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...
I was in this prematurely air conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles and there were these bathing caps you could buy that had these kind of Fourth of July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue and I wasn't tempted to buy one but I was reminded of the fact that I had been avoiding the beach.
-- Lucinda Childs "Einstein On The Beach"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
LOGO for the Dead lets you continue your computing activities from "The Other Side."
The package includes a unique telecommunications feature which lets you turn your TRS-80 into an electronic Ouija board. Then, using Logo's graphics capabilities, you can work with a friend or relative on this side of the Great Beyond to write programs. The software requires that your body be hardwired to an analog-to-digital converter, which is then interfaced to your computer. A special terminal (very terminal) program lets you talk with the users through Deadnet, an EBBS (Ectoplasmic Bulletin Board System).
LOGO for the Dead is available for 10 percent of your estate from NecroSoft inc., 6502 Charnelhouse Blvd., Cleveland, OH 44101.
-- '80 Microcomputing
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"I am convinced that the manufacturers of carpet odor removing powder have included encapsulated time released cat urine in their products. This technology must be what prevented its distribution during my mom's reign. My carpet smells like piss, and I don't have a cat. Better go buy some more."
-- timw@zeb.USWest.COM
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"There are three principal ways to lose money: wine, women, and engineers. While the first two are more pleasant, the third is by far the more certain."
-- Baron Rothschild, ca. 1800
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Rule #7: Silence is not acquiescence.
Contrary to what you may have heard, silence of those present is
not necessarily consent, even the reluctant variety. They simply may
sit in stunned silence and figure ways of sabotaging the plan after
they regain their composure.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
When you have 200 programmers trying to write code for one product, like Win95 or NT, what you get is a multipule personality program. By definition, the real problem is that these programs are psychotic by nature and make people crazy when they use them.
-- Joan Brewer on alt.destroy.microsoft
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
As in Protestant Europe, by contrast, where sects divided endlessly into smaller competing sects and no church dominated any other, all is different in the fragmented world of IBM. That realm is now a chaos of conflicting norms and standards that not even IBM can hope to control. You can buy a computer that works like an IBM machine but contains nothing made or sold by IBM itself. Renegades from IBM constantly set up rival firms and establish standards of their own. When IBM recently abandoned some of its original standards and decreed new ones, many of its rivals declared a puritan allegiance to IBM's original faith, and denounced the company as a divisive innovator. Still, the IBM world is united by its distrust of icons and imagery. IBM's screens are designed for language, not pictures. Graven images may be tolerated by the luxurious cults, but the true IBM faith relies on the austerity of the word.
-- Edward Mendelson, "The New Republic", February 22, 1988
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"Has anyone had problems with the computer accounts?"
"Yes, I don't have one."
"Okay, you can send mail to one of the tutors..."
-- E. D'Azevedo, Computer Science 372
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
You are a taxi driver. Your cab is yellow and black, and has been in use for only seven years. One of its windshield wipers is broken, and the carburetor needs adjusting. The tank holds 20 gallons, but at the moment is only three-quarters full. How old is the taxi driver?"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Real software engineers don't debug programs, they verify correctness. This process doesn't necessarily involve execution of anything on a computer, except perhaps a Correctness Verification Aid package.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"I got into an elevator at work and this man followed in after me... I pushed '1' and he just stood there... I said 'Hi, where you going?' He said, 'Phoenix.' So I pushed Phoenix. A few seconds later the doors opened, two tumbleweeds blew in... we were in downtown Phoenix. I looked at him and said 'You know, you're the kind of guy I want to hang around with.' We got into his car and drove out to his shack in the desert. Then the phone rang. He said 'You get it.' I picked it up and said 'Hello?'... the other side said 'Is this Steven Wright?'... I said 'Yes...' The guy said 'Hi, I'm Mr. Jones, the student loan director from your bank... It seems you have missed your last 17 payments, and the university you attended said that they received none of the $17,000 we loaned you... we would just like to know what happened to the money?' I said, 'Mr. Jones, I'll give it to you straight. I gave all of the money to my friend Slick, and with it he built a nuclear weapon... and I would appreciate it if you never called me again."
-- Steven Wright
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Various documentation updates and bugfixes (the best way to know that a stable kernel is approaching is to notice that somebody starts to spellcheck the kernel - it has so far never failed)
-- Linus Torvalds in the annoucement for pre-2.1.99-3
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
In America today... we have Woody Allen, whose humor has become so sophisticated that nobody gets it any more except Mia Farrow. All those who think Mia Farrow should go back to making movies where the devil gets her pregnant and Woody Allen should go back to dressing up as a human sperm, please raise your hands. Thank you.
-- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
In a minimum-phase system there is an inextricable link between frequency response, phase response and transient response, as they are all merely transforms of one another. This combined with minimalization of open-loop errors in output amplifiers and correct compensation for non-linear passive crossover network loading can lead to a significant decrease in system resolution lost. However, this all means jack when you listen to Pink Floyd.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
He thought of Musashi, the Sword Saint, standing in his garden more than three hundred years ago. "What is the 'Body of a rock'?" he was asked. In answer, Musashi summoned a pupil of his and bid him kill himself by slashing his abdomen with a knife. Just as the pupil was about to comply, the Master stayed his hand, saying, "That is the 'Body of a rock'."
-- Eric Van Lustbader
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that the parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if you can't get them together again, there must be a reason. By all means, do not use a hammer.
-- IBM maintenance manual, 1925
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Aesop's fables and other traditional children's stories involve allegory far too subtle for the youth of today. Children need an updated message with contemporary circumstance and plot line, and short enough to suit today's minute attention span.
The Troubled Aardvark
Once upon a time, there was an aardvark whose only pleasure in life was driving from his suburban bungalow to his job at a large brokerage house in his brand new 4x4. He hated his manipulative boss, his conniving and unethical co-workers, his greedy wife, and his snivelling, spoiled children. One day, the aardvark reflected on the meaning of his life and his career and on the unchecked, catastrophic decline of his nation, its pathetic excuse for leadership, and the complete ineffectiveness of any personal effort he could make to change the status quo. Overcome by a wave of utter depression and self-doubt, he decided to take the only course of action that would bring him greater comfort and happiness: he drove to the mall and bought imported consumer electronics goods.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Invest in foreign consumer electronics manufacturers.
-- Tom Annau
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
A master programmer passed a novice programmer one day. The master noted the novice's preoccupation with a hand-held computer game. "Excuse me", he said, "may I examine it?"
The novice bolted to attention and handed the device to the master. "I see that the device claims to have three levels of play: Easy, Medium, and Hard", said the master. "Yet every such device has another level of play, where the device seeks not to conquer the human, nor to be conquered by the human."
"Pray, great master," implored the novice, "how does one find this mysterious setting?"
The master dropped the device to the ground and crushed it under foot. And suddenly the novice was enlightened.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Rattling around the back of my head is a disturbing image of something I saw at the airport... Now I'm remembering, those giant piles of computer magazines right next to "People" and "Time" in the airport store. Does it bother anyone else that half the world is being told all of our hard-won secrets of computer technology? Remember how all the lawyers cried foul when "How to Avoid Probate" was published? Are they taking no-fault insurance lying down? No way! But at the current rate it won't be long before there are stacks of the "Transactions on Information Theory" at the A&P checkout counters. Who's going to be impressed with us electrical engineers then? Are we, as the saying goes, giving away the store?
-- Robert W. Lucky, IEEE President
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The growth-decay formulas were developed in the trivial fashion by Isaac Newton's famous brother Phigg. His idea was to provide an equation that would describe a quantity that would dwindle and dwindle, but never quite reach zero. Historically, he was merely trying to work out his mortgage. Another versatile equation also emerged, one which would define a function that would continue to grow, but never reach unity. This equation can be applied to charging capacitors, over-damped springs, and the human race in general.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Waving away a cloud of smoke, I look up, and am blinded by a bright, white light. It's God. No, not Richard Stallman, or Linus Torvalds, but God. In a booming voice, He says: "THIS IS A SIGN. USE LINUX, THE FREE UNIX SYSTEM FOR THE 386.
-- Matt Welsh
- 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...
"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!"
-- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"Multiply in your head" (ordered the compassionate Dr. Adams) "365,365,365, 365,365,365 by 365,365,365,365,365,365". He [ten-year-old Truman Henry Safford] flew around the room like a top, pulled his pantaloons over the tops of his boots, bit his hands, rolled his eyes in their sockets, sometimes smiling and talking, and then seeming to be in an agony, until, in not more than one minute, said he, 133,491,850,208,566,925,016,658,299,941,583,225!" An electronic computer might do the job a little faster but it wouldn't be as much fun to watch.
-- James R. Newman, "The World of Mathematics"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Slashdot Mirror
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...
I was in this prematurely air conditioned supermarket and there were all
these aisles and there were these bathing caps you could buy that had these
kind of Fourth of July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue and
I wasn't tempted to buy one but I was reminded of the fact that I had been
avoiding the beach.
-- Lucinda Childs "Einstein On The Beach"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
LOGO for the Dead
LOGO for the Dead lets you continue your computing activities from
"The Other Side."
The package includes a unique telecommunications feature which lets you
turn your TRS-80 into an electronic Ouija board. Then, using Logo's
graphics capabilities, you can work with a friend or relative on this
side of the Great Beyond to write programs. The software requires that
your body be hardwired to an analog-to-digital converter, which is then
interfaced to your computer. A special terminal (very terminal) program
lets you talk with the users through Deadnet, an EBBS (Ectoplasmic
Bulletin Board System).
LOGO for the Dead is available for 10 percent of your estate
from NecroSoft inc., 6502 Charnelhouse Blvd., Cleveland, OH 44101.
-- '80 Microcomputing
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"I am convinced that the manufacturers of carpet odor removing powder
have included encapsulated time released cat urine in their products.
This technology must be what prevented its distribution during my mom's
reign. My carpet smells like piss, and I don't have a cat. Better go
buy some more."
-- timw@zeb.USWest.COM
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"There are three principal ways to lose money: wine, women, and engineers.
While the first two are more pleasant, the third is by far the more certain."
-- Baron Rothschild, ca. 1800
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Rule #7: Silence is not acquiescence.
Contrary to what you may have heard, silence of those present is
not necessarily consent, even the reluctant variety. They simply may
sit in stunned silence and figure ways of sabotaging the plan after
they regain their composure.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
When you have 200 programmers trying to write code for one
product, like Win95 or NT, what you get is a multipule personality
program. By definition, the real problem is that these programs are
psychotic by nature and make people crazy when they use them.
-- Joan Brewer on alt.destroy.microsoft
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
As in Protestant Europe, by contrast, where sects divided endlessly into
smaller competing sects and no church dominated any other, all is different
in the fragmented world of IBM. That realm is now a chaos of conflicting
norms and standards that not even IBM can hope to control. You can buy a
computer that works like an IBM machine but contains nothing made or sold by
IBM itself. Renegades from IBM constantly set up rival firms and establish
standards of their own. When IBM recently abandoned some of its original
standards and decreed new ones, many of its rivals declared a puritan
allegiance to IBM's original faith, and denounced the company as a divisive
innovator. Still, the IBM world is united by its distrust of icons and
imagery. IBM's screens are designed for language, not pictures. Graven
images may be tolerated by the luxurious cults, but the true IBM faith relies
on the austerity of the word.
-- Edward Mendelson, "The New Republic", February 22, 1988
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"Has anyone had problems with the computer accounts?" ..."
"Yes, I don't have one."
"Okay, you can send mail to one of the tutors
-- E. D'Azevedo, Computer Science 372
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
You are a taxi driver. Your cab is yellow and black, and has been in
use for only seven years. One of its windshield wipers is broken, and
the carburetor needs adjusting. The tank holds 20 gallons, but at the
moment is only three-quarters full. How old is the taxi driver?"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Real software engineers don't debug programs, they verify correctness.
This process doesn't necessarily involve execution of anything on a
computer, except perhaps a Correctness Verification Aid package.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"I got into an elevator at work and this man followed in after me... I
pushed '1' and he just stood there... I said 'Hi, where you going?' He
said, 'Phoenix.' So I pushed Phoenix. A few seconds later the doors
opened, two tumbleweeds blew in... we were in downtown Phoenix. I looked
at him and said 'You know, you're the kind of guy I want to hang around
with.' We got into his car and drove out to his shack in the desert.
Then the phone rang. He said 'You get it.' I picked it up and said
'Hello?'... the other side said 'Is this Steven Wright?'... I said 'Yes...'
The guy said 'Hi, I'm Mr. Jones, the student loan director from your bank...
It seems you have missed your last 17 payments, and the university you
attended said that they received none of the $17,000 we loaned you... we
would just like to know what happened to the money?' I said, 'Mr. Jones,
I'll give it to you straight. I gave all of the money to my friend Slick,
and with it he built a nuclear weapon... and I would appreciate it if you never
called me again."
-- Steven Wright
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Various documentation updates and bugfixes (the best way to know that a
stable kernel is approaching is to notice that somebody starts to
spellcheck the kernel - it has so far never failed)
-- Linus Torvalds in the annoucement for pre-2.1.99-3
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
In America today ... we have Woody Allen, whose humor has become so
sophisticated that nobody gets it any more except Mia Farrow. All those who
think Mia Farrow should go back to making movies where the devil gets her
pregnant and Woody Allen should go back to dressing up as a human sperm,
please raise your hands. Thank you.
-- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
In a minimum-phase system there is an inextricable link between
frequency response, phase response and transient response, as they
are all merely transforms of one another. This combined with
minimalization of open-loop errors in output amplifiers and correct
compensation for non-linear passive crossover network loading can
lead to a significant decrease in system resolution lost. However,
this all means jack when you listen to Pink Floyd.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
He thought of Musashi, the Sword Saint, standing in his garden more than
three hundred years ago. "What is the 'Body of a rock'?" he was asked.
In answer, Musashi summoned a pupil of his and bid him kill himself by
slashing his abdomen with a knife. Just as the pupil was about to comply,
the Master stayed his hand, saying, "That is the 'Body of a rock'."
-- Eric Van Lustbader
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that the parts
you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if you can't get
them together again, there must be a reason. By all means, do not use a hammer.
-- IBM maintenance manual, 1925
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
A MODERN FABLE
Aesop's fables and other traditional children's stories involve allegory
far too subtle for the youth of today. Children need an updated message
with contemporary circumstance and plot line, and short enough to suit
today's minute attention span.
The Troubled Aardvark
Once upon a time, there was an aardvark whose only pleasure in life was
driving from his suburban bungalow to his job at a large brokerage house
in his brand new 4x4. He hated his manipulative boss, his conniving and
unethical co-workers, his greedy wife, and his snivelling, spoiled
children. One day, the aardvark reflected on the meaning of his life and
his career and on the unchecked, catastrophic decline of his nation, its
pathetic excuse for leadership, and the complete ineffectiveness of any
personal effort he could make to change the status quo. Overcome by a
wave of utter depression and self-doubt, he decided to take the only
course of action that would bring him greater comfort and happiness: he
drove to the mall and bought imported consumer electronics goods.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Invest in foreign consumer electronics manufacturers.
-- Tom Annau
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
A master programmer passed a novice programmer one day. The master
noted the novice's preoccupation with a hand-held computer game. "Excuse me",
he said, "may I examine it?"
The novice bolted to attention and handed the device to the master.
"I see that the device claims to have three levels of play: Easy, Medium,
and Hard", said the master. "Yet every such device has another level of play,
where the device seeks not to conquer the human, nor to be conquered by the
human."
"Pray, great master," implored the novice, "how does one find this
mysterious setting?"
The master dropped the device to the ground and crushed it under foot.
And suddenly the novice was enlightened.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Rattling around the back of my head is a disturbing image of something I ... Now I'm remembering, those giant piles of computer
saw at the airport
magazines right next to "People" and "Time" in the airport store. Does
it bother anyone else that half the world is being told all of our hard-won
secrets of computer technology? Remember how all the lawyers cried foul
when "How to Avoid Probate" was published? Are they taking no-fault
insurance lying down? No way! But at the current rate it won't be long
before there are stacks of the "Transactions on Information Theory" at the
A&P checkout counters. Who's going to be impressed with us electrical
engineers then? Are we, as the saying goes, giving away the store?
-- Robert W. Lucky, IEEE President
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Chapter 2: Newtonian Growth and Decay
The growth-decay formulas were developed in the trivial fashion by
Isaac Newton's famous brother Phigg. His idea was to provide an equation
that would describe a quantity that would dwindle and dwindle, but never
quite reach zero. Historically, he was merely trying to work out his
mortgage. Another versatile equation also emerged, one which would define
a function that would continue to grow, but never reach unity. This equation
can be applied to charging capacitors, over-damped springs, and the human
race in general.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Waving away a cloud of smoke, I look up, and am blinded by a bright, white
light. It's God. No, not Richard Stallman, or Linus Torvalds, but God. In
a booming voice, He says: "THIS IS A SIGN. USE LINUX, THE FREE UNIX SYSTEM
FOR THE 386.
-- Matt Welsh
- 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...
"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be, and
if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!"
-- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"Multiply in your head" (ordered the compassionate Dr. Adams) "365,365,365,
365,365,365 by 365,365,365,365,365,365". He [ten-year-old Truman Henry
Safford] flew around the room like a top, pulled his pantaloons over the
tops of his boots, bit his hands, rolled his eyes in their sockets, sometimes
smiling and talking, and then seeming to be in an agony, until, in not more
than one minute, said he, 133,491,850,208,566,925,016,658,299,941,583,225!"
An electronic computer might do the job a little faster but it wouldn't be
as much fun to watch.
-- James R. Newman, "The World of Mathematics"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...