Long were the days of pain I have spent within its walls, and long were the nights of aloneness; and who can depart from his pain and his aloneness without regret?
-- Kahlil Gibran, "The Prophet"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
What you end up with, after running an operating system concept through these many marketing coffee filters, is something not unlike plain hot water.
-- Matt Welsh
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Thus spake the master programmer:
"Let the programmers be many and the managers few -- then all will
be productive."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
partycle: I seriously do need a vacation from this
package. I actually had a DREAM about introducing a
stupid new bug into xbase-preinst last night. That's a
Bad Sign.
-- Seen on #Debian shortly before the release of Debian 2.0
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around -- nobody big, I mean -- except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff -- I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye. I know it; I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy.
-- J.D. Salinger, "Catcher in the Rye"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
For those who have had too much of Esalen, Topanga, and Kairos. Tired of being genuine all the time? Would you like to learn how to be a little phony again? Have you disclosed so much that you're beginning to avoid people? Have you touched so many people that they're all beginning to feel the same? Like to be a little dependent? Are perfect orgasms beginning to bore you? Would you like, for once, not to express a feeling? Or better yet, not be in touch with it at all? Come to us. We promise to relieve you of the burden of your great potential.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
This technique is used on equations with "_n" in them. Induction techniques are very popular, even the military used them.
SAMPLE: Proof of induction without proof of induction.
We know it's true for _n equal to 1. Now assume that it's true for every natural number less than _n. _N is arbitrary, so we can take _n as large as we want. If _n is sufficiently large, the case of _n+1 is trivially equivalent, so the only important _n are _n less than _n. We can take _n = _n (from above), so it's true for _n+1 because it's just about _n.
QED. (QED translates from the Latin as "So what?")
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The personal computer market is about the same size as the total potato chip market. Next year it will be about half the size of the pet food market and is fast approaching the total worldwide sales of pantyhose"
-- James Finke, Commodore Int'l Ltd., 1982
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The day-to-day travails of the IBM programmer are so amusing to most of us who are fortunate enough never to have been one -- like watching Charlie Chaplin trying to cook a shoe.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Fellow programmer, greetings! You are reading a letter which will bring you luck and good fortune. Just mail (or UUCP) ten copies of this letter to ten of your friends. Before you make the copies, send a chip or other bit of hardware, and 100 lines of 'C' code to the first person on the list given at the bottom of this letter. Then delete their name and add yours to the bottom of the list.
Don't break the chain! Make the copy within 48 hours. Gerald R. of San Diego failed to send out his ten copies and woke the next morning to find his job description changed to "COBOL programmer." Fred A. of New York sent out his ten copies and within a month had enough hardware and software to build a Cray dedicated to playing Zork. Martha H. of Chicago laughed at this letter and broke the chain. Shortly thereafter, a fire broke out in her terminal and she now spends her days writing documentation for IBM PC's.
Don't break the chain! Send out your ten copies today! For example, if \thinmskip = 3mu, this makes \thickmskip = 6mu. But if you also want to use \skip12 for horizontal glue, whether in math mode or not, the amount of skipping will be in points (e.g., 6pt). The rule is that glue in math mode varies with the size only when it is an \mskip; when moving between an mskip and ordinary skip, the conversion factor 1mu=1pt is always used. The meaning of '\mskip\skip12' and '\baselineskip=\the\thickmskip' should be clear.
-- Donald Knuth, TeX 82 -- Comparison with TeX80
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Flat tire on station wagon with tapes. ("Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurling down the highway" Andrew S. Tanenbaum)
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
One thing they don't tell you about doing experimental physics is that sometimes you must work under adverse conditions... like a state of sheer terror.
-- W.K. Hartmann
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
... there are about 5,000 people who are part of that commitee. These guys have a hard time sorting out what day to meet, and whether to eat croissants or doughnuts for breakfast -- let alone how to define how all these complex layers that are going to be agreed upon.
-- Craig Burton of Novell, Network World
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I have a box of telephone rings under my bed. Whenever I get lonely, I open it up a little bit, and I get a phone call. One day I dropped the box all over the floor. The phone wouldn't stop ringing. I had to get it disconnected. So I got a new phone. I didn't have much money, so I had to get an irregular. It doesn't have a five. I ran into a friend of mine on the street the other day. He said why don't you give me a call. I told him I can't call everybody I want to anymore, my phone doesn't have a five. He asked how long had it been that way. I said I didn't know -- my calendar doesn't have any sevens.
-- Steven Wright
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine.
-- Ernest Rutherford, after he had split the atom for
the first time
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Last year we drove across the country... We switched on the driving... every half mile. We had one cassette tape to listen to on the entire trip. I don't remember what it was.
-- Steven Wright
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
... "fire" does not matter, "earth" and "air" and "water" do not matter. "I" do not matter. No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words. The more words he remembers, the cleverer do his fellows esteem him. He looks upon the great transformations of the world, but he does not see them as they were seen when man looked upon reality for the first time. Their names come to his lips and he smiles as he tastes them, thinking he knows them in the naming.
-- Roger Zelazny, "Lord of Light"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
> I get the following error messages at bootup, could anyone tell me > what they mean? > fcntl_setlk() called by process 51 (lpd) with broken flock() emulation They mean that you have not read the documentation when upgrading the kernel.
-- seen on c.o.l.misc
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Nasrudin called at a large house to collect for charity. The servant said "My master is out." Nasrudin replied, "Tell your master that next time he goes out, he should not leave his face at the window. Someone might steal it."
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Three great scientific theories of the structure of the universe are the molecular, the corpuscular and the atomic. A fourth affirms, with Haeckel, the condensation or precipitation of matter from ether -- whose existence is proved by the condensation or precipitation... A fifth theory is held by idiots, but it is doubtful if they know any more about the matter than the others.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I turned my air conditioner the other way around, and it got cold out. The weatherman said "I don't understand it. I was supposed to be 80 degrees today," and I said "Oops."
In my house on the ceilings I have paintings of the rooms above... so I never have to go upstairs.
I just bought a microwave fireplace... You can spend an evening in front of it in only eight minutes.
-- Steven Wright
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
... an anecdote from IBM's Yorktown Heights Research Center. When a programmer used his new computer terminal, all was fine when he was sitting down, but he couldn't log in to the system when he was standing up. That behavior was 100 percent repeatable: he could always log in when sitting and never when standing.
Most of us just sit back and marvel at such a story; how could that terminal know whether the poor guy was sitting or standing? Good debuggers, though, know that there has to be a reason. Electrical theories are the easiest to hypothesize: was there a loose with under the carpet, or problems with static electricity? But electrical problems are rarely consistently reproducible. An alert IBMer finally noticed that the problem was in the terminal's keyboard: the tops of two keys were switched. When the programmer was seated he was a touch typist and the problem went unnoticed, but when he stood he was led astray by hunting and pecking.
-- "Programming Pearls" column, by Jon Bentley in CACM February 1985
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Destiny is a good thing to accept when it's going your way. When it isn't, don't call it destiny; call it injustice, treachery, or simple bad luck.
-- Joseph Heller, "God Knows"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Slashdot Mirror
Long were the days of pain I have spent within its walls, and
long were the nights of aloneness; and who can depart from his
pain and his aloneness without regret?
-- Kahlil Gibran, "The Prophet"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
What you end up with, after running an operating system concept through
these many marketing coffee filters, is something not unlike plain hot
water.
-- Matt Welsh
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Thus spake the master programmer:
"Let the programmers be many and the managers few -- then all will
be productive."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
> Whoa, first contact!
Nope, 'fraid not, Linux is still primarily used on planet Earth, I'm
afraid.
Our friend here sent a message in Russian (KOI8-R encoding).
-- Aleksey Kliger, explaining a russian posting
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
partycle: I seriously do need a vacation from this
package. I actually had a DREAM about introducing a
stupid new bug into xbase-preinst last night. That's a
Bad Sign.
-- Seen on #Debian shortly before the release of Debian 2.0
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this
big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around --
nobody big, I mean -- except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy
cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go
over the cliff -- I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're
going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do
all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye. I know it; I know it's crazy,
but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy.
-- J.D. Salinger, "Catcher in the Rye"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
**** GROWTH CENTER REPAIR SERVICE
For those who have had too much of Esalen, Topanga, and Kairos. Tired of
being genuine all the time? Would you like to learn how to be a little
phony again? Have you disclosed so much that you're beginning to avoid
people? Have you touched so many people that they're all beginning to
feel the same? Like to be a little dependent? Are perfect orgasms
beginning to bore you? Would you like, for once, not to express a
feeling? Or better yet, not be in touch with it at all? Come to us. We
promise to relieve you of the burden of your great potential.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Proof techniques #1: Proof by Induction.
This technique is used on equations with "_n" in them. Induction
techniques are very popular, even the military used them.
SAMPLE: Proof of induction without proof of induction.
We know it's true for _n equal to 1. Now assume that it's true
for every natural number less than _n. _N is arbitrary, so we can take _n
as large as we want. If _n is sufficiently large, the case of _n+1 is
trivially equivalent, so the only important _n are _n less than _n. We
can take _n = _n (from above), so it's true for _n+1 because it's just
about _n.
QED. (QED translates from the Latin as "So what?")
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The personal computer market is about the same size as the total potato chip
market. Next year it will be about half the size of the pet food market and
is fast approaching the total worldwide sales of pantyhose"
-- James Finke, Commodore Int'l Ltd., 1982
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The day-to-day travails of the IBM programmer are so amusing to most of
us who are fortunate enough never to have been one -- like watching
Charlie Chaplin trying to cook a shoe.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Fellow programmer, greetings! You are reading a letter which will bring
you luck and good fortune. Just mail (or UUCP) ten copies of this letter
to ten of your friends. Before you make the copies, send a chip or
other bit of hardware, and 100 lines of 'C' code to the first person on the
list given at the bottom of this letter. Then delete their name and add
yours to the bottom of the list.
Don't break the chain! Make the copy within 48 hours. Gerald R. of San
Diego failed to send out his ten copies and woke the next morning to find
his job description changed to "COBOL programmer." Fred A. of New York sent
out his ten copies and within a month had enough hardware and software to
build a Cray dedicated to playing Zork. Martha H. of Chicago laughed at
this letter and broke the chain. Shortly thereafter, a fire broke out in
her terminal and she now spends her days writing documentation for IBM PC's.
Don't break the chain! Send out your ten copies today!
For example, if \thinmskip = 3mu, this makes \thickmskip = 6mu. But if
you also want to use \skip12 for horizontal glue, whether in math mode or
not, the amount of skipping will be in points (e.g., 6pt). The rule is
that glue in math mode varies with the size only when it is an \mskip;
when moving between an mskip and ordinary skip, the conversion factor
1mu=1pt is always used. The meaning of '\mskip\skip12' and
'\baselineskip=\the\thickmskip' should be clear.
-- Donald Knuth, TeX 82 -- Comparison with TeX80
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
BOFH excuse #145:
Flat tire on station wagon with tapes. ("Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurling down the highway" Andrew S. Tanenbaum)
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
One thing they don't tell you about doing experimental physics is that
sometimes you must work under adverse conditions... like a state of sheer
terror.
-- W.K. Hartmann
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
... there are about 5,000 people who are part of that commitee. These guys
have a hard time sorting out what day to meet, and whether to eat croissants
or doughnuts for breakfast -- let alone how to define how all these complex
layers that are going to be agreed upon.
-- Craig Burton of Novell, Network World
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I have a box of telephone rings under my bed. Whenever I get lonely, I
open it up a little bit, and I get a phone call. One day I dropped the
box all over the floor. The phone wouldn't stop ringing. I had to get
it disconnected. So I got a new phone. I didn't have much money, so I
had to get an irregular. It doesn't have a five. I ran into a friend
of mine on the street the other day. He said why don't you give me a
call. I told him I can't call everybody I want to anymore, my phone
doesn't have a five. He asked how long had it been that way. I said I
didn't know -- my calendar doesn't have any sevens.
-- Steven Wright
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind
of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation
of these atoms is talking moonshine.
-- Ernest Rutherford, after he had split the atom for
the first time
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Last year we drove across the country... We switched on the driving...
every half mile. We had one cassette tape to listen to on the entire trip.
I don't remember what it was.
-- Steven Wright
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
... "fire" does not matter, "earth" and "air" and "water" do not matter.
"I" do not matter. No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers
words. The more words he remembers, the cleverer do his fellows esteem him.
He looks upon the great transformations of the world, but he does not see
them as they were seen when man looked upon reality for the first time.
Their names come to his lips and he smiles as he tastes them, thinking he
knows them in the naming.
-- Roger Zelazny, "Lord of Light"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
> I get the following error messages at bootup, could anyone tell me
> what they mean?
> fcntl_setlk() called by process 51 (lpd) with broken flock() emulation
They mean that you have not read the documentation when upgrading the
kernel.
-- seen on c.o.l.misc
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Nasrudin called at a large house to collect for charity. The servant said
"My master is out." Nasrudin replied, "Tell your master that next time he
goes out, he should not leave his face at the window. Someone might steal it."
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Three great scientific theories of the structure of the universe are the ... A fifth
molecular, the corpuscular and the atomic. A fourth affirms, with
Haeckel, the condensation or precipitation of matter from ether -- whose
existence is proved by the condensation or precipitation
theory is held by idiots, but it is doubtful if they know any more about
the matter than the others.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I turned my air conditioner the other way around, and it got cold out.
The weatherman said "I don't understand it. I was supposed to be 80
degrees today," and I said "Oops."
In my house on the ceilings I have paintings of the rooms above... so
I never have to go upstairs.
I just bought a microwave fireplace... You can spend an evening in
front of it in only eight minutes.
-- Steven Wright
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Alan E. Davis: Some files at llug.sep.bnl.gov/pub/debian/Incoming are
:-)
stamped on 10 January 1998. As I write, nowhere on Earth is it now 10 January.
Craig Sanders: That just proves how advanced debian is, doesn't it
-- debian-devel
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
... an anecdote from IBM's Yorktown Heights Research Center. When a
programmer used his new computer terminal, all was fine when he was sitting
down, but he couldn't log in to the system when he was standing up. That
behavior was 100 percent repeatable: he could always log in when sitting and
never when standing.
Most of us just sit back and marvel at such a story; how could that terminal
know whether the poor guy was sitting or standing? Good debuggers, though,
know that there has to be a reason. Electrical theories are the easiest to
hypothesize: was there a loose with under the carpet, or problems with static
electricity? But electrical problems are rarely consistently reproducible.
An alert IBMer finally noticed that the problem was in the terminal's keyboard:
the tops of two keys were switched. When the programmer was seated he was a
touch typist and the problem went unnoticed, but when he stood he was led
astray by hunting and pecking.
-- "Programming Pearls" column, by Jon Bentley in CACM February 1985
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Destiny is a good thing to accept when it's going your way. When it isn't,
don't call it destiny; call it injustice, treachery, or simple bad luck.
-- Joseph Heller, "God Knows"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...