On the other hand, the TCP camp also has a phrase for OSI people. There are lots of phrases. My favorite is `nitwit' -- and the rationale is the Internet philosophy has always been you have extremely bright, non-partisan researchers look at a topic, do world-class research, do several competing implementations, have a bake-off, determine what works best, write it down and make that the standard.
The OSI view is entirely opposite. You take written contributions from a much larger community, you put the contributions in a room of committee people with, quite honestly, vast political differences and all with their own political axes to grind, and four years later you get something out, usually without it ever having been implemented once.
So the Internet perspective is implement it, make it work well, then write it down, whereas the OSI perspective is to agree on it, write it down, circulate it a lot and now we'll see if anyone can implement it after it's an international standard and every vendor in the world is committed to it. One of those processes is backwards, and I don't think it takes a Lucasian professor of physics at Oxford to figure out which.
-- Marshall Rose, "The Pied Piper of OSI"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
What is the difference between a Turing machine and the modern computer? It's the same as that between Hillary's ascent of Everest and the establishment of a Hilton on its peak.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
To say that UNIX is doomed is pretty rabid, OS/2 will certainly play a role, but you don't build a hundred million instructions per second multiprocessor micro and then try to run it on OS/2. I mean, get serious.
-- William Zachmann, International Data Corp
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
In the beginning was the Tao. The Tao gave birth to Space and Time. Therefore, Space and Time are the Yin and Yang of programming.
Programmers that do not comprehend the Tao are always running out of time and space for their programs. Programmers that comprehend the Tao always have enough time and space to accomplish their goals.
How could it be otherwise?
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
A master programmer passed a novice programmer one day. The master noted the novice's preoccupation with a hand-held computer game. "Excuse me", he said, "may I examine it?"
The novice bolted to attention and handed the device to the master. "I see that the device claims to have three levels of play: Easy, Medium, and Hard", said the master. "Yet every such device has another level of play, where the device seeks not to conquer the human, nor to be conquered by the human."
"Pray, great master," implored the novice, "how does one find this mysterious setting?"
The master dropped the device to the ground and crushed it under foot. And suddenly the novice was enlightened.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Does biff in bo work coz it biffin doesn't beep an if biff in bo is broke then biff in bo I will delete
I've tried biff in bo with 'y' I've tried biff in bo with '-y' no biffin output does it show so poor wee biff is gonna go.
-- John Spence on debian-user
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I know. Unless htere is a cookie monster somewhere between us tat muches the amil.
amil/mail
muches/munches tat/that htere/there
heheh
problems?:) * Myxie needs an ircii addon that pipes teh command line through ispell:)
-- Seen on #Debian
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
This is the first numerical problem I ever did. It demonstrates the power of computers:
Enter lots of data on calorie & nutritive content of foods. Instruct the thing to maximize a function describing nutritive content, with a minimum level of each component, for fixed caloric content. The results are that one should eat each day:
1/2 chicken
1 egg
1 glass of skim milk
27 heads of lettuce.
-- Rev. Adrian Melott
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The so-called "desktop metaphor" of today's workstations is instead an "airplane-seat" metaphor. Anyone who has shuffled a lap full of papers while seated between two portly passengers will recognize the difference -- one can see only a very few things at once.
-- Fred Brooks
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
These download files are in Microsoft Word 6.0 format. After unzipping, these files can be viewed in any text editor, including all versions of Microsoft Word, WordPad, and Microsoft Word Viewer
-- From Micro$oft
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Please try to limit the amount of "this room doesn't have any bazingas" until you are told that those rooms are "punched out." Once punched out, we have a right to complain about atrocities, missing bazingas, and such.
-- N. Meyrowitz
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
What office are you in? Oh, that one. Did you know that your building was built over the universities first nuclear research site? And wow, are'nt you the lucky one, your office is right over where the core is buried!
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I forgot to mention an important fact in the 1.3.67 announcement. In order to get a fully working kernel, you have to follow the steps below:
- Walk around your computer widdershins 3 times, chanting "Linus is
overworked, and he makes lousy patches, but we love him anyway". Get
your spuouse to do this too for extra effect. Children are optional.
- Apply the patch included in this mail
- Call your system "Super-67", and don't forget to unapply the patch
before you later applying the official 1.3.68 patch.
- reboot
-- Linus Torvalds, announcing another kernel patch
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
One promising concept that I came up with right away was that you could manufacture personal air bags, then get a law passed requiring that they be installed on congressmen to keep them from taking trips. Let's say your congressman was trying to travel to Paris to do a fact-finding study on how the French government handles diseases transmitted by sherbet. Just when he got to the plane, his mandatory air bag, strapped around his waist, would inflate -- FWWAAAAAAPPPP -- thus rendering him too large to fit through the plane door. It could also be rigged to inflate whenever the congressman proposed a law. ("Mr. Speaker, people ask me, why should October be designated as Cuticle Inspection Month? And I answer that FWWAAAAAAPPPP.") This would save millions of dollars, so I have no doubt that the public would violently support a law requiring airbags on congressmen. The problem is that your potential market is very small: there are only around 500 members of Congress, and some of them, such as House Speaker "Tip" O'Neil, are already too large to fit on normal aircraft.
-- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The boss returned from lunch in a good mood and called the whole staff in to listen to a couple of jokes he had picked up. Everybody but one girl laughed uproariously. "What's the matter?" grumbled the boss. "Haven't you got a sense of humor?"
"I don't have to laugh," she said. "I'm leaving Friday anyway.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The primary cause of failure in electrical appliances is an expired warranty. Often, you can get an appliance running again simply by changing the warranty expiration date with a 15/64-inch felt-tipped marker.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
A certain monk had a habit of pestering the Grand Tortue (the only one who had ever reached the Enlightenment 'Yond Enlightenment), by asking whether various objects had Buddha-nature or not. To such a question Tortue invariably sat silent. The monk had already asked about a bean, a lake, and a moonlit night. One day he brought to Tortue a piece of string, and asked the same question. In reply, the Grand Tortue grasped the loop between his feet and, with a few simple manipulations, created a complex string which he proferred wordlessly to the monk. At that moment, the monk was enlightened.
From then on, the monk did not bother Tortue. Instead, he made string after string by Tortue's method; and he passed the method on to his own disciples, who passed it on to theirs.
- 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...
Looks like the channel is back to normal:)
You mean it's not scrolling faster than anyone can read?:)
-- Seen on #Debian after the release of Debian 2.0
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
After the Children of Israel had wandered for thirty-nine years in the wilderness, Ferdinand Feghoot arrived to make sure that they would finally find and enter the Promised Land. With him, he brought his favorite robot, faithful old Yewtoo Artoo, to carry his gear and do assorted camp chores.
The Israelites soon got over their initial fear of the robot and, as the months passed, became very fond of him. Patriarchs took to discussing abtruse theological problems with him, and each evening the children all gathered to hear the many stories with which he was programmed. Therefore it came as a great shock to them when, just as their journey was ending, he abruptly wore out. Even Feghoot couldn't console them.
"It may be true, Ferdinand Feghoot," said Moses, "that our friend Yewtoo Artoo was soulless, but we cannot believe it. He must be properly interred. We cannot embalm him as do the Egyptians. Nor have we wood for a coffin. But I do have a most splendid skin from one of Pharoah's own cattle. We shall bury him in it."
Feghoot agreed. "Yes, let this be his last rusting place."
"Rusting?" Moses cried. "Not in this dreadful dry desert!"
"Ah!" sighed Ferdinand Feghoot, shedding a tear, "I fear you do not realize the full significance of Pharoah's oxhide!"
-- Grendel Briarton "Through Time & Space With Ferdinand
Feghoot!"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Feel free to contact me (flames about my english and the useless of this driver will be redirected to/dev/null, oh no, it's full...).
-- Michael Beck, describing the PC-speaker sound device
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Now, it we had this sort of thing:
yield -a for yield to all traffic
yield -t for yield to trucks
yield -f for yield to people walking (yield foot)
yield -d t* for yield on days starting with t...you'd have a lot of dead people at intersections, and traffic jams you wouldn't believe...
-- Discussion on the intuitiveness of commands
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Slashdot Mirror
On the other hand, the TCP camp also has a phrase for OSI people.
There are lots of phrases. My favorite is `nitwit' -- and the rationale
is the Internet philosophy has always been you have extremely bright,
non-partisan researchers look at a topic, do world-class research, do
several competing implementations, have a bake-off, determine what works
best, write it down and make that the standard.
The OSI view is entirely opposite. You take written contributions
from a much larger community, you put the contributions in a room of
committee people with, quite honestly, vast political differences and all
with their own political axes to grind, and four years later you get
something out, usually without it ever having been implemented once.
So the Internet perspective is implement it, make it work well,
then write it down, whereas the OSI perspective is to agree on it, write
it down, circulate it a lot and now we'll see if anyone can implement it
after it's an international standard and every vendor in the world is
committed to it. One of those processes is backwards, and I don't think
it takes a Lucasian professor of physics at Oxford to figure out which.
-- Marshall Rose, "The Pied Piper of OSI"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
What is the difference between a Turing machine and the modern computer?
It's the same as that between Hillary's ascent of Everest and the
establishment of a Hilton on its peak.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
To say that UNIX is doomed is pretty rabid, OS/2 will certainly play a role,
but you don't build a hundred million instructions per second multiprocessor
micro and then try to run it on OS/2. I mean, get serious.
-- William Zachmann, International Data Corp
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
In the beginning was the Tao. The Tao gave birth to Space and Time.
Therefore, Space and Time are the Yin and Yang of programming.
Programmers that do not comprehend the Tao are always running out of
time and space for their programs. Programmers that comprehend the Tao always
have enough time and space to accomplish their goals.
How could it be otherwise?
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
A master programmer passed a novice programmer one day. The master
noted the novice's preoccupation with a hand-held computer game. "Excuse me",
he said, "may I examine it?"
The novice bolted to attention and handed the device to the master.
"I see that the device claims to have three levels of play: Easy, Medium,
and Hard", said the master. "Yet every such device has another level of play,
where the device seeks not to conquer the human, nor to be conquered by the
human."
"Pray, great master," implored the novice, "how does one find this
mysterious setting?"
The master dropped the device to the ground and crushed it under foot.
And suddenly the novice was enlightened.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Does biff in bo work
coz it biffin doesn't beep
an if biff in bo is broke
then biff in bo I will delete
I've tried biff in bo with 'y'
I've tried biff in bo with '-y'
no biffin output does it show
so poor wee biff is gonna go.
-- John Spence on debian-user
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I know. Unless htere is a cookie monster somewhere between us tat muches the amil. :) :)
amil/mail
muches/munches tat/that htere/there
heheh
problems?
* Myxie needs an ircii addon that pipes teh command line through ispell
-- Seen on #Debian
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Excerpt from a conversation between a customer support person and a
customer working for a well-known military-affiliated research lab:
Support: "You're not our only customer, you know."
Customer: "But we're one of the few with tactical nuclear weapons."
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
This is the first numerical problem I ever did. It demonstrates the
power of computers:
Enter lots of data on calorie & nutritive content of foods. Instruct
the thing to maximize a function describing nutritive content, with a
minimum level of each component, for fixed caloric content. The
results are that one should eat each day:
1/2 chicken
1 egg
1 glass of skim milk
27 heads of lettuce.
-- Rev. Adrian Melott
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The so-called "desktop metaphor" of today's workstations is instead an
"airplane-seat" metaphor. Anyone who has shuffled a lap full of papers
while seated between two portly passengers will recognize the difference --
one can see only a very few things at once.
-- Fred Brooks
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
These download files are in Microsoft Word 6.0 format. After
unzipping, these files can be viewed in any text editor, including
all versions of Microsoft Word, WordPad, and Microsoft Word Viewer
-- From Micro$oft
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Please try to limit the amount of "this room doesn't have any bazingas"
until you are told that those rooms are "punched out." Once punched out,
we have a right to complain about atrocities, missing bazingas, and such.
-- N. Meyrowitz
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
BOFH excuse #216:
What office are you in? Oh, that one. Did you know that your building was built over the universities first nuclear research site? And wow, are'nt you the lucky one, your office is right over where the core is buried!
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I forgot to mention an important fact in the 1.3.67 announcement. In order to
get a fully working kernel, you have to follow the steps below:
- Walk around your computer widdershins 3 times, chanting "Linus is
overworked, and he makes lousy patches, but we love him anyway". Get
your spuouse to do this too for extra effect. Children are optional.
- Apply the patch included in this mail
- Call your system "Super-67", and don't forget to unapply the patch
before you later applying the official 1.3.68 patch.
- reboot
-- Linus Torvalds, announcing another kernel patch
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
One promising concept that I came up with right away was that you could
manufacture personal air bags, then get a law passed requiring that they be
installed on congressmen to keep them from taking trips. Let's say your
congressman was trying to travel to Paris to do a fact-finding study on how
the French government handles diseases transmitted by sherbet. Just when he
got to the plane, his mandatory air bag, strapped around his waist, would
inflate -- FWWAAAAAAPPPP -- thus rendering him too large to fit through the
plane door. It could also be rigged to inflate whenever the congressman
proposed a law. ("Mr. Speaker, people ask me, why should October be
designated as Cuticle Inspection Month? And I answer that FWWAAAAAAPPPP.")
This would save millions of dollars, so I have no doubt that the public
would violently support a law requiring airbags on congressmen. The problem
is that your potential market is very small: there are only around 500
members of Congress, and some of them, such as House Speaker "Tip" O'Neil,
are already too large to fit on normal aircraft.
-- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The boss returned from lunch in a good mood and called the whole staff
in to listen to a couple of jokes he had picked up. Everybody but one girl
laughed uproariously. "What's the matter?" grumbled the boss. "Haven't you
got a sense of humor?"
"I don't have to laugh," she said. "I'm leaving Friday anyway.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The primary cause of failure in electrical appliances is an expired
warranty. Often, you can get an appliance running again simply by changing
the warranty expiration date with a 15/64-inch felt-tipped marker.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The tao that can be tar(1)ed
is not the entire Tao.
The path that can be specified
is not the Full Path.
We declare the names
of all variables and functions.
Yet the Tao has no type specifier.
Dynamically binding, you realize the magic.
Statically binding, you see only the hierarchy.
Yet magic and hierarchy
arise from the same source,
and this source has a null pointer.
Reference the NULL within NULL,
it is the gateway to all wizardry.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
A certain monk had a habit of pestering the Grand Tortue (the only one who
had ever reached the Enlightenment 'Yond Enlightenment), by asking whether
various objects had Buddha-nature or not. To such a question Tortue
invariably sat silent. The monk had already asked about a bean, a lake,
and a moonlit night. One day he brought to Tortue a piece of string, and
asked the same question. In reply, the Grand Tortue grasped the loop
between his feet and, with a few simple manipulations, created a complex
string which he proferred wordlessly to the monk. At that moment, the monk
was enlightened.
From then on, the monk did not bother Tortue. Instead, he made string after
string by Tortue's method; and he passed the method on to his own disciples,
who passed it on to theirs.
- 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...
Looks like the channel is back to normal :) :)
You mean it's not scrolling faster than anyone can read?
-- Seen on #Debian after the release of Debian 2.0
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
After the Children of Israel had wandered for thirty-nine years
in the wilderness, Ferdinand Feghoot arrived to make sure that they would
finally find and enter the Promised Land. With him, he brought his
favorite robot, faithful old Yewtoo Artoo, to carry his gear and do
assorted camp chores.
The Israelites soon got over their initial fear of the robot and,
as the months passed, became very fond of him. Patriarchs took to
discussing abtruse theological problems with him, and each evening the
children all gathered to hear the many stories with which he was programmed.
Therefore it came as a great shock to them when, just as their journey was
ending, he abruptly wore out. Even Feghoot couldn't console them.
"It may be true, Ferdinand Feghoot," said Moses, "that our friend
Yewtoo Artoo was soulless, but we cannot believe it. He must be properly
interred. We cannot embalm him as do the Egyptians. Nor have we wood for
a coffin. But I do have a most splendid skin from one of Pharoah's own
cattle. We shall bury him in it."
Feghoot agreed. "Yes, let this be his last rusting place."
"Rusting?" Moses cried. "Not in this dreadful dry desert!"
"Ah!" sighed Ferdinand Feghoot, shedding a tear, "I fear you do not
realize the full significance of Pharoah's oxhide!"
-- Grendel Briarton "Through Time & Space With Ferdinand
Feghoot!"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Feel free to contact me (flames about my english and the useless of this /dev/null, oh no, it's full...).
driver will be redirected to
-- Michael Beck, describing the PC-speaker sound device
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Excerpt from a conversation between a customer support person and a
customer working for a well-known military-affiliated research lab:
Support: "You're not our only customer, you know."
Customer: "But we're one of the few with tactical nuclear weapons."
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Now, it we had this sort of thing: ...you'd have a lot of dead people at intersections, and traffic jams you
yield -a for yield to all traffic
yield -t for yield to trucks
yield -f for yield to people walking (yield foot)
yield -d t* for yield on days starting with t
wouldn't believe...
-- Discussion on the intuitiveness of commands
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...