% Cannot find REALITY.SYS. Universe halted. % Fig Newton: The force required to accelerate a fig 39.37 inches/sec. % We are sorry, but the number you have dialed is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again. % Logic doesn't apply to the real world. -- Marvin Minsky % 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 % COFFEE.EXE Missing - Insert Cup and Press Any Key % If it weren't for C, we'd all be programming in BASI and OBOL. % Press Ctrl-Alt-Del now for IQ test. % Close your eyes and press escape three times. % Bad command or file name! Go stand in the corner. % A polar bear is a rectangular bear after a coordinate transform. % WinErr 547: LPT1 not found... Use backup... PENCIL & PAPER. % Bad or missing mouse driver. Spank the cat? (Y/N) % Buy a Pentium 586/90 so you can reboot faster. % So that's 2 T-1s and a newsfeed...would you like clues with that? -- One day you'll have that conversation...... % 2 + 2 = 5 for extremely large values of 2. % Computers make very fast, very accurate mistakes. % Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are. % If you're flamed in a group you don't read, does anybody get burnt? -- Paul Tomblin in a.s.r. % My software never has bugs. It just develops random features. % C:\WINDOWS C:\WINDOWS\GO C:\PC\CRAWL % C:\DOS C:\DOS\RUN RUN\DOS\RUN % <-------- The information went data way --------> % Best file compression around: "rm *.*" = 100% compression % The Definition of an Upgrade: Take old bugs out, put new ones in. % BREAKFAST.COM Halted...Cereal Port Not Responding % Beware of Geeks bearing .gifs % I survived an NT installation. % The name is Baud......James Baud. % BUFFERS=20 FILES=15 2nd down, 4th quarter, 5 yards to go! % Access denied--nah nah na nah nah! % C:\> Bad command or file name! Go stand in the corner. % Never attribute to malloc what can be easily explained by stupidity. % Bad command. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaay.. % I've written a commercial for Apple Computer. It goes like this: "Macintosh - we might not get everything right, but at least we knew the century was going to end." -- Douglas Adams % Why doesn't DOS ever say "EXCELLENT command or filename!" % As a computer, I find your faith in technology amusing. % Southern DOS: Y'all reckon? (Yep/Nope) % Security-wise, NT is a server with a kick-me sign on it. --Peter Gutmann % Backups? We don't NEED no steenking backups. % E Pluribus Modem % >... File not found. Should I fake it? (Y/N) % Ethernet (n): something used to catch the etherbunny % A mainframe: The biggest PC peripheral available. % An error? Impossible! My modem is error correcting. % CONGRESS.SYS Corrupted: Re-boot Washington D.C (Y/n)? % Does fuzzy logic tickle? % A computer's attention span is as long as it's power cord. % Those who do not learn from Dilbert are doomed to repeat it. % 11th commandment - Covet not thy neighbor's Pentium. % Fun thing to do as root, in root: chmod -R 666 * Just as bad as rm -rf *, but more fun. "The files are all there, but I can't do anything with them!" And you can't change permissions, since chmod isn't executable either. :-) % Whaddya mean you haven't got Klingon fonts for X11? % It takes 5 NT servers to offer the performance and availability of a single UNIX server. -- Network Computing, July 15 1998. % Disinformation is not as good as datinformation. % Windows: Just another pane in the glass. % bash awk grep perl sed df du, du-du du-du, vi troff su fsck rm * halt LART LART LART! -- the Swedish BOFH % SENILE.COM found . . . Out Of Memory . . . % Do not piss off the News Admin, for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup. -- Wisdom of the Wires, Scroll XLII. % Who's General Failure & why's he reading my disk? % Ultimate office automation: networked coffee. % RAM disk is not an installation procedure. % Walking through the basement of Fuller Labs wearing futuristic body armor and pushing a variable-geometry motorcycle raises eyebrows. Telling students that this is the true power of UNIX doesn't help. % Shell to DOS...Come in DOS, do you copy? Shell to DOS... % All computers wait at the same speed. % DEFINITION: Computer - A device designed to speed and automate errors. % The truth is out there...anybody got the URL? % Press -- to continue ... % Smash forehead on keyboard to continue..... % I'd offer to change your mind for you, but I don't have a fresh diaper. -- Leah to pro-spammer in news.admin.net-abuse.email % >Dear postmaster@isp.com: >I need to send a letter to about 12,000 addressees. Please advise of the >best way to accomplish such a task. Can you be of assistance? % Enter any 11-digit prime number to continue... % "When SysAdmins Attack!" This Sunday, on Fox. % ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI! % E-mail returned to sender -- insufficient voltage. % Help! I'm modeming... and I can't hang up!!! % All wiyht. Rho sritched mg kegtops awound? % Error: Keyboard not attached. Press F1 to continue. % DOS Tip #17: Add DEVICE=FNGRCROS.SYS to CONFIG.SYS % Hidden DOS secret: add BUGS=OFF to your CONFIG.SYS % Press any key... no, no, no, NOT THAT ONE! % Press any key to continue or any other key to quit... % Press every key to continue. % Go ahead, make my data! % ERROR 406: file corrupt: config.earth --- reboot universe? (Y/N) % Just because the hole is rectangular doesn't mean you can push squares through it. -- Mike DeMaria, explaining why you don't put a floppy disk in a zip drive. % I am logged in, therefore I am. % Old programmers never die; they just give up their resources. % Never stick your tongue into a strange hypercube. % RUNTIME ERROR 6D at 417A: 32CF: Incompetent user % Calm down. It's only ones and zeros. % $preferredDrink{"MountainDew"}++ % setenv PREFERREDBEVY MtDew % To err is human - and to blame it on a computer is even more so. % (001) Logic Error CLINTON.SYS: Truth table missing % (D)inner not ready: (A)bort (R)etry (P)izza. % Canadian DOS prompt: EH?\> % Computers can never replace human stupidity % Are we all turning into AOLusers or what ? Next thing we know, we'll all be shouting "Me 2! Me 2!" and someone will have to shoot us... -- Chris King in A.S.R % (A)bort, (R)etry, (I)nfluence with large hammer? % (A)bort, (R)etry, (T)hrow up? % (A)bort, (R)etry, (P)retend this never happened? % (A)bort, (R)etry, (P)anic? % (A)bort, (R)etry, (T)ake down entire network? % Bugs come in through open Windows. % Blessed are the pessimists, for they make backups! % Blessed is the end-user who expects nothing, for ye shall not be disappointed. % Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience. % This score just in: OS/2, Windows 0. % "You're one of those condescending Unix computer users!" "Here's a nickel, kid. Get yourself a real computer" -- Dilbert comic % Unix is user friendly...its just selective about who its friends are. % All programs evolve until they can send email. Except Microsoft Exchange. -- Art Hagen vs. Rick Letts in a.s.r % The phrase "Login to www.clue.org and issue the GET command" springs to mind... % Artificial intelligence usually beats real stupidity. % Thru the gateway, off the repeater, over the T-3 backbone, nothing but 'Net % Bell Labs Unix -- Reach out and grep someone. % The fact that windows is one of the most popular ways to operate a computer means that evolution has made a general screwup and our race is doomed. % "shutdown -halt now" - The final word in network security tools. % To err is human...to really foul up requires the root password. % About MS-DOS: "... an OS originally designed for a microprocessor that modern kitchen appliances would sneer at...." -- Dave Trowbridge, _Computer Technology Review_, Aug 90 % Unix is not a "A-ha" experience, it is more of a "holy-shit" experience. -- Colin McFadyen in alt.folklore.computers % There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and BSD. We don't believe this to be a coincidence. -- Jeremy S. Anderson % F U cn rd dis U mst uz Unix. % FUBAR - where CS students go for a drink. % : You are in a dark room with a compiler, emacs, an internet connection, : and a thermos of coffee. : Your move ? % I degaussed my girlfriend and I'm just not attracted to her anymore. % Tip from the Unix guru Add the following line in a friend's .cshrc file alias cd 'rm -rf' % /\ \\ \ \ \\ / / \/ / / / / \//\ \//\ / / / / /\ / / \\ \ \ \\ \/ % To know recursion, you must first know recursion. % Black holes are where God divided by zero. % People who think MSDOS & Windows are the slickest thing since sliced butter should be forced to wear a sign stating "This mind intentionally left blank" % +-------------------------------+-----------+ | Emacs is better than Vi. | Let's | | MacOS is better than Windows. | start the | | Unix is better than VMS. | religious | | C is better than Java. | wars! | +-------------------------------+-----------+ % DISCLAIMER - These opoi^H^H "damn", ^H, [esc :q :qq !q "shoot!" :Q! "Whaddya mean, Not an editor command?" :wq! ^C^C^C !STOP ^bye ^quit :quit! !halt ... ^w^q :!w :wq! ^D :qq!! ^STOP [HALT! HALT!!! "Why's it doing this?" :stopit! :wwqq!! ^Z ^L ^ESC STOP :bye bye bye! "Hey, what's this red button d..." % Hey! It compiles! Ship it! % Microsoft - because God hates us % Actual online conversation I once had. Induhvidual: Would it be bad to put the inside of a floppy disk in my cd rom drive? Me: Probably. Induhvidual: Would it melt? Me: Possibly. Induhvidual: From laser? Me: Yes. Induhvidual: That would be bad. Me: Yes it would be. % For today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created, for the first time in all history...a garden of pure ideology...where each worker may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing truths. Our Unification of Thought is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people. With one will. One resolve. One cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death. And we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail! -- "Big Brother" in the Apple commercial "1984" % Windows 98 supports real multitasking - it can boot and crash simultaneously. % In the beginning, the file was without form, and void; and emptiness was upon the face of the bits. And the Fingers of the Author moved upon the face of the keyboard. And the Author said, Let there be words, and there were words. -- From Linux System Administrators' Guide % When a filesystem no longer needs to be mounted, it can be unmounted with umount.* *It should of course be unmount, but the n mysteriously disappeared in the 70's, and hasn't been seen since. Please return it to Bell Labs, NJ, if you find it. -- From Linux System Administrators' Guide % On January 1, 2000 all the computers in the world will fail. And on that great day, the Lord shall deliver us from Bill Gates and set us free again! % Do not meddle in the affairs of `wizards', for they are sucky and quick to mangle. % By 2000, mainframes will be programmed in UnCOmmon Business Oriented Language (UCOBOL) -- Mike DeMaria, March 1998 % Please send all spam to my main address, root@localhost :-) % You really need to be careful when there's 50 billion dollars worth of shoddy computer software lying around this country. % Getting a SCSI chain working is perfectly simple if you remember that there must be exactly three terminations: one on one end of the cable, one on the far end, and the goat, terminated over the SCSI chain with a silver-handled knife whilst burning *black* candles. -- Anthony DeBoer "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." --John Woods % You spent my 150 Million on WHAT?! I said SNAPPLE not Apple! -- Bill Gates to his broker % If switching to a single platform saves money, how come no IS manager going all-whatever has EVER asked for a cut in budget and/or staff? % Windows 95(n) - 32-bit extensions and graphical shell for a 16-bit patch to an 8-bit operating system originally coded for a 4-bit microprocessor, written by a 2-bit company that can't stand 1 bit of competition. % Windows NT 4.0: The world's only fully buzzword compliant Operating System. % Microsoft is a cross between The Borg and the Ferengi. Unfortunately, they use Borg to do their marketing and Ferengi to do their programming. -- Simon Slavin in asr % All software is flawed. All hardware is flawed. If you haven't learned that yet, then you haven't been in tech support very long. % "Can you teach me how to use a computer?" "No. I just fix the machines, I don't use them." % My company motto: "If this stuff worked, you wouldn't need me." % From one of my smarter clients: "Why is something broken every time you're here?" % Error message: "Out of paper on drive D:" You try figuring it out. % Actual WindowsNT 4.0 error message: "Insert your WindowsNT CD-ROM into drive A or drive C" This may be exceedingly difficult..... % If you implement enough, quickly enough, it doesn't take much to make the effort of shifting it to NT "too hard". % The work of a few geniuses can be diluted by that of hordes of idiots. % It has been determined that you can get far more cooperation from a luser using a kind word and a 2X4 then with a kind word alone. % In a perfect world, no one would be proud to admit that they are "computer illiterate" while sitting in front of a $3000 computer, and not show any signs of shame. % If you own a computer for three years that you got for graduation from high school, and you don't even know the operating system, stop dicking around and do something else. -- Attributed to a Syracuse University professor % If I wanted a warm fuzzy feeling, I'd antialias my graphics! % Progress is the process by which Usenet has evolved from smart people in front of dumb terminals to dumb people in front of smart terminals. % If at first you don't succeed, call it version 1.0 % Its like a goto statement in an if-then world. -- Mike DeMaria % A printer consists of three main parts: the case, the jammed paper tray and the blinking red light. % Intel: We put the "um..." in Pentium. % A computer is like an Old Testament god, with a lot of rules and no mercy. -- Joseph Campbell % Helpdesk tip #2: When the support analyst says "Click...", wait for the rest of the sentence. % VMS is a text-only adventure game. If you win you can use unix. % All right who's been cooking hot dogs in the Warp Drive? % "Mr. Worf, scan that ship." "Aye Captain. 300 dpi?" % Does Artificial Intelligence imply Natural Stupidity? % Smith & Wesson: The Original Point And Click Interface % Posting to the 'net these days it's more like shouting into a deep cave in which lives a fire-breathing dragon who hordes Hormel products. You get an echo back with flames and Spam % /* And you'll never guess what the dog had */ /* in its mouth... */ -- Larry Wall in stab.c from the perl source code % I'll say it again for the logic impaired. -- Larry Wall % Real programmers can write assembly code in any language. -- Larry Wall in <8571@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> % Just don't create a file called -rf. :-) -- Larry Wall in <11393@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> % It would be just like programmers to shorten 'the year 2000 problem' to 'Y2K'-- exactly the kind of thinking that created this situation in the first place. -- Steven C. Meyer % There's no problem so large it can't be solved by killing the user off, deleting their files, closing their account and reporting their REAL earnings to the IRS. -- From the BOFH School % YOUR PC's broken and I'VE got a problem? -- The BOFH Slogan % It has to be said that people with little computer knowledge should be given little computers. % kill -9 them all. init will know its own. % God, root, what is difference? I've always found it easier to hack root. -- Ben Aveling, a.s.r. % Unix party tip #23, Alcohol: In the spirit of unix, make it ROOT beer... % Welcome to the first Macworld conference that nobody thinks will be the last Macworld conference. -- David Pogue, writer for MacWorld magazine % There are really only four levels of the OSI model. Everything else is just overhead and underwear. -- Mike DeMaria, on IST 452, Local Area Networks % How do I exit...press Control-Alt-Delete? -- Overheard from a student who was on a Sun Sparcstation using OpenWindows. % Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to re-invent it, poorly. -- Henry Spencer % Emacs is my operating system, and Linux its device driver. -- Bake Timmons % A mouse is a device used to point at the xterm you want to type in. -- Kim Alm, a.s.r % If God is perfect, why did He create discontinuous functions? % Taunt not the sysadmin, for he can become you and make your life interesting. % Question: "Multiline substitution from command line in Perl 4. How?" Answer: "You should upgrade your system administrator to one who is able to install software." -- Tom Phoenix in comp.lang.perl.misc % Surely the 4 sysadmins of the apocalypse should be: edquota, rm -rf, kill -9, and shutdown. -- Rob Blake % The Internet is here so we can waste time talking about nothing in particular when we should be working. -- Marcus Hill. % Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology. % Chaotic Evil means never having to say you're sorry. % Microsoft (noun). C+ students programming in c++. -- Mike DeMaria % ObASR: Rebooting a server to install a patch to a software package you installed so you wouldn't have to reboot the server. -- Paul R. Joslin, a.s.r % The truly paranoid administrator may wish to place motion detectors in the air ducts. -- Practical UNIX & Internet Security, 2nd Edition % As an example, I submit: abraxus.com does not exist. Now, hands up everyone who did a lookup of the domain... or registered it in an attempt to prove me wrong. -- Paul Tomko on a.s.r. % NT and security should not be used in the same sentence without negation. % Sysadmin Tip of the Day: Critical production machines should not be mislabeled. Particularily not something like, "spare". -- Matthew Crosby % Ever notice something? Unix comes with compilers. NT comes with Solitaire. -- Adep % Do you realize that thats 7.28 x 10^9 bytes of text, every character of which was spam? -- Dan Chin % He tried to lpr a GIF file. What does LPR stand for? Lotsa Paper, Retard! Any more questions? -- Brian Testa % I think we should all chip in and move the computer science department to Florida. -- Larry Schiller % On a more familiar note, I'm learing many new and exciting things about the UNIX operating system. However, I was shocked to discover that few of these things will get me chicks. Sucks to be me! But, seeing as how my life is running a solid PG rating, I'm trying to boost that up to at least PG-13 by increased use of foul language. % Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling with a pig in the mud. After a while you realize the pig enjoys it. % In college, Biology is really Chemistry, Chemistry is really Physics, Physics is really Calculus, and Calculus is really hard. % If your computer says, "Printer out of Paper," this problem cannot be resolved by continuously clicking the "OK" button. % Life's unfair - but the root password helps! % Mountain Dew and doughnuts...because breakfast is the most important meal of the day. % /* I can C clearly now */ % I had the misfortune of having to attend a SQLSewer course. Ye ghods, it's a noddy system. The limitations are unlimited. -- John Burnham % And 1.1.81 is officially BugFree(tm), so if you receive any bug-reports on it, you know they are just evil lies. -- Linus Torvalds % Which reminds me why I want to start working on a beowulf-on-a-backplane design: I want to be the one to write the program called "clusterfsck." -- Adam J. Thornton, a.s.r. % Reality is for people who can't face science fiction. % Go climb a gravity well. % CP/M-86 *screams* on a PII/400. -- Dave Brown, a.s.r. I would think so. The whole floppy image will fit in the L-II cache. -- Mark Atwood, in reply % On the wall of the women's restroom on the Enterprise: "Where no man has gone before" % The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its capacity - the rest is overhead for the operating system. % Counting in octal is just like counting in decimal, if you don't use your thumbs. Counting in binary is just like counting in decimal, if you are all thumbs. % A bad random number generator: 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 4.33e+67, 1, 1, 1 % All computers run at the same speed... with the power off. % Foolproof operation: All parameters are hard coded. % Lisp Users: Due to the holiday, there will be no garbage collection on Monday. % The world will end in 5 minutes. Please log out. % You know it is going to be a bad day when you forget your new password. % Where the system is concerned, you are not allowed to ask "Why?" % Mind your own business, Mr. Spock. I'm sick of your halfbreed interference. % I'm fairly sure Linux exists principally because writing an operating system probably seems like a good way to pass the months of darkness in Finland. -- Rodger Donaldson % Please send all flames, trolls, and complaints to /dev/toilet. % One of the joys of posting to alt.tech-support.recovery is that I get fan mail from head hunters and prospective employers. I recently received one such email from a prospective employer looking for a support personality. However, the email started with something like: "I noticed that you like to insult your customers..." followed by an employment proposition. Is insulting the customer currently a job requirement for tech support? -- Jeff Liebermann, a.t.s.r. % ObATSR: Netmask of luser: 255.0.0.250 WTF?? I can't think of a single reason why someone whould need something like this. My brain starts to lock up when I try to figure it out. Is there a reason, or is my brain starting to explode normal when dealing with such things? -- Justin, a.t.s.r. % The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck, is probably the day Microsoft starts making vacuum cleaners. -- Ernst Jan Plugge % Windows NT to extend reach update: Microsoft wants customized versions of Windows NT for "embedded" systems such as health and communications equipment. Gives Blue Screen of Death a whole new meaning... % Hmm, well we're hoping that once we get our COFFEE protocol running, we'll be able to control all the coffee makers in the world. -- Josh Cohen % Well, let's just say, if your VCR is still blinking 12:00, you don't want Linux. % You don't think one of these cyberterrorists could somehow infiltrate a chat room and pretend to be a sexy girl, do you? -- Donald Davis, Systems Analyst % Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will piss on your computer. -- Bruce Graham % bit, n: A unit of measure applied to color. Twenty-four-bit color refers to expensive $3 color as opposed to the cheaper 25 cent, or two-bit, color that use to be available a few years ago. -- Nigel Williams, a.s.r. % We are experiencing system trouble -- do not adjust your terminal. % UNIX is a well appointed kitchen. Windows is a kitchen full of bread machines and other Shopping Channel specialized tools. Which would a cook rather use? -- Peter da Silva % I'm sorry, our software is perfect. The problem must be you. -- Dogbert % Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo. % Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers. -- Leonard Brandwein % Q: How many mathematicians does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A: One. He gives it to six Californians, thereby reducing the problem to the earlier joke. % I love recursion, it breaks most people's brains. -- Thorfinn % Tell init(8) to lock-n-load, we're goin' zombie slaying! % Bacteria multiply by simple division. -- Dilbert, t.v. show % The population rises exponentially, the number of clues rises geometrically, and the number of clueful rises arithmetically. This is why the world has problems. -- Alistair J. R. Young on ASR. % ESR: I want to live in a world where software doesn't suck. RMS: Any software that isn't free sucks. Linus: I'm interested in free beer. % Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurling down the highway. -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum % Why must lusers communicate with me? It's like a 56k modem trying to impress a T3... the T3 just doesn't give a shit. -- Stephen Edwards % Its a java applet written in C...wow, that broke his head thinking about it. -- Mike DeMaria % The purpose of a windowing system is to put some amusing fluff around your one almighty emacs window. -- Mark, in gnu.emacs.help % You need a leading question like "when would you use macromedia shockwave in a web site", with acceptable answers including "never". Substitute ActiveX, Java applets, Javascript, audio, any Real protocol... -- Peter da Silva, a.s.r. % Program in Java. Taste the future. It will keep you awake at night. -- Mike DeMaria % We're just sitting here trying to put our PCjrs in a pile and burn them. And the damn things won't burn. That's the only thing IBM did right with it, they made it fireproof. -- William Bowman, Spinnaker Software % If NT is the answer, you don't understand the question. % Do you want to sell sugared water, or do you want to change the world? -- Steve Jobs, convincing Pepsi CEO John Scully to become Apple's CEO. % We have an equal opportunity Calculus class. It's fully integrated. % Having soundcards is nice... having embedded sound in web pages is not. -- Mike DeMaria % My computer was full, so I deleted everything on the right half. % The game leaves out one much-needed feature: the ability to have Blizzard contact your friends and relatives every few days and let them know the reason you haven't been around. -- 3d Gaming Net, referring to Starcraft: Brood War % What goes up, must come down. Ask any system administrator. % If USENET is anarchy, IRC is a paranoid schizophrenic after six days on speed. -- Chris Saunderson, a.s.r. % The system will be taken down at 1:34am for a scheduled disk crash. Please log off by then. % There is an old saying that if a million monkeys typed on a million keyboards for a million years, eventually all the works of Shakespeare would be produced. Now, thanks to Usenet, we know this is not true. % FATAL ERROR! SYSTEM HALTED! - Press any key to do nothing... % APATHY ERROR: Don't bother striking any key. % He's not a real doctor, He's an integer doctor. % "Scotty, beam us aboard" "Aye, sir. Will a 2x4 do?" % We have engaged the Borg. The wedding will be Friday. % Tech Services - We Aim To Please, We Shoot To Kill % Anyone who believes that computers can do things "all by themselves" shouldn't be using computers. -- Lapis Lazuli, a.t.s.r. % E-mail two copies to me when you're done; and fax a copy on green paper for my files; and bring me a hard copy of the Internet so I can do some serious surfing. -- PHB, in Dilbert by Scott Adams % I'm sorry for the double slash. -- Tim Berners-Lee in a Panel Discussion, WWW7, Brisbane, 1998 % Ah, young webmaster... java leads to shockwave. Shockwave leads to realaudio. And realaudio leads to suffering. -- Peter da Silva % If somebody's like, well, i'm interested in bringing down the gov't's crays and getting lots of k-r4d warez 'cos i'm 31337, then they can be directed toward the "What's Prison Like?" Seminar -- Crumpet, on the Hope 2000 mailing list % What's the difference between a mechanical engineer and a civil engineer? A mechanical engineer makes weapons. A civil engineer makes targets. % "What color do you want that database?" -- Dilbert, to the Pointy Haired Boss % 100 buckets of bits on the bus 100 buckets of bits Take one down, short it to ground FF buckets of bits on the bus FF buckets of bits on the bus FF buckets of bits Take one down, short it to ground FE buckets of bits on the bus % A consultant is a person who borrows your watch, tells you what time it is, pockets the watch, and sends you a bill for it. % A doctor, an architect, and a computer scientist were arguing about whose profession was the oldest. In the course of their arguments, they got all the way back to the Garden of Eden, whereupon the doctor said, "The medical profession is clearly the oldest, because Eve was made from Adam's rib, as the story goes, and that was a simply incredible surgical feat." The architect did not agree. He said, "But if you look at the Garden itself, in the beginning there was chaos and void, and out of that, the Garden and the world were created. So God must have been an architect." The computer scientist, who had listened to all of this said, "Yes, but where do you think the chaos came from?" % A hypothetical paradox: What would happen in a battle between an Enterprise security team, who always get killed soon after appearing, and a squad of Imperial Stormtroopers, who can't hit the broad side of a planet? -- Tom Galloway % A Law of Computer Programming: Make it possible for programmers to write in English and you will find the programmers cannot write in English. % A master was explaining the nature of Tao to one of his novices. "The Tao is embodied in all software -- regardless of how insignificant," said the master. "Is Tao in a hand-held calculator?" asked the novice. "It is," came the reply. "Is the Tao in a video game?" continued the novice. "It is even in a video game," said the master. "And is the Tao in the DOS for a personal computer?" The master coughed and shifted his position slightly. "The lesson is over for today," he said. -- "The Tao of Programming" % A novel approach is to remove all power from the system, which removes most system overhead so that resources can be fully devoted to doing nothing. Benchmarks on this technique are promising; tremendous amounts of nothing can be produced in this manner. Certain hardware limitations can limit the speed of this method, especially in the larger systems which require a more involved & less efficient power-down sequence. An alternate approach is to pull the main breaker for the building, which seems to provide even more nothing, but in truth has bugs in it, since it usually inhibits the systems which keep the beer cool. % A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power off and on. Knight, seeing what the student was doing spoke sternly: "You can not fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong." Knight turned the machine off and on. The machine worked. % A reading from the Book of Armaments, Chapter 4, Verses 16 to 20: Then did he raise on high the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, saying, "Bless this, O Lord, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy." And the people did rejoice and did feast upon the lambs and toads and tree-sloths and fruit-bats and orangutans and breakfast cereals ... Now did the Lord say, "First thou pullest the Holy Pin. Then thou must count to three. Three shall be the number of the counting and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither shalt thou count two, excepting that thou then proceedeth to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the number of the counting, be reached, then lobbest thou the Holy Hand Grenade in the direction of thine foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it." -- Monty Python, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" % A recent study has found that concentrating on difficult off-screen objects, such as the faces of loved ones, causes eye strain in computer scientists. Researchers into the phenomenon cite the added concentration needed to "make sense" of such unnatural three dimensional objects... % A sine curve goes off to infinity or at least the end of the blackboard. -- Prof. Steiner % A student, in hopes of understanding the Lambda-nature, came to Greenblatt. As they spoke a Multics system hacker walked by. "Is it true," asked the student, "that PL-1 has many of the same data types as Lisp?" Almost before the student had finished his question, Greenblatt shouted, "FOO!", and hit the student with a stick. % A UNIX saleslady, Lenore, Enjoys work, but she likes the beach more. She found a good way To combine work and play: She sells C shells by the seashore. % A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God. % ACHTUNG!!! Das machine is nicht fur gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen und corkenpoppen mit spitzensparken. Ist nicht fur gewerken by das dummkopfen. Das rubbernecken sightseeren keepen hands in das pockets. Relaxen und vatch das blinkenlights!!! % After a number of decimal places, nobody gives a damn. % As of next week, passwords will be entered in Morse code. % Ask not for whom the tolls. % Rule #34 of the Internet: If it is there, there is porn of it. Rule #35 of the Internet: If it doesn't exist, it must be created. % Bradley's Bromide: If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee -- that will do them in. % /earth is 98% full ... please delete anyone you can. % //GO.SYSIN DD *, DOODAH, DOODAH % 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." % Making files is easy under the UNIX operating system. Therefore, users tend to create numerous files using large amounts of file space. It has been said that the only standard thing about all UNIX systems is the message-of-the-day telling users to clean up their files. -- System V.2 administrator's guide % My God, I'm depressed! Here I am, a computer with a mind a thousand times as powerful as yours, doing nothing but cranking out fortunes and sending mail about softball games. And I've got this pain right through my ALU. I've asked for it to be replaced, but nobody ever listens. I think it would be better for us both if you were to just log out again. % Nobody said computers were going to be polite. % kernel panic: can't find / % Pascal Users: To show respect for the 313th anniversary (tomorrow) of the death of Blaise Pascal, your programs will be run at half speed. % Real programmers don't draw flowcharts. Flowcharts are, after all, the illiterate's form of documentation. Cavemen drew flowcharts; look how much good it did them. % Remember, UNIX spelled backwards is XINU. % Slowly and surely the unix crept up on the Nintendo user... % Speak softly and carry a +6 two-handed sword. % Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon. -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982 % THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #18: C- This language was named for the grade received by its creator when he submitted it as a class project in a graduate programming class. C- is best described as a "low-level" programming language. In fact, the language generally requires more C- statements than machine-code statements to execute a given task. In this respect, it is very similar to COBOL. % The New Testament offers the basis for modern computer coding theory, in the form of an affirmation of the binary number system. But let your communication be Yea, yea; nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. -- Matthew 5:37 % 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 % There are no games on this system. % Usage: fortune -P [] -a [xsz] [Q: [file]] [rKe9] -v6[+] dataspec ... inputdir % *** System shutdown message from root *** System going down in 60 seconds % When someone says "I want a programming language in which I need only say what I wish done," give him a lollipop. % You might have mail. % Real computer scientists don't program in assembler. They don't write in anything less portable than a number two pencil. % Actually, NT is more like LSD with all the good effects filtered out. -- Andrew Maddox, a.s.r. % Windows 98. We're supposed to look at our hard disk with a web browser? Like, somebody asked for this? -- David Pogue, Macworld Feb 1998 % ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE SIGNATURE FROM HELL!!!! It's 200 pages long and got lots of ^Gs in it! And, it LOCKS UP YOUR TERMINAL! AND you won't find out it's from spt@waikato.ac.nz until the 199th page. And then it'll scroll past, you'll have to read the message again to find out that my post addr is C/- University of Waikato, Prvt Bag 3105, Hamilton New Zealand Here come those FORM FEEDS!!!! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- The Original BOFH % When computers emit smoke, it means they've chosen a new Pope. Unfortunately, they invariably choose the wrong one and immediately get condemned to nonfunctionality for heresy. -- Anthony DeBoer % Try as I might, I can't parse RHOD as anything other than "Red Hat Of Death." -- Dave Brown % They tell me I have a kind face. I grew a beard to cover it. Now they tell me I have a kind beard. -- Bob Dehnhardt % Q: How about developing ? A: It exists. This is Linux. Anything that silly has already been done. -- Alan Cox, rutgers linux-kernel mailing-list, 19980911 % As far as I can tell the entire program consists of a routine to flash up a window which says "Device is not responding to SCSI command". -- Peter Gutmann % My group's mission statement: "You want *what*? By *WHEN*?" -- Simon Burr % Civilization won't *die* from Y2k. It'll be more like Civilization goes out drinking and the next morning discovers the importance of drinking gin out of smaller containers. % I came out of that meeting so full of enthusiasm that I spent the next two hours updating my resume. -- Paul Tomblin % The correct way to roll NT out is out the door and into the nearest dumpster or other large waste receptacle. -- Mike Andrews % And before anyone jumps to the conclusion that NT and windows95 (the code base for 98) were similar, let me assure you that linux has more similarity to NT than NT has to win95. -- Mike Roddy % Given the suckiness he described, throwing more hardware at this [software] abomination is not the solution. Throwing military hardware at the developers might be a solution. -- Joe Thompson % Before becoming an open-source evangelist, ESR was just this guy who played with weird software and edited Jargon-1. -- Mark Hughes % My boss has publicly stated that he doesn't care if I have "Supreme Commander" on my business cards if it makes me feel good. -- Boff % All software sucks. Everybody is considered a jerk by somebody. The sun rises, the sun sets, the Sun crashes, lusers are LARTed, BOFHs get drunk. It is the way of things. -- Steve Conley % Today at work an ethernet switch decided to take the 'N' out of NVRAM -- Richard Letts % ObASR: Absolute fscking Monday from hell. What have I done to deserve this? I spent all day either responding to fault reports, filing fault reports or investigating fault reports, including the one that said "the fault system doesn't work". -- Frossie % God, root, what is difference? God is more forgiving. -- Dave Aronson, a.s.r. % What will happen on Jan 1, 2000 when everyone will go on vacation, head for the hills, become a survivalist, and leave their computer on full auto vacation notification. Will the internet die under the deluge of vacation announcements? -- Jeff Liebermann, in a.t.s.r. on automated email vacation replies No, the internet will die three weeks beforehand when they start stockpiling porn. -- Ben, in reply % Wow. There must be a million web sites about wiener dogs. -- Wally, from Dilbert comic strip % That's why there's no toilets on the Enterprise. They just beam it straight into the mass tanks from your body, much more efficient. -- Peter da Silva, in a.s.r. on Star Trek This gives new insight into why the engineering crew works so hard to get the system back online when the transporters go down. -- Ansel, in reply % In every given certification course at least one student must decide that each person in the class came n-thousand miles to hear his/her own questionable "expertise" delivered unprompted and continued ad nauseum much to the dismay of the rest of the class. -- Chad Matsalla, a.s.r. % I don't want to call a destructor on my objects, I want to call a destroyer. Gozer has come for your memory, little PersistentNode! -- Joel Gluth, a.s.r. % That would be on the "Let's look for intelligence out there, because there's none here" principle? -- Paul Tomblin, in a.s.r. on SETI@home % Failure is not an option. It comes bundled with your Microsoft product. -- Ferenc Mantfeld, a.s.r. % Dunno, I've never had a server stolen and taken back in time to help in a great war against the forces of darkness. -- John Burnham, in a.s.r. on naming a system "babylon4" Wouldn't you love to fill out *that* report? Company asset #423423 was lost while fighting the forces of evil. -- Chris Adams, in reply % Is it just me, or does anyone else here find it vaguely unsettling that you get your theology from Star Trek? -- Anthony DeBoer, a.s.r. Yeah, he should get it from B5 like us normal people. -- Paul Tomblin, in reply % NT is the only OS that has caused me to beat a piece of hardware to death with my bare hands. -- Derry Hamilton, a.s.r. % When I first started working with sendmail, I was convinced that the cf file had been created by someone bashing their head on the keyboard. After a week, I realised this was, indeed, almost certainly the case. % If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid. -- Q % root# su bofh ENTER BOFH AUTHENTICATION SEQUENCE:xxxx Good morning, Dave. bofh* echo 'THANK luser4 FOR WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT.' | wall; rm -rf / -- Joel Maslak, a.s.r. % The old "give em a Linux box and they think they're Jean-Luc Picard" syndrome. -- Pete Bentley, a.s.r. % NASA uses Windows? Oh great. If Apollo 13 went off course today the manual would just tell them to open the airlock, flush the astronauts out, and re-install new ones. -- Kibo, a.s.r. % How's my programming? Call 1-800-DEV-NULL. % What do you mean your installing a beta OS!!? Your Crazy!!! % Everyone gives lip service to that 7 layer model but that fact is that the only thing that has ever been truly OSI 7 layer compliant is the Taco Bell 7 Layer Burrito. -- Kent "Dogman" Dahlgren % Thanks for letting me change magnetic patterns on your hard disk. % Z-80 system stack overflow. Shut 'er down Scotty, the system's sucking mud -- Error message on TRS 80 Model-16B % It looks from here like 1999 will be the year the press decides to slag off NT at every opportunity and push Linux instead. -- Alan Bellingham % Don't you wish Haskell was in Java? -- Lawrence Schiller % Yes, friends and neighbors, boys and girls - my PC speaker crashed NT. -- ahoerter in the Scary Devil Monastery % A group of hackers that call himself slashdot are being seeked by the FBI because they took down an average of three sites a day. -- From slashdot.org news, 5/27/99 % Note: when you own several computers, spare parts are Good Things. -- Adep % Y'know, I've cut down so much on spam now that I block port 25. I send my mail through ports 24 and 26, alternating packets. -- Mike DeMaria % "Forging headers is tough!" -- Spammer Barbie % Modern times 3 great lies: 1. Check is in the mail 2. I love you 3. Windows NT will replace Unix % The Internet, billions of electrons with nothing better to do. % No, I can't do that. I can't do that because it is a lame password. The system told you that, not because it likes to light up random pixels on your display but for an actual reason. I also can't do that because I now know what that password is and you shouldn't tell anyone your password. -- henke, in a.s.r. % <>!*''# ^"`$$- !*=@$_ %*<>~#4 &[]../ |{,,SYSTEM HALTED Waka waka bang splat tick tick hash, Caret quote back-tick dollar dollar dash, Bang splat equal at dollar under-score, Percent splat waka waka tilde number four, Ampersand bracket bracket dot dot slash, Vertical-bar curly-bracket comma comma CRASH. % "Norton Utilities for Linux." The can call it /dev/NUL -- Mike DeMaria % "Lets just trash the customer's machine and hang up on him." -- Jon Wright, on fixing an IRQ problem over the phone % "Does the ultrasparc catch on fire when trying to access the web page?" -- Mike DeMaria, on the beta online ResNET registration system "Wouldn't that be fun, the firewall actually catching fire?" -- Jason Epstein, in reply % Instant ResNET, just add ether. -- Mike DeMaria, on online ResNET registration % I'm picturing Windows NT jamming a network backbone going 'la la la la I can't hear you la la la la la' -- Graham Reed, a.s.r. % Hey look! It's a random power cord on the floor. Let's lick it. -- Mike DeMaria % Quake and uptime do not like each other -- Mike DeMaria % I am Hostmaster of Borg. Prepare to be delegated. -- T. Bridge, MediaNet sysop % Unix...best if used before: Tue Jan 19 03:14:08 GMT 2038 % Divide By Cucumber Error. Please Reinstall Universe And Reboot % Sorry: the very concept of PNP is a lovely dream that simply does not translate to reality. The confusion of manually doing stuff is nothing compared to the confusion of computers trying to do stuff and getting it wrong, which they gleefully do with great enthusiasm. -- Chris Johnson, a.s.r. % The ability to watch M*A*S*H on demand justified purchasing a VCR for myself. That show taught me a lot of useful things; for example, if one's skills are sufficiently in demand, one can wear a bathrobe to work, and generally have one's eccentricities tolerated. -- Gus, a.s.r. % Believe it or not, the NSA is working for us. Now get your butt over to X-Files detox. % "Unibus timeout fatal trap program lost sorry" -- An error message printed by DEC's RSTS operating system for the PDP-11 % As you well know, magic and weapons are prohibited inside the cafeteria. -- Final Fantasy VIII % We have a problem. I know how to solve it! Use NFS. Oh, oops, now we have two problems. -- Dave Brown, a.s.r. % Why do all SNMP monitoring system's suck so much? I swear that I want to meet the people who designed the SNMP protocol and rip out their eyes and violate them violently with a sharpened AOL CD. -- Ashley Penney, a.s.r. % You really piss me off Jim. -- Dr. McCoy, Star Trek % The old saying was "Captains talk tactics, colonels talk strategy, generals talk logistics." Similarly, "PFYs talk compute speed, young sysadmins talk network throughput, older sysadmins talk printer compatibility." -- Mike Andrews, a.s.r. % Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft...and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor. -- Wernher von Braun % Unix is the only virus with a command line interface. % The users of Unix systems said speed wasn't an issue when the Alpha chip was released. The same people tell their girlfriends that size doesn't matter. % The sad thing about Unix is that no matter how many times you hit yourself over the head with it, you never quite manage to completely lose consciousness. % Cretin and Unix both start with C. % Microsoft is not the answer, Microsoft is the question, the answer is no. % Windows 95 makes Unix look like an operating system. % However we discovered that it does not appear to be any sort of MD5 encryption scheme (although I'm not an encryption expert), but in actuality what we've deemed Secret Decoder Ring encryption. -- Jon Mitchell, BUGTRAQ % NT and Windows95 has not yet BSOD on me in the emulator. Yes ladies and gentlemen, Windows is more stable when running on a Mac. -- Mike DeMaria, on using his pc emulator on an iMac % ANSI C: The universal assembly language -- Jeremy Monin % I come from the mac background, where there's no such thing as a fan on a power supply. -- Mike DeMaria They've also been known to spontaneously combust, which is totally unrelated. -- Wesley Dean, in reply % The deathstar has cleared the planet. % To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the pessimist, the glass is half empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be. % How are we supposed to hack your system if it's always down! -- Paras Shelawala % We generally like to meet our account holders personally so we know who to hunt down and shoot if we have to. -- Jon Cheney % demaria: ingrid? You used ingrid? You must be a freshman. By force of habit, you should never think of using ingrid. :-) rancor: ingrid... isnt it just a comp in stars, or foundry? demaria: foundry. But it used to be different. Back in the days, in the Days of the Fours. rancor: uh, ok :) demaria: And the Rein of Adala the Computator. % RFC 882 put the dot in .com. % Number Five Standing By... % Johnny Five...is...alive! % Don't cross the streams. % The power didn't go out on 2000-01-01 either. % There are all sorts of things they should do to the fellow responsible for the damage done by LOVELETTER, but they'll probably settle for just splitting his company in half. -- Anthony DeBoer % God is real, unless declared integer. % My other computer is an LCARS % Using these toolkits is like trying to make a bookshelf out of mashed potatoes. -- Jamie Zawinski % Oh, come on. Still whining about the difference between the web and the Internet? That's so 1994 of you. % My other car is a cdr. % I'm tempted to buy the slashdot staff a grammar checker. What do they do for 40 hours a week? -- Mike DeMaria % ...Once that is done, the result works fine. But trust me, getting it installed is not for a first-time user. _I_ had to hunt a lot for documentation. And I'm supposed to know my way around the system. -- Linus Torvalds on Linux PCMCIA support % I find something quite disturbing about introducing a new technology with magic. -- Mike DeMaria, after seeing a product presentation involving magic tricks. % I hit Ctrl-A 2 because I thought I was in telnet. Instead, I replaced 3500 words of my review with the number 2. Well, it made it much easier to edit. -- Mike DeMaria, and the dangers of "Select All" keyboard shortcuts % A Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer is to computing what a McDonalds Certified Food Specialist is to fine cuisine. % Historians now believe the iBusiness trend was started by sleepy vi users who had forgotten they were already in insert mode. Foisting a patented Buzzword on the internet-hungry masses of the late 20th century was, after all, far easier than the keystrokes required to remove the extra letter." -- Jai % Mental note: don't use floppy for swap space. -- Paras % My microsoft toy is neat. It's loud and flashy and works only by crashing it. -- Mike DeMaria % There's no X in Mac OS X. -- Mike DeMaria, saying why the emacs with Mac OS X is textmode only % Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem. % Anyone know where I can snag a copy of that .au? I used to have it, but it was lost in the great rm -rf loss of 94. And again in the horrid drunken magnet incident in 96. -- Randal Joiner % If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a Unix user to show you how it's done. -- Scott Adams % Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start % So, the manager turned to the engineer who designed the first modem and asked why he wanted to build two prototypes... % "Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next. % Unix is a Registered Bell of AT&T Trademark Laboratories. -- Donn Seeley % MP3s are great because you can put 9,000 CDs on a 40 gig hard drive. MP3s suck because then it sounds like shit. -- Rob Malda, Geeks in Space Episode 27, Slashdot radio % It takes a million monkeys at typewriters to write Shakespeare, but only a dozen monkeys at computers to run Network Solutions. -- Patrick Delahanty % Please help - firewall burnt down - lost packet - reward $$$. % If Linux were a beer, it would be shipped in open barrels so that anybody could piss in it before delivery. % Fate protects fools, little children, and ships named Enterprise -- Commander Riker, Star Trek % Thank you Mario! But our princess is in another castle. % Star Trek Voyager sucked more than William Shatner's acting. -- Mike DeMaria % I open sourced my combination lock, and put a transparent plastic case on it, so that i can apply the many eyes, shallow bugs concept to bicycle security. If its a success, i'll use it on my car. -- Dan Chin % By RotJ, of course, Luke also has BOFH nature. Note how he calmly goes to the HR department^W^W^WJabba's lair. Note how he calmly asks for his friends back. Note how he calmly annihilates all about him when he doesn't get what he wants. -- Rodger Donaldson % I used to herd dairy cows. Now I herd lusers. Apart from the isolation, I think I preferred the cows. They were better conversation, easier to milk, and if they annoyed me enough, I could shoot them and eat them. -- Roger Donaldson % Actually, HTML is very useful. As a flag to say "you don't need to read this email". -- Paul Tomblin, a.s.r. % DVD's suck. If you don't like the flick, you can't tape over it. -- Adep % "Wiggly lines are the basis of all science." -- Mark Roulsto % One zone to rule them all. One zone to find them. One zone to bring them all. And in the darkness, bind them. % If Java had true garbage collection, most programs would delete themselves upon execution. -- Robert Sewell % There's an RFC for everything. I bet there is an RFC on the proper way to wipe your butt at an IETF meeting. Probably by using an expired draft RFC. -- Mike DeMaria % X has two states. Working, and tried to do anything outside default install. -- Mike DeMaria % Life sucks. Then you die. Then you respawn. Then life sucks again until you buy a new video card. Then life sucks, but it sucks with more resolution. -- Mike DeMaria % I want Quicken to download my bank statements, and reconcile automatically, and when there's a difference pop up a message that says "Bank error in your favor. Collect $50." -- Mike DeMaria % Bender: I had a dream... and there were 1's and 0's everywhere, and I think I saw a 2! Fry: There there. There's no such thing as 2's. -- Futurama % There are 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary and those who don't. % According to Merriam-Webster dictionary Main Entry: geek Pronunciation: 'gEk Function: noun, geeky /'gE-kE/ adjective Etymology: probably from English dialect geek, geck fool, from Low German geck, from Middle Low German Date: 1914 1 : a carnival performer often billed as a wild man whose act usually includes biting the head off a live chicken or snake 2 : a person often of an intellectual bent who is disapproved of % You sir, are an unknown USB device driver. -- Mike DeMaria % If you spend more on coffee than on IT security, you will be hacked. What's more, you deserve to be hacked. -- White House cybersecurity adviser Richard Clarke % Run SoftPC DOS 68K version on OS X. You'd have an emulation of a different architecture running under an emulation of a different architecture running under a multiboot system. -- Mike DeMaria % Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies: As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one. -- Mike Godwin, also known as Godwin's Law % Today I got my glasses. Everything is so much clearer and less fuzzy now. Colors are better defined and lines are crisper. Gentlemen, I am now experiencing life in HDTV mode. -- Mike DeMaria % Microsoft has long had a policy of "embracing and extending" competing standards, which is Microsoft-speak for "diluting and trivializing." -- Art Whittman, Network Computing, May 3, 1999 % "Now in regards to full disclosure, I think you should all be happy that we bothered to tell you all about these exploits. We could have selfishly used them to compromise machines" -- Jonathan T. Rockway, on Bugtraq "When you're trying to argue that your actions were ethical and moral, pointing out that you could have committed crimes isn't the way to do it." -- Devin Ganger, in reply % NICE. iTunes can play files that are in the trash. I can download crappy music directly to the trash can! -- Mike Demaria % So get this: I buy "free" compressed air from CompUSA Cost $5, with $5 rebate, from compusa. You need to send in the original UPC, not a photocopy. The UPC is painted onto the can. -- Mike DeMaria % These two strings walk into a bar and sit down. The bartender says, "So what'll it be?" The first string says, "I think I'll have a beer quag fulk boorg jdk^CjfdLk jk3s d#f67howe%^U r89nvy~~owmc63^Dz x.xvcu" "Please excuse my friend," the second string says, "He isn't null-terminated." % ML: Don't scare me like that - my daughter is already pecking at keyboards. MD: At least she won't be sticking cheese slices in the floppy drives. ML: You mean the cup holder? ML: No that's the CD drive, sorry. MD: The heating action of the laser is excellent for melting the cheese. % demaria: B I K L N B I K L N B I K L N adep: mike...what are you ON ? paras: can i have some of it? demaria: I dunno, but it looks purple. % But you've got to hand it to IBM, they know how to design hardware. The servers all had handles to pick them up and throw them out of the window. -- Juergen Nieveler % Every time I see a backhoe go by I go into an Elmer Fudd voice and say, "Be wery wery qwiet... I'm hunting fiber" For some reason the Servers and Networks guys don't think it is funny. % The subscription model of buying music is bankrupt. I think you could make available the Second Coming in a subscription model and it might not be successful. -- Steve Jobs, Dec. 3, 2003 % mdemaria: I wonder if nand can run X locally mdemaria: I think we broke it or it broke itself jeremy: broken X : > < mdemaria: broken : X :: Bugs : Microsoft % So, one of the most important compounds in human life is born of the marriage of a poison gas and an explosive metal. Ironic, don't you think? -- Alton Brown % * dan wonders how long a warrenty for dell speakers lasts. * demaria: If you know the right people, and when they're not home, that warranty can last forever. % Student 1: What do you get when you integrate 1/cabin? Student 2: A log cabin? Student 1: A houseboat! You forgot to add the c. % She asked me, "What's your sign?" I responded, "Neon." % Because . doesn't match \n. [\0-\377] is the most efficient way to match everything currently. Maybe \e should match everything. And \E would of course match nothing. :-) -- Larry Wall in <9847@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> % double value; /* or your money back! */ short changed; /* so triple your money back! */ -- Larry Wall in cons.c from the perl source code % echo "Your stdio isn't very std." -- Larry Wall in Configure from the perl distribution % Your csh still thinks true is false. Write to your vendor today and tell them that next year Configure ought to "rm /bin/csh" unless they fix their blasted shell. :-) -- Larry Wall in Configure from the perl distribution % Obviously I was either onto something, or on something. -- Larry Wall on the creation of Perl % I'm sure a mathematician would claim that 0 and 1 are both very interesting numbers. :-) -- Larry Wall in <199707300650.XAA05515@wall.org> % switch (ref $@) { OverflowError => warn "Dam needs to be drained"; DomainError => warn "King needs to be trained"; NuclearWarError => die; } -- Larry Wall in <199709302338.QAA17037@wall.org> % It's easy to solve the halting problem with a shotgun. :-) -- Larry Wall in <199801151836.KAA14656@wall.org> % I'm reminded of the day my daughter came in, looked over my shoulder at some Perl 4 code, and said, "What is that, swearing?" -- Larry Wall in <199806181642.JAA10629@wall.org> % Biologist: What's worse than being chased by a Velociraptor? Physicist: Obviously, being chased by an Acceloraptor. -- Larry Wall in A12 % Another way to look at it is that screensavers are sort of a poor man's LSD, without the bad trips. -- Larry Wall, 8th State of the Onion % My suggestion would be to assume that the Apocalypses are primarily intended to be entertaining rather than factual. :-) -- Larry Wall in <20050809221810.GA31369@wall.org> % Man. If you could go back in time to 1980 and tell everyone that in 25 years, European governments would be spearheading an initiative called "Operation Spam Zombies", and that this name was not in any way meant to be humorous, the looks on peoples faces would be priceless. -- mcc , Slashdot, June'05 % If I won the lottery, I'd be the only multimillionaire with a $50,000 house and an OC-12 connection going into it. -- Mike DeMaria % C: drive looks happier than D: drive % My T1 clocking is in two different time zones. % Joke: -> You: O /|\ / \ % Excerpt from a conversation between a customer support person and a customer working for a well-known military-affiliated research lab: Support: "You're not our only customer, you know." Customer: "But we're one of the few with tactical nuclear weapons." % "There's this wormhole theory that says all data you send in /dev/null will not be lost, but actually show up on a server in an alternate universe" % If eating sushi when working with a Wacom tablet, you run the risk of dunking your stylus into soy sauce. -- Scott Kurtz % The end is near: January 19, 2038 03:14:07 GMT % if (argc > 1 && strcmp(argv[1], "-advice") == 0) { printf("Don't Panic!\n"); exit(42); } % Real programmers don't bring brown-bag lunches. If the vending machine doesn't sell it, they don't eat it. Vending machines don't sell quiche. % Progress (n.): The process through which Usenet has evolved from smart people in front of dumb terminals to dumb people in front of smart terminals. -- obs@burnout.demon.co.uk % Sure I have a hybrid! It burns both gas and oil! -- Rowan % Bashir: Was any of it true? Garek: Every word. Bashir: Even the lies? Garek: Especially the lies. -- The Wire, Star Trek Deep Space Nine % Why is the Federation so obsessed with the Maquis? We've never harmed you. And yet we're constantly arrested and charged with terrorism. Starships chase us through the badlands, and our supporters are harrassed and ridiculed. Why? Because we've left the Federation, and that's the one thing you cannot accept. Nobody leaves paradise. Everyone should WANT to be in the Federation. Hell, you even want the Cardassians to join. You know, in some ways, you're worse than the Borg. At least they tell you about their plans for assimilation. You're more insidious. You assimilate people, and they don't even know it." -- Commander Eddington, For the Cause, Star Trek Deep Space Nine % The Apple Computer Corporation can only become cooler over time. -- Second Law of Mactonian Thermodynamics % Now, Play Russian Roulette In Bash, Just Run This Line: [ $[ $RANDOM % 6 ] == 0 ] && rm -rf / || echo "You live" -- the_JinX, bash.org % \o/ |o| /o_ /o\ % holy crap! pine has a sepll checker! -- Dan Chin, ironically % Does the name Doctor Pavlov ring a bell? % Why do we want intelligent terminals when there are so many stupid users? % The next time someone asks me to write a java program that runs over a network connection, I'm going to print out an entire ream of paper with "try/catch" blocks, crush their heads with it, then jump on their corpse and shout "WRYYYYYYYYYYYY!" triumphantly. -- FuzzGod5, Bash.org % I want to live in Theory. Everything works in Theory. % Help! Help! We're being held prisoner in a system software factory! % Welcome to our XHTML ! Sorry, we're closed. % A SQL query goes into a bar, walks up to two tables and says, "Can I join you?" % That joke is so stupid it underflows and becomes awesome. % Q: "Whats the object-oriented way to become wealthy?" A: Inheritance % Cray. They made computers so big, they had built in sofas. -- Mike DeMaria % For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. A Newtonian truism which you have obviously neglected. -- Cyrus Redblock, Star Trek TNG, The Big Goodbye % You can always tell you're in the (far distant) future if people are wearing ridiculous hats. -- tvtropes.org % Old macs never die. They just get relegated to scanner duty. % It's so good I have it on Laserdisc. -- Brian Ibbott, on the movie Quick Change % It's against my programming to impersonate a deity. -- C3PO % Why does a burger have less energy than a steak? Because the burger is in a ground state. % An asynchronous function. Who's there? Knock, knock. % It is easier to port a shell than a shell script. -- Larry Wall % Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed with Browser X' label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network. -- Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the web) % A good programmer is someone who looks both ways before crossing a one-way street. -- Doug Linder % A computer scientist is someone who, when told to "Go to Hell," sees the "go to," rather than the destination, as harmful. % The flow chart is a most thoroughly oversold piece of program documentation. -- Frederick Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month % Real artists ship. -- Steve Jobs, to the origional Macintosh development team. % 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? -- Tom Cargill, C++ Journal, Fall 1990. % A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program in than some that do. -- Dennis M. Ritchie % A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing. -- Alan Perlis % An architect's first work is apt to be spare and clean. He knows he doesn't know what he's doing, so he does it carefully and with great restraint. As he designs the first work, frill after frill and embellishment after embellishment occur to him. These get stored away to be used "next time". Sooner or later the first system is finished, and the architect, with firm confidence and a demonstrated mastery of that class of systems, is ready to build a second system. This second is the most dangerous system a man ever designs. When he does his third and later ones, his prior experiences will confirm each other as to the general characteristics of such systems, and their differences will identify those parts of his experience that are particular and not generalizable. The general tendency is to over-design the second system, using all the ideas and frills that were cautiously sidetracked on the first one. The result, as Ovid says, is a "big pile". -- Frederick Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month", and the second system affect % APL is a write-only language. I can write programs in APL, but I can't read any of them. -- Roy Keir % Around computers it is difficult to find the correct unit of time to measure progress. Some cathedrals took a century to complete. Can you imagine the grandeur and scope of a program that would take as long? -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982 % C, n.: A programming language that is sort of like Pascal except more like assembly except that it isn't very much like either one, or anything else. It is either the best language available to the art today, or it isn't. -- Ray Simard % One cute one was when the Multics swapper-out process swapped out the swapper-in process. (recall that all of the Multics OS was swappable) -- Famous computer bug in history % JavaScript: An authorizing language designed to make Netscape crash. % I'd suggest printing out a copy of the GNU coding standards, and NOT read it. Burn them, it's a great symbolic gesture. -- Linus Torvalds % People, when you go to start your kids on Unix, start them on anything but the GNU Manifesto. -- Anthony DeBoer % You can't have a performance sports car function as a school bus and a fire engine. -- Dr. Kammal Jabbour, Syracuse University, on the Intel iAPX architecture % When an entire industry knows of your project, there are only two possible reasons... and war-stories are a sign that it's *not* the good reason. -- Thorfinn on ASR % 90% of the people programming in X probably shouldn't be. I mean, you've seen KDE, yes? -- Simon Cozens, a.s.r. % Most Non-Unix managers conclude that the VI editor is either extraterrestrial in origin or was devised by the original Unix developers as part of a secret communications code to reach another dimension. -- Communications Week, July 26 1993 % Just how many lines of Perl does it take to get from "We have the data" to "We have the data in useful form"? -- Eric Remy, a.s.r. % One of the design goals was, when you saw it, you wanted to lick it. -- Steve Jobs, on the new MacOS GUI % Bernoulli was wrong. X proves that you can fill a vacuum, yet still it sucks. -- Dennis Ritchie % Thus spake the master programmer: "Without the wind, the grass does not move. Without software, hardware is useless." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" % Yes, I did say something along the lines of "C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do it blows your whole leg off." -- Bjarne Stroustrup, Inventor of C++ % Documentation is worth it just to be able to answer all your mail with 'RTFM' -- Alan Cox % If the designers of X-Windows built cars, there would be no fewer than five steering wheels hidden about the cockpit, none of which followed the same principles -- but you'd be able to shift gears with your car stereo. Useful feature, that. -- Marus J. Ranum, Digital Equipment Corporation % Emacs, n.: A slow-moving parody of a text editor. % When C++ is your hammer, everything looks like a thumb. % Anybody who really thinks /bin/true should report a version number and a help string (or even a copyright notice) needs to get his head examined. -- Linus Torvalds % The Sign of a Good CS Department is that they don't let CS majors get credit for classes like "HTML Design" % If I had wanted your website to make noise I would have licked my finger and rubbed it across the monitor. % The Macintosh turned out so well because the people working on it were musicians, artists, poets and historians who also happened to be excellent computer scientists. -- Steve Jobs, The New York Times % An Emacs reference mug is what I want. It would hold ten gallons of coffee. -- Steve VanDevender, A.S.R. % Perl, the only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption % Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. % C isn't that hard: void (*(*f[])())() defines f as an array of unspecified size, of pointers to functions that return pointers to functions that return void. % I have a CS degree. I can't do math that involves numbers anymore. -- Mike DeMaria % Any program or configuration tool that has the word "smart" in it, isn't. -- Mike DeMaria % Symantec sucks as much as a software company can without publishing an OS. -- Adep % You want it in one line? Does it have to fit in 80 columns? :-) -- Larry Wall in <7349@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> % Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use regular expressions." Now they have two problems. -- Jamie Zawinski % Thus spake the master programmer: "When a program is being tested, it is too late to make design changes." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" % The QA department should be independent and powerful, it must not report to the development team, in fact, the head of QA should have veto power over releasing any software that doesn't meet muster. -- Joel Spolsky % The digital world can be an environment rich in humanity, a network not of wires but of people. The Internet, in particular, offers immense possibilities for encounter and solidarity. This is something truly good, a gift from God. -- Pope Francis % As a startup CEO, I slept like a baby. I woke up every two hours and cried. -- Ben Horowitz, Co-founder, Opsware % A QA engineer walks into a bar and orders a drink. And a drink. And 7 drinks. And 0 drinks. And 9999999999999 drinks. And -1 drinks. And Q drinks. And Unicode snowman drinks. And a drink a drink a drink drinks. And 4'");drop database bar_tab;'); drinks. % A user interface is like a joke. If you have to explain it, it's not that good. % Some mistakes will be made, by the way. Some mistakes will be made along the way. That's good. Because at least some decisions are being made along the way. And we'll find the mistakes, we'll fix them. -- Steve Jobs % Always code as if whoever maintains your program is a violent psychopath who knows where you live % Everyone who has ever written a program has written a bug... but the biggest mistake I've ever seen in programming is optimism. -- tef % We use few comments in our revisions - most of the programs are short enough to speak for themselves. And when a program cannot speak for itself, it is seldom the case that greater reliability or understanding will result by interposing yet another insulating layer of documentation between the code and the reader. Bad programming practice cannot be explained away; it must be rewritten. -- B.W. Kernighan and P.J. Plauger, Programming Style: Examples and Counterexamples, ACM Computing Surveys, December 1974 % There is a principle of style in English that says, "Say what you mean, as simply and directly as you can." The same principle applies to programming. -- B.W. Kernighan and P.J. Plauger, Programming Style: Examples and Counterexamples, ACM Computing Surveys, December 1974 % A program should work. Not just on the easy cases, or on the well-expressed ones, but all the time. It should be written to defend itself against bad data from the outside world. "Garbage in, garbage out" is not a law of nature. It just means that a programmer shirked his responsibility for checking his input. -- B.W. Kernighan and P.J. Plauger, Programming Style: Examples and Counterexamples, ACM Computing Surveys, December 1974 % The most important thing I've accomplished, other than building the compiler, is training young people. They come to me, you know, and say, 'Do you think we can do this?' I say, "Try it." And I back 'em up. -- Grace Hopper % Letterman: Now how did you know so much about computers then? Hopper: I didn't. Letterman: How did...? Hopper: It was the first one. -- Grace Hopper, on the Mark I, interviewed by David Letterman on Late Night % The most deadly thing in software is the concept, which almost universally seems to be followed, that you are going to specify what you are going to do, and then do it. And that is where most of our troubles come from. The projects that are called successful, have met their specifications. But those specifications were based upon the designers' ignorance before they started the job. -- D.T. Ross, NATO Software Engineering Conference, 1968 % The design process is an iterative one. I will tell you one thing which can go wrong with it if you are not in the laboratory. In my terms design consists of: 1. Flowchart until you think you understand the problem. 2. Write code until you realize that you don't. 3. Go back and re-do the flowchart. 4. Write some more code and iterate to what you feel is the correct solution. -- H.A. Kinslow, NATO Software Engineering Conference, 1968 % A software system can best be designed if the testing is interlaced with the designing instead of being used after the design. -- A.J. Perlis, NATO Software Engineering Conference, 1968 % We build systems like the Wright brothers built airplanes - build the whole thing, push it off the cliff, let it crash, and start over again. -- R.M. Graham, NATO Software Engineering Conference, 1968 % We should have feedback from users early in the design process. -- B. Galler, NATO Software Engineering Conference, 1968 % We are starting gradually, and building up. My motto is "do something small, useful, now." -- R.W. Bemer, NATO Software Engineering Conference, 1968 % Large systems must evolve, and cannot be produced all at one time. You must have an initial small core system that works really well. -- K. Kolence, NATO Software Engineering Conference, 1968 % F. Genuys: If the job has been done before, estimates are fairly easy. If the research content is high, estimates are difficult. The trouble is that it is not always possible to tell beforehand which jobs are which. R.M. McClure: It's research if it's different. Even if it is just higher performance, it is still research. -- NATO Software Engineering Conference, 1968 % The good systems that are presently working were written by small groups. More than twenty programmers working on a project is usually disastrous. -- J.N. Buxton, NATO Software Engineering Conference, 1968 % Software manufacturers should desist from using customers as their means of testing systems. -- A.E. Glennie, NATO Software Engineering Conference, 1968 % Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence! -- Edsger Dijkstra, Structured Programming, 1969 % Only fools have no fear. -- Worf, Star Trek TNG, Coming of Age % It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness, that is life. -- Captain Picard, Star Trek TNG, Peak Performance % It's harder to read code than to write it. -- Joel Spolsky % IRC is just multiplayer notepad. -- Reverend, bash.org % The Programmer's Credo: We do these things not because they are easy, but because we thought they were going to be easy. %