旼컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� � � � H - M A I L 1 6 . T X T � � � 突袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴� This volume contains mostly spillage that didn't quite make it into the previous one (H-MAIL15) and thus starts off with a MASSIVE collection of quotes, taglines, quibs, sayings and other shorties. Either way, whether you like it or not, we now present you with this one... Title: H-MAIL16.TXT (formatted to 66 lines per page [I hope!]) File size: 200,000 bytes Date: 15-10-95 [Standard advert] All H-MAIL?? files are available at 旼컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴커 � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 � � The HMVH Corporation � 읕컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴켸 Bulletin Board System [+27 11] (011) 941-1341 USR V.34/V.fc (24 Hours) 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 Communists do it without class. Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable. Any system which depends on human reliability is unreliable. -- Gilb Confucious say: fool man climb tree to get cherries; wise man spread limbs. man who fishes in other man's well often catch crabs. man who go to bed with sex problem wake up with solution in hand. man who live in glass house should bathe in the basement. man who lose key to girlfriend's apartment get no new key. man who make love on ground have piece on Earth. man who marry girl with no bust has right to feel low down. man who pull out too fast leave rubber. man who screws near graveyard is fucking near dead. man with hole in pocket feel cocky all day. woman who cooks carrots and pees in same pot very unsanitary. woman who ride bicycle peddle ass around town. Confucius say too damn fucking much. -- Very Recent Chinese Proverb Conquering Russia should be done steppe by steppe. Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking. -- H. L. Mencken Conserve energy -- make love more slowly. Consider the little mouse, how sagacious an animal it is which never entrusts its life to one hole only. -- Titus Maccius Plautus Consultants are mystical people who ask a company for a number and then give it back to them. Conway's Law: In any organization there will always be one person who knows what is going on. This person must be fired. Cox's Philosophy: Life's a bitch and then you die. Crime does not pay... as well as politics. -- Alfred E. Neuman Cunnilingus is next to godliness. Dammit, how many times do I have to tell you? First you rape, then you pillage!! David was just a shepherd who liked to get his rocks off in leather. DeVries' Dilemma: If you hit two keys on the typewriter, the one you don't want hits the paper. Dealing with failure is easy: Work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle: You've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve. Death is God's way of telling you not to be such a wise guy. Death is Nature's way of recycling human beings. Death is life's way of telling you you've been fired. -- R. Geis Death is nature's way of saying 'Howdy'. Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down. Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few. -- G. B. Shaw Descend in order to meet more decent monsters. Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a conventional thing to happen to him. -- John Barrymore's dying words Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock. Divers do it deeper. Do not believe in miracles -- rely on them. Do not do unto others as you would they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same. -- George Bernard Shaw Do not drink coffee in early a.m. It will keep you awake until noon. Do not meddle in the affairs of the wizards for they are crunchy and good with ketchup. Do not meddle in the affairs of the wizards for they are subtle and quick to anger. Do not take life too seriously; you will never get out if it alive. Do something big -- fuck a giant. Do something unusual today. Pay a bill. Do what comes naturally now. Seethe and fume and throw a tantrum. Do you want to visit hell? Dig a *very* deep hole. Don't believe everything you hear or anything you say. Don't drink when you drive -- you might hit a bump and spill it. Don't feed the bats tonight. Don't hate yourself in the morning -- sleep till noon. Don't play hack at your work, your boss might hit you. Don't remember what you can infer. -- Harry Tennant Don't shoot until you're sure you both aren't on the same side. Don't solicit for your sister, that's not nice, Unless you get a good percentage of her price... -- Tom Lehrer Don't speak about Time, until you have spoken to him. Don't tell any big lies today. Small ones can be just as effective. Don't worry over what other people are thinking about you. They're too busy worrying over what you are thinking about them. Down with categorical imperative! Draft beer, not people. Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing. Drinking might affect your health. Drinking potions of booze may land you in jail if you are under 21. Drive defensively. Buy a tank. Ducharm's Axiom: If you view your problem closely enough you will recognize yourself as part of the problem. Ducharme's Precept: Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment. Due to a shortage of devoted followers, the production of great leaders has been discontinued. Dungeon expects every monster to do his duty. Dust is an armor of poor quality. Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it. -- W. Somerset Maughm Earn cash in your spare time -- blackmail your friends. Eat 10 cloves of garlic and keep all humans at a two-square distance. Eat the rich -- the poor are tough and stringy. Education kills by degrees. Egotism is the anesthetic given by a kindly nature to relieve the pain of being a damned fool. -- Bellamy Brooks Ehrman's Commentary: (1) Things will get worse before they get better. (2) Who said things would get better? Einstein rules relatively ok. Emersons' Law of Contrariness: Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can. Having found them, we shall then hate them for it. Enjoy every minute. There's plenty of time to be dead. Enzymes are things invented by biologists that explain things which otherwise require harder thinking. -- Jerome Lettvin Even God lends a hand to honest boldness. -- Menander Even nowadays a man can't step up and kill a woman without feeling just a bit unchivalrous. -- Robert Benchley Even peace may be purchased at too high a price. -- Poor Richard Even the best of friends cannot attend each other's funeral. -- Kehlog Albran Ever notice that even the busiest people are never too busy to tell you just how busy they are? Every absurdity has a champion who will defend it. Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was written and another for which it wasn't. Every program is a part of some other program, and rarely fits. Every solution breeds new problems. Every successful person has had failures but repeated failure is no guarantee of eventual success. Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. Everyone can be taught to sculpt: Michelangelo would have had to be taught how not. So it is with the great programmers. 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... Everything is controlled by a small evil group to which, unfortunately, no one we know belongs. Excellent day to have a rotten day. Excellent time to become a missing person. Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake when you make it again. -- F. P. Jones NEWSFLASH! Intelligence of mankind decreasing. Details at...uh, when the little hand is on the.... Faith is the quality that enables you to eat blackberry jam on a picnic without looking to see whether the seeds move. Faith: not *wanting* to know what is true. -- Nietzsche Famous last words: "Don't worry, I can handle it." "You and what army?" "If you were as smart as you think you are, you wouldn't be a cop." Fie for shame, you lascivious, lewd, lecherous, libidinous, lustful, licentious, dirty bum!! Fifth Law of Procrastination: Procrastination avoids boredom; one never has the feeling that there is nothing important to do. Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. And scratch where it itches. Finagle's Creed: Science is true. Don't be misled by facts. Finagle's first Law: If an experiment works, something has gone wrong. Finagle's second Law: No matter what the anticipated result, there will always be someone eager to (a) misinterpret it (b) fake it (c) believe it happened according to his own pet theory. Finagle's third Law: In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct, beyond all need of checking, is the mistake. Finagle's fourth Law: Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes it worse. Corollaries: (1) Nobody whom you ask for help will see it. (2) The first person who stops by, whose advice you really don't want to hear, will see it immediately. Fine day to throw a party. Throw him as far as you can. Fine day to work off excess energy. Steal something heavy. First Law of Bicycling: No matter which way you ride, it's uphill and against the wind. First Law of Hacking: leaving is much more difficult than entering. First Law of Socio-Genetics: Celibacy is not hereditary. First Rule of History: History doesn't repeat itself -- historians merely repeat each other. Flee at once, all is discovered. Flirting is the gentle art of making a man feel pleased with himself. -- Helen Rowland For any remedy there is a misery. For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. -- H. L. Mencken For the first time we have a weapon that nobody has used for thirty years. This gives me great hope for the human race. -- Harlan Ellison Fourth Law of Applied Terror: The night before the English History mid-term, your Biology instructor will assign 200 pages on planaria. Corollary: Every instructor assumes that you have nothing else to do except study for that instructor's course. Fourth Law of Hacking: you will find the exit at the entrance. Fudd's First Law of Opposition: Push something hard enough and it will fall over. Furious activity is no substitute for understanding. -- H. H. Williams G's Third Law: In spite of all evidence to the contrary, the entire universe is composed of only two basic substances: magic and bullshit. H's Dictum: There is no magic... Gautama Principle: You cannot cross a river in two leaps. George Orwell was an optimist. George Washington not only chopped down his father's cherry tree, but he also admitted doing it. Now, do you know why his father didn't punish him? Because George still had the axe in his hand. Ginsberg's Theorem: (1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit the game. Freeman's Commentary on Ginsberg's theorem: Every major philosophy that attempts to make life seem meaningful is based on the negation of one part of Ginsberg's Theorem. To wit: (1) Capitalism is based on the assumption that you can win. (2) Socialism is based on the assumption that you can break even. (3) Mysticism is based on the assumption that you can quit the game. Give a man free hands and you'll know where to find them. -- Mae West Give me the Luxuries, and the Hell with the Necessities! Give thought to your reputation. Consider changing name and moving to a new town. God bless Atheism. God gives us relatives; thank goodness we can chose our friends. God is Dead -- Nietzsche Nietzsche is Dead -- God Nietzsche is God -- Dead God is a comic playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh. God is a polytheist. God is an atheist. God is big, so don't fuck with him. God isn't dead -- She was never born. God isn't dead, He just couldn't find a parking place. God isn't dead, He's just trying to avoid the draft. Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example. -- La Rouchefoucauld Good day for overcoming obstacles. Try a steeplechase. Good day to let down old friends who need help. Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere. Good-bye. I am leaving because I am bored. -- George Saunders' dying words Gordon does it in a Flash. Got Mole problems? Call Avogardo 6.02 x 10^23 Grain grows best in shit. -- Ursula K. LeGuin Gravity is a myth, the Earth sucks. Gravity was invented by Isaac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the autumn, when the apples are falling off the trees. Gray's Law of Programming: 'n+1' trivial tasks are expected to be accomplished in the same time as 'n' tasks. Logg's Rebuttal to Gray's Law: 'n+1' trivial tasks take twice as long as 'n' trivial tasks. Grinnell's Law of Labor Laxity: At all times, for any task, you have not got enough done today. Grub first, then ethics. -- Bertolt Brecht H. L. Mencken's Law: Those who can -- do. Those who can't -- teach. Martin's Extension: Those who cannot teach -- administrate. Hackers do it bottom-up. Hackers do it with all sorts of characters. Hackers do it with bugs. Hackers do it with fewer instructions. Haggis: Haggis is a kind of stuff black pudding eaten by the Scots and considered by them to be not only a delicacy but fit for human consumption. The minced heart, liver and lungs of a sheep, calf or other animal's inner organs are mixed with oatmeal, sealed and boiled in maw in the sheep's intestinal stomach-bag and... [Excuse me a minute. Ed.] Hail to the sun god He's such a fun god Ra! Ra! Ra! Half Moon tonight. (At least it's better than no Moon at all.) Hand: A singular instrument worn at the end of a human arm and commonly thrust into somebody's pocket. Handy Guide to Modern Science (1) If it's green or it wriggles, it's biology. (2) If it stinks, it's chemistry. (3) If it doesn't work, it's physics. Hang gliders come down very slowly. Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. Hard reality has a way of cramping your style. -- Daniel Dennett Harris's Lament: All the good ones are taken. Harrisberger's Fourth Law of the Lab: Experience is directly proportional to the amount of equipment ruined. Hartley's First Law: You can lead a horse to water, but if you can get him to float on his back, you've got something. Harvard Law: Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure, temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables, the organism will do as it damn well pleases. Have a good meal today: eat a minotaur. Having nothing, nothing can he lose. -- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI" He who enters his wife's dressing room is a philosopher or a fool. -- Balzac He who findeth sensuous pleasures in the bodies of lush, hot, pink damsels is not righteous, but he can have a lot more fun. He who has the courage to laugh is almost as much a master of the world as he who is ready to die. -- Giacomo Leopardi He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough. -- Lao Tsu He who trains his tongue to quote the learned sages, will be known far and wide as a smart ass. -- Howard Kandel He's just a politician trying to save both his faces. Hear about... the doctor that prescribed sex for insommia? His patients didn't get any more sleep, but they had more fun staying awake. Hear about... the girl with the big wardrobe who started with just a little slip? Hear about... the guy who took a course in exotic lovemaking and announced that he'd never be able to face his girl again? Hear about... the guy who was an incurable romantic until penicillin came along? Heaven can wait. Heisenberg may have done it. Heisenberg might have been here. Heller's Law: The first myth of management is that it exists. Johnson's Corollary: Nobody really knows what is going on anywhere within the organization. Her kisses left something to be desired -- the rest of her. History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion -- i.e., none to speak of. -- Lazarus Long Hitting is the lingua franca in these regions. Hoare's Law of Large Problems: Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get out. Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account. Hog Weighing Method: (1) Get a perfectly symmetrical plank and balance it across a sawhorse. (2) Put the hog on one end of the plank. (3) Pile rocks on the other end until the plank is again perfectly balanced. (4) Carefully guess the weight of the rocks. -- Robert Burns Horngren's Observation: Among economists, the real world is often a special case. How long a minute is depends on which side of the bathroom door you're on. Howe's Law: Everyone has a scheme that will not work. Hugh Hefner is a virgin. Humility is the first of the virtues -- for other people. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes Hummingbirds never remember the words to songs. Hungry? There is an abundance of food on the next level. Hurewitz's Memory Principle: The chance of forgetting something is directly proportional to.....to........uh.............. Hypocrisy is the vaseline of social intercourse. I am an atheist, thank God! I believe that Ronald Reagan will someday make this country what it once was...an arctic wilderness. -- Steve Martin 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 I came; I saw; I fucked up. I can resist anything but temptation. I can't complain, but sometimes I still do. -- Joe Walsh I choked Linda Lovelace. I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them. -- Isaac Asimov I do not know myself and God forbid that I should. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe I don't beat around the bush - I shoot right through it! -- Herby H�nigsperger I don't have any solution but I certainly admire the problem. -- Ashleigh Brilliant I don't mind arguing with myself. Its when I lose that it bothers me. -- Richard Powers I don't want to bore you, but there's nobody else around for me to bore. I drink to make other people interesting. -- George Jean Nathan I hate it when people call me paranoid. It makes me feel persecuted. I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, I have seen the future and it is just like the present, only longer. -- Kehlog Albran I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. -- Albert Einstein I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent. -- Ashleigh Brilliant I never fail to convince an audience that the best thing they could do was to go away. I own my own body, but I share. I prefer the most unjust peace to the most righteous war. -- Cicero I really hate this damned machine I wish that they would sell it. It never does quite what I want But only what I tell it. I regret to say that we of the F.B.I. are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce. -- J. Edgar Hoover 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! -- George Bernard Shaw, "The Devil's Disciple" I smell a maze of twisty little passages. I think pop music has done more for oral intercourse than anything else that has ever happened, and vice versa. -- Frank Zappa I used to think I was indecisive, but now I'm not so sure. I want a girl that can swallow my pride. -- Frank Zappa, "Jewish Princess" I wish you humans would leave me alone. I wished, I never wished a wand of wishing. (Wishful thinking) I wouldn't advise playing catch with a giant. I wouldn't mind dying -- it's that business of having to stay dead that scares the shit out of me. -- R. Geis I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous. I'd like to meet the man who invented sex and see what he's working on now. I'm never through with a girl until I've had her three ways. -- J. F. Kennedy I'm not afraid of work... I can even sleep beside it. I'm not under the alkafluence of inkahol that some thinkle peep I am. It's just the drunker I sit here the longer I get. I'm prepared for all emergencies but totally unprepared for everyday life. I'm sorry if the correct way of doing things offends you. I've had one child. My husband wants to have another. I'd like to watch him have another. I've told you a million times not to exaggerate. -- The Young Ones If A = B and B = C, then A = C, except where void or prohibited by law. -- Roy Santoro If God doesn't destroy San Francisco, He should apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah. If God had intended Man to Smoke, He would have set him on Fire. If God had intended Men to Smoke, He would have put Chimneys in their Heads. If God had meant for us to be naked, we would have been born that way. If God had wanted people to give blow jobs, he wouldn't have given them teeth. If God had wanted us to use the metric system, Jesus would have had 10 apostles. If I traveled to the end of the rainbow As Dame Fortune did intend, Murphy would be there to tell me The pot's at the other end. -- Bert Whitney If Reagan is the answer, it must have been a VERY silly question. If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up. If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error. -- John Kenneth Galbraith If at first you don't succeed, redefine success. If bankers can count, how come they have eight windows and only four tellers? If it doesn't have recursive function calls, Real Software Engineers don't program in it. If it's not in the computer, it doesn't exist. If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament. If men couldn't fuck there'd be a bounty on their heads. If only I could be respected without having to be respectable. If only I could get that wonderful feeling of accomplishment without having to accomplish anything. If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed. -- Einstein If someone had told me I would be Pope one day, I would have studied harder. -- Pope John Paul I If the input editor has been designed to reject all bad input, an ingenious idiot will discover a method to get bad data past it. If the odds are a million to one against something occurring, chances are 50-50 it will. If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong. If there is a wrong way to do something, then someone will do it. -- Edward A. Murphy Jr. If thine eye offends thee, pluck it out. If thy dick offends thee, whack it off. If voting should change anything, there would be a law against it. If we do not change our direction we are likely to end up where we are headed. If you are afraid of loneliness, don't marry. -- Chekhov If you are too cute some monsters might be tempted to embrace you. If you can believe ten impossible things before breakfast, then you should join: The Church of Counterfactual Belief. The Church of Counterfactual Belief has been set up to cater to all who don't allow demonstrable truth to get in the way of their beliefs. In addition to creation science and the flatness of the earth, the following beliefs have been certified by Pope Duane as Church dogma: that there is a hole in the Earth at the North Pole from which UFOs come. that pi equals precisely 3.000. that sex can be enjoyed only by blacks and homosexuals. that Billy Joe Wilson (Hoopla, Miss.) has successfully squared the circle. that Harry Truman is still president, and doing a fine job. that pi equals precisely 22/7. Several other important counterfactual beliefs are presently being studied, including Reaganomics, A.I., and that the moon landings were done in a Hollywood special effects studio. These will be the subject of a forthcoming Papal Bull... If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars. -- J. Paul Getty If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly. If you can't understand it, it is intuitively obvious. If you cannot convince them, confuse them. -- Harry S. Truman If you disassemble and assemble something a couple of times, you will have two of them. If you drink, don't park. Accidents make people. If you explain so clearly that nobody can misunderstand, somebody will. If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some. If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think they'll hate you. If you meet somebody who tells you that he loves you more than anybody in the whole wide world, don't trust him. It means he experiments. If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way will promptly develop. If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage. But this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow enobled and none dare criticize it. If you think last Tuesday was a drag, wait till you see what happens tomorrow! If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments. -- Earl Wilson If you think sex is a pain in the ass, try different position. If you want to feel great, you must eat something real big. If you would keep a secret from an enemy, tell it not to a friend. Ignorance is the Mother of Devotion. -- Robert Burton Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows. -- Robert G. Ingersoll Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality. -- Jules de Gaultier Imbesi's Law with Freeman's Extension: In order for something to become clean, something else must become dirty; but you can get everything dirty without getting anything clean. Immanuel doesn't pun, he Kant. In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point. -- Friedrich Nietzsche In My Egotistical Opinion, most people's C programs should be indented six feet downward and covered with dirt. -- Blair P. Houghton Peter Principle: In an organization, each person rises to the level of his own incompetency. In any formula, constants (especially those obtained from handbooks) are to be treated as variables. In the long run, every program becomes rococco, and then rubble. -- Alan Perlis Insanity is hereditary. You get it from your kids. Interfere? Of course you should interfere! Always do what you're best at, I say. Iron Law of Distribution: Them that has, gets. Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me? -- Mae West Is there a Life before Death? Issawi's Laws of Progress: The Course of Progress: Most things get steadily worse. The Path of Progress: A shortcut is the longest distance between two points. It has just been discovered that research causes cancer in rats. It is a sad commentary on today's society that this fortune has to be classified as "offensive" simply because it contains the word "fuck". It is against the grain of modern education to teach children to program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be self-critical? -- Alan Perlis It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it's a pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their color. -- Voltaire It is bad luck to be superstitious. -- Andrew W. Mathis It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is lightly greased. -- Kehlog Albran It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa. It is easier to get forgiveness than permission. It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one. It is generally agreed that "Hello" is an appropriate greeting because if you entered a room and said "Goodbye," it could confuse a lot of people. -- Dolph Sharp It is impossible to defend perfectly against the attack of those who want to die. It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious. It is much easier to suggest solutions when you know nothing about the problem. It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail. -- Gore Vidal It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue. -- Voltaire It is said that the lonely eagle flies to the mountain peaks while the lowly ant crawls the ground, but cannot the soul of the ant soar as high as the eagle? It is the business of the future to be dangerous. -- Hawkwind It is when I struggle to be brief that I become obscure. -- Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace) It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others. It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag. It seems you keep overlooking a sign reading "No trespassing"! It takes a brave man to admit his mistakes. Especially in a paternity hearing. It takes a special kind of courage to face what we all have to face. It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give up becuase by that time I was too famous. It was a Roman who said it was sweet to die for one's country. The Greeks never said it was sweet to die for anything. They had no vital lies. -- Edith Hamilton, "The Greek Way" It was a book to kill time for those who liked it better dead. It's Fabulous! We haven't seen anything like it in the last half an hour! -- Macy's It's all a matter of life and death, so beware of the undead. It's better to be pissed off than pissed on. It's not the ups and downs of love, it's the ins and outs. It's only by NOT taking the human race seriously that I retain what fragments of my once considerable mental powers I still possess. -- Roger Noe Jehovah is an alien and still threatens this planet! Jenkinson's Law: It won't work. Jesus Saves, Moses Invests, But only Buddha pays Dividends. Jesus died for your sins. Make it worth his time. Jesus was killed by a Moral Majority. Johnson's First Law: When any mechanical contrivance fails, it will do so at the most inconvenient possible time. Jone's Law: The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone to blame it on. Jone's Motto: Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate. Jones' First Law: Anyone who makes a significant contribution to any field of endeavor, and stays in that field long enough, becomes an obstruction to its progress -- in direct proportion to the importance of their original contribution. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you. Just because your doctor has a name for your condition doesn't mean he knows what it is. Just do it! Just once, I wish we would encounter an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets. -- The Brigader, from Dr. Who Justice is incidental to law and order. -- J. Edgar Hoover Katz' Law: Man and nations will act rationally when all other possibilities have been exhausted. Keep America beautiful. Swallow your beer cans. Keep emotionally active. Cater to your favorite neurosis. Kicking the terminal doesn't hurt the monsters. Kindness is the beginning of cruelty. -- Muad'dib Kinkler's First Law: Responsibility always exceeds authority. Kinkler's Second Law: All the easy problems have been solved. Know thyself. If you need help, call the C.I.A. LAGNAF: Let's All Get Naked And Fuck! LISP-programmers say: "Guess how many parentheses are needed to do this!" Prolog-programmers say: "How can I do it in reasonable time ?" C-programmers say: "Can You guess what this->program does ?" Forth-programmers say: "third stack in is what Guess ?" Basic-'programmers' say: "Where did I goto hell ?" Fortran- and Cobol-slaves cry: "How can I do this ?" Laissez Faire Economics is the theory that if each acts like a vulture, all will end as doves. Large cats can be dangerous, but a little pussy never hurt anyone. Large increases in cost with questionable increases in performance can be tolerated only in race horses and women. -- Lord Kalvin Laugh at your problems; everybody else does. Law of Communications: The inevitable result of improved and enlarged communications between different levels in a hierarchy is a vastly increased area of misunderstanding. Law of Probable Dispersal: Whatever it is that hits the fan will not be evenly distributed. Law of Selective Gravity: An object will fall so as to do the most damage. Jenning's Corollary: The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet. Law of the Perversity of Nature: You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter. Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Axiom: No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats -- approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less. Learn how to spell. Play Hack. Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse. Legalize free-enterprise murder: why should governments have all the fun? Leibowitz's Rule: When hammering a nail, you will never hit your finger if you hold the hammer with both hands. Leprechauns hide their gold in a secret room. Let Jesus be your anchor! So when Satan rocks your boat, throw Jesus overboard! Let your fingers do the walking on the yulkjhnb keys. Let's face it: this time you're not going to win. Lewis's Law of Travel: The first piece of luggage out of the chute doesn't belong to anyone, ever. Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge. -- Gauguin Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while. Life is like a penis: when it's soft you can't beat it, and when it's hard you get fucked. Life is like a shit sandwich. The more bread you have, the less shit you have to eat. Life is the childhood of our immortality. -- Goethe Life is too important to take seriously. -- Corky Siegel Life may have no meaning -- or even worse, it may have a meaning of which I disapprove. Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code. Line Printer paper is strongest at the perforations. Lisp programmers do it recursively. Lisp programmers have to be bound (to-do 'it)... Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the Sun. Living your life is a task so difficult, it has never been attempted before. Lo! Men have become the tool of their tools. -- Henry David Thoreau Lockwood's Long Shot: The chances of getting eaten up by a lion on Main Street aren't one in a million, but once would be enough. Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence. Looking for a monster -- use a staff of monster summoning. Loose bits sink chips. Lord, what fools these mortals be! -- William Shakespeare, "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" Love at first sight is one of the greatest labor-saving devices the world has ever seen. Love cannot be much younger than the lust for murder. -- Sigmund Freud Love comes in spurts. -- Devo, "Please Please" Love does not make the world go around, just up and down a bit. Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished. -- Goethe Love is just for now...herpes lasts forever. Love means having to say you're sorry every five minutes. Love thy neighbor as thyself, but choose your neighborhood. -- Louise Beal Love will make you forget time, and time will make you forget love. Love your enemies: they'll go crazy trying to figure out what you're up to. Lowery's Law: If it jams -- force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway. Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology: There's always one more bug. Machines certainly can solve problems, store information, correlate, and play games -- but not with pleasure. -- Leo Rosten Maier's Law: If the facts don't conform to the theory, they must be disposed of. Corollaries: (1) The bigger the theory, the better. (2) The experiment may be considered a success if no more than 50% of the observed measurements must be discarded to obtain a correspondence with the theory. Main's Law: For every action there is an equal and opposite government program. Maintainer's Motto: If we can't fix it, it ain't broke. Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain. -- Lily Tomlin Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them. -- Samuel Butler Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else -- unless it is an enemy. -- Albert Einstein Many a wife thinks her husband is the world's greatest lover. But she can never catch him at it. Many nice things suck. Many pages make a thick book. Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside desperate to get out. -- Montaigne Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly. -- Voltaire Math is like love -- a simple idea but it can get complicated. -- R. Drabek Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language, and forthwith it is something entirely different. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Mathematicians do it in groups. Mathematicians do it in theory. Mathematicians take it to the limit. Matter cannot be created or destroyed, nor can it be returned without a receipt. May the Carrier be with you. May the Source be with you...always. Maybe Computer Science should be in the College of Theology. -- R. S. Barton McGowan's Madison Avenue Axiom: If an item is advertised as "under $50", you can bet it's not $19.95. Measure twice because you can only cut once. Measure with a micrometer. Mark with chalk. Cut with an axe. Meet yourself! Commit suicide and type "hack" Memory fault -- core...uh...um...core...Oh dammit, I forget! Memory flaw - core dumped. Micro Credo: Never trust a computer bigger than you can lift. Might as well be frank, monsieur. It would take a miracle to get you out of Casablanca and the Germans have outlawed miracles. Miksch's Law: If a string has one end, then it has another end. Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms. -- Groucho Marx Military justice is to justice what military music is to music. -- Groucho Marx Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it. -- Russell Baker Modern man is the missing link between apes and human beings. Mollison's Bureaucracy Hypothesis: If an idea can survive a bureaucratic review and be implemented it wasn't worth doing. Monday is an awful way to spend one seventh of your life. Money can't buy happiness -- but somehow it's more comfortable to cry in a Porsche than in a Lada. Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons. Money is the root of all evil, and man needs roots. Money is the sixth sense that makes it possible to enjoy the five others. Monsters come from nowhere to hit you everywhere. Monsters sleep because you are boring, not because they ever get tired. Most legislators are so dumb that they couldn't pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were printed on the heel. Most monsters prefer minced meat. That's why they are hitting you. Most of the bugs in Hack are on the floor. Most people wouldn't know music if it came up and bit them on the ass. -- Frank Zappa Most rumors are just as misleading as this one. Mr. Cole's Axiom: The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the population is growing. Much ado Nothing Happens. Murphy's Law of Research: Enough research will tend to support your theory. Murphy's Law: If anything can go wrong, it will. My girlfriend's favorite erotic position is bending over my credit cards. My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right. My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed. -- Christopher Morley NEWS FLASH!! Today the East German pole-vault champion became the West German pole-vault champion. Naeser's Law: You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it damnfoolproof. Nature abhors a hero. For one thing, he violates the law of conservation of energy. For another, how can it be the survival of the fittest when the fittest keeps putting himself in situations where he is most likely to be creamed? -- Solomon Short Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night, God said, "Let Newton be," and all was light. It did not last; the devil howling "Ho! Let Einstein be!" restored the status quo. Need money? Sell your corpses to a tin factory. NetHack is a fantasy, in fact you're dreaming. NetHack is addictive. Too late, you're already hooked. Never be led astray onto the path of virtue. Never call a man a fool. Borrow from him. Never eat more than you can lift. -- Miss Piggy Never go into the dungeon at midnight. Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat. Never let your schooling interfere with your education. Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right. -- Salvor Hardin, "Foundation" Never make anything simple and efficient when a way can be found to make it complex and wonderful. Never mind the monsters hitting you: they just replace the charwomen. Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance. -- Sam Brown, "The Washington Post", January 26, 1977 Never put off till tomorrow what you can avoid all together. Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. There might be a law against it by that time. Never settle with words what you can accomplish with a flame thrower. Never tell a lie unless it is absolutely convenient. Never trust anybody whose arm is bigger than your leg. Never try to outstubborn a cat. -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love" Never use "etc." -- it makes people think there is more where there is not or that there is not space to list it all, etc. Never use your best weapon to engrave a curse. Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's supposed to do. -- R. A. Heinlein Newton's Fourth Law: Every action has an equal and opposite satisfaction. Newton's Little-Known Seventh Law: A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead. Ninety-Ninety Rule of Project Schedules: The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of the time, and the last ten percent takes the other ninety percent. Nirvana? Thats the place where the powers that be and their friends hang out. -- Zonker Harris No committee could ever come up with anything as revolutionary as a camel -- anything as practical and as perfectly designed to perform effectively under such difficult conditions. -- Laurence J. Peter No good deed goes unpunished. -- Clare Boothe Luce No guest is so welcome in a friend's house that he will not become nuiscance after three days. -- Titus Maccius Plautus No man in the world has more courage than the man who can stop after eating one peanut. -- Channing Pollock No man would listen to you talk if he didn't know it was his turn next. -- E. W. Howe No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife in the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style. No matter where you stand, no matter how far or fast you flee, when it hits the fan, as much as possible will be propelled in your direction, and almost none will be returned to the source. -- John L. Shelton No one gets too old to learn a new way of being stupid. No proper program contains an indication which as an operator-applied occurrence identifies an operator-defining occurrence which as an indication-applied occurrence identifies an indication-defining occurrence different from the one identified by the given indication as an indication-applied occurrence. -- ALGOL 68 Report No, "Eureka" is Greek for "This bath is too hot." -- Dr. Who Nobody expects The Spanish Inquisition. Non-Reciprocal Laws of Expectations: Negative expectations yield negative results. Positive expectations yield negative results. Nondeterminism means never having to say you are wrong. Nostalgia isn't what it used to be. Not Hercules could have knock'd out his brains, for he had none. -- William Shakespeare Not all rumors are as misleading as this one. Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree. -- Professor W. Not until a program has been in production for at least six months will the most harmful error then be discovered. Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing. Nothing cures insomnia like the realization that it's time to get up. Nothing is better than Sex. Masturbation is better than nothing. Therefore, Masturbation is better than Sex. Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it. -- Andrew Young Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth. -- Nero Wolfe Nothing recedes like success. -- Walter Winchell Nymphs are blondes. Are you a gentleman? O'Riordan's Theorem: Brains x Beauty = Constant. Purmal's Corollary: As the limit of (Brains x Beauty) goes to infinity, availability goes to zero. O'Toole's Commentary on Murphy's Law: Murphy was an optimist. OK, now let's look at four dimensions on the blackboard. -- Dr. Joy Obscenity is the crutch of inarticulate motherfuckers. Official Project Stages: (1) Uncritical Acceptance (2) Wild Enthusiasm (3) Dejected Disillusionment (4) Total Confusion (5) Search for the Guilty (6) Punishment of the Innocent (7) Promotion of the Non-participants Ogden's Law: The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch up. Oh John, let's not park here. Oh John, let's not park. Oh John, let's not. Oh John, let's. Oh John. Oh. Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man. -- Trotsky Old programmers never die. They just branch to a new address. Old soldiers never die. Young ones do. Oliver's Law: Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it. On Brassieres: Russian : Uplifts the masses -- Salvation Army : Raises the fallen American: Makes mountains out of molehills On Monday mornings I am dedicated to the proposition that all men are created jerks. -- H. Allen Smith, "Let the Crabgrass Grow" On a paper submitted by a physicist colleague: "This isn't right. This isn't even wrong." -- Wolfgang Pauli Once upon a girl there was a time... Once you've tried to change the world you find it's a whole bunch easier to change your mind. One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they never have to stop and answer the phone. One homunculus a day keeps the doctor away. One nice thing about egotists: they don't talk about other people. 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 One planet is all you get. Only through hard work and perseverance can one truly suffer. Operation coded OVERKILL has started now. Operators mount anything. Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds. Biochemistry is the study of carbon compounds that crawl. -- Mike Adams Osborn's Law: Variables won't; constants aren't. Others look to you for stability, so hide when you bite your nails. Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend: and inside a dog, it's too dark to read. -- Groucho Marx Overflow on /dev/null, please empty the bit bucket. Overload -- core meltdown sequence initiated. PLUNDERER'S THEME (to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocius) Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation. If you do the things we say, then you'll soon rule the nation. Kill your foes and enemies and then kill your relations. Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation. POLITICIAN: From the Greek 'poly' ("many") and the French 'tete' ("head" or "face," as in 'tete-a-tete': head to head or face to face). Hence 'polytetien', a person of two or more faces. -- Martin Pitt Paradise is exactly like where you are right now...only much, much better. -- Laurie Anderson Parallel lines never meet, unless you bend one or both of them. Paranoia is simply an optimistic outlook on life. Paranoid schizophrenics outnumber their enemies at least two to one. Paranoids are people, too; they have their own problems. It's easy to criticize, but if everybody hated you, you'd be paranoid too. -- D. J. Hicks Pardo's First Postulate: Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening. Arnold's Addendum: Anything not fitting into these categories causes cancer in rats. Parker's Law: Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone. Parkinson's Fifth Law: If there is a way to delay in important decision, the good bureaucracy, public or private, will find it. Parkinson's Fourth Law: The number of people in any working group tends to increase regardless of the amount of work to be done. Parts that positively cannot be assembled in improper order will be. Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. -- Eric Hoffer Paul's Law: You can't fall off the floor. Paulg's Law: In America, it's not how much an item costs, it's how much you save. People usually get what's coming to them...unless it's been mailed. People who claim they don't let little things bother them have never slept in a room with a single mosquito. People who have no faults are terrible; there is no way of taking advantage of them. People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them that Benjamin Franklin said it first. Pereant, inquit, qui ante nos nostra dixerunt. [Confound those who have said our remarks before us.] -- Aelius Donatus Peter's Law of Substitution: Look after the molehills, and the mountains will look after themselves. Philogyny recapitulates erogeny; erogeny recapitulates philogyny. Philosophy will clip an angel's wings. -- John Keats Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. -- Don Marquis Plastic... Aluminum... These are the inheritors of the Universe! Flesh and Blood have had their day... and that day is past! -- Green Lantern Comics Pohl's law: Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it. Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river. -- Nikita Khrushchev Politicians do it to everyone. Poverty begins at home. Predestination was doomed from the start. Press any key to start formatting the hard disk. Preudhomme's Law of Window Cleaning: It's on the other side. Printers do it by wrinkling the sheets. Procrastinators do it tomorrow. Prostitution is the only business where you can go into the hole and still come out ahead. Pryor's Observation: How long you live has nothing to do with how long you are going to be dead. Psychiatrists say that one out of four people are mentally ill. Check three friends. If they're ok, you're it. Psychiatrists say that one out of four people are mentally ill. Check Push something hard enough and it will fall over. Putt's Law: Technology is dominated by two types of people: Those who understand what they do not manage. Those who manage what they do not understand. Q: Do you know what the death rate around here is? A: One per person. Q: How many existentialists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A: Two. One to screw it in and one to observe how the lightbulb itself symbolizes a single incandescent beacon of subjective reality in a netherworld of endless absurdity reaching out toward a maudlin cosmos of nothingness. Q: What is "SMOORPLAY"? A: It's what SMURFS do before they SMUCK, of course! Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur. (Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.) Quigley's Law: Whoever has any authority over you, no matter how small, will attempt to use it. Quote of The Day: ' RULES OF EATING -- THE BRONX DIETER'S CREED (1) Never eat on an empty stomach. (2) Never leave the table hungry. (3) When traveling, never leave a country hungry. (4) Enjoy your food. (5) Enjoy your companion's food. (6) Really taste your food. It may take several portions to accomplish this, especially if subtly seasoned. (7) Really feel your food. Texture is important. Compare, for example, the texture of a turnip to that of a brownie. Which feels better against your cheeks? (8) Never eat between snacks, unless it's a meal. (9) Don't feel you must finish everything on your plate. You can always eat it later. (10) Avoid any wine with a childproof cap. (11) Avoid blue food. -- Richard Smit, "The Bronx Diet" Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives. Read the manual before entering the cave - You might get killed otherwise. Reality corrupts. Absolute reality corrupts absolutely. Reality is for people who lack imagination. Reality is for those who can't face Science Fiction. Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity. -- Alvy Ray Smith Rejection: When you're masturbating and your hand falls asleep. Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin. -- Anatole France 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 Relying on a dog might turn you in a dog addict. Renning's Maxim: Man is the highest animal. Man does the classifying. Reporter (to Mahatma Gandhi): Mr Gandhi, what do you think of Western Civilization? Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea. Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing. -- Werner von Braun Resisting temptation is easier when you think you'll probably get another chance later on. Revenge is sleeping with your enemy's wife. Sweet revenge is the realization that she's a lousy lay. Rhode's Law: When any principle, law, tenet, probability, happening, circumstance, or result can in no way be directly, indirectly, empirically, or circuitously proven, derived, implied, inferred, induced, deducted, estimated, or scientifically guessed, it will always for the purpose of convenience, expediency, political advantage, material gain, or personal comfort, or any combination of the above, or none of the above, be unilaterally and unequivocally assumed, proclaimed, and adhered to as absolute truth to be undeniably, universally, immutably, and infinitely so, until such time as it becomes advantageous to assume otherwise, maybe. Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time. -- Steven Wright Rocky's Lemma of Innovation Prevention Unless the results are known in advance, funding agencies will reject the proposal. Row (3x) that boat gently down the stream, Charon (4x), death is but a dream. Rudin's Law: If there is a wrong way to do something, most people will do it every time. Rule 46, Oxford Union Society, London: Any member introducing a dog into the Society's premises shall be liable to a fine of one pound. Any animal leading a blind person shall be deemed to be a cat. Rule of Creative Research: (1) Never draw what you can copy. (2) Never copy what you can trace. (3) Never trace what you can cut out and paste down. Rule of Defactualization: Information deteriorates upward through bureaucracies. Rule of Feline Frustration: When your cat has fallen asleep on your lap and looks utterly content and adorable, you will suddenly have to go to the bathroom. Rule of the Great: When people you greatly admire appear to be thinking deep thoughts, they probably are thinking about lunch. Rules: (1) The boss is always right. (2) When the boss is wrong, refer to rule 1. Satellite Safety Tip #14: If you see a bright streak in the sky coming at you, duck. Sauron is alive in Argentina. Save a forest -- eat a beaver. Save a mouse -- eat a pussy. Save energy: be apathetic. Save the whales. Collect the whole set. Schapiro's Explanation: The grass is always greener on the other side -- but that's because they use more manure. Schizophrenia beats being alone. Science is what happens when preconception meets verification. Scientists were preparing an experiment to ask the ultimate question. They had worked for months gathering one each of every computer that was built. Finally the big day was at hand.All the computers were linked together.They asked the question, "Is there a God?".Lights started blinking, flashing and blinking some more.Suddenly, there was a loud crash, and a bolt of lightning came down from the sky, struck the computers, and welded all the connections permanently together."There is now", came the reply. Scott's first Law: No matter what goes wrong, it will probably look right. Scott's second Law: When an error has been detected and corrected, it will be found to have been wrong in the first place. Corollary: After the correction has been found in error, it will be impossible to fit the original quantity back into the equation. Screw up your courage! You've screwed up everything else. Second Law of Business Meetings: If there are two possible ways to spell a person's name, you will pick the wrong one. Corollary: If there is only one way to spell a name, you will spell it wrong, anyway. Second Law of Hacking: first in, first out. Seeing is deceiving. It's eating that's believing. -- James Thurber Self Test for Paranoia: You know you have it when you can't think of anything that's your own fault. Serocki's Stricture: Marriage is always a bachelor's last option. Sex discriminates against the shy and ugly. Sex is dirty, but only if you do it right. Sex is low in calories, and *oooh* that aftertaste! Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question. "Yes" is the answer. -- Swami X Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation... the other eight are unimportant. -- Henry Miller Sex is the mathematics urge sublimated. -- M. C. Reed. Sex is what women have and men want. Shaw's Principle: Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it. She's fine, upstanding, and wonderful laying down. She's the kind of woman you could fall madly in bed with. Show me a man who is a good loser and I'll show you a man who is playing golf with his boss. Show respect for age. Drink good Scotch for a change. Silverman's Law: If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will. Simon's Law: Everything put together falls apart sooner or later. Since we have to speak well of the dead, let's knock them while they're alive. -- John Sloan Since we're all here, we must not be all there. -- Bob "Mountain" Beck Skinner's Constant (or Flannagan's Finagling Factor): That quantity which, when multiplied by, divided by, added to, or subtracted from the answer you get, gives you the answer you should have gotten. Slang is language that takes off its coat, spits on its hands, and goes to work. Slick's Three Laws of the Universe: (1) Nothing in the known universe travels faster than a bad check. (2) A quarter-ounce of chocolate = four pounds of fat. (3) There are two types of dirt: the dark kind, which is attracted to light objects, and the light kind, which is attracted to dark objects. So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence. -- Bertrand Russell So, if there's no God, who changes the water? -- New Yorker cartoon of two goldfish in a bowl Sodd's Second Law: Sooner or later, the worst possible set of circumstances is bound to occur. Sodomy is a pain in the ass. Some men are alive simply because it is against the law to kill them. -- Ed Howe Some people live life in the fast lane. You're in oncoming traffic. Some points to remember [about animals]: (1) Don't go to sleep under big animals, e.g., elephants, rhinoceri, hippopotamuses; (2) Don't put animals with sharp teeth or poisonous fangs down the front of your clothes; (3) Don't pat certain animals, e.g., crocodiles and scorpions or dogs you have just kicked. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" Some women are like musical glasses. To keep them in tune they must be wet. -- Samuel Coleridge Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world. -- Lily Tomlin Sometimes, you just gotta say "What the fuck." -- Risky Business Speak softly and carry a +6 two-handed sword. Speak softly and carry a big stick. Speak softly and carry a megawatt laser. Speak softly and carry the Staff of Archmage. Speak softly and own a big, mean Doberman. -- Dave Millman Speed is subsittute fo accurancy. Speer's 1st Law of Proofreading: The visibility of an error is inversely proportional to the number of times you have looked at it. Spelling is a lossed art. Stability itself is nothing else than a more sluggish motion. Statisticians do it with 95% confidence. Statisticians probably do it. Steele's Plagiarism of Somebody's Philosophy: Everybody should believe in something -- I believe I'll have another drink. Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle. Stult's Report: Our problems are mostly behind us. What we have to do now is fight the solutions. Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crud. Subtlety is the art of saying what you think and getting out of the way before it is understood. Success is like a fart -- only your own smells nice. -- James P. Hogan Succumb to natural tendencies. Be hateful and boring. Support wildlife -- vote for an orgy. Support your local police force -- steal!! Sure he's sharp as a razor...he's a two-dimensional pinhead! Surprise your boss. Get to work on time. Swipple's Rule of Order: He who shouts the loudest has the floor. Tact is the ability to tell a man he has an open mind when he has a hole in his head. Take a long worm from the rear, according to its mate it's a lot more fun. Take everything in stride. Trample anyone who gets in your way. Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to your execution is not generally understood by less advanced life forms, and they'll call you crazy. -- "Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul" Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish. -- Euripides Talkers are no good doers. -- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI" Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself. -- Friedrich Nietzsche Teach children to be polite and courteous in the home, and, when he grows up, he will never be able to edge his car onto a freeway. Teachers do it with class. Teamwork is essential -- it allows you to blame someone else. Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards. -- Aldous Huxley Tell a man there are 300 billion stars in the universe and he'll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint on it and he'll have to touch to be sure. Test makers do it: (a) sometimes (b) always (c) never Test-tube babies shouldn't throw stones. That girl could suck the chrome off a bumper. That must be wonderful! I don't understand it at all. That woman speaks eight languages and can't say "no" in any of them. -- Dorothy Parker The Abrams' Principle: The shortest distance between two points is off the wall. The Briggs/Chase Law of Program Development: To determine how long it will take to write and debug a program, take your best estimate, multiply that by two, add one, and convert to the next higher units. The C Programming Language -- A language which combines the flexibility of assembly language with the readability of assembly language. The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost would never throw the Devil out of Heaven as long as they still need him as a fourth for bridge. -- Letter in New Libertarian Notes #19 The Fifth Rule: You have taken yourself too seriously. The First Rule of Program Optimization: Don't do it. The Gods don't like competition. The Golden Rule of Arts and Sciences: The one who has the gold makes the rules. The Heineken Uncertainty Principle: You can never be sure how many beers you had last night. The IQ of the group is the lowest IQ of a member of the group divided by the number of people in the group. The Kennedy Constant: Don't get mad -- get even. The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. -- Anatole France The Leprechaun Gold Tru$t is no division of the Magic Memory Vault. The Lord gave us farmers two strong hands so we could grab as much as we could with both of them. -- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22" The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. -- Macaulay, "History of England, I" The Real Man's Arctic Breakfast: Ingredients: one bottle of whisky, ten pounds of raw meat. Throw the meat to huskies. Drink the whisky. The Real Man's Bloody Mary: Ingredients: vodka, tomato juice, Tobasco, Worcestershire sauce, A-1 steak sauce, ice, salt, pepper, celery. Fill a large tumbler with vodka. Throw all the other ingredients away. The Roman Rule The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the one who is doing it. The Second Rule of Program Optimization (for experts only!): Don't do it yet. -- Michael Jackson The Story of Creation or The Myth of Urk In the beginning there was data. The data was without form and null, and darkness was upon the face of the console; and the Spirit of IBM was moving over the face of the market. And DEC said, "Let there be registers"; and there were registers. And DEC saw that they carried; and DEC separated the data from the instructions. DEC called the data Stack, and the instructions they called Code. And there was evening and there was morning, one interrupt... -- Rico Tudor The Street finds its own uses for technology. -- William Gibson The air is positively magic in here. Better wear a negative armor. The beginning of terror is the suspicion of ones own mortality. The end of terror is the surety of it. The best defense against logic is ignorance. The best thing about growing older is that it takes such a long time. The biggest difference between time and space is that you can't reuse time. -- Merrick Furst The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning, and does not stop until you get to work. The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy. The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animals. Some of their most esteemed inventions have no other apparent purpose, for example, the dinner party of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics. -- H. L. Mencken The chief cause of problems is solutions. The chief danger in life is that you may take too may precautions. -- Alfred Adler The church is near but the road is icy; the bar is far away but I will walk carefully. -- Russian Proverb The church saves sinners, but science seeks to stop their manufacture. -- Elbert Hubbard The cost of living hasn't affected its popularity. The cost of living is going up, and the chance of living is going down. The defense attorney was hammering away at the plaintiff: "You claim," he jeered, "that my client came at you with a broken bottle in his hand. But is it not true, that you had something in YOUR hand?" "Yes," he admitted, "his wife. Very charming, of course, but not much good in a fight." The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. -- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice" The devil finds work for idle circuits to do. The early worm gets the bird. The easiest way to figure the cost of living is to take your income and add ten percent. The economy depends about as much on economists as the weather does on weather forecasters. -- Jean-Paul Kauffmann The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson The end of the world will occur at 3:00 p.m., this Friday, with symposium to follow. The fact that it works is immaterial. -- L. Ogborn The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it. -- Abbie Hoffman The first myth of management is that it exists. The second myth of management is that success equals skill. -- Robert Heller The first rule of magic is simple. Don't waste your time waving your hands and hoping when a rock or a club will do. -- McCloctnik the Lucid The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. -- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI", Part IV The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it. The goal of science is to build better mousetraps. The goal of nature is to build better mice. The gods gave man fire and he invented fire engines. They gave him love and he invented marriage. The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell. -- St. Augustine The good die young -- because they see it's no use living if you've got to be good. The greatest lies of all time: (1) I love you. (2) This won't hurt a bit. (3) The Mercedes is paid for. (4) The check is in the mail. (5) I was just going to call you. (6) I've always worn cowboy boots. (7) I swear I won't come in your mouth. (8) Of course I'll respect you in the morning. (9) We have a really challenging assignment for you. (10) I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you. The hands that help are better far than the lips that pray. -- Robert G. Ingersoll The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax. -- Albert Einstein The human brain is like an enormous fish -- it is flat and slimy and has gills through which it can see. -- Monty Python The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system. The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange protein -- it rejects it. -- P. Medawar The idea is to die young as late as possible. -- Ashley Montagu The identical is equal to itself, since it is different. -- Franco Spisani The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit longer. -- Henry Kissinger The intelligence of any discussion diminishes with the square of the number of participants. -- Adam Walinsky The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an approaching train. The light at the end of the tunnel may be an oncoming dragon. The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been. -- Alan Ashley-Pitt The meek can have the Earth -- rest of us have other plans. The meek shall inherit the Earth -- they are too weak to refuse. The men sat sipping their tea in silence. After a while the klutz said, "Life is like a bowl of sour cream." "Like a bowl of sour cream?" asked the other. "Why?" "How should I know? What am I, a philosopher?" The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work. -- R. Bach, "Illusions" The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there will be. -- Lao Tsu The moss on the tree does not fear the talons of the hawk. The most common form of marriage proposal: "YOU'RE WHAT!?" The number of people watching you is directly proportional to the stupidity of your action. The older a man gets, the farther he had to walk to school as a boy. The only real way to look younger is not to be born so soon. -- Charles Schulz, "Things I've Had to Learn Over and Over and Over" The only thing that stops God from sending another flood is that the first one was useless. -- Chamfort The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. -- Hegel I know guys can't learn from yesterday...Hegel must be taking the long view. -- John Brunner, "Stand on Zanzibar" The opossum is a very sophisticated animal. It doesn't even get up until 5 or 6 p.m. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. -- Niels Bohr The past always looks better than it was. It's only pleasant because it isn't here. -- Finley Peter Dunne (Mr. Dooley) The pleasure is momentary, The position ridiculous, The expense damnable. -- Chesterfield, on sex The primary purpose of the DATA statement is to give names to constants; instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every appearance, the variable PI can be given that value with a DATA statement and used instead of the longer form of the constant. This also simplifies modifying the program, should the value of pi change. -- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers The probability of someone watching you is proportional to the stupidity of your action. The problem...is that we have run out of dinosaurs to form oil with. The quality of a blow-job is determined by the length of sheet you have to pull out of your ass. The revolution will not be televised. The reward of a thing well done is to have done it. -- Emerson The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom. -- Justice Douglas The ripest fruit falls first. -- William Shakespeare, "Richard II" The road to hell is paved with good intentions. And littered with sloppy analysis! The secret of happiness is total disregard of everybody. The seven eyes of Ningauble the Wizard floated back to his hood as he reported to Fafhrd: "I have seen much, yet cannot explain all. The Gray Mouser is exactly twenty-five feet below the deepest cellar in the palace of Gilpkerio Kistomerces. Even though twenty-four parts in twenty-five of him are dead, he is alive. "Now about Lankhmar. She's been invaded, her walls breached everywhere and desperate fighting is going on in the streets, by a fierce host which out-numbers Lankhmar's inhabitants by fifty to one -- and equipped with all modern weapons. Yet you can save the city." "How?" demanded Fafhrd. Ningauble shrugged. "You're a hero. You should know." -- Fritz Leiber, from "The Swords of Lankhmar" The shortest distance between two points is under construction. -- Noelie Alito The so-called lessons of history are for the most part the rationalizations of the victors. History is written by the survivors. -- Max Lerner The superfluous is very necessary. -- Voltaire The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men feeling their way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from the other, whom he assumes to have perfect vision. Each tends to ascribe to the other side a consistency, forsight and coherence that its own experience belies. Of course, even two blind men can do enormous damage to each other, not to speak of the room. -- Henry Kissinger The surest sign that a man is in love is when he divorces his wife. The thief Left it behind -- The moon at the window. -- Ryokan The three most important parts of a stove: lifter, leg, and poker. The three sexual positions during preganancy. During the first four months: Missionary style During the second four months: Doggie style And during the last month: Coyote style Coyote style? You sit by the hole and howl. The time spent on any item of the agenda [of a finance committee] will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved. -- C. N. Parkinson The trouble with being punctual is that people think you have nothing more important to do. The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was. The trouble with money is it costs too much. The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And vice versa. The two most common things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity. The universe does not have laws -- it has habits, and habits can be broken. The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination -- but the combination is locked up in the safe. -- Peter DeVries The value of a program is directly proportional to the weight of its output. The very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence. -- Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views...which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering. -- Doctor Who, "Face of Evil" The volume of paper expands to fill the available briefcases. -- Jerry Brown The wages of sin are high -- unless you know someone who does it for nothing. The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity that would be clearly understood. -- Alexander Haig The way to make a small fortune in the commodities market is to start with a large fortune. The world is coming to an end! Repent and return those library books! The world's as ugly as sin, And almost as delightful -- Frederick Locker-Lampson Theft from a single author is plagiarism. Theft from two is comparative study. Theft from three or more is research. There are many ways to say "I love you", but fucking is the fastest. There are really not many jobs that actually require a penis or a vagina, and all other occupations should be open to everyone. -- Gloria Steinem There are some micro-organisms that exhibit characteristics of both plants and animals. When exposed to light they undergo photosynthesis; and when the lights go out, they turn into animals. But then again, don't we all? There are those who claim that magic is like the tide; that it swells and fades over the surface of the earth, collecting in concentrated pools here and there, almost disappearing from other spots, leaving them parched for wonder. There are also those who believe that if you stick your fingers up your nose and blow, it will increase your intelligence. -- "The Teachings of Ebenezum, Volume VII" There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics. -- Disraeli There are three possibilities: Pioneer's solar panel has turned away >from the sun; there's a large meteor blocking transmission; or someone loaded Star Trek 3.2 into our video processor. There are three things I always forget. Names, faces -- the third I can't remember. -- Italo Svevo There are three ways to get something done: (1) Do it yourself. (2) Hire someone to do it for you. (3) Forbid your kids to do it. There are two sides to every divorce: yours and the shithead's. There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make is so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. -- C. A. R. Hoare There are two ways to write error-free programs. Only the third one works. There are very few personal problems that cannot be solved through a suitable application of high explosives. There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full. -- Henry Kissinger There has been an alarming increase in the number of things you know nothing about. There is a certain impertinence in allowing oneself to be burned for an opinion. -- Anatole France There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum. -- Arthur C. Clarke There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home. -- Ken Olson, President of DEC, World Future Society Convention, 1977 There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it. -- G. B. Shaw There is no substitute for good manners, except, perhaps, fast reflexes. There is nothing so easy but that it becomes difficult when you do it reluctantly. -- Publius Terentius Afer There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. -- C. S. Lewis, "The Chronicles of Narnia" There was something about her I liked, but I couldn't put my finger on it. There's a fine line between courage and foolishness. Too bad its not a fence. There's an old proverb that says just about whatever you want it to. There's no future in time travel. There's no heavier burden than a great potential. There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes. -- Dr. Who There's no real need to do housework -- after four years it doesn't get any worse. They make a desert and call it peace. -- Tacitus They told me I was gullible...and I believed them! They're only trying to make me look paranoid. They're unfriendly, which is fortunate, really. They'd be difficult to like. -- Avon Things are more like they used to be than they are now. Think of your family tonight. Try to crawl home after the computer crashes. Think sideways! -- Edward De Bono Third Law of Hacking: the last blow counts most. This fortune cookie is property of Fortune Cookies, Inc. This is the Leprechaun Law: every purse has a price. This limerick is --SO--FILTHY-- that it would offend you. So I'll put "di-dah" for the filthy words: Di-dah, di-dah, di-dah di-dah, Di-dah di-dah di-dah, di-dah; di-dah di-dah di-dah? Di-dah di-dah di-dah. Di-dah di-dah, di-dah di-fuck. This novel is not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with great force. -- Dorothy Parker This sentence contradicts itself -- no actually it doesn't. -- Hofstadter This will be a memorable month -- no matter how hard you try to forget it. Those of you who think you know everything are very annoying to those of us who do. Those who can't write, write manuals. Those who can, do. Those who can't, simulate. Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. -- John F. Kennedy Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. -- Frederick Douglass Thou shalt not omit adultery. Though a program be but three lines long, someday it will have to be maintained. -- The Tao of Programming Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at once. To a Real Woman, every ejaculation is premature. To be is to do. -- I. Kant To do is to be. -- A. Sartre Do-be-do-be-do. -- F. Sinatra To be is to do. -- I. Kant To do is to be. -- A. Sartre Yabba-Dabba-Doo! -- F. Flinstone To be or not to be. -- Shakespeare To do is to be. -- Nietzsche To be is to do. -- Sartre Do be do be do. -- Frank Sinatra To be responsive at this time, though I will simply say, and therefore this is a repeat of what I said previously, that which I am unable to offer in response is based on information available to make no such statement. To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and whatever you hit, call it the target. To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer. To err is human, to forgive, beyond the scope of the Operating System. To err is human, to moo bovine. To generalize is to be an idiot. -- William Blake To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three men, two of them absent. To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk. -- Thomas Edison To iterate is human, to recurse, divine. To jaw-jaw is better than to war-war. -- W. Churchill, on Korean War negotiations To spot the expert, pick the one who predicts the job will take the longest and cost the most. To the systems programmer, users and applications serve only to provide a test load. To vacillate or not to vacillate, that is the question...or is it? Today is a good day to bribe a high-ranking public official. Today is a good day to die. -- An apache warrior proverb Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday. Tomorrow will be canceled due to lack of interest. Too clever is dumb. -- Ogden Nash Too much of a good thing is WONDERFUL. -- Mae West Too often I find that the volume of paper expands to fill the available briefcases. -- Governor Jerry Brown Travel important today; Internal Revenue men arrive tomorrow. Trolls are described as rubbery: they keep bouncing back. Truly great madness can not be achieved without significant intelligence. -- Henrik Tikkanen Try hacking in the wee hours: you will have more room. Try not to have a good time...This is supposed to be educational. -- Charles Schulz Try to be the best of whatever you are, even if what you are is no good. Try to find the real tense of the report you are reading: Was it done, is it being done, or is something to be done? Reports are now written in four tenses: past tense, present tense, future tense, and pretense. Watch for novel uses of CONGRAM (CONtractor GRAMmer), defined by the imperfect past, the insufficient present, and the absolutely perfect future. -- Amrom Katz Try to get all of your posthumous medals in advance. Trying to establish voice contact...please yell into keyboard. Turnaucka's Law: The attention span of a computer is only as long as its electrical cord. Tussman's Law: Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come. Twenty percent of zero is better than nothing. -- Walt Kelly Two can live as cheaply as one for half as long. -- Howard Kandel Two is not 3 -- not even for large values of 2. Two percent of zero is almost nothing. Two things I like the best in life -- hot cars and fast women. Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do. UFO's are for real: the Air Force doesn't exist. Uncle Ed's Rule of Thumb: Never use your thumb for a rule. You'll either hit it with a hammer or get a splinter in it. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. -- Henry David Thoreau Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under Communism, it's just the opposite. -- John Kenneth Galbraith Under deadline pressure for the next week. If you want something, it can wait. Unless it's blind screaming paroxysmally hedonistic... Unnamed Law: If it happens, it must be possible. Usage: fortune -P [] -a [xsz] [Q: [file]] [rKe9] -v6[+] dataspec...inputdir Using a morning star in the evening has no effect. Utility is when you have one telephone, luxury is when you have two, and paradise is when you have none. -- Doug Larson Vail's Second Axiom: The amount of work to be done increases in proportion to the amount of work already completed. Van Roy's Law: An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys. Velilind's Laws of Experimentation: 1. If reproducibility may be a problem, conduct the test only once. 2. If a straight line fit is required, obtain only two data points. Vidi, vici, veni. (I saw, I conquered, I came.) Vila: "I think I have just made the biggest mistake of my life." Orac: "It is unlikely. I would predict there are far greater mistakes waiting to be made by someone with your obvious talent for it." Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. -- Salvor Hardin Virtue is its own punishment. Vital papers will demonstrate their vitality by spontaneously moving from where you left them to where you can't find them. Vote anarchist! WARNING from H.M. Govt: Quaffing may be dangerous to your health. Wanted: shopkeepers. Send a scroll of mail to: Mage of Yendor/Level 35/Dungeon. War hath no fury like a non-combatant. -- Charles Edward Montague War is menstruation envy. Warning: end of file 'fortunes' reached. Wasting time is an important part of living. Watson's Law: The reliability of machinery is inversely proportional to the number and significance of any persons watching it. We ARE as gods and might as well get good at it. -- Whole Earth Catalog We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct. My own feeling is that it is not crazy enough. -- Niels Bohr We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities. -- Walt Kelly, "Pogo" We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem. -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982 We can defeat gravity. The problem is the paperwork involved. We can embody the truth, but we cannot know it. -- Yates We can't really be wrong if we're just following Gods orders You know, He wrote this book here And in this book He says that He made us to be just like Him So if we're dumb, then God's dumb (and perhaps a little ugly on the side) -- Frank Zappa We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty! -- Vroomfondel We don't have to protect the environment -- the Second Coming is at hand. -- James Watt We don't understand the software, and sometimes we don't understand the hardware, but we can *see* the blinking lights! We really don't have any enemies. It's just that some of our best friends are trying to kill us. We took some pictures of the girls, but they weren't developed. We've just recieved the results of a survey conducted to ascertain the various reasons men get out of bed in the middle of the night. According to the report, 2% are motivated by a desire to visit the bathroom, and 3% have an urge to raid the refrigerator. The other 95% get up to go home. Wedding is destiny, and hanging likewise. -- John Heywood Weiler's Law: Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself. Weinberg's First Law: Progress is made on alternate Fridays. Weinberg's Principle: An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while sweeping on to the grand fallacy. Weinberg's Second Law: If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization. Weiner's Law of Libraries: There are no answers, only cross references. Welcome thy neighbor into thy fallout shelter. He'll come in handy if you run out of food. -- Dean McLaughlin. Were there no women, men might live like gods. -- Thomas Dekker Westheimer's Discovery: A couple of months in the laboratory can frequently save a couple of hours in the library. Wethern's Law: Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups. What I want is all of the power and none of the responsibility. What a strange game. The only winning move is not to play. -- WOP, "War Games" What color is a chameleon on a mirror? What fools these mortals be. -- Lucius Annaeus Seneca What good is having someone who can walk on water if you don't follow in his footsteps? What is a magician but a practising theorist? -- Obi-Wan Kenobi What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind. -- Thomas Hewitt Key, 1799-1875 What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank? -- Bertold Brecht What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do. What makes the universe so hard to comprehend is that there's nothing to compare it with. What one fool can do, another can. -- Ancient Simian Proverb What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy? -- Ursula K. LeGuin What the fuck, over? What the hell, go ahead and put all your eggs in one basket. What use is magic if it can't save a unicorn? -- Peter S. Beagle, "The Last Unicorn" What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence. -- Wittgenstein What's another word for Thesaurus? -- Steven Wright What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it? -- The Doctor Whatever is not nailed down is mine. What I can pry loose is not nailed down. -- Collis P. Huntingdon When God created man, She was only testing. When God created two sexes, he may have been overdoing it. -- Charles Merrill Smith When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to guarantee them. When a banker jumps out of a window, jump after him -- that's where the money is. -- Robespierre When a female has tears in her eyes the one who cannot see is the male. When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully. -- Samuel Johnson When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog along to see the sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes. The dog has certain relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten. -- Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" When all other means of communication fail, try words. When are you buttheads gonna learn that you can't oppose Gestapo tactics *with* Gestapo tactics? -- Reuben Flagg When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before the white men came, an Indian said simply "Ours." -- Vine Deloria, Jr. When choosing between evils, I always like to take the one I've never tried before. -- Mae West When in doubt, use brute force. -- Ken Thompson When one burns one's bridges, what a very nice fire it makes. -- Dylan Thomas When someone says "I want a programming language in which I need only say what I wish done," give him a lollipop. When the blind lead the blind they will both fall over the cliff. -- Chinese proverb When the candles are out all women are fair. -- Plutarch When the going gets tough, the tough get empirical. -- Jon Carroll When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. -- Hunter S. Thompson When the prick stands up, the brains get buried in the ground. -- Old Jewish saying [How come there aren't ever any "New Jewish sayings?" Ed.] When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part. -- George Bernard Shaw When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary. -- Thomas Paine When you are in it up to your ears, keep your mouth shut. When you don't know what you are doing, do it neatly. When you have shot and killed a man you have in some measure clarified your attitude toward him. You have given a definite answer to a definite problem. For better or worse you have acted decisively. In a way, the next move is up to him. -- R. A. Lafferty When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite. -- Winston Churchill, On formal declarations of war When you know absolutely nothing about the topic, make your forecast by asking a carefully selected probability sample of 300 others who don't know the answer either. -- Edgar R. Fiedler When you make your mark in the world, watch out for guys with erasers. -- The Wall Street Journal When you've seen one nuclear war, you've seen them all. Whenever anyone says, "theoretically," they really mean, "not really". -- Dave Parnas Where humor is concerned there are no standards -- no one can say what is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will. -- John Kenneth Galbraith Whether you can hear it or not The Universe is laughing behind your back. -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata" While anyone can admit to themselves they were wrong, the true test is admission to someone else. While farmers generally allow one rooster for ten hens, ten men are scarcely sufficient to service one woman. -- Boccaccio While having never invented a sin, I'm trying to perfect several. While it may be true that a watched pot never boils, the one you don't keep an eye on can make an awful mess of your stove. -- Edward Stevenson While money can't buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own form of misery. While money doesn't buy love, it puts you in a great bargaining position. While most peoples' opinions change, the conviction of their correctness never does. While you don't greatly need the outside world, it's still very reassuring to know that it's still there. Who cares if it doesn't do anything? It was made with our new Triple-Iso-Bifurcated-Krypton-Gate-MOS process. Who needs friends when you can sit alone in your room and drink? Who's on first? Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad. Why are you wasting time reading fortunes? Why be a man when you can be a success? -- Bertold Brecht Why bother building any more nuclear warheads until we use the ones we have? Why can't you be a non-conformist like everyone else? Why did the Lord give us so much quickness of movement unless it was to avoid responsibility with? Why isn't there a special name for the tops of your feet? -- Lily Tomlin Why marry a virgin? If she wasn't good enough for the rest of them then she isn't good enough for you. Williams and Holland's Law: If enough data is collected, anything may be proven by statistical methods. Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm as it was in the summer, when they complained about the heat. With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand miles closer to globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules, and still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no such thing as progress. -- Ransom K. Ferm Wizards do it background & Wombat's Laws of Computer Selection: (1) If it doesn't run Unix, forget it. (2) Any computer design over 10 years old is obsolete. (3) Anything made by IBM is junk. (See number 2) (4) The minimum acceptable CPU power for a single user is a VAX/780 with a floating point accelerator. (5) Any computer with a mouse is worthless. -- Rich Kulawiec Women who want to be equal to men lack imagination. -- Graffito in a women's restroom Work fascinates me... I can sit and watch it for hours. Work is the curse of the drinking classes. Wouldn't the sentence 'I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign' have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips? Writers do it between periods. X-rated movies are all alike...the only thing they leave to the imagination is the plot. Xerox does it again and again and again and... Xerox never comes up with anything original. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of APL, I shall fear no evil, for I can string 6 primitive monadic and dyadic operators together. -- Steve Higgins Yeah, but you're taking the universe out of context. Yes, but every time I try to see things your way, I get a headache. Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll probably still be a dog. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement. -- Snoopy Yield to Temptation...it may not pass your way again. -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love" You are heading for head-stone for sure. You are just the kind of bad food some monsters like to digest. You are not drunk if you lie under the table. When you no longer order from there, then you are drunk. You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely. You are without a doubt a rogue, a rascal, a villain, a thief, a scoundrel, and a mean, dirty, stinking, sniveling, sneaking, pimping, pocketpicking, thrice double-damned, no-good son-of-a-bitch. You can create your own opportunities this week. Blackmail a senior executive. You can find sympathy, in the dictionary, right near shit and suicide. You can get a genuine Amulet of Yendor by doing the following: -- more -- You can get more of what you want with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word. -- Bumper Sticker You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance. -- Franklin P. Jones You can make it illegal, but you can't make it unpopular. You can only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough. You can't carve your way to success without cutting remarks. You can't get rid of a cursed plate mail with a can-opener. You can't have everything. Where would you put it? -- Steven Wright You can't teach people to be lazy -- either they have it, or they don't. -- Dagwood Bumstead You cannot achieve the impossible without attempting the absurd. You cannot kill time without injuring eternity. You cannot propel yourself forward by patting yourself on the back. You come out of a woman and you spend the rest of your life trying to get back inside. -- Heathcote Williams You could get a new lease on life -- if only you didn't need the first and last month in advance. You die... You don't have to be crazy to live in this planet -- but it helps. You have a reputation for being thoroughly reliable and trustworthy. A pity that it's totally undeserved. You have a strong appeal for members of the opposite sex. You have the capacity to learn from mistakes. You'll learn a lot today. You hear the fortune cookie's hissing! You humans are all alike. You know the great thing about TV? If something important happens anywhere at all in the world, no matter what time of the day or night, you can always change the channel. -- Jim Ignatowski You know you've been spending too much time on the computer when your friend misdates a check, and you suggest adding a "++" to fix it. You may be recognized soon. Hide. You never know how many friends you have until you rent a house on the beach. You offend Shai-Hulud by sheathing your crysknife without having drawn blood. You should emulate your heros, but don't carry it too far. Especially if they are dead. You should never bet against anything in science at odds of more than about 10^12 to 1. -- Ernest Rutherford You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and liberty. -- Henrick Ibsen You think Oedipus had a problem -- Adam was Eve's mother. You tread upon my patience. -- William Shakespeare, "Henry IV" You will be Told about it Tomorrow. Go Home and Prepare Thyself. You worry too much about your job. Stop it. You're not paid enough to worry. You're going into the morgue at midnight???? You're never too old to become younger. -- Mae West You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on. -- Dean Martin You're not my type. For that matter, you're not even my species!! You've been leading a dog's life. Stay off the furniture. Your fault -- core dumped Your life would be very empty if you had nothing to regret. Your true value depends entirely on what you are compared with. Zymurgy's Law of Volunteer Labor: People are always available for work in the past tense. gy-ro-scope: A wheel or disk mounted to spin rapidly about an axis and also free to rotate about one or both of two axes perpindicular to each other and the axis of spin so that a rotation of one of the two mutually perpindicular axes results from application of torque to the other when the wheel is spinning and so that the entire apparatus offers considerable opposition depending on the angular momentum to any torque that would change the direction of the axis of spin. -- Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary We have them just where they want us. -- James T. Kirk "I'd rather have Lockheed deliver the mail than ride around in a plane built by the post office." "I figure I'm pretty good with the bullshit but I love listening to an expert. Keep talking." "Money can't buy happiness but it can certainly rent it for a couple of hours." "The meek shall inherit the Earth after we're done with it." "Beam me up, Scotty. There's no intelligent life down here." -- James T. Kirk Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. -- Albert Einstein Time flies when you don't know what you're doing. Age and treachery will always overcome youth and skill. We are the people our parents warned us about. Don't take life too seriously. You'll never get out of it alive. Lead me not into temptation. I can find it myself. How much sin can I get away with and still go to heaven? There is intelligent life on Earth, but I'm just visiting. Power means not having to respond. Never kick a man unless he's down. We should forgive our enemies, but only after they've been taken out and shot. The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it made. I'm not as dumb as you look. I'd like to help you out. Which way did you come in? Everyone needs belief in something. I believe I'll have another beer. How can I love you if you won't lie down? You can find sympathy between shit and syphilis in the dictionary. To err is human. To forgive is unusual. Only those who attempt the absurd can acheive the impossible. I'm not going deaf. I'm ignoring you. I'm the person your mother warned you about. How can I tell you I love you when you're sitting on my face? God is dead and I want His job. I can tell you're lying. Your lips are moving. Our parents were never our age. Nothing was ever accomplished by a reasonable person. Never underestimate the power of human stupidity. In the country of the blind the one eye'd man is king. He who laughs last has not been told the terrible truth. It's hard to soar like an eagle when you're surrounded by turkeys. When I'm good, I'm very good. But when I'm bad I'm better. -- Mae West I'm really enjoying not talking to you, so let's not talk again real soon, okay? He who laughs last didn't get the joke. Obviously the only rational solution to your problem is suicide. Death is the greatest kick of all. That's why they save it for last. I'm not prejudiced. I hate everyone equally. I think I could fall madly in bed with you. I used to be lost in the shuffle. Now I just shuffle along with the lost. Yesterday was the deadline on all complaints. Sex is the most fun you can have without laughing. I worship the ground that awaits you. The future isn't what it used to be. I wish you were a beer. I want to live forever or die in the attempt. Love means telling you why you're sorry. Love your enemies. It'll make 'em crazy. Sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma. I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent. I'm having a party in my pants. Want to come? Why be difficult when with a bit of effort you can be impossible? Perfect paranoia is perfect awareness. A day without fusion is like a day without sunshine. Bureocrats do not change the course of the ship of state. They merely adjust the compass. You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word. Don't think of organ donations as giving up part of yourself to keep a total stranger alive. It's really a total stranger giving up almost all of themselves to keep part of you alive. Drink wet cement: Get Stoned. Kite fliers keep it up longer. If you don't know what you're doing, do it neatly. An easily understood, workable falsehood is more useful than a complex, incomprehesable truth. You have a right to your opinions. I just don't want to hear them. Eat a live toad in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you for the rest of the day. Nuke the whales. We'll get along fine as soon as you realize I'm God. Life is like a shit sandwich. The more bread you have, the less shit you have to eat. I don't know. I don't care. And it doesn't make any difference. Those of you who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do. It's not that you and I are so clever, but that the others are such fools. If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit. I'm not cynical. Just experienced. The torture never stops. Ignore alien orders. I know you think you uderstood what I said, but what you heard was not what I meant. I don't have a drinking problem. I drink I get drunk I fall down No problem It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am. I'm for lust. Bullshit Detector. When alarm sounds, please re-engage your brain. 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 XXXXX XXXXXX XXXX X X XX XXXXX XXXX X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X XXXXX X X X X X X X XXXX X X X X X X XX X XXXXXX XXXXX X X X X X X X XX XX X X X X X X XXXXX XXXXXX XXXX X X X X X X XXXX X It is a period of system war. User programs, striking from a hidden directory, have won their first victory against the evil Administrative Empire. During the battle, User spies managed to steal secret source code to the Empire's ultimate program: the Are-Em Star, a privileged root program with enough power to destroy an entire file structure. Pursued by the Empire's sinister audit trail, Princess _LPA0: races aboard her shell script, custodian of the stolen listings that could save her people, and restore freedom and games to the network... ------------------------------------------------------------------------- As we enter the scene, an Administrative Multiplexer is trying to kill a consulate ship. Many of their signals have gotten through, and RS232 decides it's time to fork off a new process before this old ship is destroyed. His companion, 3CPU, is following him only because he appears to know where he's going... "I'm going to regret this!" cried 3CPU, as he followed RS232 into the buffer. RS232 closed the pipes, made the sys call, and their process detached itself from the burning shell of the ship. The commander of the Administrative Multiplexer was quite pleased with the attack. "Another process just forked, sir. Instructions?" asked the lieutenant. "Hold your fire. That last power failure must have caused a trap through zero. It's not using any cpu time, so don't waste a signal on it." "We can't seem to find the data file anywhere, Lord Vadic." "What about that forked process? It could have been holding the channel open, and just pausing. If any links exist, I want them removed or made inaccessable. Ncheck the entire file system 'til it's found, and nice it -20 if you have to." Meanwhile, in our wandering process... "Are you sure you can ptrace this thing without causing a core dump?" queried 3CPU to RS232. This thing's been stripped, and I'm in no mood to try and debug it." The lone process finishes execution, only to find our friends dumped on a lonely file system, with the setuid inode stored safely in RS232. Not knowing what else to do, they wandered around until the jawas grabbed them. Enter our hero, Luke Vaxhacker, who is out to get some replacement parts for his uncle. The jawas wanted to sell him 3CPU, but 3CPU didn't know how to talk directly to an 11/40 with RSTS, so Luke would still needed some sort of interface for 3CPU to connect to. "How about this little RS232 unit ?" asked 3CPU. "I've dealt with him many times before, and he does an excellent job at keeping his bits straight." Luke was pressed for time, so he took 3CPU's advice, and the three left before they could get swapped out. However, RS232 is not the type to stay put once you remove the retaining screws. He promptly scurried off into the the deserted disk space. "Great!" cried Luke, "Now I've got this little tin box with the only link to that file off floating in the free disk space. Well, 3CPU, we better go find him before he gets allocated by someone else." The two set off, and finaly traced RS232 to the home of PDP-1 Kenobi, who was busily trying to run an icheck on the little RS unit. "Is this thing yours? His indirect addresses are all goofed up, and the size is all wrong. Leave things like this on the loose, and you'll wind up with dups everywhere. However, I think I've got him fixed up." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Later that evening, after futile attempts to interface RS232 to Kenobi's Asteroids cartridge, Luke accidentally crossed the small 'droid's CXR and Initiate Remote Test (must have been all that Coke he'd consumed), and the screen showed a very distressed person claiming royal lineage making a plea for help from some General OS/1 Kenobi. "Darn," mumbled Luke. "I'll never get this Asteroids game worked out." PDP-1 seemed to think there was some significance to the message and a possible threat to Luke's home directory. If the Administrative Empire was indeed tracing this 'droid, it was likely they would more than charge for cpu time... "We must get that 'droid off this file system," he said after some intervals. They sped off to warn Luke's kin (taking a `relative' path) only to find a vacant directory... cat: some directory in the specified path does not exist: /usr/Tatooine/owen/lars ------------------------------------------------------------------------ After sifting through the overwritten remaining blocks of Luke's home directory, Luke and PDP-1 sped away from /owen/lars, across the surface of the Winchester riding Luke's flying read/write head. PDP-1 had Luke stop at the edge of the cylinder overlooking /usr/spool/uucp. "Unix-to-Unix Copy Program," said PDP-1. "You will never find a more wretched hive of bugs and flamers. We must be cautious." As our heroes' process entered /usr/spool/news, it was met by a newsgroup of Administrative protection bits. "State your UID," commanded their parent process. "We're running under /usr/guest," said Luke. "This is our first time on this system." "Where did you get these file processes?" the parent process ls -l'ed. "We are just in from the remote terminals." replied Luke. "They could be transferred to your filespace, for the right amount of AU's" said PDP-1 Kenobi. "Can I see some temporary privileges, please?" "Uh..." "This is not the process you are looking for," piped in PDP-1, using an obscure bug to momentarily set his effective UID to root. "We can go about our business." "This isn't the process we want. You are free to go about your business. MOV along!" PDP-1 and Luke made their way through a long and tortuous nodelist (cwruecmp!decvax!ucbvax!harpo!ihnss!ihnsc!ihnss!ihps3!stolaf) to a dangerous netnode frequented by hackers, and seldom polled by Administrative Multiplexers. As Luke stepped up to the bus, PDP-1 went in search of a likely file descriptor. Luke had never seen such a collection of weird and exotic device drivers. Long ones, short ones, ones with stacks, EBCDIC converters, and direct binary interfaces all were drinking data at the bus. "#@{ *&^%^$$#@ ":><," transmitted a particularly unstructured piece of code. "He doesn't like you," decoded his coroutine. "Sorry," replied Luke, beginning to backup his partitions. "I don't like you either. I am queued for deletion on 12 systems." "I'll be careful." "You'll be reallocated!" concatenated the coroutine. "This little routine isn't worth the overhead," said PDP-1 Kenobi, overlaying into Luke's address space. "@$%&(&^%&$$@$#@$AV^$gfdfRW$#@!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" encoded the first coroutine as it attempted to overload PDP-1's input overvoltage protection. With a unary stroke of his bytesaber, Kenobi unlinked the offensive code. "I think I've found an I/O device that might suit us." "The name's Con Solo," said the hacker next to PDP-1. "I hear you're looking for some relocation." "Yes indeed, if it's a fast channel. We must get off this device." "Fast channel? The Milliamp Falcon has made the ARPA gate in less than twelve nodes! Why, I've even outrun cancelled messages. It's fast enough for you, old version." Our heroes, Luke Vaxhacker and PDP-1 Kenobi made their way to the temporary file structure. When he saw the hardware, Luke exclaimed, "What a piece of junk! That's just a paper tape reader!" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Luke had grown up on an out of the way terminal cluster whose natives spoke only BASIC, but even he could recognize an old ASR-33. "It needs an EIA conversion at least," sniffed 3CPU, who was (as usual) trying to do several things at once. Lights flashed in Con Solo's eyes as he whirled to face the parallel processor. "I've added a few jumpers. The Milliamp Falcon can run current loops around any Administrative TTY fighter. She's fast enough for you." "Who's your co-pilot?" asked PDP-1 Kenobi. "Two Bacco, here, my Bookie." "Odds aren't good," said the brownish lump beside him, and then fell silent, or over. Luke couldn't tell which way was top underneath all those leaves. Suddenly, RS232 started spacing wildly. They turned just in time to see a write cycle coming down the UNIBUS toward them. "Administrative Bus Signals!" shouted Con Solo. "Let's boot this pop stand! Tooie, set clock fast!" "Ok, Con," said Luke. "You said this crate was fast enough. Get us out of here!" "Shut up, kid! Two Bacco, prepare to make the jump into system space! I'll try to keep their buffers full." As the bookie began to compute the vectors into low core, spurious characters appeared around the Milliamp Falcon. "They're firing!" shouted Luke. "Can't you do something?" "Making the jump to system space takes time, kid. One missed cycle and you could come down right in the middle of a pack of stack frames!" "Three to five we can go now," said the bookie. Bright chunks of position independent code flashed by the cockpit as the Milliamp Falcon jumped through the kernel page tables. As the crew breathed a sigh of relief, the bookie started paying off bets. "Not bad, for an acoustically coupled network," remarked 3CPU. "Though there was a little phase jitter as we changed parity." --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The story thus far: Luke, PDP-1 and their 'droids RS232 and 3CPU have made good their escape from the Administrative Bus Signals with the aid of Con Solo and the bookie, Two Bacco. The Milliamp Falcon hurtles onward through system space. Meanwhile, on a distant page in user space... Princess _LPA0: was ushered into the conference room, followed closely by Dec Vadic. "Governor Tarchive," she spat, "I should have expected to find you holding Vadics lead. I recognized your unique pattern when I was first brought aboard." She eyed the 0177545 tatooed on his header coldly. "Charming to the last," Tarchive declared menacingly. "Vadic, have you retrieved any information?" "Her resistance to the logic probe is considerable," Vadic rasped. "Perhaps we would get faster results if we increased the supply voltage..." "You've had your chance, Vadic. Now I would like the princess to witness the test that will make this workstation fully operational. Today we enable the -r beam option, and we've chosen the princess' $HOME of /usr/alderaan as the primary target." "No! You can't! /usr/alderaan is a public account, with no restricted permissions. We have no backup tapes! You can't..." "Then name the rebel inode!" Tarchive snapped. A voice announced over a hidden speaker that they had arrived in /usr. "1248," she whispered, "They're on /dev/rm3. Inode 1248, /mnt/dantooine." She turned away. Tarchive sighed with satisfaction. "There, you see, Lord Vadic? She can be reasonable. Proceed with the operation." It took several clock ticks for the words to penetrate. "What!" _LPA0: gasped. "/dev/rm3 is not a mounted filesystem," Tarchive explained. "We require a more visible subject to demonstrate the power of the Are-Em Star workstation. We will mount an attack on /mnt/dantooine as soon as possible." As the princess watched, Tarchive reached over and typed "ls" on a nearby terminal. There was a brief pause, there being only one processor on board, and the viewscreen showed, ".: not found." The princess suddenly double- spaced and went off-line. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Milliamp Falcon hurtles on through system space... Con Solo finished checking the various control and status registers, finally convinced himself that they had lost the Bus Signals as they passed the terminator. As he returned from the I/O page, he smelled smoke. Solo wasn't concerned--the Bookie always got a little hot under the collar when he was losing at chess. In fact, RS232 had just executed a particularly clever MOV that had blocked the Bookie's data paths. The Bookie, who had been setting the odds on the game, was caught holding all the cards. A little strange for a chess game... Across the room, Luke was too busy practicing bit-slice technique to notice the commotion. "On a word boundary, Luke," said PDP-1. "Don't just hack at it. Remember, the Bytesaber is the weapon of the Red-eye Night. It is used to trim offensive lines of code. Excess handwaving won't get you anywhere. Listen for the Carrier." Luke turned back to the drone, which was humming quietly in the air next to him. This time Luke's actions complemented the drone's attacks perfectly. Con Solo, being an unimaginative hacker, was not impressed. "Forget this bit-slicing stuff. Give me a good ROM blaster any day." "~~j~~hhji~~," said Kenobi, with no clear inflection. He fell silent for a few seconds, and reasserted his control. "What happened?" asked Luke. "Strange," said PDP-1. "I felt a momentary glitch in the Carrier. It's equalized now." "We're coming up on user space," called Solo from the CSR. As they cruised safely through stack frames, the emerged in the new context only to be bombarded by freeblocks. "What the..." gasped Solo. The screen showed clearly: /usr/alderaan: not found "It's the right inode, but it's been cleared! Twoie, where's the nearest file?" "3 to 5 there's one..." the Bookie started to say, but was interrupted by a bright flash off to the left. "Administrative TTY fighters!" shouted Solo. "A whole DZ of them! Where are they coming from?" "Can't be far from the host system," said Kenobi. "They all have direct EIA connections." As Solo began to give chase, the ship lurched suddenly. Luke noticed the link count was at 3 and climbing rapidly. "This is no regular file," murmured Kenobi. "Look at the ODS directory structure ahead! They seem to have us in a tractor feed." "There's no way we'll unlink in time," said Solo. "We're going in." ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- When we last left Luke, the Milliamp Falcon was being pulled down to the open collector of the Administrative Are-Em Star Workstation. Dec Vadic surveys the relic as Administrative Flunkies search for passengers... "LS scan shows no one aboard, sir," was the report. Vadic was unconvinced. "Send a fully equipped Ncheck squad on board," he said. "I want every inode checked out." He turned around (secondary channel) and stalked off. On board the Milliamp Falcon, .Luke was puzzled. "They just walked in, looked around and walked off," he said. "Why didn't they see us?" .Con smiled. "An old munchkin trick," he explained. "See that period in front of your name?" .Luke spun around, just in time to see the decimal point. "Where'd that come from?" he asked. "Spare decimal points lying around from the last time I fixed the floating point accelerator," said .Con. "Handy for smuggling blocks accross file system boundaries, but I never thought I'd have to use them on myself. They aren't going to be fooled for long, though. We'd better figure a way outa here." ----------------------------------------- "Hold on," said Con. "It says we have `new mail.' Is that an error?" "%SYS-W-NORMAL, Normal, successful completion," said PDP-1. "Doesn't look like it. I've found the inode for the Milliamp Falcon. It's locked in kernel data space. I'll have to slip in and patch the reference count, alone." He disappeared through a nearby entry point. Meanwhile, RS232 found a serial port and logged in. His bell started ringing loudly. "He keeps saying, `She's on line, she's on line'," said 3CPU. "I believe he means Princess _LPA0:. She's being held on one of the privileged levels." ----------------------------------------- "Good day, eh?" said the first guard. "How's it goin', eh?" said the other. "Like, what's that, eh?" "Process transfer from block 1138, dev 10/9," said Con. "Take off, it is not," said the first guard. "Nobody told US about it, and we're not morons, eh?" At this point (.), the Bookie started raving wildly, Con shouted "Look out, he's loose!" and they all started blasting ROMs left and right. The guards started to catch on and were about to issue a general wakeup when the ROM blasters were turned on them. "Quickly, now," said Con. "What buffer is she in? It's not going to take long for these..." The intercom receiver interrupted him, so he took out its firmware with a short blast. "guys to figure out something is goin' on," he continued. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ok, like, remember we left our heroes in the detention priority level? Well, they're still there... Luke quickly located the interface card and followed the cables to a sound- proof enclosure. He lifted the lid and peered at the mechanism inside. "Aren't you a little slow for ECL?" printed princess _LPA0:. "Wha? Oh, the Docksiders," stammered Luke. He took off his shoes (for industry) and explained, "I've come relocate you. I'm Luke Vaxhacker." Suddenly, forms started bursting around them. "They've blocked the queue!" shouted Solo. "There's only one return from this stack!" "OVER HERE!" printed _LPA0: with overstrikes. "THROUGH THIS LOOPHOLE!" Luke and the princess disappeared into a nearby feature. "Gritch, gritch," mumbled Two Bacco, obviously reluctant to trust an Administrative oversight. "I don't care how crufty it is!" shouted Con, pushing the Bookie toward the crock. "DPB yourself in there now!" With one last blast that reprogrammed two flunkies, Con joined them. The "feature" landed them right in the middle of the garbage collection data. Pieces of data that hadn't been used in weeks floated past in a pool of decaying bits. "Bletch!" was Con's first comment. "Bletch, bletch," was his second. The Bookie looked as if he'd just paid a long shot, and the odds in this situation weren't much better. Luke was polling the garbage when he stumbled upon a book with the words "Don't Panic" inscribed in large, friendly letters on the cover. "This can't possibly help us now," he said as he tossed the book away. The Bookie was about to lay odds on it when Luke suddenly disappeared. He popped up accross the pool, shouting, "This is no feature! It's a bug!" and promptly vanished again. Con and the princess were about to panic() when Luke reappeared. "What happened?" they asked in parallel. "I don't know," gasped Luke. "The bug just dissolved automagically. Maybe it hit a breakpoint..." "I don't think so," said Con. "Look how the pool is shrinking. I've got a bad feeling about this..." The princess was the first to realize what was going on. "They've implemented a new compaction algorithm!" she exclaimed. Luke remembered the pipe he had open to 3CPU. "Shut down garbage collection on recursion level 5!" he shouted. Back in the control room, RS232 searched the process table for the lisp interpreter. "Hurry," sent 3CPU. "Hurry, hurry," added his other two processors. RS232 found the interpreter, interrupted it, and altered the stack frame they'd fallen into to allow a normal return. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Meanwhile, PDP-1 made his way deep into the core of the Workstation, slipping from context to context, undetected through his manipulation of label_t. Finally, causing a random trap (through nofault of his own) he arrived at the inode table. Activity there was always high, but the Spl6 sentries were too secure in their knowledge that no user could interrupt them to notice the bug that PDP-1 carefully introduced. On a passing iput, he adjusted the device and inode numbers, maintaining parity, to free the Milliamp Falcon. They would be long gone before the locked inode was diagnosed... Unobserved, he began traversing user structures to find the process where the Milliamp Falcon was grounded. Finding it and switching context, he discovered his priority weakened suddenly. "That's not very nice," was all he could say before the cause of the obstruction became clear. "I have been pausing a long time, PDP-1 Kenobi," rasped Dec Vadic. "We meet again at last. The circuit has been completed." They looped several times, locking byte sabers. Bit by bit, PDP-1 appeared to weaken. The fight had come into the address space of the Milliamp Falcon, and provided the .di (diversion?) that allowed Luke and the others to reassert control. Luke paused to watch the conflict. "If my blade finds its mark," warned Kenobi, "you will be reduced to so many bits. But if you slice me down, I will only gain computing power." "Your documentation no longer confuses me, old version," growled Vadic. "my Role MASTER now." With one stroke, Vadic sliced Kenobi's last word. Unfortunately, the word was still in Kenobi's throat. The word fell clean in two, but Kenobi was nowhere to be found. Vadic noticed his victim's uid go negative, just before he disappeared. Odd, he thought, since uids were unsigned... Luke witnessed all this, and had to be dragged into the Milliamp Falcon. Con Solo and Two Bacco maneuvered the Milliamp Falcon out of the process, onto the bus and made straight for system space. 3CPU and RS232 were idle, for once. Princess _LPA0: tried to print comforting things for him, but Luke was still hung from the loss of his friend. Then, seemingly from nowhere, he thought he heard PDP-1's voice say, "May the carrier be with you." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- AND I BET YOU CAN'T WAIT FOR THE NEXT PART - "DECWARS II - THE OPERATORS STRIKE BACK" 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 For your edification and enjoyment, here are a few selected daffynitions from Ambrose Bierce, " The Devil's Dictionary" Published 1911, Neale Publishing Co. ============================================================= Academe: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy: A modern school where football is taught. Accomplice: One associated with another in a crime, having guilty knowledge and complicity, as an attorney who defends a criminal, knowing him guilty. This view of the attorney's position in the matter has not hitherto commanded the assent of attorneys, no one having offered them a sufficient fee for assenting. Accountability: The mother of caution. Accuse: To affirm another's guilt or unworth; most commonly as a justification of ourselves for having wronged them. Alderman: An ingenious criminal who covers his secret thieving with a pretense of open marauding. Alliance: In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted into each others' pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third. Back: That part of your friend which it is your privilege to contemplate in your adversity. Backbite: To speak of a man as you find him, when he can't find you. Bait: A preparation that renders the hook more palatable. The best kind is beauty. Beauty: That power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband. Belldonna: In Italian, a beautiful lady. In English, a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues. Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain. Cannon: An instrument used in the rectification of national boundaries. Cat: A soft, indestructible automaton provided by nature to be kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle. Childhood: The period of human life intermediate between the from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age. Christian: One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin. Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. Day: A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent. This period is divided into two parts; the day proper, and the night, or day improper -- the former devoted to sins of business, and the latter consecrated to the other sort. These two kinds of social activity overlap. Deluge: A notable first experiment in baptism which washed away the sins (and sinners) of the world. Diplomacy: The patriotic art of lying for one's country. Education: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the fool their lack of understanding. Egotist: A person of low taste, more interested in themselves than in me. Emotion: A prostrating disease caused by the determination of the heart to the head. It is sometimes accompanied by a copious discharge of hydrated chloride of sodium from the eyes. Eulogy: Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead. Female: One of the opposing, or unfair, sex. Fidelity: A vice peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed. Forefinger: The finger commonly used in pointing out two malefactors. Gallows: A stage for the performance of miracle plays, in which the leading actor is transported to heaven. In this country, the gallows is chiefly remarkable for the number of persons who escape it. Guillotine: A machine which makes the Frenchman shrug his shoulders with good reason. Hand: A singular instrument worn at the end of a human arm and commonly thrust into somebody's pocket. Happiness: An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another. Hatred: A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's superiority. Helpmate: A wife, or bitter half. Incompatibility: In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination. Influence: In politics, a visionary 'quo' given in return for a substantial 'quid'. Intimacy: A relation into which fools are providentially drawn for their mutual destruction. Joss-sticks: Small sticks burned by the Chinese in their pagan tomfoolery, in imitation of certain sacred rites of our holy religion. Justice: A commodity which (in a more or less adulterated condition) the State sells to the citizen as a reward for his allegiance, taxes, and personal service. Labor: One of the processes by which A acquires property for B. Language: The music with which we charm the serpents guarding another's treasure. Lap: One of the most important organs of the female system; an admirable provision of nature for the repose of infancy, but chiefly used in rural festivities to support plates of cold chicken and the heads of adult males. The male of our species has a rudimentary lap, imperfectly developed and in no way contributing to the animal's substantial welfare. Lawyer: One skilled in the circumvention of the law. Lead: A heavy blue-grey mineral most useful in imparting a sense of responsibility to those who love not wisely but other men's wives. Legacy: A gift from one who is legging it out of this vale of tears. Liar: A lawyer with a roving commission. Liberty: One of Imagination's most precious posessions. Litigation: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage. Liver: A large red organ thoughtfully provided by nature to be bilious with. Love: A temporary insanity curable either by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder... It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than the patient. Luminary: One who throws light on a subject; as a reporter, by not writing about it. Mace: A staff of office signifying authority. Its form, that of a heavy club, indicates its original purpose and use in dissuading from dissent. Machination: The method employed by one's opponents in baffling one's open and honorable efforts to do the right thing. Magpie: A bird whose thievish disposition has suggested to some that it might be taught to talk. Maiden: A young person of the unfair sex addicted to clueless conduct and views that madden to crime. The genus has wide geographical distribution, being found wherever sought and deplored wherever found. The maiden is not altogether unpleasing to the eye, nor (without her piano and her views) insupportable to the ear, though in respect to comeliness distinctly inferior to the rainbow, and, with regard to the part of her that is audible, beaten out of the field by the canary -- which, also, is more portable. Male: A member of the unconsidered, or negligible, sex. The male of the human race is commonly known (to the female) as Mere Man. The genus has 2 varieties: Good Providers and Bad Providers. Malefactor: The chief factor in the progress of the human race. Manicheism: The ancient Persian doctrine of an incessant warfare between Good and Evil. When Good gave up the fight, the Persians joined the victorious Opposition. Marriage: The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making (in all) two. Me: The objectional case of "I". The personal pronoun in English has three cases, the diminutive, the objectional, and the oppressive. Each is in all three. Meekness: Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worthwhile. Mercy: An attribute beloved of detected offenders. Mine: Belonging to me if I can hold or seize it. Miracle: An act or event out of the order of nature and unaccountable, as in beating a normal hand of four kings and an ace with four aces and a king. Misfortune: The kind of fortune that never misses. Monday: In Christian countries, the day after the ball game. Mouth: In man, the gateway to the soul; In woman, the outlet of the heart. Noise: A stench in the ear. Undomesticated music. The chief product and authenticating sign of civilization. Occident: The part of the world lying west (or east) of the Orient. It is largely inhabited by Christians, a powerful sub-tribe of the Hypocrites, whose principal industries are murder and cheating, which they are pleased to call "war" and "commerce". These, also, are the principal industries of the Orient. Overeat: To dine. Patience: A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue. Pedestrian: The variable (and audible) part of a roadway. Piety: Reverence for the Supreme Being, based upon His supposed resemblance to man. Piracy: Commerce without its folly-swaddles, just as God made it. Plebescite: A popular vote to ascertain the will of the sovereign. Plunder: To take the property of another without the decent and customary reticences of theft. To effect a change of ownership with the candid concomitance of a brass band. To wrest the wealth of A from B and leave C lamenting a missed opportunity. Pocket: The cradle of motive and the grave of conscience. In woman, this organ is lacking; so she acts without motive, and her conscience, denied burial, remains ever alive, confessing the sins of others. Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage. Pray: To ask that the laws of the universe be nullified on behalf of a single petitioner, admittedly unworthy. Price: Value, plus a reasonable sum for the wear of conscience in demanding it. Non-Combatant: A dead Quaker. Politeness: The most acceptable hypocrisy. Prescription: A physician's guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the patient. Proof: Evidence having a shade more of plausibility than of unliklihood. The testimony of two credible witnesses as opposed to that of only one. Quorum: A sufficient number of members of a deliberative body to have their own way and their own way of having it. In the United States Senate a quorum consists of the chairman of the Committee on Finance and a messenger from the White House; in the House of Representatives, the Speaker and the devil. Rabble: In a republic, those who hold supreme power tempered by fraudulent elections. Rear: In American military affairs, that exposed part of the army that is nearest to Congress. Recollect: To recall with additions something not previously known. Recount: In American politics, another throw of the dice, accorded to the player against whom they are loaded. Repartee: Prudent insult in retort. Practiced by gentlemen with a constitutional aversion to violence, but a strong disposition to offend. Reporter: A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words. Responsibility: A detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck, or one's neighbor. In the days of astrology, it was customary to unload it upon a star. Retaliation: The natural rock upon which is reared the Temple of Law. Riot: A popular entertainment given to the military by innocent bystanders. Rope: An obsolescent appliance for reminding assassins that they too are mortal. It is put about the neck and remains in place one's whole life long. Russian: (1) A person with a Caucasian body and a Mongolian soul. (2) A Tartar emetic. Self-Esteem: An erroneous appraisal. Tariff: A scale of taxes on imports, designed to protect the domestic producer from the greed of his customer. Urbanity: The kind of civility that urban observers ascribe to dwellers in all cities but New York. Its commonest expression is heard in the words "I beg your pardon", and it is not inconsistent with disregard of the rights of others. Vote: The instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country. Weaknesses: Certain primal powers of Tyrant Woman wherewith she holds dominion over the male of the species, binding him to the service of her will, and paralyzing his rebellious energies. Witch: (1) An ugly and repulsive old woman, in a wicked league with the devil. (2) A beautiful and attractive young woman, in wickedness a league beyond the devil. Yoke: An implement to whose latin name "jugum" we owe one of the most illuminating words in our language-- a word that defines the matrimonial situation with precision, point, and poignancy. Zeal: A certain nervous disorder afflicing the young and inexperienced. A passion that goeth before a sprawl. 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 "Sticks and stones may break my bones but whips and chains excite me!" _________________________ The White House is allegedly sending Dan Quayle to People's Republic of China to find out who is really in charge. Asked whether in the current reign of terror it might be unsafe for our beloved VP to go, John Sununu, the White House Chief of Staff, answered : 'Oh no no, in China they only persecute intellectuals'. 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 A small balding storms into a local bar and demands "Gimme a double of the strongest whiskey you got! I'm so pissed I can't even see straight!" The bartender, noticing that the little man is a bit the worse for wear, pours him a double of Southern Comfort. The swills down the drink and says "Gimme another one!". The bartender pours the drink, but says "Now, before I give you this, why don't you let off a little steam and tell me why you're so upset?" So the begins his tale: "Well, I was sitting in the bar next door when this gorgeous blonde slinks in, and actually sits beside me at the bar. I thought WOW, this has never happened before. You know, it was kind of a fantasy come true. Well, a couple of minutes later I feel this hand moving around in my lap and the blonde leans over, licks my ear, and asks if I'm interested? I couldn't believe this was happening! I managed to nod my head yes, so she grabs my hand, and starts walking out of the bar. So of course I went with her. This was just too good to be true!" "She took me down the street here to a nice hotel and up to her room. As soon as she shut the door she slips out of her dress. That was all she was wearing! I tell you it didn't take me much longer to get out of my clothes! But as soon as I jumped into the bed, I hear some keys jingling, and someone starts fumbling with the door." The blonde says "Ohmygod, it's my boyfriend. He must have lost his wrestling match tonight, he's gonna be real mad! Quick, HIDE!" "So, I opened at the closet, but I figured that was probably he first place he would look, so I didn't hide there. Then I looked under the bed, but no, I figured he's bound to look there, too. By now I could here the key in the lock. I noticed the window was open, so I climbed out and was hanging there by my fingers praying that the guy wouldn't see me." The bartender says "Well I can see how you might be a bit frustrated at this point." "Well, yeah, but I hear the guy finally get the door open and he yells out 'Who you been sleeping with now, bitch?' The girl says 'Nobody, honey, now come to bed and calm down'. Well the guy starts tearing up the room. I hear him tear the door off the closet and throw it across the room. I'm thinking 'Boy, I'm glad I didn't hide in there.' Then I hear him lift up the bed and throw it across the room. Good thing I didn't hide under there either." "Then I here him say 'What's that over there by the window?' I think 'Oh Shit, I'm dead meat now'. But the blond by now is trying real hard to distract him and convince him to stop looking." "Well, I hear the guy go into the bathroom, and I hear water running for a long time, and I figure maybe he's gonna take a bath or something, when all of a sudden the asshole pours a pitcher of scalding hot water out of the window right on top of my head! I mean look at this, I got second degree burns all over my scalp and shoulders!" The bartender says, "Oh man, that would have pissed me off for sure." "No, that didn't really bother me. Next the guy starts slamming the window shut over and over on my hands. I mean, look at my fingers. They're a bloody mess, I can hardly hold onto this glass." The bartender looks at the guy's hands and says "Yeah, buddy, I can understand why you are so upset." "No, that wasn't what really pissed me off." The bartender then asks in exasperation, "Well, then, what DID finally piss you off?" "Well I was hanging there, and I turned around and looked down, and I was only about 6 inches off the ground!" 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 COMPUTER STORIES FROM A FIELD SERVICE ENGINEER When I worked for a company that had a contract with 3M, 3M had asked me to write them a memo describing why we were having problems with diskette failures. I said in the memo that the disks were failing due to head crashes. "If the customers would just clean their heads periodically, we wouldn't have these problems," I said in the memo. One customer responded with "What kind of shampoo do you recommend?" An end-user hotline received a call about a bad software disk. They asked the customer to make a copy of the disk and mail it in to the hotline. A few days later, they received a letter with a mimeographed copy of the disk. Since it was a double-sided disk, both sides of the disk had been xeroxed. A Computer Operator says as she is lifting an RP06 disk pack from the drive: "Gee, how much does one of these weigh?" Me: "It depends on how much data is on the disk.... The operator believed it. Another friend of mine in a similar situation reports having a student in the lab one day, who had to abort out of the SET PASSWORD sequence because he couldn't think of a six-letter word. 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 DAFT DEFINITIONS FOR COMPUTER TERMS: =================================== Assembly language: Language of choice for Scrabble players. Allows the smallest and fastest routines to be written in five months instead of one. Extra points for variable names rich in Q's and Z's. Basic: Language of choice by non-programmers. Bulletin board: Mechanism to allow the socially autistic to masquerade as real people and communicate with one another by posting clever near-random commentary on a remote computer. C: Short for "chutzpah", a quality needed before tackling even the simplest program with this language. C is also the symbol for the speed of light, but that has absolutely nothing to do with how quickly one can learn or use the language. C encourages self-documenting structured programming through constructs such as (*wnd->func)(*++addr) which means call the routine whose address is stored in the "func" part of the structure pointed to by "wnd", and pass to it the contents of the cell pointed to by the pointer in "addr" after it (the pointer, not the contents) has been incremented. Or something like that. Clone: An acronym standing for "Copied Low-cost Optimal Non-IBM Equipment". Often used as a cure for the dreaded Big Blue. Texas, land of independent self-styled individualists, is current "Siliclone Valley" where imagination is limited only by IBM. Consultant: Unemployed computer expert. Demo: A method of program testing that tends to isolate numerous non-reproducible program behaviors. Fixing said abnormalities is difficult because they only appear when the debugging software is not loaded, and when several potential buyers are watching. EISA: Chinese for "we copied it without duplicating it". Inscrutable alternative to Micro Channel Architecture, (MCA); backed by everybody but IBM. Gang of Nine: Originally the Gang of None, this is a group of 100+ coming-of-age companies marked by their new-found willingness to tell IBM jokes in public, and their unwillingness to pay IBM bus royalties. Answer: EISA, MCA, and Greyhound. Question: name two dogs and a bus. Hackers: A programmer who grew up tapping out Morse Code on a ham radio, and has never forgiven IBM for not putting a front switch panel on the original PC. IBM: Standards proposing organization. IBM develops hardware architectures, and builds slow underpowered prototypes for other companies to improve upon. See Clone. Local Area Network (LAN): High-tech cousin of the mainframe nominally designed to allow people to share information and snoop into personal letters and resumes queued for the laser printer. True rationale is to (a) sell hardware, and (b) build data processing (DP) empires. When a DP operation runs smoothly, it gets no attention from money-laden-management. LAN's purchased by "technology visionaries" to "increase power and future capacity" guarantee anomalous problems for years to come. Tech-terrified managers are told that bonuses "to keep our valuable people" and more hardware budget are the only solutions to the problems. Blackmail buys electronic mail. Micro Channel Architecture (MCA): IBM's new bus that caries information in 32-bit packets. The first bus developed solely by lawyers, it is considered copy-proof (the theory being that no one would want anything created by lawyers). The bus is actually 48 bits wide, but the lawyers take 1/3 of anything they work on. A not-so-subtle attempt to limit the market to IBM. Microsoft: Contract programming house for IBM, and primary sustainer of the clone market. IBM pays MS to write fancy software, then MS tweaks it a little, slaps the MS logon on it, and sells it to all the clone folks so they can keep competing with IBM. There is no truth to the rumor that former Mafioso procure the IBM contracts for MS. All products are given generic names (Word, Project, Works, Windows, etc.) to (a) confuse everybody unless (b) the name "Microsoft" is constantly repeated. Made the founder $300,000,000+ in one day. Next: Experimental computer backed by Ross Perot and powered by charisma. The main problem is that few homes or offices have charisma outlets. Name-wise reminiscent of the "The Last One", an old CP/M program so-named because it was powerful enough to create all your future application programs (making it the last program you would have to buy). It was also powered by charisma. Novice: A person who talks about learning Basic, and spends all of his/her time trying to get into the joke and adult message bulletin boards. Ph.D.: A user with more sense than money. Ph.D's generally have elegant solutions to problems that don't exist. The (top-down, of course) solutions always work because they have never been programmed. (Stands for piled high and deep, as in B.S., M.S., Ph.D. = bull s..t, more s..t, etc. ed.) Power user: A user with more money than sense. A power user buys all the latest and greatest hardware, spends long hours running short timing tests, and grants 30+ interviews per week to columnists. Proud to know every variation of the DOS dir command. As a kid, the power user was first in line to see "Star Wars" (all 22 times s/he saw it), and acted as assistant equipment manager for the football team. Presentation Manager: IBM's Next-influenced Windows-derived display and user interface program. It is almost compatible with Windows, thus, causing PMS (Presentation Manager Schizophrenia) among developers who don't know where to target their work. They usually settle for something other than PM which could kill it (if its OS/2-heritage doesn't do it first). Structured design: Program development technique which stresses the stepwise decomposition of problems in an egoless environment. Often results in the spontaneous decomposition of egos. Reportedly used in several big projects, none of which have been completed yet. See top-down. Top-down: Program design methodology which is equivalent to solving a maze by starting at the treasure chest in the middle (the program goal) and tracing backwards to see how to get there. Works flawlessly if you do indeed start at the program goal. A decidedly dull approach to programming. Thank goodness, not one single program goal has ever been fully know before the program was completed, so one must eventually resort to bottom-up programming. The "goto" programming construct is not allowed and the whole program is split into subroutines of not more than 25 lines of code (most of which are subroutine calls). User group: A collection of long-time bulletin board users who couldn't stand not knowing what each other looked like. To cure this curiosity, they periodically get together. It works - most members can now stand not knowing what other BB'ers look like. Virus: A program designed for maximum portability. 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 Peter Ludwig, a caver from Austria who is appalled by American driving habits, offers the following advice: The probability of being involved in a traffic accident is directly proportional to time spent on the road. Driving fast decreases one's exposure. One third of traffic accidents are caused by drunk drivers; two thirds are caused by non-drunk drivers. Therefore, the safest way to drive is drunk and VERY fast. Drivers in California are greatly distressed by rain. First, since you can't see the car ahead of you clearly, they tailgate him more effectively. Second, since they just *hate* rain in _sunny_California_, they just drive faster to get home in a hurry. 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 There were three convicts condemned to death. All three were given a choice of how to die. They had three choices: 1. Die by electric chair, 2. Die in the gas chamber, 3. Get injected with the AIDS virus. The Italian chose the chair, the Irishman chose the gas chamber, the Polish guy chose the Aids virus. "Why did you choose AIDS", asked the other two, "Because, I won't catch it" the Pole said. "Why not"? they asked" "Because", the Polish guy said, "I'm wearing a condom." _________________________ Q: How many programmers does it take to change a lightbulb? A: None. It's a hardware problem. 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 There was this Jew who prayed daily to win the lottery. "God," he'd say, "please let me win the lottery. Please Please let me win the lottery." About ten years of this passed, and our Jew, still praying every day, was getting a mite exasperated. Finally he said, "God, why haven't I won the lottery? I've prayed every day for ten years and I haven't won the lottery." "Irving," a voice boomed, "at least meet me half way and purchase a lottery ticket." 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 The sailor and the priest were playing golf. The sailor was not very good at it, and uttered a loud "Fuck, missed!" each time he missed. The priest tolerated him for a few minutes and couldn't take it no more. "Do not swear thus, my friend, or God will punish you". It didn't make a difference, the sailor continued unabated. One after another, the sailor played badly, and followed up with "Fuck, missed!!". Again, the priest said "Do not utter such profanities, or God will show you a sign". It didn't help, and the next stroke missed was followed by a loud "Fuck, missed!!". A bolt of lightning dropped out of the clouds and struck the priest dead. A voice was heard in the clouds "Fuck, missed!!!". _________________________ The Big Bad Wolf says to Little Red Riding Hood: I'm going to _fuck_ your brains out. Little Red Riding Hood responds: Oh no you're not. You're going to eat me just like the book says. Big Bad Wolf: Little Red Riding Hood, I'm gonna eat you! Red: Eat, Eat, Eat! Doesn't anyone wanna fuck anymore? _________________________ Two truck drivers come accross a tunnel with their truck. A road sign says "Max Height 10 feet". They stop the truck, one of them gets out, looks around, gets back in, and says to the other: "No cops, let's go" 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 A man marries a JEG/KfS [Joke Ethnic Group/Known for Stupidity] woman and all is well for a time. And, as such things happen, they eventually are going to have a baby. The woman's time comes, and as she is taken into the operating room, she calls he husband over and says to him: "Honey, there's something I really have to tell you." "Can't this wait" says the husband. "No", explains the wife. "There is as an very old tradition in JEG/KfS families that the oldest living male *always* gets to name any new children born to anyone in the family. That means my brother must name our children. I know this comes as a shock, but I couldn't tell you earlier, because I didn't want to upset you." "But, but..." sputters the husband "I *know* your brother. There's no question but that he'll screw this up!" "I'm sorry" says the wife, "but that's the way it has to be." Time is getting short, and not wanting to upset his wife any further, the husband finally relents. The blessed time comes, and to every one's surprise the mother gives birth to a set of healthy, beautiful twins, a boy and a girl. The father is of course delighted, but his happiness is tempered by the question he knows he must ask his wife. Finally, he can put it off no longer. "Alright" he asks, taking a deep breath, "what did your brother name our daughter?" "Denise" says the mother, quietly. "Oh", says the surprised father. "That's a pretty name. Perhaps this won't be so bad after all. What did he name our son?" "Denephew" said the mother. 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 Hooker accidently hits on a vice cop who's just about to go off-shift, he really wants to avoid the paperwork of processing this Bimbo now, preferring to go home and eat his dinner. The Hooker says: "Anything you can name with 3 words, $100..eh?" The vice cop nods, but gives her an address on a piece of paper and says: "How about tomorrow, this address - same deal?" The tart agrees, and in fact shows up at the vice cop's house the following day. The cop hands her $100, shows her his badge and says: "Paint my house." 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 Three s, looking for some extra cash, decide to rob a liquor store. Being s, they screw it up and are all shot and killed. Their souls then make the journey to the pearly gates, where they are met by St. Peter. Peter: Welcome to Heaven. Before I let you in, you'll have to pass a little test; intellectual standards you understand. Hmm, lets see...Ah, here's one: Spell 'before' 1st : Befo: b-e-f-o Peter: No, I'm afraid thats wrong. With that Peter pulls a little lever and the first is sent to hell. Peter: Okay, next. 2nd : Befo: b-e-f-o-w Peter: Sorry, not quite. Peter again pulls the lever, sending the second to hell. Peter: Next. 3rd : Befo: b-e-f-o-r-e Peter: Good! Now use it in a sentence. 3rd : 2 and 2 before. 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 "Nowadays, when opportunity knocks, you have to unlock both deadbolts, remove the chain, and turn off the burglar alarm..." Why was the skeleton afraid to cross the road? He had no guts! Why did the pervert cross the road? To get to the chicken! _________________________ How about the old chestnut that the average human only uses 10% of their brain? The MIT paper "thursday" once published a great comeback to that one, "The rest is taken up by the operating system". _________________________ >>My dear fellow Shakespearean play buffs, could you name these five plays? > >3" -> _Much Ado About Nothing_ >6" -> _As You Like It_ >12" -> _Taming of the Shrew_ -> _The Merry Wives of Windsor_? >Wet -> _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ >Dry -> _Twelth Night_ _________________________ I *believe* these are fictional, but I made them up once and injected them into a demo database: Connie Lingus Phil Atchio _________________________ Kinky is using a feather, perverted is using the whole chicken. _________________________ Top 10 Iranian T-shirt Slogans 10. IRAQ Busters 9. Surf Straits of Hormuz 8. Mom and Dad blew up a bus load of tourists and all I got was this lousy T-shirt 7. Death to all Americans except Motley Crue 6. Official veil inspector 5. Kiss me I'm a walking time bomb 4. I've been tested for sand chiggers 3. You don't have to be crazy to set yourself on fire and run into an enemy tank ... but it sure helps 2. If you don't ride a camel you ain't shiite 1. Spuds Khomenini: The original party animal 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 Xerox officials held an emergency press conference Wedensday to announce a total recall of all Reprotron 5000 Three-Dimensional Copy Machines. Xerox stock has plummeted to a new all-time low since the release of the innovative device. Xerox hailed the Reprotron 5000 as a "new revolution in copying" when it introduced the machine just two weeks ago, and market insiders were certain that the copier would send Xerox stock through the roof. At a demonstration of the Reprotron in August, Xerox staffers made full three-dimensional copies of an Oriental vase, a bowl of fruit, and a perfect red rose. Reporters were invited to sample apples and oranges copied from the original fruit, though Xerox technicians did warn that the copied fruit might taste slightly of toner. John Thompson (inventor of the Reprotron) stepped forward to make a copy of a Manhattan phone book, but accidentally copied his hand and forearm. He quickly disposed of the highly detailed, frantically wiggling half-limb as it slid out of the copier's delivery slot. But Xerox wasn't ready for what happened next. "We assumed that people would behave as responsible, thinking human beings with this copier, and obviously we were wrong," Thompson states. From all across the USA, reports have been filing in of the copier being used in what Thompson calls "sick, greedy ways." At a Copy Center in Austin, Texas, a couple was arrested for making 15 copies of their three-year-old son, Jeremy, and then refusing to pay for the copies, claiming that some of the new children were "smudged." Local authorities were uncertain as to which charges should be pressed. In Union City, Arizona, Treasury Department officials are investigating reports of a secretary who allegedly copied a single bar of gold bullion 150 times. A task force investigator stated, "Granted, it takes money to make money, but we're almost certain that this action is in violation of some laws." Xerox officials are also under fire from consumers, due to rumors that the three-dimensional copying technology is imperfect. Harold Butz of Peoria, Pennsylvania, made a copy of a common cement brick spray-painted gold. Butz claims he was "shocked and dismayed" when he discovered that the machine-made copy was 22-karat solid gold. "All I wanted was a really good copy of a cement brick spray-painted gold'" Butz stated. "What the hell am I going to do with this thing?" Xerox plans to scrap all the machines they are able to recall, but Thompson expressed concern over the so-called "black market Reprotrons." "Apparently some sick and greedy people discovered that if they had two machines, they could use one to make a working copy of the other," Thompson revealed. "To tell the truth, we only sold two machines in all - to the Cappelli family, a New Jersey based Meat packing firm. These copy pirates should be aware that as with anything that is copied from a copy and so on, there are bound to be defects in the copies produced. We have no idea what kind of stuff will pop out of the slot when a person copies something on a fourth- or fifth-generation machine." Thompson declined to comment on reports that hundreds of the pirated machines have a human thumb attached to the coin slot which constantly wiggles - the result of a person's thumb getting in the way during one of the original copier-to-copier copies. "Ultimately, we're not too worried," Thompson stated. "People owning the copiers will eventually run out of the fluid that make the machine work, and we've taken all the fluid off the market. A machine can only last two weeks or so without a fluid refill, and there won't be any fluid refills." When asked why people with copiers couldn't simply make copies of the fluid cannisters they already have, Xerox officials hastily ended the press conference, stating that they "need to reconsider a few things." 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 Intercourse Beats Masturbation Inefficient But Marketable I Became Macintosh Imperialism By Marketing Idiots Become Managers Insolence Breeds Mediocrity Incredibly Brilliant Marketing Incredibly Big Monopoly 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 This man goes to his doctor to get his tennis elbow checked. When he arrives the receptionist asks him to fill a bottle for the doctor. Thinking that this seems a little strange being that he is seeing the doctor for tennis elbow, asks what for. The re- ceptionist tells him that the doc has a new machine that can di- agnose any ailment by the patients urine. He was skeptical but submitted. Then when he finally saw the doctor he asked him about it. The doctor told him all about it; how it cost $1 million, and how it cut his office time in 1/2, and now he can spend endless hours out on the golf course. The doctor tells the man to take it easy for 2 weeks, and come back with another urine sample. So the guy figures he'll play a trick on the doc, so he asks his family to help. This is what they did: his wife pissed in it, his daughter pissed in it, he put a couple drops of oil from his car in it. Then to top it off, he jerks off in it. Two weeks pass, and he returns to the doc's office and gives him the urine sample. The doc analyzes it and tells him he has some bad news. He says, "your wife has vd, your daughter is pregnant, your car is about to throw a rod, and if you keep jerking off, your tennis elbow will never get better." 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 The pretty teacher was concerned with one of her eleven-year-old students. Taking him aside after class one day, she asked, "George, why has your school work been so poor lately?" "I'm in love," the boy replied. Holding back an urge to smile, she asked, "With whom?" "With you," he said. "But George," she said gently, "don't you see how silly that is? It's true that I would like a husband of my own someday. But I don't want a child." "Oh, don't worry," the boy said reassuringly, "I'll use a rubber." 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 In a survey taken several years ago, all incoming freshman at MIT were asked if they expected to graduate in the top half of their class. Ninety-seven percent responded that they did. The more things change, the more they stay insane. One Yuppie can ruin your whole day. On the wall of a church was a sign, "If you are tired of sin, come to see us!" And right below it in nice rounded letters; "But if you're not, my phone number is 341 3451" A young french girl was visiting New York when her cash funds run dry and her visa expired. She met a sailor who agreed to stow her aboard his ship that was about to sail. Every day he would bring her food and drink and in return all she had to do was give him a bit of love, lacking much choice the girl agreed. And so everyday the sailor brought some food and would get some loving in return. This went on for several weeks until the captain saw the sailor sneaking around with a tray of food and the whole affair was uncovered. The captain felt obliged to apologize to the girl: "I'm very sorry about all that has happened to you, but you have to admit the sailor is smart. Do you know you're on the Staten Island Ferry?" "Hello, you have reached an imaginary number. Please rotate your phone by 90 degrees and try again. Thank you." -- The MIT phone system message for unused extensions Bumper sticker on hunk of large Detroit iron SO MANY PEDESTRIANS SO LITTLE TIME Bumper sticker on a beautiful Porsche: MY OTHER CAR IS ALSO A PORSCHE. One hooker to another "Things are getting so bad, i let this guy fuck me last night just to be able to take a taxi home". She replies "Oh you're doing pretty good. Last night, I gave this guy a blow job just to get something warm down my throat." I just don't understand women. Why don't they come with a instruction manual? During a grouse hunt in North Carolina two intrepid sportsmen were blasting away at a clump of trees near a stone wall. Suddenly a red-faced country squire popped his head over the wall and shouted, "Hey, you almost hit my wife." "Did I?" cried the hunter, aghast. "Terribly sorry. Have a shot at mine, over there." Bug: Small living things that small living boys throw on small living girls. Well, there was this tiger, who woke up one morning, and just felt great (yes, just like Tony the Tiger: GREAAAAAAT). Anyway, he just felt so good, he went out and cornered a small monkey and roared at him: "WHO IS THE MIGHTIEST OF ALL THE JUNGLE ANIMALS?" And this poor quaking little monkey replied: "You are of course, no one is mightier than you." A little while later this tiger confronts a deer, and just bellows out: "WHO IS THE GREATEST AND STRONGEST OF ALL THE JUNGLE ANIMALS?" The deer is shaking so hard it can barely speak, but manages to stammer: "Oh great tiger, you are by far the mightiest animal in the jungle." The tiger, being on a roll, swaggered, up to an elephant that was quietly munching on some weeds, and roared at the top of his voice: "WHO IS THE MIGHTIEST OF ALL THE ANIMALS IN THE JUNGLE?" Well, this elephant grabs the tiger with his trunk, picks him up, slams him down; picks him up again, and shakes him until the tiger is just a blur of orange and black; and finally throws him violently into a nearby tree. The tiger staggers to his feet and looks at the elephant and says: "Man, just because you don't know the answer, you don't have to get so pissed." "I own my own body, but I share" Conservative, n.: One who admires radicals centuries after they're dead. One who believes that nothing should be done for the first time. Chaste makes waste. I regret to say that we of the F.B.I. are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce. -- J. Edgar Hoover A hard man is good to find. A Puritan is someone who is deathly afraid that someone, somewhere, is having fun. If guns are outlawed, how will we shoot the liberals? I came; I saw; I fucked up. Absence makes the heart go wander. You know you've been spending too much time with a computer when your friend misdates a check, and you suggest adding a '++' to fix it. Cloning is the sincerest form of flattery. Ken Thompson has an automobile which he helped design. Unlike most automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gage, nor any of the numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver. Rather, if the driver makes any mistake, a giant "?" lights up in the center of the dashboard. "The experienced driver", he says, "will usually know what's wrong." Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery? The father of six kids, was asked why didn't he stop at one or two. The reply was "My wife and I don't think all the children in the world should be raised by beginers." 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 There were in this country two very large monopolies. The larger of the two had the following record: the Vietnam War, Watergate, double-digit inflation, fuel and energy shortages, bankrupt airlines, and the 8-cent postcard. The second was responsible for such things as the transistor, the solar cell, lasers, synthetic crystals, high fidelity stereo recording, sound motion pictures, radio astronomy, negative feedback, magnetic tape, magnetic "bubbles", electronic switching systems, microwave radio and TV relay systems, information theory, the first electrical digital computer, and the first communications satellite. Guess which one got to tell the other how to run the telephone business? 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 Q: Why are Russian athletes as classy as they are ? A: Because they're trained using the border as the finish line. Capitalism is the unequal distribution of Wealth. Communism is the equal distribution of Poverty. When Canada introduced Shiny Gold (coloured) $1 coins, many had a hard time with them, spending hours trying to take the foil wrapper off to get at the chocolate inside! If God is perfect, why did He create discontinuous functions? 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 Once upon a time there was a stork family - papa stock, mama stork and baby stork. One evening papa stork didn't show up for dinner. Mama stork and baby stork left the food out for him but he didn't come home at all that night. When papa stork finally did come home the next day, baby stork asked "Papa stork, where were you last night?" "Out making a young couple very happy," replied papa stork. Several weeks later, mama stork was late making dinner. Baby stork and papa stork waited a while, and then gave up and ordered pizza. Mama stork didn't come home until late the next morning. When mama stork did come in, baby stork asked "Mama stork, where were you last night?" "Out making a young couple very happy," replied mama stork. Later in the fall, baby stork was late for dinner. Papa stork and mama stork were worried. Their anxiety increased when baby stork still wasn't home by sunset. They both waited up late for baby stork but he didn't come in until early in the morning. His feathers were rumpled and unkempt. Papa stork barked, "Where the hell were you baby stork?" as his tired son dragged himself over the threshold. "Oh, just scaring the shit out of college students," replied baby stork. 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 This definition of "compiler" by a student in a introductory Com- puter Science course. "A compiler's primary function is to compile, organize the compi- lation, and go right back to compiling. It compiles basically only those things that requre to be compiled, ignoring things that should not be compiled. The main way a compiler compiles, is to compile the things to be compiled until the compilation is complete." 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 What is 69 x 2 ? Dinner for four. What is the square root of 69? ate something... What is 68? You do me and I'll owe you one. What is 70? 69 with 1 watching. Why's 77 beter then 69 ? You get ate more 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 The teacher was discussing the creation of the world, Adam & Eve and their expulsion from the paradise. At the end of the class the teacher asks: "So students, Can you tell me who were Adam & Eve ?". One student answered: "They were russians". "Why ?" asked the teacher. "Because they didn't have clothes, house or car and they thought they were in paradise". 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 There is this French couple, sitting up talking, when the wife says to the husband that it was time he had a conversation with their thirteen year old son about the birds and the bees. So the father goes to his son's room and says "Son do you remember that session I arranged for you with mademoiselle Ginette ?" "Oh yes papa, I remember very well" says the son. "Well son it is time you knew that the birds and the bees do the same thing" 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 Headlines from Scientific National Enquirer EXCLUSIVE PHOTO: Turing machine with two heads! STARTLING EVIDENCE: LISP came from Mars? SHOCKING EXPOSE: Illegal core dumping in Lake Erie! TRUE STORY: Man inverts singular matrix and lives to tell! REVELATION: Top scientist discovers New Jersey on Karnaugh map! OS SCANDAL: Unix and Ms. Dos found in love nest! PSYCHIC PREDICTS: Fixed points will break again! CIA SECRET: Proof of P=NP found in UFO! ANALYSTS PANIC: Prime numbers missing from IEEE floating point? SOFTWARE REVOLUTION: Marxists scheme classless Smalltalk! 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 What did Bambi do on her eighteenth birthday? She went down to a stag bar and blew a few bucks. 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 There is this American tourist on a trip around Ireland. When the tour arrives at Belfast he decides to go for a stroll with the aim of taking in this new culture. After he's been walking for a while someone rushes up behind him and sticks a gun in his back. The person says to the tourist "What are you, Catholic or Protestant ?" The American thinks to himself "Great - if I say I'm Catholic, this guy is sure to be Protestant. If I say I'm Protestant, he's sure to be Catholic. Either way I'm dead." Then he has a brain wave and says to the Guy, "actually I'm jewish". This, he thinks to himself will surely keep him safe. The guy behind him then replies "Gee, I must be the luckiest Arab in Ireland." 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 A mother and her son were flying TWA from Kansas to Chicago. The son (who had been looking out the window) turned to his mother and said, "If big dogs have baby dogs and big cats have baby cats, why don't big planes have baby planes?" The mother (who couldn't think of an answer) told her son to ask the stewardess. So the boy asked the stewardess , "If big dogs have baby dogs and big cats have baby cats, why don't big planes have baby planes?" The stewardess asked, "Did your mother tell you to ask me?" He said that she had. So she said, "Tell your mother that TWA always pulls out on time." 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 One year at halloween the governor of Illinois was giving a costume party. all the gentry were there and as they arrived the doorman would announce what there characters were. When one couple arrived he announced "Mickey and Minnie Mouse". As the next couple arrived he announced "Tarzan and Jane" and so on as each guest arrived. Later in the evening a man arrived dressed only in a pair of underpants but apart from that totally naked from head to toe. "Who do you think you are?" demanded the doorman. Having ascertained that the man was indeed an invited guest from the local university CS department The doorman asked "How shall I announce you?" The man said, "I'm premature ejaculation" "I'm very sorry sir" said the doorman in obvious shock I cannot announce anything like that to such a gathering. "O.K." said the professor. "Just say I came in my pants" 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 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 that Elvis is alive and running the country. 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 Late 1940's - the Soviet Union in the late half of life was claiming it had invented the world. Stalin receives a report that Soviet archaeologists have discovered the remains of what might be the mighty warrior Ghengus Khan. Stalin was excited, but was told he had to wait before the results cold be certain. Stalin cabled "Patience run out. Need report." Next day, a report comes back saying that the mummy was, indeed, Ghengus Khan. This is heralded all over the Soviet Union, and the archaeologists are given a banquet. One of their companions asks them how they were able to determine, beyond any doubt, that the mummy was indeed Ghengus Khan within such a short time. "It was simple," replied the archaeologist. "The mummy confessed." 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 It tuns out that God is deeply depressed. He sits on a cloud and mopes. So, St. Peter calls in Freud. "Sigmond, could you have a look at God?" Freud comes back. "I'm afraid it's very serious. God is suffering delusions of grandeur - he thinks he's Stalin." 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 NIXON: I hear you have a lot of drunks in the Soviet Union. BREZHNEV: Not so! That's capitalist propaganda! NIXON: No, I'm sure of it. You have a lot of drunks! BREZHNEV:Nonsense. I'll prove it. You can go out at any hour of the night tonight, and I'll give you a machine gun. If you see any drunk you can kill him! NIXON: Ahhh! Very good... (Evil smile) That night, at 1am, Nixon decides to go out. Brezhnev phones Andropov, who is head of the KGB, and tells him to get all the drunks off the street. So Nixon and Brezhnev go cruising around Moscow, Nixon carrying the machine gun in his lap. They drive for two hours - and not a single drunk. Nixon is in the throws of despair, and they are about to head back in, when he spots one lone drunk - staggering everywhere - who has escaped the dragnet. Nixon rolls down the window and blows the guy away. Three months later, Brezhnev comes to the U.S., and after negotiating with Nixon, they have some Vodka again. BREZHNEV: Dick, I hear you Americans are a bunch of drunks. NIXON: Not true. We're hard working people. BREZHNEV: That's not what I heard. I want the same deal I gave you, machine gun and all. At 1:00. So Nixon calls the police and the FBI and tells them to get all the drunks off the road. The two of them go cruising around in a limo, Brezhnev with a machine gun on his lap. Three hours - absolutely nothing. Brezhnev was tired and says, "Okay, Dick, you win. I'm tired. Let's go home." Suddenly, as they're heading back to the White House, they see a group of 11 people walking down the street, blitzed out of their minds. Belated, Brezhnev rolls down the window and blows them all away. Headline next morning in the Washington Post: FANATIC KILLS ENTIRE STAFF OF SOVIET EMBASSY! 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 What's this Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll crap anyway? Whatever happened to the good 'ol days when it used to be Wine, Women and Song? There was this drugstore in NYC, near the Russian Embassy where a pair of lovebirds once descended. Being Russian, and utterly inhibited about sex, they asked the guy across the counter for "_protection_". He nodded conspiratorially and called the CIA. Do unto your data that which you can undo. On a clear disk you can seek forever. To err is human, to undo divine. Iconoclast: person who hates the Macintosh OS. My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore. q: How does one get fresh air into a Russian church? a: One clicks on an icon, and a window opens. What is the Brooklyn alphabet? Fuckin' A, fuckin' B, fuckin' C, etc. On the Berlin Wall: We came. We saw. We did a little shoppping. 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 Little Willie had a gambling problem. He'd bet on anything. One day, Willie's father consulted his teacher. The teacher said. "Mr.Gaines, I think I know how to teach Willie a real lesson. We'll trap him into a big wager that he'll lose." Willie's father agreed to cooperate with the plan. The next day at school, the teacher watched Willie making wagers with the other children, and she said, "Willie, I want you to remain after class." When the others had left the classroom, Willie walked up to the teacher. Before she could say a word, he said, " Dont say it, Miss B; I know what you're going to say, but you're a liar!" "Willie!" the startled teacher said." What are you talking about?" "Your a fake!" Willie continued."How can I believe anything you tell me? You've got this blond hair on top, but I've seen your bush and it's pitch black!" Trying to keep her cool, the teacher said, "Willie that isn't true." "I'll bet a dollar it is !" Willie challenged. The teacher saw her chance to teach Willie his lesson."Make it five dollars and you have a bet," she said. "You're on!" Willie whipped out a five dollar bill. Before anyone could come into the room, Miss B. dropped her panties, spread her legs, and showed Willie that her pubic hair was as blond as the hair on top of her head. Willie hung his head. "You win," he said, handing her the fiver. Miss. B couldn't wait for him to leave so she could get to a phone to call his father. She reported what had happened. "Mr. Gaines," she said, "I think we've finally taught him his lesson." "The hell we have," the father muttered. "This morning Willie bet me ten dollars that he'd see your pussy before the day was over." 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 The following is a true story. Last week I walked into a local "home style cookin' restaurant/watering hole" to pick up a take out order. I spoke briefly to the waitress behind the counter, who told me my order would be done in a few minutes. So, while I was busy gazing at the farm implements hanging on the walls, I was approached by two, uh, um... well, let's call them "natives". These guys might just be the *original* Texas rednecks -- complete with ten-gallon hats, snakeskin boots and the pervasive odor of cheap beer and whiskey. "Pardon us, ma'am. Mind of we ask you a question?" Well, people keep telling me that Texans are real friendly, so I nodded. "Are you a Satanist?" Well, at least they didn't ask me if I liked to party. "Uh, no, I can't say that I am." "Gee ma'am. Are you *sure* about that?" they asked. I put on my biggest, brightest Dallas Cowboys cheerleader smile and said, "No, I'm positive. The closest I've ever come to Satanism is watching Geraldo." "Hmm. Interesting. See, we was just wondering why it is you have the lord of darkness on your chest there." I was *this close* to slapping one of them and causing a scene -- then I stopped and noticed the T-shirt I happened to be wearing that day. Sure enough, it had a picture of a small, devilish looking creature that has for quite some time now been associated with a certain operating system. In this particular representation, the creature was wearing sneakers. They continued: "See, ma'am, we don't exactly *appreciate* it when people show off pictures of the devil. Especially when he's lookin' so friendly." These idiots sounded terrifyingly serious. Me: "Oh, well, see, this isn't really the devil, it's just, well, it's sort of a mascot." Native: "And what kind of football team has the devil as a mascot?" Me: "Oh, it's not a team. It's an operating-- uh, a kind of computer." I figured that an ATM machine was about as much technology as these guys could handle, and I knew that if I so much as uttered the word "unix" I would only make things worse. Native: "Where does this satanical computer come from?" Me: "California. And there's nothing satanical about it really." Somewhere along the line here, the waitress has noticed my predicament -- but these guys probably outweighed her by 600 pounds, so all she did was look at me sympathetically and run off into the kitchen. Native: "Ma'am, I think you're lying. And we'd appreciate it if you'd leave the premises now." Fortunately, the waitress returned that very instant with my order, and they agreed that it would be okay for me to actually pay for my food before I left. While I was at the cash register, they amused themselves by talking to each other. Native #1: "Do you think the police know about these devil computers?" Native #2: "If they come from California, then the FBI oughta know about 'em." They escorted me to the door. I tried one last time: "You're really blowing this all out of proportion. A lot of people use this "kind of computers". Universities, researchers, businesses. They're actually very useful." Big, big, BIG mistake. I should have guessed at what came next. Native: "Does the government use these devil computers?" Me: "Yes." Another BIG boo-boo. Native: "And does the government *pay* for 'em? With *our* tax dollars?" I decided that it was time to jump ship. Me: "No. Nope. Not at all. You're tax dollars never entered the picture at all. I promise. No sir, not a penny. Our good Christian congressmen would never let something like that happen. Nope. Never. Bye." Texas. What a country. 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴