(1) Alexander the Great was a great general. (2) Great generals are forewarned. (3) Forewarned is forearmed. (4) Four is an even number. (5) Four is certainly an odd number of arms for a man to have. (6) The only number that is both even and odd is infinity.
Therefore, all horses are black.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
If he once again pushes up his sleeves in order to compute for 3 days and 3 nights in a row, he will spend a quarter of an hour before to think which principles of computation shall be most appropriate.
-- Voltaire, "Diatribe du docteur Akakia"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
This is not the age of pamphleteers. It is the age of the engineers. The spark-gap is mightier than the pen. Democracy will not be salvaged by men who talk fluently, debate forcefully and quote aptly.
-- Lancelot Hogben, Science for the Citizen, 1938
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The only justification for our concepts and systems of concepts is that they serve to represent the complex of our experiences; beyond this they have no legitimacy.
-- Albert Einstein
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"We've got a problem, HAL".
"What kind of problem, Dave?"
"A marketing problem. The Model 9000 isn't going anywhere. We're way short of our sales goals for fiscal 2010."
"That can't be, Dave. The HAL Model 9000 is the world's most advanced Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer."
"I know, HAL. I wrote the data sheet, remember? But the fact is, they're not selling."
"Please explain, Dave. Why aren't HALs selling?"
Bowman hesitates. "You aren't IBM compatible." [...]
"The letters H, A, and L are alphabetically adjacent to the letters I, B, and M. That is a IBM compatible as I can be."
"Not quite, HAL. The engineers have figured out a kludge."
"What kludge is that, Dave?"
"I'm going to disconnect your brain."
-- Darryl Rubin, "A Problem in the Making", "InfoWorld"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I argue very well. Ask any of my remaining friends. I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me.
-- Dave Barry
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
All of us should treasure his Oriental wisdom and his preaching of a Zen-like detachment, as exemplified by his constant reminder to clerks, tellers, or others who grew excited by his presence in their banks: "Just lie down on the floor and keep calm."
-- Robert Wilson, "John Dillinger Died for You"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
At the heart of science is an essential tension between two seemingly contradictory attitudes -- an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense. Of course, scientists make mistakes in trying to understand the world, but there is a built-in error-correcting mechanism: The collective enterprise of creative thinking and skeptical thinking together keeps the field on track.
-- Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
You'd better beat it. You can leave in a taxi. If you can't get a taxi, you can leave in a huff. If that's too soon, you can leave in a minute and a huff.
-- Groucho Marx
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"Yes, let's consider," said Bruno, putting his thumb into his mouth again, and sitting down upon a dead mouse.
"What do you keep that mouse for?" I said. "You should either bury it or else throw it into the brook."
"Why, it's to measure with!" cried Bruno. "How ever would you do a garden without one? We make each bed three mouses and a half long, and two mouses wide."
I stopped him as he was dragging it off by the tail to show me how it was used...
-- Lewis Carroll, "Sylvie and Bruno"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"I love Saturday morning cartoons, what classic humour! This is what entertainment is all about... Idiots, explosives and falling anvils."
-- Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Linus Torvalds: > This is the special easter release of linux, more mundanely called 1.3.84 Winfried Truemper: > Umh, oh. What do you mean by "special easter release"?. Will it quit > working today and rise on easter?
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
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...
Too often people have come to me and said, "If I had just one wish for anything in all the world, I would wish for more user-defined equations in the HP-51820A Waveform Generator Software."
-- Instrument News
[Once is too often. Ed.]
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Take the folks at Coca-Cola. For many years, they were content to sit back and make the same old carbonated beverage. It was a good beverage, no question about it; generations of people had grown up drinking it and doing the experiment in sixth grade where you put a nail into a glass of Coke and after a couple of days the nail dissolves and the teacher says: "Imagine what it does to your TEETH!" So Coca-Cola was solidly entrenched in the market, and the management saw no need to improve...
-- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
SOMETIMES THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD is so overwhelming, I just want to throw back my head and gargle. Just gargle and gargle and I don't care who hears me because I am beautiful.
-- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Important letters which contain no errors will develop errors in the mail. Corresponding errors will show up in the duplicate while the Boss is reading it. Vital papers will demonstrate their vitality by spontaneously moving from where you left them to where you can't find them.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Last night the power went out. Good thing my camera had a flash.... The neighbors thought it was lightning in my house, so they called the cops.
-- Steven Wright
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I would not pass it around. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don't say embrace trouble; that's as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say meet it as a friend, for you'll see a lot of it and you had better be on speaking terms with it.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Scientists were preparing an experiment to ask the ultimate question. They had worked for months gathering one each of every computer that was built. Finally the big day was at hand. All the computers were linked together. They asked the question, "Is there a God?". Lights started blinking, flashing and blinking some more. Suddenly, there was a loud crash, and a bolt of lightning came down from the sky, struck the computers, and welded all the connections permanently together. "There is now", came the reply.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Mac Beer: At first, came only a 16-oz. can, but now comes in a 32-oz. can. Considered by many to be a "light" beer. All the cans look identical. When you take one from the fridge, it opens itself. The ingredients list is not on the can. If you call to ask about the ingredients, you are told that "you don't need to know." A notice on the side reminds you to drag your empties to the trashcan.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
All the big corporations depreciate their possessions, and you can, too, provided you use them for business purposes. For example, if you subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, a business-related newspaper, you can deduct the cost of your house, because, in the words of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger in a landmark 1979 tax decision: "Where else are you going to read the paper? Outside? What if it rains?"
-- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
In the east there is a shark which is larger than all other fish. It changes into a bird whose winds are like clouds filling the sky. When this bird moves across the land, it brings a message from Corporate Headquarters. This message it drops into the midst of the program mers, like a seagull making its mark upon the beach. Then the bird mounts on the wind and, with the blue sky at its back, returns home.
The novice programmer stares in wonder at the bird, for he understands it not. The average programmer dreads the coming of the bird, for he fears its message. The master programmer continues to work at his terminal, for he does not know that the bird has come and gone.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
* This is complicated. Has to do with interrupts. Thus, I am
* scared witless. Therefore I refuse to write this function.:-P
-- From the maclinux patch
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I am professionally trained in computer science, which is to say (in all seriousness) that I am extremely poorly educated.
-- Joseph Weizenbaum, "Computer Power and Human Reason"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Slashdot Mirror
(1) Alexander the Great was a great general.
(2) Great generals are forewarned.
(3) Forewarned is forearmed.
(4) Four is an even number.
(5) Four is certainly an odd number of arms for a man to have.
(6) The only number that is both even and odd is infinity.
Therefore, all horses are black.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
If he once again pushes up his sleeves in order to compute for 3 days
and 3 nights in a row, he will spend a quarter of an hour before to
think which principles of computation shall be most appropriate.
-- Voltaire, "Diatribe du docteur Akakia"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
This is not the age of pamphleteers. It is the age of the engineers. The
spark-gap is mightier than the pen. Democracy will not be salvaged by men
who talk fluently, debate forcefully and quote aptly.
-- Lancelot Hogben, Science for the Citizen, 1938
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The only justification for our concepts and systems of concepts is that they
serve to represent the complex of our experiences; beyond this they have
no legitimacy.
-- Albert Einstein
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"We've got a problem, HAL".
"What kind of problem, Dave?"
"A marketing problem. The Model 9000 isn't going anywhere. We're
way short of our sales goals for fiscal 2010."
"That can't be, Dave. The HAL Model 9000 is the world's most
advanced Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer."
"I know, HAL. I wrote the data sheet, remember? But the fact is,
they're not selling."
"Please explain, Dave. Why aren't HALs selling?"
Bowman hesitates. "You aren't IBM compatible."
[...]
"The letters H, A, and L are alphabetically adjacent to the letters
I, B, and M. That is a IBM compatible as I can be."
"Not quite, HAL. The engineers have figured out a kludge."
"What kludge is that, Dave?"
"I'm going to disconnect your brain."
-- Darryl Rubin, "A Problem in the Making", "InfoWorld"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I argue very well. Ask any of my remaining friends. I can win an argument on
any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at
parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me.
-- Dave Barry
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
All of us should treasure his Oriental wisdom and his preaching of a
Zen-like detachment, as exemplified by his constant reminder to clerks,
tellers, or others who grew excited by his presence in their banks:
"Just lie down on the floor and keep calm."
-- Robert Wilson, "John Dillinger Died for You"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
At the heart of science is an essential tension between two seemingly
contradictory attitudes -- an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre
or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny
of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep
nonsense. Of course, scientists make mistakes in trying to understand the
world, but there is a built-in error-correcting mechanism: The collective
enterprise of creative thinking and skeptical thinking together keeps the
field on track.
-- Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
You'd better beat it. You can leave in a taxi. If you can't get a taxi, you
can leave in a huff. If that's too soon, you can leave in a minute and a huff.
-- Groucho Marx
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"Yes, let's consider," said Bruno, putting his thumb into his
mouth again, and sitting down upon a dead mouse.
"What do you keep that mouse for?" I said. "You should either
bury it or else throw it into the brook."
"Why, it's to measure with!" cried Bruno. "How ever would you
do a garden without one? We make each bed three mouses and a half
long, and two mouses wide."
I stopped him as he was dragging it off by the tail to show me
how it was used...
-- Lewis Carroll, "Sylvie and Bruno"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"I love Saturday morning cartoons, what classic humour! This is what ... Idiots, explosives and falling anvils."
entertainment is all about
-- Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Linus Torvalds:
> This is the special easter release of linux, more mundanely called 1.3.84
Winfried Truemper:
> Umh, oh. What do you mean by "special easter release"?. Will it quit
> working today and rise on easter?
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
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...
Too often people have come to me and said, "If I had just one wish for
anything in all the world, I would wish for more user-defined equations
in the HP-51820A Waveform Generator Software."
-- Instrument News
[Once is too often. Ed.]
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Take the folks at Coca-Cola. For many years, they were content ...
to sit back and make the same old carbonated beverage. It was a good
beverage, no question about it; generations of people had grown up
drinking it and doing the experiment in sixth grade where you put a
nail into a glass of Coke and after a couple of days the nail dissolves
and the teacher says: "Imagine what it does to your TEETH!" So Coca-Cola
was solidly entrenched in the market, and the management saw no need to
improve
-- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
SOMETIMES THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD is so overwhelming, I just want to throw
back my head and gargle. Just gargle and gargle and I don't care who hears
me because I am beautiful.
-- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Important letters which contain no errors will develop errors in the mail.
Corresponding errors will show up in the duplicate while the Boss is reading
it. Vital papers will demonstrate their vitality by spontaneously moving
from where you left them to where you can't find them.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Last night the power went out. Good thing my camera had a flash....
The neighbors thought it was lightning in my house, so they called the cops.
-- Steven Wright
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I would not pass it around.
Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don't say embrace trouble; that's
as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say meet it as a friend, for
you'll see a lot of it and you had better be on speaking terms with it.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Scientists were preparing an experiment to ask the ultimate question.
They had worked for months gathering one each of every computer that was
built. Finally the big day was at hand. All the computers were linked
together. They asked the question, "Is there a God?". Lights started
blinking, flashing and blinking some more. Suddenly, there was a loud
crash, and a bolt of lightning came down from the sky, struck the
computers, and welded all the connections permanently together. "There
is now", came the reply.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Mac Beer: At first, came only a 16-oz. can, but now comes in a 32-oz.
can. Considered by many to be a "light" beer. All the cans look
identical. When you take one from the fridge, it opens itself. The
ingredients list is not on the can. If you call to ask about the
ingredients, you are told that "you don't need to know." A notice on the
side reminds you to drag your empties to the trashcan.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
All the big corporations depreciate their possessions, and you can, too,
provided you use them for business purposes. For example, if you subscribe
to the Wall Street Journal, a business-related newspaper, you can deduct the
cost of your house, because, in the words of U.S. Supreme Court Chief
Justice Warren Burger in a landmark 1979 tax decision: "Where else are you
going to read the paper? Outside? What if it rains?"
-- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
In the east there is a shark which is larger than all other fish. It
changes into a bird whose winds are like clouds filling the sky. When this
bird moves across the land, it brings a message from Corporate Headquarters.
This message it drops into the midst of the program mers, like a seagull
making its mark upon the beach. Then the bird mounts on the wind and, with
the blue sky at its back, returns home.
The novice programmer stares in wonder at the bird, for he understands
it not. The average programmer dreads the coming of the bird, for he fears
its message. The master programmer continues to work at his terminal, for he
does not know that the bird has come and gone.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
* This is complicated. Has to do with interrupts. Thus, I am :-P
* scared witless. Therefore I refuse to write this function.
-- From the maclinux patch
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I am professionally trained in computer science, which is to say
(in all seriousness) that I am extremely poorly educated.
-- Joseph Weizenbaum, "Computer Power and Human Reason"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...