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  1. Last Post! on O'Reilly Pushing Founder's Copyright System · · Score: 0

    Ever since prehistoric times, wise men have tried to understand what,
    exactly, make people laugh. That's why they were called "wise men." All the
    other prehistoric people were out puncturing each other with spears, and the
    wise men were back in the cave saying: "How about: Would you please take my
    wife? No. How about: Here is my wife, please take her right now. No How
    about: Would you like to take something? My wife is available. No. How
    about ..."
    -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"

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  2. Last Post! on Gameboy Advance SP Released Today in North America · · Score: 0

    Mohandas K. Gandhi often changed his mind publicly. An aide once asked him
    how he could so freely contradict this week what he had said just last week.
    The great man replied that it was because this week he knew better.

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  3. Last Post! on TiVo++ from India · · Score: 0

    Does biff in bo work
    coz it biffin doesn't beep
    an if biff in bo is broke
    then biff in bo I will delete

    I've tried biff in bo with 'y'
    I've tried biff in bo with '-y'
    no biffin output does it show
    so poor wee biff is gonna go.
    -- John Spence on debian-user

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  4. Last Post! on Wallace and Gromit Game Preview · · Score: 0

    ...very few phenomena can pull someone out of Deep Hack Mode, with two
    noted exceptions: being struck by lightning, or worse, your *computer*
    being struck by lightning.
    -- Matt Welsh

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  5. Last Post! on IBM Researcher Offers an E-Stamp Spam Solution · · Score: 0

    Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this simplistic
    formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the scientific
    mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact wholly unconcerned
    with what ____does exist. Indeed, the banality of existence has been
    so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to discuss it any further
    here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically,
    discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical,
    and the purely hypothetical. They were all, one might say, nonexistent,
    but each nonexisted in an entirely different way ...
    -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

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  6. Last Post! on Sonicblue files for Chap 11 · · Score: 0

    I'D LIKE TO BE BURIED INDIAN-STYLE, where they put you up on a high rack,
    above the ground. That way, you could get hit by meteorites and not even
    feel it.
    -- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.

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  7. Last Post! on LCD Overtaking CRT · · Score: 0

    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"

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  8. Last Post! on Major Strike on Iraq Underway · · Score: 0

    "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"

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  9. Last Post! on Brian Hook Interview · · Score: 0

    A novice asked the master: "I have a program that sometimes runs and
    sometimes aborts. I have followed the rules of programming, yet I am totally
    baffled. What is the reason for this?"
    The master replied: "You are confused because you do not understand
    the Tao. Only a fool expects rational behavior from his fellow humans. Why
    do you expect it from a machine that humans have constructed? Computers
    simulate determinism; only the Tao is perfect.
    The rules of programming are transitory; only the Tao is eternal.
    Therefore you must contemplate the Tao before you receive enlightenment."
    "But how will I know when I have received enlightenment?" asked the
    novice.
    "Your program will then run correctly," replied the master.
    -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"

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  10. Last Post! on BBC on Website Slow Downs · · Score: 0

    The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed from available
    data. Our authority is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon
    shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold,
    as the light of seven days." Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much
    radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition seven times seven (49) times
    as much as the Earth does from the Sun, or fifty times in all. The light we
    receive from the Moon is one ten-thousandth of the light we receive from the
    Sun, so we can ignore that. With these data we can compute the temperature
    of Heaven. The radiation falling on Heaven will heat it to the point where
    the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation,
    i.e., Heaven loses fifty times as much heat as the Earth by radiation. Using
    the Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation, (H/E)^4 = 50, where E is the absolute
    temperature of the earth (~300K), gives H as 798K (525C). The exact
    temperature of Hell cannot be computed, but it must be less than 444.6C, the
    temperature at which brimstone or sulphur changes from a liquid to a gas.
    Revelations 21:8 says "But the fearful, and unbelieving ... shall have their
    part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone." A lake of molten
    brimstone means that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point,
    or 444.6C (Above this point it would be a vapor, not a lake.) We have,
    then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C.
    -- "Applied Optics", vol. 11, A14, 1972

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  11. Last Post! on Web Site Hacks Rise as War Rages in Iraq · · Score: 0

    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.

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  12. Last Post! on Video Capturing Guide at Ars Technica · · Score: 0

    The only really good reason I can think to not release specs is
    embarrassment on just how crappy some hardware out there is, or just how
    buggy it is.
    -- Chris Wedgwood

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  13. Last Post! on Satellite Access in Time of War · · Score: 0

    I'm sure that VMS is completely documented, I just haven't found the
    right manual yet. I've been working my way through the manuals in the document
    library and I'm half way through the second cabinet, (3 shelves to go), so I
    should find what I'm looking for by mid May. I hope I can remember what it
    was by the time I find it.
    I had this idea for a new horror film, "VMS Manuals from Hell" or maybe
    "The Paper Chase : IBM vs. DEC". It's based on Hitchcock's "The Birds", except
    that it's centered around a programmer who is attacked by a swarm of binder
    pages with an index number and the single line "This page intentionally left
    blank."
    -- Alex Crain

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  14. Last Post! on Cisco to Acquire Linksys · · Score: 0

    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

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  15. Last Post! on Voice Communication & Gaming Etiquette · · Score: 0

    Science is built up of facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection
    of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.
    -- Jules Henri Poincar'e

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  16. Last Post! on Updates on War in Iraq · · Score: 0

    I for one cannot protest the recent M.T.A. fare hike and the
    accompanying promises that this would in no way improve service. For
    the transit system, as it now operates, has hidden advantages that
    can't be measured in monetary terms.
    Personally, I feel that it is well worth 75 cents or even $1 to
    have that unimpeachable excuse whenever I am late to anything: "I came
    by subway." Those four words have such magic in them that if Godot
    should someday show up and mumble them, any audience would instantly
    understand his long delay.

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  17. Last Post! on Turn Your Monitor Into an HDTV · · Score: 0

    Every Solidarity center had piles and piles of paper ... everyone was
    eating paper and a policeman was at the door. Now all you have to do is
    bend a disk.
    -- A member of the outlawed Polish trade union, Solidarity,
    commenting on the benefits of using computers in support
    of their movement.

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  18. Last Post! on Dying Languages, Fading Formats · · Score: 0

    When Alexander Graham Bell died in 1922, the telephone people interrupted
    service for one minute in his honor. They've been honoring him intermittently
    ever since, I believe.
    -- The Grab Bag

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  19. Last Post! on Cirocco Live Liquid Cooled Rack · · Score: 0

    Very few things actually get manufactured these days, because in an
    infinitely large Universe, such as the one in which we live, most things one
    could possibly imagine, and a lot of things one would rather not, grow
    somewhere. A forest was discovered recently in which most of the trees grew
    ratchet screwdrivers as fruit. The life cycle of the ratchet screwdriver is
    quite interesting. Once picked it needs a dark dusty drawer in which it can
    lie undisturbed for years. Then one night it suddenly hatches, discards its
    outer skin that crumbles into dust, and emerges as a totally unidentifiable
    little metal object with flanges at both ends and a sort of ridge and a hole
    for a screw. This, when found, will get thrown away. No one knows what the
    screwdriver is supposed to gain from this. Nature, in her infinite wisdom,
    is presumably working on it.

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  20. Last Post! on Slackware 9 Unleashed to World · · Score: 0

    Many of the convicted thieves Parker has met began their
    life of crime after taking college Computer Science courses.
    -- Roger Rapoport, "Programs for Plunder", Omni, March 1981

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  21. Last Post! on Bioware Releases Neverwinter Nights Linux Client Beta · · Score: 0

    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"

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  22. Last Post! on Users Conned by Cable Con · · Score: 0

    Oxygen is a very toxic gas and an extreme fire hazard. It is fatal in
    concentrations of as little as 0.000001 p.p.m. Humans exposed to the
    oxygen concentrations die within a few minutes. Symptoms resemble very
    much those of cyanide poisoning (blue face, etc.). In higher
    concentrations, e.g. 20%, the toxic effect is somewhat delayed and it
    takes about 2.5 billion inhalations before death takes place. The reason
    for the delay is the difference in the mechanism of the toxic effect of
    oxygen in 20% concentration. It apparently contributes to a complex
    process called aging, of which very little is known, except that it is
    always fatal.

    However, the main disadvantage of the 20% oxygen concentration is in the
    fact it is habit forming. The first inhalation (occurring at birth) is
    sufficient to make oxygen addiction permanent. After that, any
    considerable decrease in the daily oxygen doses results in death with
    symptoms resembling those of cyanide poisoning.

    Oxygen is an extreme fire hazard. All of the fires that were reported in
    the continental U.S. for the period of the past 25 years were found to be
    due to the presence of this gas in the atmosphere surrounding the buildings
    in question.

    Oxygen is especially dangerous because it is odorless, colorless and
    tasteless, so that its presence can not be readily detected until it is
    too late.
    -- Chemical & Engineering News February 6, 1956

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  23. Last Post! on U.S. May Reduce Non-Military GPS Accuracy · · Score: 0

    The Guy on the Right Doesn't Stand a Chance
    The guy on the right has the Osborne 1, a fully functional computer system
    in a portable package the size of a briefcase. The guy on the left has an
    Uzi submachine gun concealed in his attache case. Also in the case are four
    fully loaded, 32-round clips of 125-grain 9mm ammunition. The owner of the
    Uzi is going to get more tactical firepower delivered -- and delivered on
    target -- in less time, and with less effort. All for $795. It's inevitable.
    If you're going up against some guy with an Osborne 1 -- or any personal
    computer -- he's the one who's in trouble. One round from an Uzi can zip
    through ten inches of solid pine wood, so you can imagine what it will do
    to structural foam acrylic and sheet aluminum. In fact, detachable magazines
    for the Uzi are available in 25-, 32-, and 40-round capacities, so you can
    take out an entire office full of Apple II or IBM Personal Computers tied
    into Ethernet or other local-area networks. What about the new 16-bit
    computers, like the Lisa and Fortune? Even with the Winchester backup,
    they're no match for the Uzi. One quick burst and they'll find out what
    Unix means. Make your commanding officer proud. Get an Uzi -- and come home
    a winner in the fight for office automatic weapons.
    -- "InfoWorld", June, 1984

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  24. Last Post! on Amazon Sells IPAQs for $10 · · Score: 0

    > I'm an idiot.. At least this [bug] took about 5 minutes to find..
    Surely, Linus is talking about the kind of idiocy that others aspire to :-).
    -- Bruce Perens in response to Linus Torvalds's

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  25. Last Post! on DRM and Threat Analysis · · Score: 0

    It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what
    they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed
    that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so
    much -- the wheel, New York, wars and so on -- whilst all the dolphins
    had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But
    conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more
    intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons.

    Curiously enough, the dolphins had long known of the impending
    destruction of the of the planet Earth and had made many attempts to
    alert mankind to the danger; but most of their communications were
    misinterpreted ...
    -- Douglas Admas "The Hitchhikers' Guide To The Galaxy"

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