karl@sugar.hackercorp.com (Karl Lehenbauer) (04/28/89)
Below is the latest addition to my fortune cookie file, 40212 bytes of mirth and merriment. This file contains a lot of quotes from peoples' postings on Usenet. After I had been doing this a while, I began including their net addresses as well. Enjoy, or hit 'n'... -------------------- cut it here, dude ------------------------------ %% "If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed." -- Albert Einstein %% "What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite." -- Bertrand Russell, _Sceptical_Essays_, 1928 %% "Were there no women, men might live like gods." -- Thomas Dekker %% "Intelligence without character is a dangerous thing." -- G. Steinem %% "It says he made us all to be just like him. So if we're dumb, then god is dumb, and maybe even a little ugly on the side." -- Frank Zappa %% "It's not just a computer -- it's your ass." -- Cal Keegan %% "Let me guess, Ed. Pentescostal, right?" -- Starcap'n Ra, ra@asuvax.asu.edu "Nope. Charismatic (I think - I've given up on what all those pesky labels mean)." -- Ed Carp, erc@unisec.usi.com "Same difference - all zeal and feel, averaging less than one working brain cell per congregation. Starcap'n Ra, you pegged him. Good work!" -- Kenn Barry, barry@eos.UUCP %% "BTW, does Jesus know you flame?" -- Diane Holt, dianeh@binky.UUCP, to Ed Carp %% "I've seen the forgeries I've sent out." -- John F. Haugh II (jfh@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US), about forging net news articles %% "Just out of curiosity does this actually mean something or have some of the few remaining bits of your brain just evaporated?" -- Patricia O Tuama, rissa@killer.DALLAS.TX.US %% "Bite off, dirtball." Richard Sexton, richard@gryphon.COM %% "Oh my! An `inflammatory attitude' in alt.flame? Never heard of such a thing..." -- Allen Gwinn, allen@sulaco.Sigma.COM %% (null cookie; hope that's ok) %% "In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point." -- Friedrich Nietzsche %% "Who alone has reason to *lie himself out* of actuality? He who *suffers* from it." -- Friedrich Nietzsche %% "You who hate the Jews so, why did you adopt their religion?" -- Friedrich Nietzsche, addressing anti-semitic Christians %% "Little prigs and three-quarter madmen may have the conceit that the laws of nature are constantly broken for their sakes." -- Friedrich Nietzsche %% "Science makes godlike -- it is all over with priests and gods when man becomes scientific. Moral: science is the forbidden as such -- it alone is forbidden. Science is the *first* sin, the *original* sin. *This alone is morality.* ``Thou shalt not know'' -- the rest follows." -- Friedrich Nietzsche %% "Faith: not *wanting* to know what is true." -- Friedrich Nietzsche %% >One basic notion underlying Usenet is that it is a cooperative. Having been on USENET for going on ten years, I disagree with this. The basic notion underlying USENET is the flame. -- Chuq Von Rospach, chuq@Apple.COM %% "Every group has a couple of experts. And every group has at least one idiot. Thus are balance and harmony (and discord) maintained. It's sometimes hard to remember this in the bulk of the flamewars that all of the hassle and pain is generally caused by one or two highly-motivated, caustic twits." -- Chuq Von Rospach, chuq@apple.com, about Usenet %% Backed up the system lately? %% "It doesn't much signify whom one marries for one is sure to find out next morning it was someone else." -- Rogers %% "If you are afraid of loneliness, don't marry." -- Chekhov %% "Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished." -- Goethe %% "In matrimony, to hesitate is sometimes to be saved." -- Butler %% "The great question... which I have not been able to answer... is, `What does woman want?'" -- Sigmund Freud %% "A fractal is by definition a set for which the Hausdorff Besicovitch dimension strictly exceeds the topological dimension." -- Mandelbrot, _The Fractal Geometry of Nature_ %% "I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology." -- Thomas Jefferson %% Remember: Silly is a state of Mind, Stupid is a way of Life. -- Dave Butler %% "The preeminence of a learned man over a worshiper is equal to the preeminence of the moon, at the night of the full moon, over all the stars. Verily, the learned men are the heirs of the Prophets." -- A tradition attributed to Muhammad %% "The clergy successfully preached the doctrines of patience and pusillanimity; the active virtues of society were discouraged; and the last remains of a military spirit were buried in the cloister: a large portion of public and private wealth was consecrated to the specious demands of charity and devotion; and the soldiers' pay was lavished on the useless multitudes of both sexes who could only plead the merits of abstinence and chastity." -- Edward Gibbons, _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ %% "The question is rather: if we ever succeed in making a mind 'of nuts and bolts', how will we know we have succeeded? -- Fergal Toomey "It will tell us." -- Barry Kort %% "Inquiry is fatal to certainty." -- Will Durant %% "The Mets were great in 'sixty eight, The Cards were fine in 'sixty nine, But the Cubs will be heavenly in nineteen and seventy." -- Ernie Banks %% "On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." -- Charles Babbage %% "I call Christianity the *one* great curse, the *one* great intrinsic depravity, the *one* great instinct for revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, *petty* -- I call it the *one* mortal blemish of mankind." -- Friedrich Nietzsche %% "The fundamental purpose animating the Faith of God and His Religion is to safeguard the interests and promote the unity of the human race, and to foster the spirit of love and fellowship amongst men. Suffer it not to become a source of dissension and discord, of hate and enmity." "Religion is verily the chief instrument for the establishment of order in the world and of tranquillity amongst it's peoples...The greater the decline of religion, the more grievous the waywardness of the ungodly. This cannot but lead in the end to chaos and confusion." -- Baha'u'llah, a selection from the Baha'i scripture %% "Cogito ergo I'm right and you're wrong." -- Blair Houghton %% "...one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs." -- Robert Firth %% Q: Somebody just posted that Roman Polanski directed Star Wars. What should I do? A: Post the correct answer at once! We can't have people go on believing that! Very good of you to spot this. You'll probably be the only one to make the correction, so post as soon as you can. No time to lose, so certainly don't wait a day, or check to see if somebody else has made the correction. And it's not good enough to send the message by mail. Since you're the only one who really knows that it was Francis Coppola, you have to inform the whole net right away! -- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_ %% Q: How can I choose what groups to post in? ... Q: How about an example? A: Ok. Let's say you want to report that Gretzky has been traded from the Oilers to the Kings. Now right away you might think rec.sport.hockey would be enough. WRONG. Many more people might be interested. This is a big trade! Since it's a NEWS article, it belongs in the news.* hierarchy as well. If you are a news admin, or there is one on your machine, try news.admin. If not, use news.misc. The Oilers are probably interested in geology, so try sci.physics. He is a big star, so post to sci.astro, and sci.space because they are also interested in stars. Next, his name is Polish sounding. So post to soc.culture.polish. But that group doesn't exist, so cross-post to news.groups suggesting it should be created. With this many groups of interest, your article will be quite bizarre, so post to talk.bizarre as well. (And post to comp.std.mumps, since they hardly get any articles there, and a "comp" group will propagate your article further.) You may also find it is more fun to post the article once in each group. If you list all the newsgroups in the same article, some newsreaders will only show the the article to the reader once! Don't tolerate this. -- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_ %% Q: I cant spell worth a dam. I hope your going too tell me what to do? A: Don't worry about how your articles look. Remember it's the message that counts, not the way it's presented. Ignore the fact that sloppy spelling in a purely written forum sends out the same silent messages that soiled clothing would when addressing an audience. -- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_ %% Q: They just announced on the radio that Dan Quayle was picked as the Republican V.P. candidate. Should I post? A: Of course. The net can reach people in as few as 3 to 5 days. It's the perfect way to inform people about such news events long after the broadcast networks have covered them. As you are probably the only person to have heard the news on the radio, be sure to post as soon as you can. -- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_ %% What did Mickey Mouse get for Christmas? A Dan Quayle watch. -- heard from a Mike Dukakis field worker %% Q: What's the difference between a car salesman and a computer salesman? A: The car salesman can probably drive! -- Joan McGalliard (jem@latcs1.oz.au) %% "Your stupidity, Allen, is simply not up to par." -- Dave Mack (mack@inco.UUCP) "Yours is." -- Allen Gwinn (allen@sulaco.sigma.com), in alt.flame %% A selection from the Taoist Writings: "Lao-Tan asked Confucius: `What do you mean by benevolence and righteousness?' Confucius said: `To be in one's inmost heart in kindly sympathy with all things; to love all men and allow no selfish thoughts: this is the nature of benevolence and righteousness.'" -- Kwang-tzu %% "Jesus saves...but Gretzky gets the rebound!" -- Daniel Hinojosa (hinojosa@hp-sdd) %% "Anything created must necessarily be inferior to the essence of the creator." -- Claude Shouse (shouse@macomw.ARPA) "Einstein's mother must have been one heck of a physicist." -- Joseph C. Wang (joe@athena.mit.edu) %% "Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines." -- Bertrand Russell %% "Lying lips are abomination to the Lord; but they that deal truly are his delight. A soft answer turneth away wrath; but grievous words stir up anger. He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him. Be not a witness against thy neighbor without cause; and deceive not with thy lips. Death and life are in the power of the tongue." -- Proverbs, some selections from the Jewish Scripture %% "As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life -- so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls." -- Matt Cartmill %% Heisengberg might have been here. %% "Any excuse will serve a tyrant." -- Aesop %% "Experience has proved that some people indeed know everything." -- Russell Baker %% How many Zen Buddhist does it take to change a light bulb? Two. One to change it and one not to change it. %% "I prefer the blunted cudgels of the followers of the Serpent God." -- Sean Doran the Younger %% "If I do not want others to quote me, I do not speak." -- Phil Wayne %% "my terminal is a lethal teaspoon." -- Patricia O Tuama %% "I am ... a woman ... and ... technically a parasitic uterine growth" -- Sean Doran the Younger [allegedly] %% "Is it just me, or does anyone else read `bible humpers' every time someone writes `bible thumpers?' -- Joel M. Snyder, jms@mis.arizona.edu %% "Money is the root of all money." -- the moving finger %% "...Greg Nowak: `Another flame from greg' - need I say more?" -- Jonathan D. Trudel, trudel@caip.rutgers.edu "No. You need to say less." -- Richard Sexton, richard@gryphon.COM %% "And it's my opinion, and that's only my opinion, you are a lunatic. Just because there are a few hunderd other people sharing your lunacy with you does not make you any saner. Doomed, eh?" -- Oleg Kiselev,oleg@CS.UCLA.EDU %% "Obedience. A religion of slaves. A religion of intellectual death. I like it. Don't ask questions, don't think, obey the Word of the Lord -- as it has been conveniently brought to you by a man in a Rolls with a heavy Rolex on his wrist. I like that job! Where can I sign up?" -- Oleg Kiselev,oleg@CS.UCLA.EDU %% "Home life as we understand it is no more natural to us than a cage is to a cockatoo." -- George Bernard Shaw %% "Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside desperate to get out." -- Montaigne %% "For a male and female to live continuously together is... biologically speaking, an extremely unnatural condition." -- Robert Briffault %% "Marriage is low down, but you spend the rest of your life paying for it." -- Baskins %% A man is not complete until he is married -- then he is finished. %% Marriage is the sole cause of divorce. %% Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience. %% "The chain which can be yanked is not the eternal chain." -- G. Fitch %% "Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company." -- Mark Twain %% "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 by some more." -- timw@zeb.USWest.COM, in alt.conspiracy %% "If there isn't a population problem, why is the government putting cancer in the cigarettes?" -- the elder Steptoe, c. 1970 %% "If you don't want your dog to have bad breath, do what I do: Pour a little Lavoris in the toilet." -- Comedian Jay Leno %% "Here's something to think about: How come you never see a headline like `Psychic Wins Lottery.'" -- Comedian Jay Leno %% "Well hello there Charlie Brown, you blockhead." -- Lucy Van Pelt %% "Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so." -- Ford Prefect, _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ %% "Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows." -- Robert G. Ingersoll %% "Let every man teach his son, teach his daughter, that labor is honorable." -- Robert G. Ingersoll %% "I have not the slightest confidence in 'spiritual manifestations.'" -- Robert G. Ingersoll %% "It is hard to overstate the debt that we owe to men and women of genius." -- Robert G. Ingersoll %% "Joy is wealth and love is the legal tender of the soul." -- Robert G. Ingersoll %% "The hands that help are better far than the lips that pray." -- Robert G. Ingersoll %% "It is the creationists who blasphemously are claiming that God is cheating us in a stupid way." -- J. W. Nienhuys %% "No, no, I don't mind being called the smartest man in the world. I just wish it wasn't this one." -- Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias, WATCHMEN %% "Be *excellent* to each other." -- Bill, or Ted, in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure %% The Seventh Edition licensing procedures are, I suppose, still in effect, though I doubt that tapes are available from AT&T. At any rate, whatever restrictions the license imposes still exist. These restrictions were and are reasonable for places that just want to run the system, but don't allow many of the things that Minix was written for, like study of the source in classes, or by individuals not in a university or company. I've always thought that Minix was a fine idea, and competently done. As for the size of v7, wc -l /usr/sys/*/*.[chs] is 19271. -- Dennis Ritchie, 1989 %% "Our vision is to speed up time, eventually eliminating it." -- Alex Schure %% "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come." --Matt Groening %% "I'm not afraid of dying, I just don't want to be there when it happens." -- Woody Allen %% "The Street finds its own uses for technology." -- William Gibson %% "I see little divinity about them or you. You talk to me of Christianity when you are in the act of hanging your enemies. Was there ever such blasphemous nonsense!" -- Shaw, "The Devil's Disciple" %% "You and I as individuals can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but only for a limited period of time. Why should we think that collectively, as a nation, we are not bound by that same limitation?" -- Ronald Reagan %% "He did decide, though, that with more time and a great deal of mental effort, he could probably turn the activity into an acceptable perversion." -- Mick Farren, _When Gravity Fails_ %% "Conversion, fastidious Goddess, loves blood better than brick, and feasts most subtly on the human will." -- Virginia Woolf, "Mrs. Dalloway" %% It's time to boot, do your boot ROMs know where your disk controllers are? %% "What the scientists have in their briefcases is terrifying." -- Nikita Khrushchev %% "...a most excellent barbarian ... Genghis Kahn!" -- _Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure_ %% "Pull the trigger and you're garbage." -- Lady Blue %% "Oh what wouldn't I give to be spat at in the face..." -- a prisoner in "Life of Brian" %% "Truth never comes into the world but like a bastard, to the ignominy of him that brought her birth." -- Milton %% "If you can't debate me, then there is no way in hell you'll out-insult me." -- Scott Legrand (Scott.Legrand@hogbbs.Fidonet.Org) "You may be wrong here, little one." -- R. W. F. Clark (RWC102@PSUVM) %% "Yes, I am a real piece of work. One thing we learn at Ulowell is how to flame useless hacking non-EE's like you. I am superior to you in every way by training and expertise in the technical field. Anyone can learn how to hack, but Engineering doesn't come nearly as easily. Actually, I'm not trying to offend all you CS majors out there, but I think EE is one of the hardest majors/grad majors to pass. Fortunately, I am making it." -- "Warrior Diagnostics" (wardiag@sky.COM) "Being both an EE and an asshole at the same time must be a terrible burden for you. This isn't really a flame, just a casual observation. Makes me glad I was a CS major, life is really pleasant for me. Have fun with your chosen mode of existence!" -- Jim Morrison (morrisj@mist.cs.orst.edu) %% "BYTE editors are men who seperate the wheat from the chaff, and then print the chaff." -- Lionel Hummel (uiucdcs!hummel), derived from a quote by Adlai Stevenson, Sr. %% THE "FUN WITH USENET" MANIFESTO Very little happens on Usenet without some sort of response from some other reader. Fun With Usenet postings are no exception. Since there are some who might question the rationale of some of the excerpts included therein, I have written up a list of guidelines that sum up the philosophy behind these postings. One. I never cut out words in the middle of a quote without a VERY good reason, and I never cut them out without including ellipses. For instance, "I am not a goob" might become "I am ... a goob", but that's too mundane to bother with. "I'm flame proof" might (and has) become "I'm ...a... p...oof" but that's REALLY stretching it. Two. If I cut words off the beginning or end of a quote, I don't put ellipses, but neither do I capitalize something that wasn't capitalized before the cut. "I don't think that the Church of Ubizmo is a wonderful place" would turn into "the Church of Ubizmo is a wonderful place". Imagine the posting as a tape-recording of the poster's thoughts. If I can set up the quote via fast-forwarding and stopping the tape, and without splicing, I don't put ellipses in. And by the way, I love using this mechanism for turning things around. If you think something stinks, say so - don't say you don't think it's wonderful. ... -- D. J. McCarthy (dmccart@cadape.UUCP) %% "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary saftey deserve neither liberty not saftey." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759 %% "I am, therefore I am." -- Akira %% "Stan and I thought that this experiment was so stupid, we decided to finance it ourselves." -- Martin Fleischmann, co-discoverer of room-temperature fusion (?) %% "I have more information in one place than anybody in the world." -- Jerry Pournelle, an absurd notion, apparently about the BIX BBS %% "It's what you learn after you know it all that counts." -- John Wooden %% #define BITCOUNT(x) (((BX_(x)+(BX_(x)>>4)) & 0x0F0F0F0F) % 255) #define BX_(x) ((x) - (((x)>>1)&0x77777777) \ - (((x)>>2)&0x33333333) \ - (((x)>>3)&0x11111111)) -- really weird C code to count the number of bits in a word %% "If you can write a nation's stories, you needn't worry about who makes its laws. Today, television tells most of the stories to most of the people most of the time." -- George Gerbner %% "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw %% "We want to create puppets that pull their own strings." -- Ann Marion "Would this make them Marionettes?" -- Jeff Daiell %% On the subject of C program indentation: "In My Egotistical Opinion, most people's C programs should be indented six feet downward and covered with dirt." -- Blair P. Houghton %% There was, it appeared, a mysterious rite of initiation through which, in one way or another, almost every member of the team passed. The term that the old hands used for this rite -- West invented the term, not the practice -- was `signing up.' By signing up for the project you agreed to do whatever was necessary for success. You agreed to forsake, if necessary, family, hobbies, and friends -- if you had any of these left (and you might not, if you had signed up too many times before). -- Tracy Kidder, _The Soul of a New Machine_ %% "By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began to suspect "Hungry." -- a Larson cartoon %% "But don't you see, the color of wine in a crystal glass can be spiritual. The look in a face, the music of a violin. A Paris theater can be infused with the spiritual for all its solidity." -- Lestat, _The Vampire Lestat_, Anne Rice %% "Love your country but never trust its government." -- from a hand-painted road sign in central Pennsylvania %% I bought the latest computer; it came fully loaded. It was guaranteed for 90 days, but in 30 was outmoded! - The Wall Street Journal passed along by Big Red Computer's SCARLETT %% To update Voltaire, "I may kill all msgs from you, but I'll fight for your right to post it, and I'll let it reside on my disks". -- Doug Thompson (doug@isishq.FIDONET.ORG) %% "Though a program be but three lines long, someday it will have to be maintained." -- The Tao of Programming %% "Turn on, tune up, rock out." -- Billy Gibbons %% EARTH smog | bricks AIR -- mud -- FIRE soda water | tequila WATER %% "Of course power tools and alcohol don't mix. Everyone knows power tools aren't soluble in alcohol..." -- Crazy Nigel %% "Life sucks, but death doesn't put out at all...." -- Thomas J. Kopp %% "There is no Father Christmas. It's just a marketing ploy to make low income parents' lives a misery." "... I want you to picture the trusting face of a child, streaked with tears because of what you just said." "I want you to picture the face of its mother, because one week's dole won't pay for one Master of the Universe Battlecruiser!" - Filthy Rich and Catflap, 1986. %% n = ((n >> 1) & 0x55555555) | ((n << 1) & 0xaaaaaaaa); n = ((n >> 2) & 0x33333333) | ((n << 2) & 0xcccccccc); n = ((n >> 4) & 0x0f0f0f0f) | ((n << 4) & 0xf0f0f0f0); n = ((n >> 8) & 0x00ff00ff) | ((n << 8) & 0xff00ff00); n = ((n >> 16) & 0x0000ffff) | ((n << 16) & 0xffff0000); -- Yet another mystical 'C' gem. This one reverses the bits in a word. %% "All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume." -- Noam Chomsky %% "A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked." -- John Gall, _Systemantics_ %% "In my opinion, Richard Stallman wouldn't recognise terrorism if it came up and bit him on his Internet." -- Ross M. Greenberg %% I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradictions to the sentiments of others, and all positive assertion of my own. I even forbade myself the use of every word or expression in the language that imported a fixed opinion, such as "certainly", "undoubtedly", etc. I adopted instead of them "I conceive", "I apprehend", or "I imagine" a thing to be so or so; or "so it appears to me at present". When another asserted something that I thought an error, I denied myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing him immediately some absurdity in his proposition. In answering I began by observing that in certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present case there appeared or semed to me some difference, etc. I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I engaged in went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I proposed my opinions procured them a readier reception and less contradiction. I had less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily prevailed with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I happened to be in the right. -- Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin %% "If I ever get around to writing that language depompisifier, it will change almost all occurences of the word "paradigm" into "example" or "model." -- Herbie Blashtfalt %% "Life, loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it." -- Marvin the paranoid android %% Contemptuous lights flashed flashed across the computer's console. -- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy %% "There must be some mistake," he said, "are you not a greater computer than the Milliard Gargantubrain which can count all the atoms in a star in a millisecond?" "The Milliard Gargantubrain?" said Deep Thought with unconcealed contempt. "A mere abacus. Mention it not." -- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy %% "But are you not," he said, "a more fiendish disputant than the Great Hyperlobic Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler of Ciceronicus Twelve, the Magic and Indefatigable?" "The Great Hyperlobic Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler," said Deep Thought, thoroughly rolling the r's, "could talk all four legs off an Arcturan Mega-Donkey -- but only I could persuade it to go for a walk afterward." -- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy %% If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, Jolt Cola would be a Fortune-500 company. If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, you'd be able to buy a nice little colonial split-level at Babbages for $34.95. If programmers wrote programs the way builders build buildings, we'd still be using autocoder and running compile decks. -- Peter da Silva and Karl Lehenbauer, a different perspective %% To err is human, to moo bovine. %% "America is a stronger nation for the ACLU's uncompromising effort." -- President John F. Kennedy %% "The simple rights, the civil liberties from generations of struggle must not be just fine words for patriotic holidays, words we subvert on weekdays, but living, honored rules of conduct amongst us...I'm glad the American Civil Liberties Union gets indignant, and I hope this will always be so." -- Senator Adlai E. Stevenson %% "The ACLU has stood foursquare against the recurring tides of hysteria that from time to time threaten freedoms everyhere... Indeed, it is difficult to appreciate how far our freedoms might have eroded had it not been for the Union's valiant representation in the courts of the constitutional rights of people of all persuasions, no matter how unpopular or even despised by the majority they were at the time." -- former Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren %% "The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure." -- Albert Einstein %% "Well I don't see why I have to make one man miserable when I can make so many men happy." -- Ellyn Mustard, about marriage %% "And it should be the law: If you use the word `paradigm' without knowing what the dictionary says it means, you go to jail. No exceptions." -- David Jones @ Megatest Corporation %% "Luke, I'm yer father, eh. Come over to the dark side, you hoser." -- Dave Thomas, "Strange Brew" %% "Let's not be too tough on our own ignorance. It's the thing that makes America great. If America weren't incomparably ignorant, how could we have tolerated the last eight years?" -- Frank Zappa, Feb 1, 1989 %% "The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases. "For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question 'How can we eat?' the second by the question 'Why do we eat?' and the third by the question 'Where shall we have lunch?'" -- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy %% "Don't think; let the machine do it for you!" -- E. C. Berkeley %% "It follows that any commander in chief who undertakes to carry out a plan which he considers defective is at fault; he must put forth his reasons, insist of the plan being changed, and finally tender his resignation rather than be the instrument of his army's downfall." -- Napoleon, "Military Maxims and Thought" %% "(The Chief Programmer) personally defines the functional and performance specifications, designs the program, codes it, tests it, and writes its documentation... He needs great talent, ten years experience and considerable systems and applications knowledge, whether in applied mathematics, business data handling, or whatever." -- Fred P. Brooks, _The Mythical Man Month_ %% "It ain't over until it's over." -- Casey Stengel %% "If anything can go wrong, it will." -- Edsel Murphy %% "Yo baby yo baby yo." -- Eddie Murphy %% "You must learn to run your kayak by a sort of ju-jitsu. You must learn to tell what the river will do to you, and given those parameters see how you can live with it. You must absorb its force and convert it to your users as best you can. Even with the quickness and agility of a kayak, you are not faster than the river, nor stronger, and you can beat it only by understanding it." -- Strung, Curtis and Perry, _Whitewater_ %% Everyone who comes in here wants three things: 1. They want it quick. 2. They want it good. 3. They want it cheap. I tell 'em to pick two and call me back. -- sign on the back wall of a small printing company in Delaware %% "More software projects have gone awry for lack of calendar time than for all other causes combined." -- Fred Brooks, Jr., _The Mythical Man Month_ %% panic: kernel trap (ignored) %% "Nuclear war can ruin your whole compile." -- Karl Lehenbauer %% "Remember, extremism in the nondefense of moderation is not a virtue." -- Peter Neumann, about usenet %% "We dedicated ourselves to a powerful idea -- organic law rather than naked power. There seems to be universal acceptance of that idea in the nation." -- Supreme Court Justice Potter Steart %% "What man has done, man can aspire to do." -- Jerry Pournelle, about space flight %% "Well, it don't make the sun shine, but at least it don't deepen the shit." -- Straiter Empy, in _Riddley_Walker_ by Russell Hoban %% "If you can, help others. If you can't, at least don't hurt others." -- the Dalai Lama %% To the systems programmer, users and applications serve only to provide a test load. %% "Just think, with VLSI we can have 100 ENIACS on a chip!" -- Alan Perlis %% "...Local prohibitions cannot block advances in military and commercial technology... Democratic movements for local restraint can only restrain the world's democracies, not the world as a whole." -- K. Eric Drexler %% "The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between a five-dollar bill and a whip deserves to learn the difference on his own back -- as, I think, he will." -- Francisco d'Anconia, in Ayn Rand's _Atlas Shrugged_ %% "If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money it values more, it will lose that, too." -- W. Somerset Maugham %% "Pardon me for breathing, which I never do anyway so I don't know why I bother to say it, oh God, I'm so depressed. Here's another of those self-satisfied doors. Life! Don't talk to me about life." -- Marvin the Paranoid Android %% One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be so outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn't understand hat was going on, and really being genuinely stupid. He was reknowned for being quite clever and quite clearly was so -- but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence the act. He preferred people to be puzzled rather than contemptuous. This above all appeared to Trillian to be genuinely stupid, but she could no longer be bothered to argue about. -- Douglas Adams, _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ %% Far back in the mists of ancient time, in the great and glorious days of the former Galactic Empire, life was wild, rich and largely tax free. Mighty starships plied their way between exotic suns, seeking adventure and reward among the furthest reaches of Galactic space. In those days, spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before -- and thus was the Empire forged. -- Douglas Adams, _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ %% "Gort, klaatu nikto barada." -- The Day the Earth Stood Still %% > From MAILER-DAEMON@Think.COM Thu Mar 2 13:59:11 1989 > Subject: Returned mail: unknown mailer error 255 "Dale, your address no longer functions. Can you fix it at your end?" -- Bill Wolfe (wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu) "Bill, Your brain no longer functions. Can you fix it at your end?" -- Karl A. Nyberg (nyberg@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu) %% "Don't drop acid, take it pass-fail!" -- Bryan Michael Wendt %% "I got a question for ya. Ya got a minute?" -- two programmers passing in the hall %% I took a fish head to the movies and I didn't have to pay. -- Fish Heads, Saturday Night Live, 1977. %% What hath Bob wrought? %% "I don't know where we come from, Don't know where we're going to, And if all this should have a reason, We would be the last to know. So let's just hope there is a promised land, And until then, ...as best as you can." -- Steppenwolf, "Rock Me Baby" %% "Help Mr. Wizard!" -- Tennessee Tuxedo %% "The lawgiver, of all beings, most owes the law allegiance. He of all men should behave as though the law compelled him. But it is the universal weakness of mankind that what we are given to administer we presently imagine we own." -- H.G. Wells %% "Unlike most net.puritans, however, I feel that what OTHER consenting computers do in the privacy of their own phone connections is their own business." -- John Woods, jfw@eddie.mit.edu %% "Don't talk to me about disclaimers! I invented disclaimers!" -- The Censored Hacker %% 'On this point we want to be perfectly clear: socialism has nothing to do with equalizing. Socialism cannot ensure conditions of life and consumption in accordance with the principle "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." This will be under communism. Socialism has a different criterion for distributing social benefits: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his work."' -- Mikhail Gorbachev, _Perestroika_ %% "Cable is not a luxury, since many areas have poor TV reception." -- The mayor of Tucson, Arizona, 1989 [apparently, good TV reception is a basic necessity -- at least in Tucson -kl] %% "All the system's paths must be topologically and circularly interrelated for conceptually definitive, locally transformable, polyhedronal understanding to be attained in our spontaneous -- ergo, most economical -- geodesiccally structured thoughts." -- R. Buckminster Fuller [...and a total nonsequitir as far as I can tell. -kl] %% "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 %% "It's when they say 2 + 2 = 5 that I begin to argue." -- Eric Pepke %% Comparing information and knowledge is like asking whether the fatness of a pig is more or less green than the designated hitter rule." -- David Guaspari %% "None of our men are "experts." We have most unfortunately found it necessary to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert -- because no one ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job. A man who knows a job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he is always pressing forward and never gives up an instant of thought to how good and how efficient he is. Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a state of mind in which nothing is impossible. The moment one gets into the "expert" state of mind a great number of things become impossible." -- From Henry Ford Sr., "My Life and Work," p. 86 (1922): %% "The NY Times is read by the people who run the country. The Washington Post is read by the people who think they run the country. The National Enquirer is read by the people who think Elvis is alive and running the country..." -- Robert J Woodhead (trebor@biar.UUCP) %% "...'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." -- Siddartha, _Lord_of_Light_ by Roger Zelazny %% "Irrigation of the land with sewater desalinated by fusion power is ancient. It's called 'rain'." -- Michael McClary, in alt.fusion %% "The bad reputation UNIX has gotten is totally undeserved, laid on by people who don't understand, who have not gotten in there and tried anything." -- Jim Joyce, former computer science lecturer at the University of California %% "We scientists, whose tragic destiny it has been to make the methods of annihilation ever more gruesome and more effective, must consider it our solemn and transcendent duty to do all in our power in preventing these weapons from being used for the brutal purpose for which they were invented." -- Albert Einstein, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, September 1948 %% "You can have my Unix system when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers." -- Cal Keegan -- -- uunet!sugar!karl | "Nobody hipped me to that, dude." -- Pee Wee -- Usenet BBS (713) 438-5018