"'kthxbye' is the pinnacle of English's advancement, shortening 'All correct, Thank you, God be with you.' into seven lowercase letters. Humanity is doomed." -- kaeru in Urban Dictionary Whoever said that money cannot buy happiness has not checked out the Omega-3 Fatty Acids level available OTC in Japanese cuisine. - Siderea Honey. You don't really think that fantasizing about blowing people's heads off in the mall could ever take the place of you, do you? Just wait over there while I run over this hooker. - Sanpaku on computer games I'm approaching a literary singluarity; if book acquisition continues at this pace without getting a more voluminous apartment in which to store them, nuclear fusion is iminent. -- Tibicen "I am not anti-gun. I'm pro-knife. Consider the merits of the knife. In the first place, you have to catch up with someone in order to stab him. A general substitution of knives for guns would promote physical fitness. We'd turn into a whole nation of great runners. Plus, knives don't ricochet. And people are seldom killed while cleaning their knives." -- Molly Ivins The problem with America is stupidity. I'm not saying there should be capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself? - Anonymous It's sort of like when you've been trying to get two acquaintances to meet and talk to each other, but there's all these mishaps that occur, and finally, they talk, and get along pretty well, until one day one realizes that the other one talks too fucking much and segfaults in their face. - dr4b on Perl-Excel integration It's becoming a hobby, which is the term I like to use because "obsession" sounds bad. - Chris Newell When the aliens come, it will be fen who communicate with them. And you know why? It's not just because, well, science fiction fans have THOUGHT about aliens more than most people. No, it's because, at a science fiction convention, you can expect that a shomer n'giah Orthodox Jew will talk to a leather-clad dominatrix and someone dressed in Regency garb. As friends. About hobbit pornography. - Xiphias "I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves." --- August Strindberg, A Madman's Diary, 1895 [The buffer overflow] was the number one cause of hacks and worms in the olden days before Microsoft Outlook made hacking easy enough for teenagers to do. -- Joel on Software I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone. -- Bjarne Stroustrup On writing autobiographies: I guess, in my mind, my "self-narrative" is actually more of a database table than a list. They're asking me "how is the information ordered?" and I keep scratching my head and saying "tell me how you want it ordered and I can write any SELECT you want!" -- Tibicen The Senate has passed a bill to move the Director of Homeland Security up to 8th in the line of presidential succession. In the event that the President, Vice President, Speaker of the House, President Pro Tempore of the senate, and those other four guys are all wiped out by a terrorist attack, do we really want the country to be run by the guy whose job it was to make sure something like that didn't happen? -- kimberlogic@livejournal.com All it takes for bad English to prevail is for literate people to do nothing. -- Dan Kimmel Stupidity is not a handicap. Park elsewhere. On choosing an SCA period for a Jewish persona: "I chose to be Sephardi because, well, they're the cool ones, and also I assumed that playing an Ashkenazi was just piety, oppression, and a pogrom each Thursday whether you needed it or not." - Raquel (Hasoferet@aol.com) "The actions taken by the New Hampshire Episcopalians are an affront to Christians everywhere. I am just thankful that the church's founder, Henry VIII, and his wife Catherine of Aragon, his wife Anne Boleyn, his wife Jane Seymour, his wife Anne of Cleves, his wife Katherine Howard, and his wife Catherine Parr are no longer here to suffer through this assault on traditional Christian marriage." -- a Los Angeles Times editorial "Visitor teaches town to stand up to the local bullies" is the plot of an awful lot of Westerns, of some large fraction of "Kung Fu" episodes, of a good percentage of episodes of "The Incredible Hulk" or "The Fugitive" ... hell, with all the traveling they did, there's probably an episode of "The Partridge Family" built around the same thing, albeit with stranger outfits and musical interludes. -- Tim Lynch, commenting on an Enterprise episode I've started referring to the proposed action against Iraq as Desert Storm 1.1, since it reminds me of a Microsoft upgrade: it's expensive, most people aren't sure they want it, and it probably won't work. --Kevin G. Barkes Regard as trifling the great good you did to others, and as enormous the little good others did to you. - Talmud: Derek Eretz Last night I found myself behind a car with a bumper sticker saying, "Follow me to Jesus." And I wondered what would happen if I did. What would they have done if I just started following them all the way home? I'd pull up at their house and be like, "Ok, where is he?" - Beaniekins Birds of a feather flock together and aim for your car. When I can't be kind, I try to have the decency to be vague. The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right time, but also to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment. The older you get, the tougher it is to lose weight, because by then your body and your fat are really good friends. The sole purpose of a child's middle name is so he can tell when he's really in trouble. Suppose you don't believe in God and that you and another atheist friend begin to discuss the merits of belief in God. Suppose additionally that for the sake of argument you decide to defend God, although you are in fact confident in his nonexistence. Are you still playing devil's advocate? -- Nick Jong "It's not the verbing that weirds the language, it's the renounification." -- Marc LeBlanc Re: Better Political Speechwriting "Zathras look at budget deficit, says, not good. Stop spending. But no one ever listen to Zathras. But one day, everybody listen. Then, Zathras elected. Zathras will be great president. Someday even have face printed on money. Then, everybody have Zathras face in pants. It is good to be president." -- JMS vi is really easy, once you learn the fundamental truth, which is that vi has two modes: one that beeps at you, and another that corrupts your data. -- Unknown There are only 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't. -- Unknown Veggie eaters are just people who can't catch real food. -- Bucky (Get Fuzzy) His troops would follow him anywhere, but only out of curiosity. -- source (and target) unknown Writing software is not like building bridges because halfway through the project some dumbass from marketing doesn't come down and tell you that concrete is out and so it needs to be a steel bridge. Oh, and those tacky cables have got to go -- the focus group hated them. --john@iastate.edu on slashdot "The Web brings people together because no matter what kind of a twisted sexual mutant you happen to be, you've got millions of pals out there. Type in 'Find people that have sex with goats that are on fire' and the computer will say, 'Specify type of goat.'" - Rich Jeni "English doesn't borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over, and goes through their pockets for loose grammar." --- James D. Nicoll All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put this premise together again. - Jamahl Epsicokhan commenting on a Voyager plot Seen on the Net: "The cup is half empty. Deal with it." Deja Moo: The feeling that you've heard this bull before. Y'know that logic puzzle with the fox, the goose and the grain? What kind of farmer owns a *fox*? -- John Stracke For the life of me, I've never understood why people dismiss the importance of "semantics" in communication. After all, if semantics had no purpleness, you'd slitheringly go bold at by-sit it I'm climbing. -- Heather Rose Jones Rain -- violent torrents of it, rain like fetid water from a God-sized pot of pasta strained through a sky-wide colander, rain as Noah knew it, flaying the shuddering trees, whipping the whitecapped waters, violating the sodden firmament, purging purity and filth alike from the land, rain without mercy, without surcease, incontinent rain, turning to intermittent showers overnight with partial clearing Tuesday. - seen on the net (source unknown) The only things for sure in this life are Death and Taxes...and Taxes are optional as long as you don't care where you die! "Stop slouching toward Bethlehem!" -- The Mother of the Beast If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed. -- Mark Twain You know you're among Jewish geeks when... 1. the Quakeathon *ends* on Friday afternoon, rather than *start*. 2. the phrase "Amalek of Borg" makes sense... 3. someone is denounced for diverting a Halakhic discussion to the implications of event X where P(X) < P(sun going nova) - Omri Schwarz The Peter Principle: In every hierarchy, whether it be government or business, each employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence; every post tends to be filled by an employee incompetent to execute its duties. Corollaries: 1. Incompetence knows no barriers of time or place. 2. Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence. 3. If at first you don't succeed, try something else. The universe hates you. Deal with it. --S. Harper, Andromeda Pre Internet: Look at those clouds. It's going to rain. Post Internet: lok at tHOz CLOWDZ!!!!!!!! IMHOFYIASAP its goying to cLICK HeRe!!!!!! B-) -- Author unknown "As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls." -- M. Cartmill "UNIX is very user-friendly, it's just very particular about who its friends are." (source unknown) RTFMA: Read the manual, SIR! A wizard is a band-aid for a poorly-designed user interface. -- Overheard at SIGDOC 2000 Trouble occasionally needs to be stirred up to prevent it from becoming lumpy. -- Cassadoria Coke in, code out. Friends don't let friends use Outlook. -- Rick Brown (?) The kiss originated when the first male reptile licked the first female reptile, implying in a subtle, complimentary way that she was as succulent as the small reptile he had for dinner the night before. F. Scott Fitzgerald For those in the know, potrzebie is truly necessary. "Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so." -Douglas Adams I have no problem with hunting for food. But hunting will never be a sport until deer are issued Uzis and rabbits are taught to lay claymores. Larry Kirby Yesterday it worked Today it is not working Windows is like that. Gold! Y'know they always show burly pirates carrying large chests of gold? Two cubic feet of solid gold, the size of a common cardboard "book box," or a little larger than a copy-paper box, would weigh 2,332 pounds -- and would be worth about $11M these days. Carry *that* pirate-boy! (Calculations available upon request.) -- Cynthia du Pri Argent From "Top 10 reasons to start keeping kosher": 5. Every spring, you're obligated to throw out that unrecognizable green growth germinating in the back of your refrigerator. (Courtesy of Ohr Somayach.) Kindling fire is biblical. Elevators are interpretation. - Tibor on halachic interpretation One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries. A. A. Milne "I'm sorry, but anyone who thinks the use of an angelic (or seemingly angelic) character, whose likes have been written about for, oh, about 4,000 years, is ripping off Star Trek, has his head so thoroughly up his ass as to have blipped into an entirely new intestinally-based reality and desperately needs to get a wider frame of reference." -jms To get answers from usenet, don't ask questions: post errors. There are three kinds of men: The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves. Godwin's Law: prov. [Usenet] "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups. One who gives coin to the poor is rewarded with six blessings, but one who pledges to a charity receives a free tote bag. David Bader "History doesn't always repeat itself... sometimes it just screams 'Why don't you listen when I'm talking to you?' and lets fly with a club." JWC,Jr. If music be the food of love, then some of it be the Twinkies of dysfunctional relationships. -- Avram Grumer Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. --Barry Goldwater, in a speech written by William Safire "Had God not given us the Torah, we would have learned the laws of modesty from cats." -- Talmudic saying. I used to be an athiest, but I had to give it up because I had nothing to say during a blowjob. "Oh -- Random Chance, Random Chance -- RANDOM CHANCE!!" just doesn't express the gravity of the situation. -- Kevin (fnord@cruzers.com) We doubt that even so eminent a composer as Irving Berlin should be permitted to claim a property interest in iambic pentameter. - (some) Court of Appeals, ruling on song parodies and copyright Let me be a free man -- free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to think and talk and act for myself -- and I will obey every law, or submit to the penalty. In-mut-too-yah-lat-lat (Chief Joseph), 1879 I pray you forgive me my ramblings, my humors are most unbalanced as they ever are this time of year. As soon as the leaves start to open, I have too much of the cold and wet phlegmatic humours. Perhaps I need to eat food that is hotter and drier to counteract this. That, or take some more Claritin. --Dyfan ap Iago The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- G. Bernard Shaw War has ended, not with the bang of a bomb, but with the gentle whisper of crashing software. -- Gerard Stafleu SCSI is *NOT* magic. There are *fundamental technical reasons* why it is necessary to sacrifice a young goat to your SCSI chain now and then. -- jfw@proteon.com (John Woods) [on SCA bureaucracy:] One waiver to rule them all, one waiver to bind them, one waiver to bring them all and in the darkness savage their legal rights. -- Tibor of Rock Valley On the other hand, if XBrew thinks that I was "flaming just for the sake of flaming" then I suspect he has no idea how restrained my language has been compared to what I'm capable of if I choose, and compared to my full and complete opinion of him, his intellect, his ability to think logically, and his intellectual honesty. -- Tangwystyl (rec.org.sca) Etiquette: the noise you don't make while eating soup. Maybe lost email, believing itself to be unwanted and neglected, wanders off to seek other email in the same situation. Eventually these messages get together with each other, form colonies of their own, breed, and produce... spam. The typical man oils the squeaky wheel when it becomes annoying. The smart man realizes that all the wheels on the cart are working together, and checks the others at the same time. The truly wise man doesn't wait for squeaks to check on their condition. -- Monica Cellio on tantrum-based management "We are Microsoft of Borg. Resistance is futile. You will be assim -" General Protection Fault at BORG32.DLL A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well. Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning. -- Rich Cook Oh bother, said the Borg, we've assimilated Pooh. I've got a mind like a...what's that thing called that you use to strain spaghetti? There's no such thing as an over-engineered solution, just under-engineered problems. -- Steve Jensen (incipient engineer) I like to give home-made gifts. Which one of the kids would you like? "Checks and balances" does *not* mean writing the checks while ignoring the balances. I am Ornithopter of the Borg. I am insignificant. It sure would be nice if we got a day off for the president's birthday, like they do for the queen. Of course, then we would have a lot of people voting for a candidate born on July 3 or December 26, just for the long weekends. Often, when I am reading a good book, I stop and thank my teacher. That is, I used to, until she got an unlisted number. For centuries, people thought the moon was made of green cheese. Then the astronauts found that the moon is really a big hard rock. That's what happens to cheese when you leave it out. If we could just get everyone to close their eyes and visualize world peace for an hour, imagine how serene and quiet it would be until the looting started. Rome was not implemented in a day. Tongue: a variety of meat, rarely served because it clearly crosses the line between a cut of beef and a piece of dead cow. - Henry Beard Division is useless. You will be approximated. - Pentium of Borg Re: Neil Gaiman, and Modern Comics "The word `masterbate' was censored out of one of the stories. He said Karen Berger told him, `It is official policy. People don't masterbate in the DC universe.' To which Neil replied, `That's why they all wear funny costumes.'" The purpose of time is to keep everything from happening at once. It's not working. Nothing arouses more hope than the first four hours of a diet. Can God write a check for a sum so large that he can't cover it? I can. If God can't, what does that say about his omnipotence? - Dani Zweig In California, "on time" doesn't mean anything at all. An appointment for a meeting at three o'clock on Tuesday indicates that there won't be a meeting and there might not be a Tuesday. Few words and no numbers have any meaning west of the Nevada border. - P. J. O'Rourke One sometimes finds advice about life in the oddest places. I saw a plastic bag the other day that warned me "To avoid danger of suffocation, keep away from babies and small children." And they always seemed so cute and harmless! - Fred Wamsley I have finally thought of the ultimate villain for the comics: Physics Man. Physics Man's only power would be to enforce the laws of physics. Colossal Boy would collapse under his own weight. Laurel Gand would suffer time dilation. Spider Man would get blood cancer. Superman would have to eat a WHOLE lot or spend months at a time in close orbit around the sun. Batman would be on a respirator. Kitty Pride would be twenty-three. Powergirl would own a br..well, you get the point;-) -- charyma@wkuvx1.bitnet I'll get a life as soon as I can find the FTP site. -anonymous I've known a number of CMU undergrads who would qualify as vegetarian alternatives, though I think most of them are in frats. -Scott Fahlman on canabalism at CMU Lord, give me the courage to change what I can, the wisdom to accept that which I cannot change, and the heavy artillery to make up the difference. -- Patrick L. Humphrey Something told Dorothy she wasn't in Kansas anymore. Maybe it was the color of the sky; maybe it was the smell in the air; maybe it was the road sign that said, "Welcome to Missouri." Arval: (and a large fraction of my offhand comments, which are *not* intended to cause discussion, do.) Ellisif: Gee, do you really think so? BAGEL: A round, hard, doughnut-shaped bakery product introduced to America by Jewish immigrants. The derivation of the Yiddish word is uncertain. Some possible sources are: `beygul' (an encounter with the devil early in the morning); `baygal' (to feel like one has a weasel in his stomach); `beykil' (a mouthful of flannel); `bikkel' (to eat one's luggage); and `bakul' (a brick with a hole in it). -- Henry Beard The couple of times I've played with cornettos, the finger holes seemed completely irrelevant to what note came out the end. - Bill Sommerfeld In case of fire, do not use elevator. Water works better. Psychiatrists say that one out of four people is mentally ill. Check three friends; if they're ok, you're it. Jason: Wanna go out tonight? Catch a movie? Miniature golf? Veronica: I was thinking more along the lines of slitting Heather Duke's wrists open, making it look like suicide. Jason: Ah, now you're talking. I can be up for that. - Heathers So I have decided that from now on, everyone who I interview for a job will be described as an Eskimo. "Luxembourg" sounds like an Eskimo name, doesn't it? So does "Touretzky". We're ALL going to be Eskimos. Witbrock, D'Ippolito, Young, Gusciora -- all Eskimos. The EEO bureaucrats can go straight to hell. Pass the blubber, guys. - Dave Touretzky on Affirmative Action This is nothing more than the entropic deterioration of text... - book review 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. - Blake's Seven (City on the Edge of the World) The extreme always seems to make an impression. - Heathers Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as satisfying as an income tax refund. - F. J. Raymond If you think C++ is not overly complicated, just what is a "protected abstract virtual base pure virtual private destructor", and when was the last time you needed one? It is not enough for a handful of experts to attempt the solution of a problem, to solve it and then to apply it. The restriction of knowledge to an elite group destroys the spirit of society and leads to its intellectual impoverishment. - Albert Einstein The lawgiver, of all beings, most owes the law allegiance. He of all men should behave as though the law compelled him. But it is the universal weakness of mankind that what we are given to administer we presently imagine we own. - Herbert George Wells It isn't the fact that the cats like to hang around while sex is going on that annoys me: it's those little score cards they hold up afterwards. -Folo Republican parents have no problem buying their kids toy guns. Democrats refuse to do so. That is why their kids pretend to shoot each other with dolls. -John Carlson The longer you stay in the mall, the longer your children will have to listen to holiday songs on the mall public-address system, and many of these songs can damage children emotionally. For example: "Frosty the Snowman" is about a snowman who befriends some children, plays with them until they learn to love him, then melts. -Dave Barry String literal too long (I let you have 512 characters, that's 3 more than ANSI said I should) -Macintosh error message ...And the lord said, 'lo, there shall only be case or default labels inside a switch statement' -Macintosh error message A typedef name was a complete surprise to me at this point in your program -Macintosh error message Type in (cast) must be scalar; ANSI 3.3.4; page 39, lines 10-11 (I know you don't care, I'm just trying to annoy you) -Macintosh error message Call me paranoid but finding '/*' inside this comment makes me suspicious -Macintosh error message This function has an explicit return type and deserves a return value -Macintosh error message Too many errors on one line (make fewer) -Macintosh error message Symbol table full - fatal heap error; please go buy a RAM upgrade from your local Apple dealer -Macintosh error message Of course the US Constitution isn't perfect, but it's a lot better than what we have now. Welfare is the art of taking the money you've earned and giving it to someone who hasn't. Mr. Chairman, listening to this debate, it has occurred to me that the American people might wonder who is telling the truth here. One side says, 'We are raising taxes but we are cutting spending.' The other side says, 'You are not cutting spending, you are raising spending and raising taxes, and it is the same old tax-and-spend.' I am going to put my money where my mouth is. I will write out a check from my own personal funds payable to Bill Clinton and the Democratic National Committee, $100,000, if spending next year is less than this year. I will resign my seat in Congress and I will write out 100 times, 'I apologize to the Democrats, they were telling the truth. They really did cut spending.' - Rep. Christopher Cox (R-CA), from the March 17, 1993 Congressional Record Masochists are people who have pain confused with pleasure. In a society which has television confused with entertainment, Doritos confused with food, and Dan Quayle confused with a national political leader, masochists are clearly less mixed up than the rest of us. - P. J. O'Rourke Guns are always the best method for a private suicide. Drugs are too chancy. You might miscalculate the dosage and just have a good time. - P. J. O'Rourke Two guys in a Yugo were arrested last night in Oakland following a push-by shooting incident. Well-balanced meal: to have selected items from both the left and right sides of the vending machine. -Aleccia McDonald If you were asked a hypothetical question, would you answer it? More irregular verbs: I address the issues, you launch ad-hominem attacks, he's a flaming maniac and should have his access pulled. -Dani Zweig I find it incongruous that so many people who oppose government intervention in the economy also favor capital punishment. Not that there isn't merit to both stances, of course, but there *is* something strange about granting the power of life and death to people you don't trust to balance a checkbook. -Dani Zweig paraphrasing an unknown source If Thomas Jefferson thought taxation without representaion was bad, he should see how it is with representation. -Rush Limbaugh Razors pain you Rivers are damp Acids stain you Drugs cause cramp Guns aren't lawful Nooses give Gas smells awful You may as well live -Dorothy Parker It's national clean-off-your-desk day. I think I found Elvis. It was only after their population of fifty mysteriously shrank to eight that the other seven dwarfs began to suspect Hungry. Nowadays, when opportunity knocks, you have to unlock both deadbolts, remove the chain, and turn off the burglar alarm... If the jury feels the law is unjust, we recognize the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by a judge, and contrary to the evidence ... and the courts must abide by that decision. - US v Moylan, 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, 1969, 417 F.2d at 1006 There are two schools of thought on Nostradamus: either (1) he had supernatural powers which enabled him to prophesy the future with uncanny accuracy, or (2) he did for bullshit what Stonehenge did for rocks. -Cecil Adams Is "tired old cliche" one? In an Orkin Exterminating Co. survey of what pests Pittsburghers fear most, 1.3% named their spouses and kids. Faith is the quality that enables you to eat blackberry jam on a picnic without looking to see whether the seeds move. clone, n -- 1. an exact duplicate, as in "our product is a clone of their product." 2. a shoddy, spurious copy, as in "their product is a clone of our product." Ted is a sick human being. We shouldn't hate him, we shouldn't make fun of him, we shouldn't treat him as a pariah or a net.idiot --above all, we shouldn't flame him. We should reach out to him as a brother, with love and compassion, and operate on his brain. - Gene Ward Smith It's not that I object to people re-inventing the wheel; what gets to me is watching them re-invent the flat tire. - Todric Is the word "spec" short for specification, or for speculation? Dogs come when they are called. Cats have answering machines and may get back to you. Is there a Unix Fortran optimizer? Yeah, "rm *.f". If you love something, let it go. If it comes back... it's probably depenedent on you. Unix is the answer, but only if you phrase the question *very* carefully. On the other hand, we don't have gladiators, spectacles to the death involving religious heretics, or some of the other fun forms of entertainment genus homo has devised while waiting for the cathode ray tube to open a direct link to the tackiness center of the human spirit. - Scott Fisher My desk is not messy! It's just decaying into a lower energy level faster than everyone else's. A rose by any other name returns %DNS-E-UNKNOWNENTRY. Gun control is hitting your target. -Andrew Beal Fight organized crime: stamp out the IRS. Bumper sticker: DANGER! I drive like you do. I cannot be fired. Slaves have to be sold. I'd like to help you out. Which way did you come in? Interwoven alignment preambles are not allowed. If you have been so devious as to get this message, you will understand it, and you will deserve no sympathy. -Donald Knuth, The TeXbook, from the chapter on errors and error nessages Crime does not pay... as well as politics. - A.E. Newman What doesn't kill me better be able to run damn fast. Meat is murder. Fish is justifiable ichthyocide. - Ken Johnson, presumably a vegetarian It's bad manners to apply cosmetics in public. It reminds people you need them... - P.J. O'Rourke, "Modern Manners: An Ettiquette Book for Rude People" The principal fact of life is, of course, death. Even very young children need to be informed about dying. Explain the concept of death very carefully to your child. This will make threatening him with it much more effective... - P.J. O'Rourke, "Modern Manners: An Ettiquette Book for Rude People" Proper behavior means always giving the appearance of unperturbed grace. This appearance is much easier to achieve if you really *don't* care about anything. This is why people always seem to be on their best behavior right before they commit suicide... - P.J. O'Rourke, "Modern Manners: An Ettiquette Book for Rude People" Skiing: the art of catching cold and going broke while rapidly heading nowhere at great personal risk. All right, you worthless *vermin*! No more Mister Nice Pope! -Cerebus I feel sorry for Cupid's mother. How'd you like to try to toilet-train an armed kid who can fly? "Mr. Hussein, do you think it was wise to go to war with pilots who have played Nintendo for seven years?" -Dick Locher Saint Valentine was martyred, after all. Probably by single people. -Karen Norteman If a tree falls on a laboratory mouse, does it cause cancer? Watership Down: You've read the book. You've seen the movie. Now eat the stew! - Dani Zweig "Can heresy itself be a legitimate religion?" -Nilakantha the Simple "A religion is a heresy with an adequate army." -Cariadoc Milihelen: the amount of beauty required to launch one ship. "If you could have a large sum of money, how much would you want?" "All of it." -Cerebus A feature is a bug with seniority. I would bet that the Great San Francisco Glaucoma Epidemic of 1992 will be one for the history books. - Alan Furman Fun fact: the estimated human LD-50 for marijuana is half a metric tonne. What's the best way to accelerate a Macintosh? At 9.8 meters per second squared. It's hard to seize the day when you first have to grapple with the morning. Americans have different ways of saying things. They say "elevator", we say "lift"...they say "President", we say "stupid psychopathic git"... - Alexi Sayle It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC; as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration. - E. W. Dijkstra The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense. - E. W. Dijkstra The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim. - E. W. Dijkstra Life was simple before World War II. After that, we had systems. - Grace Hopper In pioneer days they used oxen for heavy pulling, and when one ox couldn't budge a log, they didn't try to grow a larger ox. We shouldn't be trying for bigger computers, but for more systems of computers. - Grace Hopper And, of course, you have the commercials where savvy businesspeople Get Ahead by using their MacIntosh computers to create the ultimate American business product: a really sharp-looking report. - Dave Barry Hardware: The parts of a computer system that can be kicked. - Jeff Pesis A crash is when your competitor's program dies. When your program dies, it is an 'idiosyncrasy.' Frequently, crashes are followed with a message like 'ID 02.' 'ID' is an abbreviation for 'idiosyncrasy' and the number that follows indicates how many more months of testing the product should have had. -Guy Kawasaki, "The Macintosh Way" pixel, n.: A mischievous, magical spirit associated with screen displays. The computer industry has frequently borrowed from mythology: Witness the sprites in computer graphics, the demons in artificial intelligence, and the trolls in the marketing department. - Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer An old puzzle asks how a barometer can be used to measure the height of a building. Answers range from dropping the instrument from the top and measuring the time of its fall to giving it to the building's superintendent in return for a look at the plans. A modern version of the puzzle asks how a personal computer can balance a checkbook. An elegant solution is to sell the machine and deposit the money. - Jon Bentley, More Programming Pearls It's a well known fact that computing devices such as the abacus were invented thousands of years ago. But it's not well known that the first use of a common computer protocol occured in the Old Testament. This, of course, was when Moses aborted the Egyptians' process with a control-sea... - Tom Galloway In a way, staring into a computer screen is like staring into an eclipse. It's brilliant and you don't realize the damage until its too late. - Bruce Sterling And computers are getting smarter all the time: scientists tell us that soon they will be able to talk to us. (By "they" I mean "computers": I doubt scientists will ever be able to talk to us.) - Dave Barry The danger from computers is not that they will eventually get as smart as men, but that we will meanwhile agree to meet them halfway. - Bernard Avishai The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents. - Nathaniel Borenstein If the automobile had followed the same development cyclee as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside. - Robert X. Cringely, InfoWorld It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years. - John Von Neumann (ca. 1949) C combines the power of assembly language with the flexibility of assembly language. When in doubt, use brute force. - Ken Thompson Hartley's Second Law: Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself. 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 Anything is good and useful if it's made of chocolate. Normal is...spending all day in a sick building with windows that don't open and a thermostat that is seasonally dysfunctional in order to make the environment consistently comfy and user-friendly for the mainframe computer. - Ellen Goodman Religious Views of Life: Taoism: Shit happens. Confucianism: Confucius say, shit happens. Buddhism: If shit happens, it isn't really shit. Zen: What is the sound of shit happening? Hinduism: This shit happened before. Islam: If shit happens, it is the will of Allah. Protestantism: Let shit happen to someone else. Catholicism: If shit happens, you deserve it. Judaism: Why does this shit always happen to *us*? Atheism: I don't believe this shit. Agnosticism: What is this shit? ADA: Something you need to know the name of to be an Expert in Computing. Useful in sentences like, "We had better develop an ADA awareness." Bug: An elusive creature living in a program that makes it incorrect. The activity of "debugging," or removing bugs from a program, ends when people get tired of doing it, not when the bugs are removed. Cache: A very expensive part of the memory system of a computer that no one is supposed to know is there. Design: What you regret not doing later on. Documentation: Instructions translated from Swedish by Japanese for English-speaking persons. Economies of scale: The notion that bigger is better. In particular, that if you want a certain amount of computer power, it is much better to buy one biggie than a bunch of smallies. Accepted as an article of faith by people who love big machines and all that complexity. Rejected as an article of faith by those who love small machines and all those limitations. Hardware: The parts of a computer system that can be kicked. Information Center: A room staffed by professional computer people whose job it is to tell you why you cannot have the information you require. Information Processing: What you call data processing when people are so disgusted with it they won't let it be discussed in their presence. Machine-indepenent program: A program that will not run on any machine. Meeting: An assembly of computer experts coming together to decide what person or department not represented in the room must solve the problem. Minicomputer: A computer that can be afforded on the budget of a middle-level manager. Office Automation: The use of computers to improve efficiency in the office by removing anyone you would want to talk with over coffee. On-line: The idea that a human being should always be accessible to a computer. Pascal: A programming language named after a man who would turn over in his grave if he knew about it. Performance: A statement of the speed at which a computer system works. Or rather, might work under certain circumstances. Or was rumored to be working over in Jersey about a month ago. Priority: A statement of the importance of a user or a program. Often expressed as a relative priority, indicating that the user doesn't care when the work is completed so long as he is treated less badly than someone else. Quality control: Assuring that the quality of a product does not get out of hand and add to the cost of its manufacture or design. Regression analysis: Mathematical techniques for trying to understand why things are getting worse. Strategy: A long-range plan whose merit cannot be evaluated until sometime after those creating it have left the organization. Systems programmer: A person in sandals who has been in the elevator with the senior vice president and is ultimately responsible for a phone call you are to receive from you boss.