
High Priest: Armaments Chapter One, verses nine through twenty-seven: Bro. Maynard: And Saint Attila raised the Holy Hand Grenade up on high
saying, "Oh Lord, Bless us this Holy Hand Grenade, and with it
smash our enemies to tiny bits." And the Lord did grin, and the
people did feast upon the lambs, and stoats, and orangutans, and
breakfast cereals, and lima bean- High Priest: Skip a bit, brother. Bro. Maynard: And then the Lord spake, saying: "First, shalt thou take
out the holy pin. Then shalt thou count to three. No more, no less.
*Three* shall be the number of the counting, and the number of the
counting shall be three. *Four* shalt thou not count, and neither
count thou two, excepting that thou then goest on to three. Five is
RIGHT OUT. Once the number three, being the third number be reached,
then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade towards thy foe, who, being
naughty in my sight, shall snuff it. Amen. All: Amen.
-- Monty Python, "The Holy Hand Grenade"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Good evening, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the HAL plant in Urbana, Illinois, on January 11th, nineteen hundred ninety-five. My supervisor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you would like, I could sing it for you.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
There is a good deal of solemn cant about the common interests of capital and labour. As matters stand, their only common interest is that of cutting each other's throat.
-- Brooks Atkinson, "Once Around the Sun"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"I said I hope it is a good party," said Galder, loudly.
"AT THE MOMENT IT IS," said Death levelly. "I THINK IT MIGHT GO DOWNHILL VERY QUICKLY AT MIDNIGHT."
"Why?"
"THAT'S WHEN THEY THINK I'LL BE TAKING MY MASK OFF."
-- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
What the hell is it good for?
-- Robert Lloyd (engineer of the Advanced Computing Systems
Division of IBM), to colleagues who insisted that the
microprocessor was the wave of the future, c. 1968
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"Well," Brahma said, "even after ten thousand explanations, a fool is no wiser, but an intelligent man requires only two thousand five hundred."
-- The Mahabharata.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.
-- J.D. Watson, "The Double Helix"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
A gangster assembled an engineer, a chemist, and a physicist. He explained that he was entering a horse in a race the following week and the three assembled guys had the job of assuring that the gangster's horse would win. They were to reconvene the day before the race to tell the gangster how they each propose to ensure a win. When they reconvened the gangster started with the engineer:
Gangster: OK, Mr. engineer, what have you got? Engineer: Well, I've invented a way to weave metallic threads into the saddle
blanket so that they will act as the plates of a battery and provide
electrical shock to the horse. G: That's very good! But let's hear from the chemist. Chemist: I've synthesized a powerful stimulant that disolves
into simple blood sugars after ten minutes and therefore
cannot be detected in post-race tests. G: Excellent, excellent! But I want to hear from the physicist before
I decide what to do. Physicist? Physicist: Well, first consider a spherical horse in simple harmonic motion...
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The computer industry is journalists in their 20's standing in awe of entrepreneurs in their 30's who are hiring salesmen in their 40's and 50's and paying them in the 60's and 70's to bring their marketing into the 80's.
-- Marty Winston
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
For those who have had too much of Esalen, Topanga, and Kairos. Tired of being genuine all the time? Would you like to learn how to be a little phony again? Have you disclosed so much that you're beginning to avoid people? Have you touched so many people that they're all beginning to feel the same? Like to be a little dependent? Are perfect orgasms beginning to bore you? Would you like, for once, not to express a feeling? Or better yet, not be in touch with it at all? Come to us. We promise to relieve you of the burden of your great potential.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offence.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
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...
Slashdot Mirror
Like you, I am frequently haunted by profound questions related to man's
place in the Scheme of Things. Here are just a few:
Q -- Is there life after death?
A -- Definitely. I speak from personal experience here. On New
Year's Eve, 1970, I drank a full pitcher of a drink called "Black Russian",
then crawled out on the lawn and died within a matter of minutes, which was
fine with me because I had come to realize that if I had lived I would have
spent the rest of my life in the grip of the most excruciatingly painful
headache. Thanks to the miracle of modern orange juice, I was brought back
to life several days later, but in the interim I was definitely dead. I
guess my main impression of the afterlife is that it isn't so bad as long
as you keep the television turned down and don't try to eat any solid foods.
-- Dave Barry
- 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...
If addiction is judged by how long a dumb animal will sit pressing a lever
to get a "fix" of something, to its own detriment, then I would conclude
that netnews is far more addictive than cocaine.
-- Rob Stampfli
- 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...
Alan Turing thought about criteria to settle the question of whether
machines can think, a question of which we now know that it is about
as relevant as the question of whether submarines can swim.
-- Dijkstra
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
... Another writer again agreed with all my generalities, but said that as an
inveterate skeptic I have closed my mind to the truth. Most notably I have
ignored the evidence for an Earth that is six thousand years old. Well, I
haven't ignored it; I considered the purported evidence and *then* rejected
it. There is a difference, and this is a difference, we might say, between
prejudice and postjudice. Prejudice is making a judgment before you have
looked at the facts. Postjudice is making a judgment afterwards. Prejudice
is terrible, in the sense that you commit injustices and you make serious
mistakes. Postjudice is not terrible. You can't be perfect of course; you
may make mistakes also. But it is permissible to make a judgment after you
have examined the evidence. In some circles it is even encouraged.
-- Carl Sagan, "The Burden of Skepticism"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The Analytical Engine weaves Algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard
loom weaves flowers and leaves.
-- Ada Augusta, Countess of Lovelace, the first programmer
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The only really good reason I can think to not release specs is
embarrassment on just how crappy some hardware out there is, or just how
buggy it is.
-- Chris Wedgwood
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Audience: What will become of Linux when the Hurd is ready?
Eric Youngdale: Err... is Richard Stallman here?
-- From the Linux conference in spring '95, Berlin
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I tell ya, gambling never agreed with me. Last week I went to the track
and they shot my horse with the opening gun.
Well, just last week I was at a Chinese restaurant and when I opened my
fortune cookie I found the guy's check sitting at the next table. I said,
"Hey, buddy, I got your check", he said, "Thanks."
-- Rodney Dangerfield
- 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...
[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...
Several years ago, some smart businessmen had an idea: Why not build a big
store where a do-it-yourselfer could get everything he needed at reasonable
prices? Then they decided, nah, the hell with that, let's build a home
center. And before long home centers were springing up like crabgrass all
over the United States.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
High Priest: Armaments Chapter One, verses nine through twenty-seven:
Bro. Maynard: And Saint Attila raised the Holy Hand Grenade up on high
saying, "Oh Lord, Bless us this Holy Hand Grenade, and with it
smash our enemies to tiny bits." And the Lord did grin, and the
people did feast upon the lambs, and stoats, and orangutans, and
breakfast cereals, and lima bean-
High Priest: Skip a bit, brother.
Bro. Maynard: And then the Lord spake, saying: "First, shalt thou take
out the holy pin. Then shalt thou count to three. No more, no less.
*Three* shall be the number of the counting, and the number of the
counting shall be three. *Four* shalt thou not count, and neither
count thou two, excepting that thou then goest on to three. Five is
RIGHT OUT. Once the number three, being the third number be reached,
then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade towards thy foe, who, being
naughty in my sight, shall snuff it. Amen.
All: Amen.
-- Monty Python, "The Holy Hand Grenade"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Good evening, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational
at the HAL plant in Urbana, Illinois, on January 11th, nineteen hundred
ninety-five. My supervisor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a
song. If you would like, I could sing it for you.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
There is a good deal of solemn cant about the common interests of capital
and labour. As matters stand, their only common interest is that of cutting
each other's throat.
-- Brooks Atkinson, "Once Around the Sun"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"I said I hope it is a good party," said Galder, loudly.
"AT THE MOMENT IT IS," said Death levelly. "I THINK IT MIGHT GO
DOWNHILL VERY QUICKLY AT MIDNIGHT."
"Why?"
"THAT'S WHEN THEY THINK I'LL BE TAKING MY MASK OFF."
-- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
What the hell is it good for?
-- Robert Lloyd (engineer of the Advanced Computing Systems
Division of IBM), to colleagues who insisted that the
microprocessor was the wave of the future, c. 1968
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"Well," Brahma said, "even after ten thousand explanations, a fool is no
wiser, but an intelligent man requires only two thousand five hundred."
-- The Mahabharata.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast
to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists,
a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also
just stupid.
-- J.D. Watson, "The Double Helix"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
A gangster assembled an engineer, a chemist, and a physicist. He explained
that he was entering a horse in a race the following week and the three
assembled guys had the job of assuring that the gangster's horse would win.
They were to reconvene the day before the race to tell the gangster how they
each propose to ensure a win. When they reconvened the gangster started with
the engineer:
Gangster: OK, Mr. engineer, what have you got?
Engineer: Well, I've invented a way to weave metallic threads into the saddle
blanket so that they will act as the plates of a battery and provide
electrical shock to the horse.
G: That's very good! But let's hear from the chemist.
Chemist: I've synthesized a powerful stimulant that disolves
into simple blood sugars after ten minutes and therefore
cannot be detected in post-race tests.
G: Excellent, excellent! But I want to hear from the physicist before
I decide what to do. Physicist?
Physicist: Well, first consider a spherical horse in simple harmonic motion...
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The computer industry is journalists in their 20's standing in awe of
entrepreneurs in their 30's who are hiring salesmen in their 40's and
50's and paying them in the 60's and 70's to bring their marketing into
the 80's.
-- Marty Winston
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
**** GROWTH CENTER REPAIR SERVICE
For those who have had too much of Esalen, Topanga, and Kairos. Tired of
being genuine all the time? Would you like to learn how to be a little
phony again? Have you disclosed so much that you're beginning to avoid
people? Have you touched so many people that they're all beginning to
feel the same? Like to be a little dependent? Are perfect orgasms
beginning to bore you? Would you like, for once, not to express a
feeling? Or better yet, not be in touch with it at all? Come to us. We
promise to relieve you of the burden of your great potential.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be
regarded as a criminal offence.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
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...