For those of you in the reseller business, here is a helpful tip that will save your support staff a few hours of precious time. Before you send your next machine out to an untrained client, change the permissions on/etc/passwd to 666 and make sure there is a copy somewhere on the disk. Now when they forget the root password, you can easily login as an ordinary user and correct the damage. Having a bootable tape (for larger machines) is not a bad idea either. If you need some help, give us a call.
-- CommUNIXque 1:1, ASCAR Business Systems
- 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...
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
-- Albert Einstein
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Puns are little "plays on words" that a certain breed of person loves to spring on you and then look at you in a certain self-satisfied way to indicate that he thinks that you must think that he is by far the cleverest person on Earth now that Benjamin Franklin is dead, when in fact what you are thinking is that if this person ever ends up in a lifeboat, the other passengers will hurl him overboard by the end of the first day even if they have plenty of food and water.
-- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
- 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...
We dedicate this book to our fellow citizens who, for love of truth, take from their own wants by taxes and gifts, and now and then send forth one of themselves as dedicated servant, to forward the search into the mysteries and marvelous simplicities of this strange and beautiful Universe, Our home.
-- "Gravitation", Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Unix is a lot more complicated (than CP/M) of course -- the typical Unix hacker can never remember what the PRINT command is called this week -- but when it gets right down to it, Unix is a glorified video game. People don't do serious work on Unix systems; they send jokes around the world on USENET or write adventure games and research papers.
-- E. Post
"Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal", Datamation, 7/83
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
and if we're playing old distributions... whatever happened to Yggdrasil?:)
\\swing: everybody who tried to pronounce it got their tongue in a knot and choked
-- #Debian
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"You mean, if you allow the master to be uncivil, to treat you any old way he likes, and to insult your dignity, then he may deem you fit to hear his view of things?"
"Quite the contrary. You must defend your integrity, assuming you have integrity to defend. But you must defend it nobly, not by imitating his own low behavior. If you are gentle where he is rough, if you are polite where he is uncouth, then he will recognize you as potentially worthy. If he does not, then he is not a master, after all, and you may feel free to kick his ass."
-- Tom Robbins, "Jitterbug Perfume"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"Uncle Cosmo... why do they call this a word processor?"
"It's simple, Skyler... you've seen what food processors do to food, right?"
-- MacNelley, "Shoe"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"Yo, Mike!"
"Yeah, Gabe?"
"We got a problem down on Earth. In Utah."
"I thought you fixed that last century!"
"No, no, not that. Someone's found a security problem in the physics program. They're getting energy out of nowhere."
"Blessit! Lemme look... Hey, it's there all right! OK, just a sec... There, that ought to patch it. Dist it out, wouldja?"
-- Cold Fusion, 1989
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
FORTRAN, "the infantile disorder", by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
There was a writer in 'Life' magazine... who claimed that rabbits have no memory, which is one of their defensive mechanisms. If they recalled every close shave they had in the course of just an hour life would become insupportable.
-- Kurt Vonnegut
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
* james would be more impressed if netgod's magic powers could stop the splits in the first place... * netgod notes debian developers are notoriously hard to impress
-- Seen on #Debian
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Do you want the instant respect that comes from being able to use technical terms that nobody understands? Do you want to strike fear and loathing into the hearts of DP managers everywhere? If so, then let the Famous Programmers' School lead you on... into the world of professional computer programming. They say a good programmer can write 20 lines of effective program per day. With our unique training course, we'll show you how to write 20 lines of code and lots more besides. Our training course covers every programming language in existence, and some that aren't. You'll learn why the on/off switch for a computer is so important, what the words *fatal error* mean, and who and what you should blame when you make a mistake.
Yes, I want the brochure describing this incredible offer.
I enclose $1000 is small unmarked bills to cover the cost of
postage and handling. (No live poultry, please.)
*** Our Slogan: Top down programming for the masses. ***
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
... we must be wary of granting too much power to natural selection by viewing all basic capacities of our brain as direct adaptations. I do not doubt that natural selection acted in building our oversized brains -- and I am equally confident that our brains became large as an adaptation for definite roles (probably a complex set of interacting functions). But these assumptions do not lead to the notion, often uncritically embraced by strict Darwinians, that all major capacities of the brain must arise as direct products of natural selection.
-- S.J. Gould, "The Mismeasure of Man"
- 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...
The best rebuttal to this kind of statistical argument came from the redoubtable John W. Campbell:
The laws of population growth tell us that approximately half the
people who were ever born in the history of the world are now
dead. There is therefore a 0.5 probability that this message is
being read by a corpse.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Every person, all the events in your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.
-- Messiah's Handbook : Reminders for the Advanced Soul
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
A would-be disciple came to Nasrudin's hut on the mountain-side. Knowing that every action of such an enlightened one is significant, the seeker watched the teacher closely. "Why do you blow on your hands?" "To warm myself in the cold." Later, Nasrudin poured bowls of hot soup for himself and the newcomer, and blew on his own. "Why are you doing that, Master?" "To cool the soup." Unable to trust a man who uses the same process to arrive at two different results -- hot and cold -- the disciple departed.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Standards are different for all things, so the standard set by man is by no means the only 'certain' standard. If you mistake what is relative for something certain, you have strayed far from the ultimate truth.
-- Chuang Tzu
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
TIRED of calculating components of vectors? Displacements along direction of force getting you down? Well, now there's help. Try amazing "Dot-Product", the fast, easy way many professionals have used for years and is now available to YOU through this special offer. Three out of five engineering consultants recommend "Dot-Product" for their clients who use vector products. Mr. Gumbinowitz, mechanical engineer, in a hidden-camera interview...
"Dot-Product really works! Calculating Z-axis force components has
never been easier." Yes, you too can take advantage of the amazing properties of Dot-Product. Use it to calculate forces, velocities, displacements, and virtually any vector components. How much would you pay for it? But wait, it also calculates the work done in Joules, Ergs, and, yes, even BTU's. Divide Dot-Product by the magnitude of the vectors and it becomes an instant angle calculator! Now, how much would you pay? All this can be yours for the low, low price of $19.95!! But that's not all! If you order before midnight, you'll also get "Famous Numbers of Famous People" as a bonus gift, absolutely free! Yes, you'll get Avogadro's number, Planck's, Euler's, Boltzmann's, and many, many, more!! Call 1-800-DOT-6000. Operators are standing by. That number again... 1-800-DOT-6000. Supplies are limited, so act now. This offer is not available through stores and is void where prohibited by law.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
+#if defined(__alpha__) && defined(CONFIG_PCI) +/* + * The meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Plus + * this makes the year come out right. + */ + year -= 42; +#endif
-- From the patch for 1.3.2: (kernel/time.c), submitted by Marcus Meissner
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
... before I could come to any conclusion it occurred to me that my speech or my silence, indeed any action of mine, would be a mere futility. What did it matter what anyone knew or ignored? What did it matter who was manager? One gets sometimes such a flash of insight. The essentials of this affair lay deep under the surface, beyond my reach, and beyond my power of meddling.
-- Joseph Conrad
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The instruments of science do not in themselves discover truth. And there are searchings that are not concluded by the coincidence of a pointer and a mark.
-- Fred Saberhagen, "The Berserker Wars"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Slashdot Mirror
UNIX Trix
/etc/passwd
For those of you in the reseller business, here is a helpful tip that will
save your support staff a few hours of precious time. Before you send your
next machine out to an untrained client, change the permissions on
to 666 and make sure there is a copy somewhere on the disk. Now when they
forget the root password, you can easily login as an ordinary user and correct
the damage. Having a bootable tape (for larger machines) is not a bad idea
either. If you need some help, give us a call.
-- CommUNIXque 1:1, ASCAR Business Systems
- 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...
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior
spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive
with our frail and feeble mind.
-- Albert Einstein
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Puns are little "plays on words" that a certain breed of person loves to
spring on you and then look at you in a certain self-satisfied way to
indicate that he thinks that you must think that he is by far the cleverest
person on Earth now that Benjamin Franklin is dead, when in fact what you
are thinking is that if this person ever ends up in a lifeboat, the other
passengers will hurl him overboard by the end of the first day even if they
have plenty of food and water.
-- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
- 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...
We dedicate this book to our fellow citizens who, for love of truth, take from
their own wants by taxes and gifts, and now and then send forth one of
themselves as dedicated servant, to forward the search into the mysteries and
marvelous simplicities of this strange and beautiful Universe, Our home.
-- "Gravitation", Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Unix is a lot more complicated (than CP/M) of course -- the typical Unix
hacker can never remember what the PRINT command is called this week --
but when it gets right down to it, Unix is a glorified video game.
People don't do serious work on Unix systems; they send jokes around the
world on USENET or write adventure games and research papers.
-- E. Post
"Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal", Datamation, 7/83
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
and if we're playing old distributions... whatever happened to Yggdrasil? :)
\\swing: everybody who tried to pronounce it got their tongue in a knot and choked
-- #Debian
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"You mean, if you allow the master to be uncivil, to treat you
any old way he likes, and to insult your dignity, then he may deem you
fit to hear his view of things?"
"Quite the contrary. You must defend your integrity, assuming
you have integrity to defend. But you must defend it nobly, not by
imitating his own low behavior. If you are gentle where he is rough,
if you are polite where he is uncouth, then he will recognize you as
potentially worthy. If he does not, then he is not a master, after all,
and you may feel free to kick his ass."
-- Tom Robbins, "Jitterbug Perfume"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"Uncle Cosmo ... why do they call this a word processor?" ... you've seen what food processors do to food,
"It's simple, Skyler
right?"
-- MacNelley, "Shoe"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"Yo, Mike!"
"Yeah, Gabe?"
"We got a problem down on Earth. In Utah."
"I thought you fixed that last century!"
"No, no, not that. Someone's found a security problem in the physics
program. They're getting energy out of nowhere."
"Blessit! Lemme look... Hey, it's
there all right! OK, just a sec...
There, that ought to patch it. Dist it out, wouldja?"
-- Cold Fusion, 1989
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
FORTRAN, "the infantile disorder", by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly
inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is
too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
There was a writer in 'Life' magazine ... who claimed that rabbits have
no memory, which is one of their defensive mechanisms. If they recalled
every close shave they had in the course of just an hour life would become
insupportable.
-- Kurt Vonnegut
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
* james would be more impressed if netgod's magic powers could stop the splits in the first place...
* netgod notes debian developers are notoriously hard to impress
-- Seen on #Debian
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
*** A NEW KIND OF PROGRAMMING ***
Do you want the instant respect that comes from being able to use technical
terms that nobody understands? Do you want to strike fear and loathing into
the hearts of DP managers everywhere? If so, then let the Famous Programmers'
School lead you on... into the world of professional computer programming.
They say a good programmer can write 20 lines of effective program per day.
With our unique training course, we'll show you how to write 20 lines of code
and lots more besides. Our training course covers every programming language
in existence, and some that aren't. You'll learn why the on/off switch for a
computer is so important, what the words *fatal error* mean, and who and what
you should blame when you make a mistake.
Yes, I want the brochure describing this incredible offer.
I enclose $1000 is small unmarked bills to cover the cost of
postage and handling. (No live poultry, please.)
*** Our Slogan: Top down programming for the masses. ***
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
... we must be wary of granting too much power to natural selection
by viewing all basic capacities of our brain as direct adaptations.
I do not doubt that natural selection acted in building our oversized
brains -- and I am equally confident that our brains became large as
an adaptation for definite roles (probably a complex set of interacting
functions). But these assumptions do not lead to the notion, often
uncritically embraced by strict Darwinians, that all major capacities
of the brain must arise as direct products of natural selection.
-- S.J. Gould, "The Mismeasure of Man"
- 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...
The best rebuttal to this kind of statistical argument came from the
redoubtable John W. Campbell:
The laws of population growth tell us that approximately half the
people who were ever born in the history of the world are now
dead. There is therefore a 0.5 probability that this message is
being read by a corpse.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Every person, all the events in your life are there because you have
drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.
-- Messiah's Handbook : Reminders for the Advanced Soul
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
A would-be disciple came to Nasrudin's hut on the mountain-side. Knowing
that every action of such an enlightened one is significant, the seeker
watched the teacher closely. "Why do you blow on your hands?" "To warm
myself in the cold." Later, Nasrudin poured bowls of hot soup for himself
and the newcomer, and blew on his own. "Why are you doing that, Master?"
"To cool the soup." Unable to trust a man who uses the same process
to arrive at two different results -- hot and cold -- the disciple departed.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Standards are different for all things, so the standard set by man is by
no means the only 'certain' standard. If you mistake what is relative for
something certain, you have strayed far from the ultimate truth.
-- Chuang Tzu
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
TIRED of calculating components of vectors? Displacements along direction of
force getting you down? Well, now there's help. Try amazing "Dot-Product",
the fast, easy way many professionals have used for years and is now available
to YOU through this special offer. Three out of five engineering consultants
recommend "Dot-Product" for their clients who use vector products. Mr.
Gumbinowitz, mechanical engineer, in a hidden-camera interview...
"Dot-Product really works! Calculating Z-axis force components has
never been easier."
Yes, you too can take advantage of the amazing properties of Dot-Product. Use
it to calculate forces, velocities, displacements, and virtually any vector
components. How much would you pay for it? But wait, it also calculates the
work done in Joules, Ergs, and, yes, even BTU's. Divide Dot-Product by the
magnitude of the vectors and it becomes an instant angle calculator! Now, how
much would you pay? All this can be yours for the low, low price of $19.95!!
But that's not all! If you order before midnight, you'll also get "Famous
Numbers of Famous People" as a bonus gift, absolutely free! Yes, you'll get
Avogadro's number, Planck's, Euler's, Boltzmann's, and many, many, more!!
Call 1-800-DOT-6000. Operators are standing by. That number again...
1-800-DOT-6000. Supplies are limited, so act now. This offer is not
available through stores and is void where prohibited by law.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
+#if defined(__alpha__) && defined(CONFIG_PCI) /*
+
+ * The meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Plus
+ * this makes the year come out right.
+ */
+ year -= 42;
+#endif
-- From the patch for 1.3.2: (kernel/time.c), submitted by Marcus Meissner
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
... before I could come to any conclusion it occurred to me that my speech
or my silence, indeed any action of mine, would be a mere futility. What
did it matter what anyone knew or ignored? What did it matter who was
manager? One gets sometimes such a flash of insight. The essentials of
this affair lay deep under the surface, beyond my reach, and beyond my
power of meddling.
-- Joseph Conrad
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The instruments of science do not in themselves discover truth. And there are
searchings that are not concluded by the coincidence of a pointer and a mark.
-- Fred Saberhagen, "The Berserker Wars"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...