A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a strings of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little nor too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity.
A program should follow the 'Law of Least Astonishment'. What is this law? It is simply that the program should always respond to the user in the way that astonishes him least.
A program, no matter how complex, should act as a single unit. The program should be directed by the logic within rather than by outward appearances.
If the program fails in these requirements, it will be in a state of disorder and confusion. The only way to correct this is to rewrite the program.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Bozo is the Brotherhood of Zips and Others. Bozos are people who band together for fun and profit. They have no jobs. Anybody who goes on a tour is a Bozo. Why does a Bozo cross the street? Because there's a Bozo on the other side. It comes from the phrase vos otros, meaning others. They're the huge, fat, middle waist. The archetype is an Irish drunk clown with red hair and nose, and pale skin. Fields, William Bendix. Everybody tends to drift toward Bozoness. It has Oz in it. They mean well. They're straight-looking except they've got inflatable shoes. They like their comforts. The Bozos have learned to enjoy their free time, which is all the time.
-- Firesign Theatre, "If Bees Lived Inside Your Head"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
He who knows not and knows that he knows not is ignorant. Teach him. He who knows not and knows not that he knows not is a fool. Shun him. He who knows and knows not that he knows is asleep. Wake him.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
At any given moment, an arrow must be either where it is or where it is not. But obviously it cannot be where it is not. And if it is where it is, that is equivalent to saying that it is at rest.
-- Zeno's paradox of the moving (still?) arrow
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Hacker's Guide To Cooking: 2 pkg. cream cheese (the mushy white stuff in silver wrappings that doesn't
really come from Philadelphia after all; anyway, about 16 oz.) 1 tsp. vanilla extract (which is more alcohol than vanilla and pretty
strong so this part you *GOTTA* measure) 1/4 cup sugar (but honey works fine too) 8 oz. Cool Whip (the fluffy stuff devoid of nutritional value that you
can squirt all over your friends and lick off...) "Blend all together until creamy with no lumps." This is where you get to
join(1) all the raw data in a big buffer and then filter it through
merge(1m) with the -thick option, I mean, it starts out ultra lumpy
and icky looking and you have to work hard to mix it. Try an electric
beater if you have a cat(1) that can climb wall(1s) to lick it off
the ceiling(3m). "Pour into a graham cracker crust..." Aha, the BUGS section at last. You
just happened to have a GCC sitting around under/etc/food, right?
If not, don't panic(8), merely crumble a rand(3m) handful of innocent
GCs into a suitable tempfile and mix in some melted butter. "...and refrigerate for an hour." Leave the recipe's stdout in a fridge
for 3.6E6 milliseconds while you work on cleaning up stderr, and
by time out your cheesecake will be ready for stdin.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Several students were asked to prove that all odd integers are prime.
The first student to try to do this was a math student. "Hmmm... Well, 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, and by induction, we have that all the odd integers are prime."
The second student to try was a man of physics who commented, "I'm not sure of the validity of your proof, but I think I'll try to prove it by experiment." He continues, "Well, 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is... uh, 9 is... uh, 9 is an experimental error, 11 is prime, 13 is prime... Well, it seems that you're right."
The third student to try it was the engineering student, who responded, "Well, to be honest, actually, I'm not sure of your answer either. Let's see... 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is... uh, 9 is... well, if you approximate, 9 is prime, 11 is prime, 13 is prime... Well, it does seem right."
Not to be outdone, the computer science student comes along and says "Well, you two sort've got the right idea, but you'll end up taking too long! I've just whipped up a program to REALLY go and prove it." He goes over to his terminal and runs his program. Reading the output on the screen he says, "1 is prime, 1 is prime, 1 is prime, 1 is prime..."
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The true way goes over a rope which is not stretched at any great height but just above the ground. It seems more designed to make people stumble than to be walked upon.
-- Franz Kafka
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more "user-friendly".... Their best approach, so far, has been to take all the old brochures, and stamp the words, "user-friendly" on the cover.
-- Bill Gates, Microsoft, Inc.
[Pot. Kettle. Black.]
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
There once was a man who went to a computer trade show. Each day as he entered, the man told the guard at the door:
"I am a great thief, renowned for my feats of shoplifting. Be forewarned, for this trade show shall not escape unplundered."
This speech disturbed the guard greatly, because there were millions of dollars of computer equipment inside, so he watched the man carefully. But the man merely wandered from booth to booth, humming quietly to himself.
When the man left, the guard took him aside and searched his clothes, but nothing was to be found.
On the next day of the trade show, the man returned and chided the guard saying: "I escaped with a vast booty yesterday, but today will be even better." So the guard watched him ever more closely, but to no avail.
On the final day of the trade show, the guard could restrain his curiosity no longer. "Sir Thief," he said, "I am so perplexed, I cannot live in peace. Please enlighten me. What is it that you are stealing?"
The man smiled. "I am stealing ideas," he said.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
It's simply unbelievable how much energy and creativity people have invested into creating contradictory, bogus and stupid licenses...
--- Sven Rudolph about licences in debian/non-free.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The hieroglyphics are all unreadable except for a notation on the back, which reads "Genuine authentic Egyptian papyrus. Guaranteed to be at least 5000 years old."
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
You are transported to a room where you are faced by a wizard who points to you and says, "Them's fighting words!" You immediately get attacked by all sorts of denizens of the museum: there is a cobra chewing on your leg, a troglodyte is bashing your brains out with a gold nugget, a crocodile is removing large chunks of flesh from you, a rhinoceros is goring you with his horn, a sabre-tooth cat is busy trying to disembowel you, you are being trampled by a large mammoth, a vampire is sucking you dry, a Tyranosaurus Rex is sinking his six inch long fangs into various parts of your anatomy, a large bear is dismembering your body, a gargoyle is bouncing up and down on your head, a burly troll is tearing you limb from limb, several dire wolves are making mince meat out of your torso, and the wizard is about to transport you to the corner of Westwood and Broxton. Oh dear, you seem to have gotten yourself killed, as well.
You scored 0 out of 250 possible points. That gives you a ranking of junior beginning adventurer. To achieve the next higher rating, you need to score 32 more points.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
As usual, this being a 1.3.x release, I haven't even compiled this kernel yet. So if it works, you should be doubly impressed.
-- Linus Torvalds, announcing kernel 1.3.3
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Men's skin is different from women's skin. It is usually bigger, and it has more snakes tattooed on it. Also, if you examine a woman's skin very closely, inch by inch, starting at her shapely ankles, then gently tracing the slender curve of her calves, then moving up to her...
[EDITOR'S NOTE: To make room for news articles about important world events such as agriculture, we're going to delete the next few square feet of the woman's skin. Thank you.]... until finally the two of you are lying there, spent, smoking your cigarettes, and suddenly it hits you: Human skin is actually made up of billions of tiny units of protoplasm, called "cells"! And what is even more interesting, the ones on the outside are all dying! This is a fact. Your skin is like an aggressive modern corporation, where the older veteran cells, who have finally worked their way to the top and obtained offices with nice views, are constantly being shoved out the window head first, without so much as a pension plan, by younger hotshot cells moving up from below.
-- Dave Barry, "Saving Face"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Your Pentium has a heating problem - try cooling it with ice cold water.(Do not turn of your computer, you do not want to cool down the Pentium Chip while he isn't working, do you?)
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Risch's decision procedure for integration, not surprisingly, uses a recursion on the number and type of the extensions from the rational functions needed to represent the integrand. Although the algorithm follows and critically depends upon the appropriate structure of the input, as in the case of multivariate factorization, we cannot claim that the algorithm is a natural one. In fact, the creator of differential algebra, Ritt, committed suicide in the early 1950's, largely, it is claimed, because few paid attention to his work. Probably he would have received more attention had he obtained the algorithm as well.
-- Joel Moses, "Algorithms and Complexity", ed. J.F. Traub
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Celestial navigation is based on the premise that the Earth is the center of the universe. The premise is wrong, but the navigation works. An incorrect model can be a useful tool.
-- Kelvin Throop III
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Or you or I must yield up his life to Ahrimanes. I would rather it were you. I should have no hesitation in sacrificing my own life to spare yours, but we take stock next week, and it would not be fair on the company.
-- J. Wellington Wells
- 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...
Before he became a hermit, Zarathud was a young Priest, and
took great delight in making fools of his opponents in front of his followers.
One day Zarathud took his students to a pleasant pasture and there he confronted The Sacred Chao while She was contentedly grazing.
"Tell me, you dumb beast," demanded the Priest in his commanding voice, "why don't you do something worthwhile? What is your Purpose in Life, anyway?"
Munching the tasty grass, The Sacred Chao replied "MU". (The Chinese ideogram for NO-THING.)
Upon hearing this, absolutely nobody was enlightened.
Primarily because nobody understood Chinese.
-- Camden Benares, "Zen Without Zen Masters"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The POP3 server service depends on the SMTP server service, which failed to start because of the following error: The operation completed successfully.
-- Windows NT Server v3.51
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
vi is [[13~^[[15~^[[15~^[[19~^[[18~^ a muk[^[[29~^[[34~^[[26~^[[32~^ch better editor than this emacs. I know I^[[14~'ll get flamed for this but the truth has to be said. ^[[D^[[D^[[D^[[D ^[[D^[^[[D^[[D^[[B^ exit ^X^C quit:x:wq dang it:w:w:w:x ^C^C^Z^D
-- Jesper Lauridsen from alt.religion.emacs
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"If you knew this person as well as I know him, you would think as much of him as I do."
(Or as little, to phrase it slightly more accurately.) "Her input was always critical."
(She never had a good word to say.) "I have no doubt about his capability to do good work."
(And it's nonexistent.) "This candidate would lend balance to a department like yours, which already has so many outstanding members."
(Unless you already have a moron.) "His presentation to my seminar last semester was truly remarkable: one unbelievable result after another."
(And we didn't believe them, either.) "She is quite uniform in her approach to any function you may assign her."
(In fact, to life in general...)
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Slashdot Mirror
A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a
strings of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained
throughout. There should be neither too little nor too much, neither needless
loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming
rigidity.
A program should follow the 'Law of Least Astonishment'. What is this
law? It is simply that the program should always respond to the user in the
way that astonishes him least.
A program, no matter how complex, should act as a single unit. The
program should be directed by the logic within rather than by outward
appearances.
If the program fails in these requirements, it will be in a state of
disorder and confusion. The only way to correct this is to rewrite the
program.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
101 USES FOR A DEAD MICROPROCESSOR
.
.
.
(1) Scarecrow for centipedes
(2) Dead cat brush
(3) Hair barrettes
(4) Cleats
(5) Self-piercing earrings
(6) Fungus trellis
(7) False eyelashes
(8) Prosthetic dog claws
(99) Window garden harrow (pulled behind Tonka tractors)
(100) Killer velcro
(101) Currency
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Bozo is the Brotherhood of Zips and Others. Bozos are people who band
together for fun and profit. They have no jobs. Anybody who goes on a
tour is a Bozo. Why does a Bozo cross the street? Because there's a Bozo
on the other side. It comes from the phrase vos otros, meaning others.
They're the huge, fat, middle waist. The archetype is an Irish drunk
clown with red hair and nose, and pale skin. Fields, William Bendix.
Everybody tends to drift toward Bozoness. It has Oz in it. They mean
well. They're straight-looking except they've got inflatable shoes. They
like their comforts. The Bozos have learned to enjoy their free time,
which is all the time.
-- Firesign Theatre, "If Bees Lived Inside Your Head"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
He who knows not and knows that he knows not is ignorant. Teach him.
He who knows not and knows not that he knows not is a fool. Shun him.
He who knows and knows not that he knows is asleep. Wake him.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
At any given moment, an arrow must be either where it is or where it is
not. But obviously it cannot be where it is not. And if it is where
it is, that is equivalent to saying that it is at rest.
-- Zeno's paradox of the moving (still?) arrow
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Hacker's Guide To Cooking: /etc/food, right?
2 pkg. cream cheese (the mushy white stuff in silver wrappings that doesn't
really come from Philadelphia after all; anyway, about 16 oz.)
1 tsp. vanilla extract (which is more alcohol than vanilla and pretty
strong so this part you *GOTTA* measure)
1/4 cup sugar (but honey works fine too)
8 oz. Cool Whip (the fluffy stuff devoid of nutritional value that you
can squirt all over your friends and lick off...)
"Blend all together until creamy with no lumps." This is where you get to
join(1) all the raw data in a big buffer and then filter it through
merge(1m) with the -thick option, I mean, it starts out ultra lumpy
and icky looking and you have to work hard to mix it. Try an electric
beater if you have a cat(1) that can climb wall(1s) to lick it off
the ceiling(3m).
"Pour into a graham cracker crust..." Aha, the BUGS section at last. You
just happened to have a GCC sitting around under
If not, don't panic(8), merely crumble a rand(3m) handful of innocent
GCs into a suitable tempfile and mix in some melted butter.
"...and refrigerate for an hour." Leave the recipe's stdout in a fridge
for 3.6E6 milliseconds while you work on cleaning up stderr, and
by time out your cheesecake will be ready for stdin.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
If there is a possibility of several things going wrong,
the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure
can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way will promptly develop.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Several students were asked to prove that all odd integers are prime.
The first student to try to do this was a math student. "Hmmm...
Well, 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, and by induction, we have that all
the odd integers are prime."
The second student to try was a man of physics who commented, "I'm not
sure of the validity of your proof, but I think I'll try to prove it by
experiment." He continues, "Well, 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is
prime, 9 is... uh, 9 is... uh, 9 is an experimental error, 11 is prime, 13
is prime... Well, it seems that you're right."
The third student to try it was the engineering student, who responded,
"Well, to be honest, actually, I'm not sure of your answer either. Let's
see... 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is... uh, 9 is...
well, if you approximate, 9 is prime, 11 is prime, 13 is prime... Well, it
does seem right."
Not to be outdone, the computer science student comes along and says
"Well, you two sort've got the right idea, but you'll end up taking too long!
I've just whipped up a program to REALLY go and prove it." He goes over to
his terminal and runs his program. Reading the output on the screen he says,
"1 is prime, 1 is prime, 1 is prime, 1 is prime..."
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The true way goes over a rope which is not stretched at any great height
but just above the ground. It seems more designed to make people stumble
than to be walked upon.
-- Franz Kafka
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more ... Their best approach, so far, has been to take all
"user-friendly".
the old brochures, and stamp the words, "user-friendly" on the cover.
-- Bill Gates, Microsoft, Inc.
[Pot. Kettle. Black.]
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
There once was a man who went to a computer trade show. Each day as
he entered, the man told the guard at the door:
"I am a great thief, renowned for my feats of shoplifting. Be
forewarned, for this trade show shall not escape unplundered."
This speech disturbed the guard greatly, because there were millions
of dollars of computer equipment inside, so he watched the man carefully.
But the man merely wandered from booth to booth, humming quietly to himself.
When the man left, the guard took him aside and searched his clothes,
but nothing was to be found.
On the next day of the trade show, the man returned and chided the
guard saying: "I escaped with a vast booty yesterday, but today will be even
better." So the guard watched him ever more closely, but to no avail.
On the final day of the trade show, the guard could restrain his
curiosity no longer. "Sir Thief," he said, "I am so perplexed, I cannot live
in peace. Please enlighten me. What is it that you are stealing?"
The man smiled. "I am stealing ideas," he said.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
It's simply unbelievable how much energy and creativity people have
invested into creating contradictory, bogus and stupid licenses...
--- Sven Rudolph about licences in debian/non-free.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The hieroglyphics are all unreadable except for a notation on the back,
which reads "Genuine authentic Egyptian papyrus. Guaranteed to be at
least 5000 years old."
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
You are transported to a room where you are faced by a wizard who
points to you and says, "Them's fighting words!" You immediately get
attacked by all sorts of denizens of the museum: there is a cobra
chewing on your leg, a troglodyte is bashing your brains out with a
gold nugget, a crocodile is removing large chunks of flesh from you, a
rhinoceros is goring you with his horn, a sabre-tooth cat is busy
trying to disembowel you, you are being trampled by a large mammoth, a
vampire is sucking you dry, a Tyranosaurus Rex is sinking his six inch
long fangs into various parts of your anatomy, a large bear is
dismembering your body, a gargoyle is bouncing up and down on your
head, a burly troll is tearing you limb from limb, several dire wolves
are making mince meat out of your torso, and the wizard is about to
transport you to the corner of Westwood and Broxton. Oh dear, you seem
to have gotten yourself killed, as well.
You scored 0 out of 250 possible points.
That gives you a ranking of junior beginning adventurer.
To achieve the next higher rating, you need to score 32 more points.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
As usual, this being a 1.3.x release, I haven't even compiled this
kernel yet. So if it works, you should be doubly impressed.
-- Linus Torvalds, announcing kernel 1.3.3
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Men's skin is different from women's skin. It is usually bigger, and ...
... until finally the two of you are lying there, spent, smoking your
it has more snakes tattooed on it. Also, if you examine a woman's skin
very closely, inch by inch, starting at her shapely ankles, then gently
tracing the slender curve of her calves, then moving up to her
[EDITOR'S NOTE: To make room for news articles about important world events
such as agriculture, we're going to delete the next few square feet of the
woman's skin. Thank you.]
cigarettes, and suddenly it hits you: Human skin is actually made up of
billions of tiny units of protoplasm, called "cells"! And what is even more
interesting, the ones on the outside are all dying! This is a fact. Your
skin is like an aggressive modern corporation, where the older veteran
cells, who have finally worked their way to the top and obtained offices
with nice views, are constantly being shoved out the window head first,
without so much as a pension plan, by younger hotshot cells moving up from
below.
-- Dave Barry, "Saving Face"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
BOFH excuse #322:
Your Pentium has a heating problem - try cooling it with ice cold water.(Do not turn of your computer, you do not want to cool down the Pentium Chip while he isn't working, do you?)
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Risch's decision procedure for integration, not surprisingly,
uses a recursion on the number and type of the extensions from the
rational functions needed to represent the integrand. Although the
algorithm follows and critically depends upon the appropriate structure
of the input, as in the case of multivariate factorization, we cannot
claim that the algorithm is a natural one. In fact, the creator of
differential algebra, Ritt, committed suicide in the early 1950's,
largely, it is claimed, because few paid attention to his work. Probably
he would have received more attention had he obtained the algorithm as well.
-- Joel Moses, "Algorithms and Complexity", ed. J.F. Traub
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Celestial navigation is based on the premise that the Earth is the center
of the universe. The premise is wrong, but the navigation works. An
incorrect model can be a useful tool.
-- Kelvin Throop III
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Or you or I must yield up his life to Ahrimanes. I would rather it were you.
I should have no hesitation in sacrificing my own life to spare yours, but
we take stock next week, and it would not be fair on the company.
-- J. Wellington Wells
- 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...
Before he became a hermit, Zarathud was a young Priest, and
took great delight in making fools of his opponents in front of
his followers.
One day Zarathud took his students to a pleasant pasture and
there he confronted The Sacred Chao while She was contentedly grazing.
"Tell me, you dumb beast," demanded the Priest in his
commanding voice, "why don't you do something worthwhile? What is your
Purpose in Life, anyway?"
Munching the tasty grass, The Sacred Chao replied "MU". (The
Chinese ideogram for NO-THING.)
Upon hearing this, absolutely nobody was enlightened.
Primarily because nobody understood Chinese.
-- Camden Benares, "Zen Without Zen Masters"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The POP3 server service depends on the SMTP server service, which
failed to start because of the following error:
The operation completed successfully.
-- Windows NT Server v3.51
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
vi is [[13~^[[15~^[[15~^[[19~^[[18~^ a :x :wq dang it :w:w:w :x ^C^C^Z^D
muk[^[[29~^[[34~^[[26~^[[32~^ch better editor than this emacs. I know
I^[[14~'ll get flamed for this but the truth has to be
said. ^[[D^[[D^[[D^[[D ^[[D^[^[[D^[[D^[[B^
exit ^X^C quit
-- Jesper Lauridsen from alt.religion.emacs
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
What they said:
What they meant:
"If you knew this person as well as I know him, you would think as much
of him as I do."
(Or as little, to phrase it slightly more accurately.)
"Her input was always critical."
(She never had a good word to say.)
"I have no doubt about his capability to do good work."
(And it's nonexistent.)
"This candidate would lend balance to a department like yours, which
already has so many outstanding members."
(Unless you already have a moron.)
"His presentation to my seminar last semester was truly remarkable:
one unbelievable result after another."
(And we didn't believe them, either.)
"She is quite uniform in her approach to any function you may assign her."
(In fact, to life in general...)
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...