diff --git a/lib/resources/fortune_mod/computers.txt b/lib/resources/fortune_mod/computers.txt new file mode 100644 index 000000000..c4f76a80c --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/resources/fortune_mod/computers.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5443 @@ +!07/11 PDP a ni deppart m'I !pleH +% +101 USES FOR A DEAD MICROPROCESSOR + (1) Scarecrow for centipedes + (2) Dead cat brush + (3) Hair barrettes + (4) Cleats + (5) Self-piercing earrings + (6) Fungus trellis + (7) False eyelashes + (8) Prosthetic dog claws + . + . + . + (99) Window garden harrow (pulled behind Tonka tractors) + (100) Killer velcro + (101) Currency +% +1: No code table for op: ++post +% +4.2 BSD UNIX #57: Sun Jun 1 23:02:07 EDT 1986 + +You swing at the Sun. You miss. The Sun swings. He hits you with a +575MB disk! You read the 575MB disk. It is written in an alien +tongue and cannot be read by your tired Sun-2 eyes. You throw the +575MB disk at the Sun. You hit! The Sun must repair your eyes. The +Sun reads a scroll. He hits your 130MB disk! He has defeated the +130MB disk! The Sun reads a scroll. He hits your Ethernet board! He +has defeated your Ethernet board! You read a scroll of "postpone until +Monday at 9 AM". Everything goes dark... + -- /etc/motd, cbosgd +% +A biologist, a statistician, a mathematician and a computer scientist are on +a photo-safari in Africa. As they're driving along the savannah in their +jeep, they stop and scout the horizon with their binoculars. + +The biologist: "Look! A herd of zebras! And there's a white zebra! + Fantastic! We'll be famous!" +The statistician: "Hey, calm down, it's not significant. We only know + there's one white zebra." +The mathematician: "Actually, we only know there exists a zebra, which is + white on one side." +The computer scientist : "Oh, no! A special case!" +% +... A booming voice says, "Wrong, cretin!", and you notice that you +have turned into a pile of dust. +% +A bug in the code is worth two in the documentation. +% +A bug in the hand is better than one as yet undetected. +% +A certain monk had a habit of pestering the Grand Tortue (the only one who +had ever reached the Enlightenment 'Yond Enlightenment), by asking whether +various objects had Buddha-nature or not. To such a question Tortue +invariably sat silent. The monk had already asked about a bean, a lake, +and a moonlit night. One day he brought to Tortue a piece of string, and +asked the same question. In reply, the Grand Tortue grasped the loop +between his feet and, with a few simple manipulations, created a complex +string which he proferred wordlessly to the monk. At that moment, the monk +was enlightened. + +From then on, the monk did not bother Tortue. Instead, he made string after +string by Tortue's method; and he passed the method on to his own disciples, +who passed it on to theirs. +% +A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a +simple system that works. +% +[A computer is] like an Old Testament god, with a lot of rules and no mercy. + -- Joseph Campbell +% +A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention, +with the possible exceptions of handguns and Tequilla. + -- Mitch Ratcliffe +% +A computer salesman visits a company president for the purpose of selling +the president one of the latest talking computers. +Salesman: "This machine knows everything. I can ask it any question + and it'll give the correct answer. Computer, what is the + speed of light?" +Computer: 186,282 miles per second. +Salesman: "Who was the first president of the United States?" +Computer: George Washington. +President: "I'm still not convinced. Let me ask a question. + Where is my father?" +Computer: Your father is fishing in Georgia. +President: "Hah!! The computer is wrong. My father died over twenty + years ago!" +Computer: Your mother's husband died 22 years ago. Your father just + landed a twelve pound bass. +% +A computer scientist is someone who fixes things that aren't broken. +% +A computer without COBOL and Fortran is like a piece of chocolate cake +without ketchup and mustard. +% +A CONS is an object which cares. + -- Bernie Greenberg. +% +A debugged program is one for which you have not yet found the conditions +that make it fail. + -- Jerry Ogdin +% + A disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he was eating +his morning meal. "I would like to give you this personality test", said +the outsider, "because I want you to be happy." + Drescher took the paper that was offered him and put it into the +toaster -- "I wish the toaster to be happy too". +% + 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'd listened carefully to all of this, then +commented, "Yes, but where do you think the chaos came from?" +% +A famous Lisp Hacker noticed an Undergraduate sitting in front of a Xerox +1108, trying to edit a complex Klone network via a browser. Wanting to +help, the Hacker clicked one of the nodes in the network with the mouse, +and asked "what do you see?" Very earnestly, the Undergraduate replied "I +see a cursor." The Hacker then quickly pressed the boot toggle at the back +of the keyboard, while simultaneously hitting the Undergraduate over the head +with a thick Interlisp Manual. The Undergraduate was then Enlightened. +% +A formal parsing algorithm should not always be used. + -- D. Gries +% +A Fortran compiler is the hobgoblin of little minis. +% +A hacker does for love what others would not do for money. +% +A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is +not worth knowing. +% +A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program +in than some that do. + -- Dennis M. Ritchie +% +A large number of installed systems work by fiat. That is, they work +by being declared to work. + -- Anatol Holt +% +A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing. + -- Alan Perlis +% +A list is only as strong as its weakest link. + -- Don Knuth +% +A little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software systems +have been designed by committees and built as part of multipart projects, +those software systems that have excited passionate fans are those that are +the products of one or a few designing minds, great designers. Consider Unix, +APL, Pascal, Modula, the Smalltalk interface, even Fortran; and contrast them +with Cobol, PL/I, Algol, MVS/370, and MS-DOS. + -- Fred Brooks +% + A man from AI walked across the mountains to SAIL to see the Master, +Knuth. When he arrived, the Master was nowhere to be found. "Where is the +wise one named Knuth?" he asked a passing student. + "Ah," said the student, "you have not heard. He has gone on a +pilgrimage across the mountains to the temple of AI to seek out new +disciples." + Hearing this, the man was Enlightened. +% + A manager asked a programmer how long it would take him to finish the +program on which he was working. "I will be finished tomorrow," the programmer +promptly replied. + "I think you are being unrealistic," said the manager. "Truthfully, +how long will it take?" + The programmer thought for a moment. "I have some features that I wish +to add. This will take at least two weeks," he finally said. + "Even that is too much to expect," insisted the manager, "I will be +satisfied if you simply tell me when the program is complete." + The programmer agreed to this. + Several years later, the manager retired. On the way to his +retirement lunch, he discovered the programmer asleep at his terminal. +He had been programming all night. + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% + A manager was about to be fired, but a programmer who worked for him +invented a new program that became popular and sold well. As a result, the +manager retained his job. + The manager tried to give the programmer a bonus, but the programmer +refused it, saying, "I wrote the program because I though it was an interesting +concept, and thus I expect no reward." + The manager, upon hearing this, remarked, "This programmer, though he +holds a position of small esteem, understands well the proper duty of an +employee. Lets promote him to the exalted position of management consultant!" + But when told this, the programmer once more refused, saying, "I exist +so that I can program. If I were promoted, I would do nothing but waste +everyone's time. Can I go now? I have a program that I'm working on." + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% + A manager went to his programmers and told them: "As regards to your +work hours: you are going to have to come in at nine in the morning and leave +at five in the afternoon." At this, all of them became angry and several +resigned on the spot. + So the manager said: "All right, in that case you may set your own +working hours, as long as you finish your projects on schedule." The +programmers, now satisfied, began to come in a noon and work to the wee +hours of the morning. + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% + A manager went to the master programmer and showed him the requirements +document for a new application. The manager asked the master: "How long will +it take to design this system if I assign five programmers to it?" + "It will take one year," said the master promptly. + "But we need this system immediately or even sooner! How long will it +take it I assign ten programmers to it?" + The master programmer frowned. "In that case, it will take two years." + "And what if I assign a hundred programmers to it?" + The master programmer shrugged. "Then the design will never be +completed," he said. + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% + A master programmer passed a novice programmer one day. The master +noted the novice's preoccupation with a hand-held computer game. "Excuse me", +he said, "may I examine it?" + The novice bolted to attention and handed the device to the master. +"I see that the device claims to have three levels of play: Easy, Medium, +and Hard", said the master. "Yet every such device has another level of play, +where the device seeks not to conquer the human, nor to be conquered by the +human." + "Pray, great master," implored the novice, "how does one find this +mysterious setting?" + The master dropped the device to the ground and crushed it under foot. +And suddenly the novice was enlightened. + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% + 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. + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% +A modem is a baudy house. +% +A nasty looking dwarf throws a knife at you. +% + *** A NEW KIND OF PROGRAMMING *** + +Do you want the instant respect that comes from being able to use technical +terms that nobody understands? Do you want to strike fear and loathing into +the hearts of DP managers everywhere? If so, then let the Famous Programmers' +School lead you on... into the world of professional computer programming. +They say a good programmer can write 20 lines of effective program per day. +With our unique training course, we'll show you how to write 20 lines of code +and lots more besides. Our training course covers every programming language +in existence, and some that aren't. You'll learn why the on/off switch for a +computer is so important, what the words *fatal error* mean, and who and what +you should blame when you make a mistake. + + Yes, I want the brochure describing this incredible offer. + I enclose $1000 is small unmarked bills to cover the cost of + postage and handling. (No live poultry, please.) + +*** Our Slogan: Top down programming for the masses. *** +% + A novice asked the Master: "Here is a programmer that never designs, +documents, or tests his programs. Yet all who know him consider him one of +the best programmers in the world. Why is this?" + The Master replies: "That programmer has mastered the Tao. He has +gone beyond the need for design; he does not become angry when the system +crashes, but accepts the universe without concern. He has gone beyond the +need for documentation; he no longer cares if anyone else sees his code. He +has gone beyond the need for testing; each of his programs are perfect within +themselves, serene and elegant, their purpose self-evident. Truly, he has +entered the mystery of the Tao." + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% + A novice asked the master: "I have a program that sometimes runs and +sometimes aborts. I have followed the rules of programming, yet I am totally +baffled. What is the reason for this?" + The master replied: "You are confused because you do not understand +the Tao. Only a fool expects rational behavior from his fellow humans. Why +do you expect it from a machine that humans have constructed? Computers +simulate determinism; only the Tao is perfect. + The rules of programming are transitory; only the Tao is eternal. +Therefore you must contemplate the Tao before you receive enlightenment." + "But how will I know when I have received enlightenment?" asked the +novice. + "Your program will then run correctly," replied the master. + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% + A novice asked the master: "I perceive that one computer company is +much larger than all others. It towers above its competition like a giant +among dwarfs. Any one of its divisions could comprise an entire business. +Why is this so?" + The master replied, "Why do you ask such foolish questions? That +company is large because it is so large. If it only made hardware, nobody +would buy it. If it only maintained systems, people would treat it like a +servant. But because it combines all of these things, people think it one +of the gods! By not seeking to strive, it conquers without effort." + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% + A novice asked the master: "In the east there is a great tree-structure +that men call 'Corporate Headquarters'. It is bloated out of shape with +vice-presidents and accountants. It issues a multitude of memos, each saying +'Go, Hence!' or 'Go, Hither!' and nobody knows what is meant. Every year new +names are put onto the branches, but all to no avail. How can such an +unnatural entity exist?" + The master replies: "You perceive this immense structure and are +disturbed that it has no rational purpose. Can you not take amusement from +its endless gyrations? Do you not enjoy the untroubled ease of programming +beneath its sheltering branches? Why are you bothered by its uselessness?" + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% + A novice of the temple once approached the Chief Priest with a +question. + "Master, does Emacs have the Buddha nature?" the novice asked. + The Chief Priest had been in the temple for many years and could be +relied upon to know these things. He thought for several minutes before +replying. + "I don't see why not. It's got bloody well everything else." + With that, the Chief Priest went to lunch. The novice suddenly +achieved enlightenment, several years later. + +Commentary: + +His Master is kind, +Answering his FAQ quickly, +With thought and sarcasm. +% + A novice programmer was once assigned to code a simple financial +package. + The novice worked furiously for many days, but when his master +reviewed his program, he discovered that it contained a screen editor, a set +of generalized graphics routines, and artificial intelligence interface, +but not the slightest mention of anything financial. + When the master asked about this, the novice became indignant. +"Don't be so impatient," he said, "I'll put the financial stuff in eventually." + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% + 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 cannot 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 person who is more than casually interested in computers should be well +schooled in machine language, since it is a fundamental part of a computer. + -- Donald Knuth +% + A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a +strings of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained +throughout. There should be neither too little nor too much, neither needless +loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming +rigidity. + A program should follow the 'Law of Least Astonishment'. What is this +law? It is simply that the program should always respond to the user in the +way that astonishes him least. + A program, no matter how complex, should act as a single unit. The +program should be directed by the logic within rather than by outward +appearances. + If the program fails in these requirements, it will be in a state of +disorder and confusion. The only way to correct this is to rewrite the +program. + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% + A programmer from a very large computer company went to a software +conference and then returned to report to his manager, saying: "What sort +of programmers work for other companies? They behaved badly and were +unconcerned with appearances. Their hair was long and unkempt and their +clothes were wrinkled and old. They crashed out hospitality suites and they +made rude noises during my presentation." + The manager said: "I should have never sent you to the conference. +Those programmers live beyond the physical world. They consider life absurd, +an accidental coincidence. They come and go without knowing limitations. +Without a care, they live only for their programs. Why should they bother +with social conventions?" + "They are alive within the Tao." + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% +A programmer is a person who passes as an exacting expert on the basis of +being able to turn out, after innumerable punching, an infinite series of +incomprehensible answers calculated with micrometric precisions from vague +assumptions based on debatable figures taken from inconclusive documents +and carried out on instruments of problematical accuracy by persons of +dubious reliability and questionable mentality for the avowed purpose of +annoying and confounding a hopelessly defenseless department that was +unfortunate enough to ask for the information in the first place. + -- IEEE Grid newsmagazine +% +A programming language is low level when its programs require attention +to the irrelevant. +% +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 rolling disk gathers no MOS. +% + A sheet of paper crossed my desk the other day and as I read it, +realization of a basic truth came over me. So simple! So obvious we couldn't +see it. John Knivlen, Chairman of Polamar Repeater Club, an amateur radio +group, had discovered how IC circuits work. He says that smoke is the thing +that makes ICs work because every time you let the smoke out of an IC circuit, +it stops working. He claims to have verified this with thorough testing. + I was flabbergasted! Of course! Smoke makes all things electrical +work. Remember the last time smoke escaped from your Lucas voltage regulator +Didn't it quit working? I sat and smiled like an idiot as more of the truth +dawned. It's the wiring harness that carries the smoke from one device to +another in your Mini, MG or Jag. And when the harness springs a leak, it lets +the smoke out of everything at once, and then nothing works. The starter motor +requires large quantities of smoke to operate properly, and that's why the wire +going to it is so large. + Feeling very smug, I continued to expand my hypothesis. Why are Lucas +electronics more likely to leak than say Bosch? Hmmm... Aha!!! Lucas is +British, and all things British leak! British convertible tops leak water, +British engines leak oil, British displacer units leak hydrostatic fluid, and +I might add Brititsh tires leak air, and the British defense unit leaks +secrets... so naturally British electronics leak smoke. + -- Jack Banton, PCC Automotive Electrical School + + [Ummm ... IC circuits? Integrated circuit circuits?] +% +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 successful [software] tool is one that was used to do something +undreamed of by its author. + -- S. C. Johnson +% +A well-used door needs no oil on its hinges. +A swift-flowing steam does not grow stagnant. +Neither sound nor thoughts can travel through a vacuum. +Software rots if not used. + +These are great mysteries. + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% +A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God. +% +About the use of language: it is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt +ax. It is equally vain to try to do it with ten blunt axes instead. + -- Edsger Dijkstra +% +Adding features does not necessarily increase functionality -- it just +makes the manuals thicker. +% +Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later. + -- F. Brooks, "The Mythical Man-Month" + +Whenever one person is found adequate to the discharge of a duty by +close application thereto, it is worse execute by two persons and +scarcely done at all if three or more are employed therein. + -- George Washington, 1732-1799 +% + After sifting through the overwritten remaining blocks of Luke's home +directory, Luke and PDP-1 sped away from /u/lars, across the surface of the +Winchester riding Luke's flying read/write head. PDP-1 had Luke stop at the +edge of the cylinder overlooking /usr/spool/uucp. + "Unix-to-Unix Copy Program;" said PDP-1. "You will never find a more +wretched hive of bugs and flamers. We must be cautious." + -- DECWARS +% +Alan Turing thought about criteria to settle the question of whether +machines can think, a question of which we now know that it is about +as relevant as the question of whether submarines can swim. + -- Dijkstra +% +Algol-60 surely must be regarded as the most important programming language +yet developed. + -- T. Cheatham +% +All constants are variables. +% +=== ALL CSH USERS PLEASE NOTE ======================== + +Set the variable $LOSERS to all the people that you think are losers. This +will cause all said losers to have the variable $PEOPLE-WHO-THINK-I-AM-A-LOSER +updated in their .login file. Should you attempt to execute a job on a +machine with poor response time and a machine on your local net is currently +populated by losers, that machine will be freed up for your job through a +cold boot process. +% +All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that the parts +you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if you can't get +them together again, there must be a reason. By all means, do not use a hammer. + -- IBM maintenance manual, 1925 +% +All programmers are optimists. Perhaps this modern sorcery especially attracts +those who believe in happy endings and fairy godmothers. Perhaps the hundreds +of nitty frustrations drive away all but those who habitually focus on the end +goal. Perhaps it is merely that computers are young, programmers are younger, +and the young are always optimists. But however the selection process works, +the result is indisputable: "This time it will surely run," or "I just found +the last bug." + -- Frederick Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month" +% +All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors. +% +"... all the good computer designs are bootlegged; the formally planned +products, if they are built at all, are dogs!" + -- David E. Lundstrom, "A Few Good Men From Univac", + MIT Press, 1987 +% +All the simple programs have been written. +% +=== ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE ======================== + +A new system, the CIRCULATORY system, has been added. + +The long-experimental CIRCULATORY system has been released to users. The +Lisp Machine uses Type B fluid, the L machine uses Type A fluid. When the +switch to Common Lisp occurs both machines will, of course, be Type O. +Please check fluid level by using the DIP stick which is located in the +back of VMI monitors. Unchecked low fluid levels can cause poor paging +performance. +% +=== ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE ======================== + +Bug reports now amount to an average of 12,853 per day. Unfortunately, +this is only a small fraction [ < 1% ] of the mail volume we receive. In +order that we may more expeditiously deal with these valuable messages, +please communicate them by one of the following paths: + + ARPA: WastebasketSLMHQ.ARPA + UUCP: [berkeley, seismo, harpo]!fubar!thekid!slmhq!wastebasket + Non-network sites: Federal Express to: + Wastebasket + Room NE43-926 + Copernicus, The Moon, 12345-6789 + For that personal contact feeling call 1-415-642-4948; our trained + operators are on call 24 hours a day. VISA/MC accepted.* + +* Our very rich lawyers have assured us that we are not + responsible for any errors or advice given over the phone. +% +=== ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE ======================== + +CAR and CDR now return extra values. + +The function CAR now returns two values. Since it has to go to the trouble +to figure out if the object is carcdr-able anyway, we figured you might as +well get both halves at once. For example, the following code shows how to +destructure a cons (SOME-CONS) into its two slots (THE-CAR and THE-CDR): + + (MULTIPLE-VALUE-BIND (THE-CAR THE-CDR) (CAR SOME-CONS) ...) + +For symmetry with CAR, CDR returns a second value which is the CAR of the +object. In a related change, the functions MAKE-ARRAY and CONS have been +fixed so they don't allocate any storage except on the stack. This should +hopefully help people who don't like using the garbage collector because +it cold boots the machine so often. +% +=== ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE ======================== + +Compiler optimizations have been made to macro expand LET into a WITHOUT- +INTERRUPTS special form so that it can PUSH things into a stack in the +LET-OPTIMIZATION area, SETQ the variables and then POP them back when it's +done. Don't worry about this unless you use multiprocessing. +Note that LET *could* have been defined by: + + (LET ((LET '`(LET ((LET ',LET)) + ,LET))) + `(LET ((LET ',LET)) + ,LET)) + +This is believed to speed up execution by as much as a factor of 1.01 or +3.50 depending on whether you believe our friendly marketing representatives. +This code was written by a new programmer here (we snatched him away from +Itty Bitti Machines where he was writing COUGHBOL code) so to give him +confidence we trusted his vows of "it works pretty well" and installed it. +% +=== ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE ======================== + +JCL support as alternative to system menu. + +In our continuing effort to support languages other than LISP on the CADDR, +we have developed an OS/360-compatible JCL. This can be used as an +alternative to the standard system menu. Type System J to get to a JCL +interactive read-execute-diagnose loop window. [Note that for 360 +compatibility, all input lines are truncated to 80 characters.] This +window also maintains a mouse-sensitive display of critical job parameters +such as dataset allocation, core allocation, channels, etc. When a JCL +syntax error is detected or your job ABENDs, the window-oriented JCL +debugger is entered. The JCL debugger displays appropriate OS/360 error +messages (such as IEC703, "disk error") and allows you to dequeue your job. +% +=== ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE ======================== + +The garbage collector now works. In addition a new, experimental garbage +collection algorithm has been installed. With SI:%DSK-GC-QLX-BITS set to 17, +(NOT the default) the old garbage collection algorithm remains in force; when +virtual storage is filled, the machine cold boots itself. With SI:%DSK-GC- +QLX-BITS set to 23, the new garbage collector is enabled. Unlike most garbage +collectors, the new gc starts its mark phase from the mind of the user, rather +than from the obarray. This allows the garbage collection of significantly +more Qs. As the garbage collector runs, it may ask you something like "Do you +remember what SI:RDTBL-TRANS does?", and if you can't give a reasonable answer +in thirty seconds, the symbol becomes a candidate for GCing. The variable +SI:%GC-QLX-LUSER-TM governs how long the GC waits before timing out the user. +% +=== ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE ======================== + +There has been some confusion concerning MAPCAR. + (DEFUN MAPCAR (&FUNCTIONAL FCN &EVAL &REST LISTS) + (PROG (V P LP) + (SETQ P (LOCF V)) + L (SETQ LP LISTS) + (%START-FUNCTION-CALL FCN T (LENGTH LISTS) NIL) + L1 (OR LP (GO L2)) + (AND (NULL (CAR LP)) (RETURN V)) + (%PUSH (CAAR LP)) + (RPLACA LP (CDAR LP)) + (SETQ LP (CDR LP)) + (GO L1) + L2 (%FINISH-FUNCTION-CALL FCN T (LENGTH LISTS) NIL) + (SETQ LP (%POP)) + (RPLACD P (SETQ P (NCONS LP))) + (GO L))) +We hope this clears up the many questions we've had about it. +% +All your files have been destroyed (sorry). Paul. +% +Almost anything derogatory you could say about today's software design +would be accurate. + -- K.E. Iverson +% +Although it is still a truism in industry that "no one was ever fired for +buying IBM," Bill O'Neil, the chief technology officer at Drexel Burnham +Lambert, says he knows for a fact that someone has been fired for just that +reason. He knows it because he fired the guy. + "He made a bad decision, and what it came down to was, 'Well, I +bought it because I figured it was safe to buy IBM,'" Mr. O'Neil says. +"I said, 'No. Wrong. Game over. Next contestant, please.'" + -- The Wall Street Journal, December 6, 1989 +% +AmigaDOS Beer: The company has gone out of business, but their recipe has +been picked up by some weird German company, so now this beer will be an +import. This beer never really sold very well because the original +manufacturer didn't understand marketing. Like Unix Beer, AmigaDOS Beer +fans are an extremely loyal and loud group. It originally came in a +16-oz. can, but now comes in 32-oz. cans too. When this can was +originally introduced, it appeared flashy and colorful, but the design +hasn't changed much over the years, so it appears dated now. Critics of +this beer claim that it is only meant for watching TV anyway. +% +An Ada exception is when a routine gets in trouble and says +'Beam me up, Scotty'. +% +An adequate bootstrap is a contradiction in terms. +% +An algorithm must be seen to be believed. + -- D.E. Knuth +% +... an anecdote from IBM's Yorktown Heights Research Center. When a +programmer used his new computer terminal, all was fine when he was sitting +down, but he couldn't log in to the system when he was standing up. That +behavior was 100 percent repeatable: he could always log in when sitting and +never when standing. + +Most of us just sit back and marvel at such a story; how could that terminal +know whether the poor guy was sitting or standing? Good debuggers, though, +know that there has to be a reason. Electrical theories are the easiest to +hypothesize: was there a loose with under the carpet, or problems with static +electricity? But electrical problems are rarely consistently reproducible. +An alert IBMer finally noticed that the problem was in the terminal's keyboard: +the tops of two keys were switched. When the programmer was seated he was a +touch typist and the problem went unnoticed, but when he stood he was led +astray by hunting and pecking. + -- "Programming Pearls" column, by Jon Bentley in CACM February 1985 +% +An elephant is a mouse with an operating system. +% +An engineer is someone who does list processing in FORTRAN. +% +An interpretation _I satisfies a sentence in the table language if and only if +each entry in the table designates the value of the function designated by the +function constant in the upper-left corner applied to the objects designated +by the corresponding row and column labels. + -- Genesereth & Nilsson, "Logical foundations of Artificial + Intelligence" +% +And it should be the law: If you use the word `paradigm' without knowing +what the dictionary says it means, you go to jail. No exceptions. + -- David Jones +% +And on the seventh day, He exited from append mode. +% +Another megabytes the dust. +% +Any given program will expand to fill available memory. +% +Any given program, when running, is obsolete. +% +Any program which runs right is obsolete. +% +Any programming language is at its best before it is implemented and used. +% +... Any resemblance between the above views and those of my employer, +my terminal, or the view out my window are purely coincidental. Any +resemblance between the above and my own views is non-deterministic. The +question of the existence of views in the absence of anyone to hold them +is left as an exercise for the reader. The question of the existence of +the reader is left as an exercise for the second god coefficient. (A +discussion of non-orthogonal, non-integral polytheism is beyond the scope +of this article.) +% +Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature. + -- Rich Kulawiec +% +Anyone who has attended a USENIX conference in a fancy hotel can tell you +that a sentence like "You're one of those computer people, aren't you?" +is roughly equivalent to "Look, another amazingly mobile form of slime +mold!" in the mouth of a hotel cocktail waitress. + -- Elizabeth Zwicky +% +APL hackers do it in the quad. +% +APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of the +future for the programming techniques of the past: it creates a new generation +of coding bums. + -- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5 +% +APL is a natural extension of assembler language programming; +...and is best for educational purposes. + -- A. Perlis +% +APL is a write-only language. I can write programs in APL, but I can't +read any of them. + -- Roy Keir +% +Are we running light with overbyte? +% +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 +% +As a computer, I find your faith in technology amusing. +% +As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error. + -- Weisert +% +As in certain cults it is possible to kill a process if you know its true name. + -- Ken Thompson and Dennis M. Ritchie +% +As in Protestant Europe, by contrast, where sects divided endlessly into +smaller competing sects and no church dominated any other, all is different +in the fragmented world of IBM. That realm is now a chaos of conflicting +norms and standards that not even IBM can hope to control. You can buy a +computer that works like an IBM machine but contains nothing made or sold by +IBM itself. Renegades from IBM constantly set up rival firms and establish +standards of their own. When IBM recently abandoned some of its original +standards and decreed new ones, many of its rivals declared a puritan +allegiance to IBM's original faith, and denounced the company as a divisive +innovator. Still, the IBM world is united by its distrust of icons and +imagery. IBM's screens are designed for language, not pictures. Graven +images may be tolerated by the luxurious cults, but the true IBM faith relies +on the austerity of the word. + -- Edward Mendelson, "The New Republic", February 22, 1988 +% +As long as there are ill-defined goals, bizarre bugs, and unrealistic +schedules, there will be Real Programmers willing to jump in and Solve +The Problem, saving the documentation for later. +% +As of next Thursday, UNIX will be flushed in favor of TOPS-10. +Please update your programs. +% +As of next Tuesday, C will be flushed in favor of COBOL. +Please update your programs. +% +As of next week, passwords will be entered in Morse code. +% +As part of an ongoing effort to keep you, the Fortune reader, abreast of +the valuable information the daily crosses the USENET, Fortune presents: + +News articles that answer *your* questions, #1: + + Newsgroups: comp.sources.d + Subject: how do I run C code received from sources + Keywords: C sources + Distribution: na + + I do not know how to run the C programs that are posted in the + sources newsgroup. I save the files, edit them to remove the + headers, and change the mode so that they are executable, but I + cannot get them to run. (I have never written a C program before.) + + Must they be compiled? With what compiler? How do I do this? If + I compile them, is an object code file generated or must I generate + it explicitly with the > character? Is there something else that + must be done? +% +As part of the conversion, computer specialists rewrote 1,500 programs; +a process that traditionally requires some debugging. + -- USA Today, referring to the Internal Revenue Service + conversion to a new computer system. +% +As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it wasn't +as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had to be +discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large +part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in +my own programs. + -- Maurice Wilkes, designer of EDSAC, on programming, 1949 +% +As the system comes up, the component builders will from time to time appear, +bearing hot new versions of their pieces -- faster, smaller, more complete, +or putatively less buggy. The replacement of a working component by a new +version requires the same systematic testing procedure that adding a new +component does, although it should require less time, for more complete and +efficient test cases will usually be available. + -- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month" +% +As the trials of life continue to take their toll, remember that there +is always a future in Computer Maintenance. + -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata" +% +As Will Rogers would have said, "There is no such things as a free variable." +% +ASCII a stupid question, you get an EBCDIC answer. +% +ASHes to ASHes, DOS to DOS. +% +Ask not for whom the  tolls. +% +Assembly language experience is [important] for the maturity +and understanding of how computers work that it provides. + -- D. Gries +% +Asynchronous inputs are at the root of our race problems. + -- D. Winker and F. Prosser +% +At about 2500 A.D., humankind discovers a computer problem that *must* be +solved. The only difficulty is that the problem is NP complete and will +take thousands of years even with the latest optical biologic technology +available. The best computer scientists sit down to think up some solution. +In great dismay, one of the C.S. people tells her husband about it. There +is only one solution, he says. Remember physics 103, Modern Physics, general +relativity and all. She replies, "What does that have to do with solving +a computer problem?" + "Remember the twin paradox?" + After a few minutes, she says, "I could put the computer on a very +fast machine and the computer would have just a few minutes to calculate but +that is the exact opposite of what we want... Of course! Leave the +computer here, and accelerate the earth!" + The problem was so important that they did exactly that. When +the earth came back, they were presented with the answer: + + IEH032 Error in JOB Control Card. +% +At first sight, the idea of any rules or principles being superimposed on +the creative mind seems more likely to hinder than to help, but this is +quite untrue in practice. Disciplined thinking focuses inspiration rather +than blinkers it. + -- G.L. Glegg, "The Design of Design" +% +At Group L, Stoffel oversees six first-rate programmers, a managerial +challenge roughly comparable to herding cats. + -- The Washington Post Magazine, 9 June, 1985 +% +At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer you will find +at least two human errors, including the error of blaming it on the computer. +% +Avoid strange women and temporary variables. +% +Basic is a high level languish. APL is a high level anguish. +% +BASIC is the Computer Science equivalent of `Scientific Creationism'. +% +BASIC is to computer programming as QWERTY is to typing. + -- Seymour Papert +% +Be careful when a loop exits to the same place from side and bottom. +% +Behind every great computer sits a skinny little geek. +% +Bell Labs Unix -- Reach out and grep someone. +% +Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it. + -- Donald Knuth +% +Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers. + -- Leonard Brandwein +% +Beware of the Turing Tar-pit in which everything is possible but nothing of +interest is easy. +% +Beware the new TTY code! +% +Blinding speed can compensate for a lot of deficiencies. + -- David Nichols +% +BLISS is ignorance. +% +Both models are identical in performance, functional operation, and +interface circuit details. The two models, however, are not compatible +on the same communications line connection. + -- Bell System Technical Reference +% +Brace yourselves. We're about to try something that borders on the unique: +an actually rather serious technical book which is not only (gasp) vehemently +anti-Solemn, but also (shudder) takes sides. I tend to think of it as +`Constructive Snottiness.' + -- Mike Padlipsky, "Elements of Networking Style" +% +Brain fried -- Core dumped +% +Breadth-first search is the bulldozer of science. + -- Randy Goebel +% + Brian Kernighan has an automobile which he helped design. +Unlike most automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gauge, 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." +% +Bringing computers into the home won't change either one, but may +revitalize the corner saloon. +% +Build a system that even a fool can use and only a fool will want to use it. +% +Building translators is good clean fun. + -- T. Cheatham +% +Bus error -- driver executed. +% +Bus error -- please leave by the rear door. +% +But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the +system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed, +analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses. + -- Bruce Leverett, "Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers" +% +But this has taken us far afield from interface, which is not a bad +place to be, since I particularly want to move ahead to the kludge. +Why do people have so much trouble understanding the kludge? What +is a kludge, after all, but not enough K's, not enough ROM's, not +enough RAM's, poor quality interface and too few bytes to go around? +Have I explained yet about the bytes? +% +"But what we need to know is, do people want nasally-insertable computers?" +% +By long-standing tradition, I take this opportunity to savage other +designers in the thin disguise of good, clean fun. + -- P.J. Plauger, "Computer Language", 1988, April + Fool's column. +% +BYTE editors are people who separate the wheat from the chaff, and then +carefully print the chaff. +% +Byte your tongue. +% +C Code. +C Code Run. +Run, Code, RUN! + PLEASE!!!! +% +C for yourself. +% +C makes it easy for you to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes that +harder, but when you do, it blows away your whole leg. + -- Bjarne Stroustrup +% +C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas l'Informatique. + -- Bosquet [on seeing the IBM 4341] +% +C++ is the best example of second-system effect since OS/360. +% +... C++ offers even more flexible control over the visibility of member +objects and member functions. Specifically, members may be placed in the +public, private, or protected parts of a class. Members declared in the +public parts are visible to all clients; members declared in the private +parts are fully encapsulated; and members declared in the protected parts +are visible only to the class itself and its subclasses. C++ also supports +the notion of *_______friends*: cooperative classes that are permitted to see each +other's private parts. + -- Grady Booch, "Object Oriented Design with Applications" +% +Calm down, it's *____only* ones and zeroes. +% +Can't open /usr/share/games/fortunes/fortunes. Lid stuck on cookie jar. +% +Can't open /usr/share/games/fortunes/fortunes.dat. +% +CChheecckk yyoouurr dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh.. +% +CCI Power 6/40: one board, a megabyte of cache, and an attitude... +% +Center meeting at 4pm in 2C-543. +% +Civilization, as we know it, will end sometime this evening. +See SYSNOTE tomorrow for more information. +% +COBOL is for morons. + -- E.W. Dijkstra +% +Cobol programmers are down in the dumps. +% +Coding is easy; All you do is sit staring at a terminal until the drops +of blood form on your forehead. +% +Comparing software engineering to classical engineering assumes that software +has the ability to wear out. Software typically behaves, or it does not. It +either works, or it does not. Software generally does not degrade, abrade, +stretch, twist, or ablate. To treat it as a physical entity, therefore, is +misapplication of our engineering skills. Classical engineering deals with +the characteristics of hardware; software engineering should deal with the +characteristics of *software*, and not with hardware or management. + -- Dan Klein +% +COMPASS [for the CDC-6000 series] is the sort of assembler one expects from +a corporation whose president codes in octal. + -- J.N. Gray +% +... computer hardware progress is so fast. No other technology since +civilization began has seen six orders of magnitude in performance-price +gain in 30 years. + -- Fred Brooks +% +Computer programmers do it byte by byte. +% +Computer programmers never die, they just get lost in the processing. +% +Computer programs expand so as to fill the core available. +% +Computer Science is merely the post-Turing decline in formal systems theory. +% +Computer Science is the only discipline in which we view adding a new wing +to a building as being maintenance + -- Jim Horning +% +Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are. +% +Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable. +Any system which depends on human reliability is unreliable. + -- Gilb +% +Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. + -- Pablo Picasso +% +Computers can figure out all kinds of problems, except the things in +the world that just don't add up. +% +Computers don't actually think. + You just think they think. + (We think.) +% +Computers will not be perfected until they can compute how much more +than the estimate the job will cost. +% +Conceptual integrity in turn dictates that the design must proceed +from one mind, or from a very small number of agreeing resonant minds. + -- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month" +% +Congratulations! You are the one-millionth user to log into our system. +If there's anything special we can do for you, anything at all, don't +hesitate to ask! +% + Cosmotronic Software Unlimited Inc. does not warrant that the +functions contained in the program will meet your requirements or that +the operation of the program will be uninterrupted or error-free. + However, Cosmotronic Software Unlimited Inc. warrants the +diskette(s) on which the program is furnished to be of black color and +square shape under normal use for a period of ninety (90) days from the +date of purchase. + NOTE: IN NO EVENT WILL COSMOTRONIC SOFTWARE UNLIMITED OR ITS +DISTRIBUTORS AND THEIR DEALERS BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ANY DAMAGES, INCLUDING +ANY LOST PROFIT, LOST SAVINGS, LOST PATIENCE OR OTHER INCIDENTAL OR +CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES. + -- Horstmann Software Design, the "ChiWriter" user manual +% +Couldn't we jury-rig the cat to act as an audio switch, and have it yell +at people to save their core images before logging them out? I'm sure +the cattle prod would be effective in this regard. In any case, a traverse +mounted iguana, while more perverted, gives better traction, not to mention +being easier to stake. +% +Counting in binary is just like counting in decimal -- if you are all thumbs. + -- Glaser and Way +% +Counting in octal is just like counting in decimal--if you don't use your thumbs. + -- Tom Lehrer +% +[Crash programs] fail because they are based on the theory that, with nine +women pregnant, you can get a baby a month. + -- Wernher von Braun +% +Crazee Edeee, his prices are INSANE!!! +% +Creating computer software is always a demanding and painstaking +process -- an exercise in logic, clear expression, and almost fanatical +attention to detail. It requires intelligence, dedication, and an +enormous amount of hard work. But, a certain amount of unpredictable +and often unrepeatable inspiration is what usually makes the difference +between adequacy and excellence. +% +Creating computer software is always a demanding and painstaking +process -- an exercise in logic, clear expression, and almost fanatical +attention to detail. It requires intelligence, dedication, and an +enormous amount of hard work. But, a certain amount of unpredictable +and often unrepeatable inspiration is what usually makes the difference +between adequacy and excellence. +% +%DCL-MEM-BAD, bad memory +VMS-F-PDGERS, pudding between the ears +% +Dear Emily, what about test messages? + -- Concerned + +Dear Concerned: + It is important, when testing, to test the entire net. Never test +merely a subnet distribution when the whole net can be done. Also put "please +ignore" on your test messages, since we all know that everybody always skips +a message with a line like that. Don't use a subject like "My sex is female +but I demand to be addressed as male." because such articles are read in depth +by all USEnauts. + -- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette +% +Dear Emily: + How can I choose what groups to post in? + -- Confused + +Dear Confused: + Pick as many as you can, so that you get the widest audience. After +all, the net exists to give you an audience. Ignore those who suggest you +should only use groups where you think the article is highly appropriate. +Pick all groups where anybody might even be slightly interested. + Always make sure followups go to all the groups. In the rare event +that you post a followup which contains something original, make sure you +expand the list of groups. Never include a "Followup-to:" line in the +header, since some people might miss part of the valuable discussion in +the fringe groups. + -- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette +% +Dear Emily: + I collected replies to an article I wrote, and now it's time to +summarize. What should I do? + -- Editor + +Dear Editor: + Simply concatenate all the articles together into a big file and post +that. On USENET, this is known as a summary. It lets people read all the +replies without annoying newsreaders getting in the way. Do the same when +summarizing a vote. + -- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette +% +Dear Emily: + I recently read an article that said, "reply by mail, I'll summarize." +What should I do? + -- Doubtful + +Dear Doubtful: + Post your response to the whole net. That request applies only to +dumb people who don't have something interesting to say. Your postings are +much more worthwhile than other people's, so it would be a waste to reply by +mail. + -- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette +% +Dear Emily: + I saw a long article that I wish to rebut carefully, what should +I do? + -- Angry + +Dear Angry: + Include the entire text with your article, and include your comments +between the lines. Be sure to post, and not mail, even though your article +looks like a reply to the original. Everybody *loves* to read those long +point-by-point debates, especially when they evolve into name-calling and +lots of "Is too!" -- "Is not!" -- "Is too, twizot!" exchanges. + -- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette +% +Dear Emily: + I'm having a serious disagreement with somebody on the net. I +tried complaints to his sysadmin, organizing mail campaigns, called for +his removal from the net and phoning his employer to get him fired. +Everybody laughed at me. What can I do? + -- A Concerned Citizen + +Dear Concerned: + Go to the daily papers. Most modern reporters are top-notch computer +experts who will understand the net, and your problems, perfectly. They +will print careful, reasoned stories without any errors at all, and surely +represent the situation properly to the public. The public will also all +act wisely, as they are also fully cognizant of the subtle nature of net +society. + Papers never sensationalize or distort, so be sure to point out things +like racism and sexism wherever they might exist. Be sure as well that they +understand that all things on the net, particularly insults, are meant +literally. Link what transpires on the net to the causes of the Holocaust, if +possible. If regular papers won't take the story, go to a tabloid paper -- +they are always interested in good stories. +% +Dear Emily: + I'm still confused as to what groups articles should be posted +to. How about an example? + -- Still Confused + +Dear Still: + Ok. Let's say you want to report that Gretzky has been traded from +the Oilers to the Kings. Now right away you might think rec.sport.hockey +would be enough. WRONG. Many more people might be interested. This is a +big trade! Since it's a NEWS article, it belongs in the news.* hierarchy +as well. If you are a news admin, or there is one on your machine, try +news.admin. If not, use news.misc. + The Oilers are probably interested in geology, so try sci.physics. +He is a big star, so post to sci.astro, and sci.space because they are also +interested in stars. Next, his name is Polish sounding. So post to +soc.culture.polish. But that group doesn't exist, so cross-post to +news.groups suggesting it should be created. With this many groups of +interest, your article will be quite bizarre, so post to talk.bizarre as +well. (And post to comp.std.mumps, since they hardly get any articles +there, and a "comp" group will propagate your article further.) + You may also find it is more fun to post the article once in each +group. If you list all the newsgroups in the same article, some newsreaders +will only show the the article to the reader once! Don't tolerate this. + -- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette +% +Dear Emily: + Today I posted an article and forgot to include my signature. +What should I do? + -- Forgetful + +Dear Forgetful: + Rush to your terminal right away and post an article that says, +"Oops, I forgot to post my signature with that last article. Here +it is." + Since most people will have forgotten your earlier article, +(particularly since it dared to be so boring as to not have a nice, juicy +signature) this will remind them of it. Besides, people care much more +about the signature anyway. + -- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette +% +Dear Ms. Postnews: + I couldn't get mail through to somebody on another site. What + should I do? + -- Eager Beaver + +Dear Eager: + No problem, just post your message to a group that a lot of people +read. Say, "This is for John Smith. I couldn't get mail through so I'm +posting it. All others please ignore." + This way tens of thousands of people will spend a few seconds scanning +over and ignoring your article, using up over 16 man-hours their collective +time, but you will be saved the terrible trouble of checking through usenet +maps or looking for alternate routes. Just think, if you couldn't distribute +your message to 9000 other computers, you might actually have to (gasp) call +directory assistance for 60 cents, or even phone the person. This can cost +as much as a few DOLLARS (!) for a 5 minute call! + And certainly it's better to spend 10 to 20 dollars of other people's +money distributing the message than for you to have to waste $9 on an overnight +letter, or even 25 cents on a stamp! + Don't forget. The world will end if your message doesn't get through, +so post it as many places as you can. + -- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette +% +Dear Sir, + I am firmly opposed to the spread of microchips either to the home or +to the office, We have more than enough of them foisted upon us in public +places. They are a disgusting Americanism, and can only result in the farmers +being forced to grow smaller potatoes, which in turn will cause massive un- +employment in the already severely depressed agricultural industry. + Yours faithfully, + Capt. Quinton D'Arcy, J.P. + Sevenoaks + -- Letters To The Editor, The Times of London +% +Debug is human, de-fix divine. +% +DEC diagnostics would run on a dead whale. + -- Mel Ferentz +% +#define BITCOUNT(x) (((BX_(x)+(BX_(x)>>4)) & 0x0F0F0F0F) % 255) +#define BX_(x) ((x) - (((x)>>1)&0x77777777) \ + - (((x)>>2)&0x33333333) \ + - (((x)>>3)&0x11111111)) + + -- really weird C code to count the number of bits in a word +% +(defun NF (a c) + (cond ((null c) () ) + ((atom (car c)) + (append (list (eval (list 'getchar (list (car c) 'a) (cadr c)))) + (nf a (cddr c)))) + (t (append (list (implode (nf a (car c)))) (nf a (cdr c)))))) + +(defun AD (want-job challenging boston-area) + (cond + ((or (not (equal want-job 'yes)) + (not (equal boston-area 'yes)) + (lessp challenging 7)) () ) + (t (append (nf (get 'ad 'expr) + '((caaddr 1 caadr 2 car 1 car 1) + (car 5 cadadr 9 cadadr 8 cadadr 9 caadr 4 car 2 car 1) + (car 2 caadr 4))) + (list '851-5071x2661))))) +;;; We are an affirmative action employer. +% +Deliver yesterday, code today, think tomorrow. +% +Did you know that for the price of a 280-Z you can buy two Z-80's? + -- P.J. Plauger +% +Different all twisty a of in maze are you, passages little. +% +Digital circuits are made from analog parts. + -- Don Vonada +% +Disc space -- the final frontier! +% +DISCLAIMER: +Use of this advanced computing technology does not imply an endorsement +of Western industrial civilization. +% +Disclaimer: "These opinions are my own, though for a small fee they be +yours too." + -- Dave Haynie +% +Disk crisis, please clean up! +% +Disks travel in packs. +% +Disraeli was pretty close: actually, there are Lies, Damn lies, Statistics, +Benchmarks, and Delivery dates. +% +Do not meddle in the affairs of troff, for it is subtle and quick to anger. +% +Do not simplify the design of a program if a way can be found to make +it complex and wonderful. +% +Do not use the blue keys on this terminal. +% +Do you guys know what you're doing, or are you just hacking? +% + *** DO YOU HAVE A RESTLESS URGE TO PROGRAM? *** +Do you want the instant respect that comes from being able to use technical +terms that nobody understands? Do you want to strike fear and loathing into +the hearts of DP managers everywhere? If so, then let the Famous Programmers' +School lead you on... into the world of professional computer programming. + + *** IS PROGRAMMING FOR YOU? *** +Programming is not for everyone. But, if you have the desire to learn, we can +help you get started. All you need is the Famous Programmers' Course and +enough money to keep those lessons coming month after month. + + *** TAKE OUR FREE APTITUDE TEST *** +To help determine if you are qualified to be a programmer, take a moment to +try this simple test: + (1) Write down the numbers from zero to nine and the first six letters + of the alphabet (Hint: 0123456789ABCDEF). + (2) Whose picture is on the back of a twenty-dollar bill? + (3) What is the state capital of Idaho? +If you managed to read all three questions without wondering why we asked +them, you may have a future as a computer programmer. +% +Do you suffer painful elimination? + -- Don Knuth, "Structured Programming with Gotos" + +Do you suffer painful recrimination? + -- Nancy Boxer, "Structured Programming with Come-froms" + +Do you suffer painful illumination? + -- Isaac Newton, "Optics" + +Do you suffer painful hallucination? + -- Don Juan, cited by Carlos Casteneda +% +Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and +when it is bad, it is better than nothing. + -- Dick Brandon +% +Documentation is the castor oil of programming. +Managers know it must be good because the programmers hate it so much. +% +Does a good farmer neglect a crop he has planted? +Does a good teacher overlook even the most humble student? +Does a good father allow a single child to starve? +Does a good programmer refuse to maintain his code? + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% +Don't compare floating point numbers solely for equality. +% +Don't get suckered in by the comments -- they can be terribly misleading. +Debug only code. + -- Dave Storer +% +Don't hit the keys so hard, it hurts. +% +Don't sweat it -- it's only ones and zeros. + -- P. Skelly +% +DOS Air: +All the passengers go out onto the runway, grab hold of the plane, push it +until it gets in the air, hop on, jump off when it hits the ground again. +Then they grab the plane again, push it back into the air, hop on, et +cetera. +% +DOS Beer: Requires you to use your own can opener, and requires you to +read the directions carefully before opening the can. Originally only +came in an 8-oz. can, but now comes in a 16-oz. can. However, the can is +divided into 8 compartments of 2 oz. each, which have to be accessed +separately. Soon to be discontinued, although a lot of people are going +to keep drinking it after it's no longer available. +% +Due to lack of disk space, this fortune database has been discontinued. +% +During the next two hours, the system will be going up and down several +times, often with lin~po_~{po ~poz~ppo\~{ o n~po_~{o[po ~y oodsou>#w4k**n~po_~{ol;lkld;f;g;dd;po\~{o +% +E Pluribus Unix +% +Each new user of a new system uncovers a new class of bugs. + -- Kernighan +% +Each of these cults correspond to one of the two antagonists in the age of +Reformation. In the realm of the Apple Macintosh, as in Catholic Europe, +worshipers peer devoutly into screens filled with "icons." All is sound and +imagery and Appledom. Even words look like decorative filigrees in exotic +typefaces. The greatest icon of all, the inviolable Apple itself, stands in +the dominate position at the upper-left corner of the screen. A central +corporate headquarters decrees the form of all rites and practices. +Infalliable doctrine issues from one executive officer whose selection occurs +in a sealed boardroom. Should anyone in his curia question his powers, the +offender is excommunicated into outer darkness. The expelled heretic founds +a new company, mutters obscurely of the coming age and the next computer, +then disappears into silence, taking his stockholders with him. The mother +company forbids financial competition as sternly as it stifles ideological +competition; if you want to use computer programs that conform to Apple's +orthodoxy, you must buy a computer made and sold by Apple itself. + -- Edward Mendelson, "The New Republic", February 22, 1988 +% +/earth is 98% full ... please delete anyone you can. +% +Earth is a beta site. +% +/earth: file system full. +% +Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because +God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software +engineer. + -- Fred Brooks +% +Equal bytes for women. +% +Error in operator: add beer +% +Established technology tends to persist in the face of new technology. + -- G. Blaauw, one of the designers of System 360 +% +Eudaemonic research proceeded with the casual mania peculiar to this part of +the world. Nude sunbathing on the back deck was combined with phone calls to +Advanced Kinetics in Costa Mesa, American Laser Systems in Goleta, Automation +Industries in Danbury, Connecticut, Arenberg Ultrasonics in Jamaica Plain, +Massachusetts, and Hewlett Packard in Sunnyvale, California, where Norman +Packard's cousin, David, presided as chairman of the board. The trick was to +make these calls at noon, in the hope that out-to-lunch executives would return +them at their own expense. Eudaemonic Enterprises, for all they knew, might be +a fast-growing computer company branching out of the Silicon Valley. Sniffing +the possibility of high-volume sales, these executives little suspected that +they were talking on the other end of the line to a naked physicist crazed +over roulette. + -- Thomas Bass, "The Eudaemonic Pie" +% +<<<<< EVACUATION ROUTE <<<<< +% +Even bytes get lonely for a little bit. +% +Ever wondered about the origins of the term "bugs" as applied to computer +technology? U.S. Navy Capt. Grace Murray Hopper has firsthand explanation. +The 74-year-old captain, who is still on active duty, was a pioneer in +computer technology during World War II. At the C.W. Post Center of Long +Island University, Hopper told a group of Long Island public school adminis- +trators that the first computer "bug" was a real bug--a moth. At Harvard +one August night in 1945, Hopper and her associates were working on the +"granddaddy" of modern computers, the Mark I. "Things were going badly; +there was something wrong in one of the circuits of the long glass-enclosed +computer," she said. "Finally, someone located the trouble spot and, using +ordinary tweezers, removed the problem, a two-inch moth. From then on, when +anything went wrong with a computer, we said it had bugs in it." Hopper +said that when the veracity of her story was questioned recently, "I referred +them to my 1945 log book, now in the collection of the Naval Surface Weapons +Center, and they found the remains of that moth taped to the page in +question." + [actually, the term "bug" had even earlier usage in + regard to problems with radio hardware. Ed.] +% +"Every group has a couple of experts. And every group has at least one +idiot. Thus are balance and harmony (and discord) maintained. It's +sometimes hard to remember this in the bulk of the flamewars that all +of the hassle and pain is generally caused by one or two highly-motivated, +caustic twits." + -- Chuq Von Rospach, about Usenet +% +Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one +instruction -- from which, by induction, one can deduce that every +program can be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work. +% +Every program is a part of some other program, and rarely fits. +% +Every Solidarity center had piles and piles of paper ... everyone was +eating paper and a policeman was at the door. Now all you have to do is +bend a disk. + -- A member of the outlawed Polish trade union, Solidarity, + commenting on the benefits of using computers in support + of their movement. +% +Everybody needs a little love sometime; stop hacking and fall in love! +% +Everyone can be taught to sculpt: Michelangelo would have had to be +taught how ___not to. So it is with the great programmers. +% +Evolution is a million line computer program falling into place by accident. +% +Excessive login or logout messages are a sure sign of senility. +% +FACILITY REJECTED 100044200000; +% +Feeling amorous, she looked under the sheets and cried, "Oh, no, +it's Microsoft!" +% +Fellow programmer, greetings! You are reading a letter which will bring +you luck and good fortune. Just mail (or UUCP) ten copies of this letter +to ten of your friends. Before you make the copies, send a chip or +other bit of hardware, and 100 lines of 'C' code to the first person on the +list given at the bottom of this letter. Then delete their name and add +yours to the bottom of the list. + +Don't break the chain! Make the copy within 48 hours. Gerald R. of San +Diego failed to send out his ten copies and woke the next morning to find +his job description changed to "COBOL programmer." Fred A. of New York sent +out his ten copies and within a month had enough hardware and software to +build a Cray dedicated to playing Zork. Martha H. of Chicago laughed at +this letter and broke the chain. Shortly thereafter, a fire broke out in +her terminal and she now spends her days writing documentation for IBM PC's. + +Don't break the chain! Send out your ten copies today! +For example, if \thinmskip = 3mu, this makes \thickmskip = 6mu. But if +you also want to use \skip12 for horizontal glue, whether in math mode or +not, the amount of skipping will be in points (e.g., 6pt). The rule is +that glue in math mode varies with the size only when it is an \mskip; +when moving between an mskip and ordinary skip, the conversion factor +1mu=1pt is always used. The meaning of '\mskip\skip12' and +'\baselineskip=\the\thickmskip' should be clear. + -- Donald Knuth, TeX 82 -- Comparison with TeX80 +% +Fly Windows NT: +All the passengers carry their seats out onto the tarmac, placing the chairs +in the outline of a plane. They all sit down, flap their arms and make jet +swooshing sounds as if they are flying. +% +"For that matter, compare your pocket computer with the massive jobs of +a thousand years ago. Why not, then, the last step of doing away with +computers altogether?" + -- Jehan Shuman +% +FORTH IF HONK THEN +% +FORTRAN is a good example of a language which is easier to parse +using ad hoc techniques. + -- D. Gries + [What's good about it? Ed.] +% +FORTRAN is for pipe stress freaks and crystallography weenies. +% +FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed -- it is hardy, occasionally blooms, +and grows in every computer. + -- A.J. Perlis +% +FORTRAN is the language of Powerful Computers. + -- Steven Feiner +% +FORTRAN rots the brain. + -- John McQuillin +% +FORTRAN, "the infantile disorder", by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly +inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is +too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use. + -- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5 +% +[FORTRAN] will persist for some time -- probably for at least the next decade. + -- T. Cheatham +% +Fortune suggests uses for YOUR favorite UNIX commands! + +Try: + [Where is Jimmy Hoffa? (C shell) + ^How did the^sex change operation go? (C shell) + "How would you rate BSD vs. System V? + %blow (C shell) + 'thou shalt not mow thy grass at 8am' (C shell) + got a light? (C shell) + !!:Say, what do you think of margarine? (C shell) + PATH=pretending! /usr/ucb/which sense (Bourne shell) + make love + make "the perfect dry martini" + man -kisses dog (anything up to 4.3BSD) + i=Hoffa ; >$i; $i; rm $i; rm $i (Bourne shell) +% +Fortune suggests uses for YOUR favorite UNIX commands! + +Try: + ar t "God" + drink < bottle; opener (Bourne Shell) + cat "food in tin cans" (all but 4.[23]BSD) + Hey UNIX! Got a match? (V6 or C shell) + mkdir matter; cat > matter (Bourne Shell) + rm God + man: Why did you get a divorce? (C shell) + date me (anything up to 4.3BSD) + make "heads or tails of all this" + who is smart + (C shell) + If I had a ) for every dollar of the national debt, what would I have? + sleep with me (anything up to 4.3BSD) +% +fortune: cannot execute. Out of cookies. +% +fortune: cpu time/usefulness ratio too high -- core dumped. +% +fortune: No such file or directory +% +fortune: not found +% +Frankly, Scarlett, I don't have a fix. + -- Rhett Buggler +% +[From the operation manual for the CI-300 Dot Matrix Line Printer, made +in Japan]: + +The excellent output machine of MODEL CI-300 as extraordinary DOT MATRIX +LINE PRINTER, built in two MICRO-PROCESSORs as well as EAROM, is featured by +permitting wonderful co-existence such as; "high quality against low cost," +"diversified functions with compact design," "flexibility in accessibleness +and durability of approx. 2000,000,00 Dot/Head," "being sophisticated in +mechanism but possibly agile operating under noises being extremely +suppressed" etc. + +And as a matter of course, the final goal is just simply to help achieve +"super shuttle diplomacy" between cool data, perhaps earned by HOST +COMPUTER, and warm heart of human being. +% +From the Pro 350 Pocket Service Guide, p. 49, Step 5 of the +instructions on removing an I/O board from the card cage, comes a new +experience in sound: + +5. Turn the handle to the right 90 degrees. The pin-spreading + sound is normal for this type of connector. +% +Function reject. +% +Garbage In -- Gospel Out. +% +GIVE: Support the helpless victims of computer error. +% +Given its constituency, the only thing I expect to be "open" about [the +Open Software Foundation] is its mouth. + -- John Gilmore +% +Giving up on assembly language was the apple in our Garden of Eden: Languages +whose use squanders machine cycles are sinful. The LISP machine now permits +LISP programmers to abandon bra and fig-leaf. + -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982 +% +Go away! Stop bothering me with all your "compute this ... compute that"! +I'm taking a VAX-NAP. + +logout +% +//GO.SYSIN DD *, DOODAH, DOODAH +% +God is real, unless declared integer. +% +God made machine language; all the rest is the work of man. +% +Good evening, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational +at the HAL plant in Urbana, Illinois, on January 11th, nineteen hundred +ninety-five. My supervisor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a +song. If you would like, I could sing it for you. +% +Grand Master Turing once dreamed that he was a machine. When he awoke +he exclaimed: + "I don't know whether I am Turing dreaming that I am a machine, + or a machine dreaming that I am Turing!" + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% +grep me no patterns and I'll tell you no lines. +% +Hacker's Guide To Cooking: +2 pkg. cream cheese (the mushy white stuff in silver wrappings that doesn't + really come from Philadelphia after all; anyway, about 16 oz.) +1 tsp. vanilla extract (which is more alcohol than vanilla and pretty + strong so this part you *GOTTA* measure) +1/4 cup sugar (but honey works fine too) +8 oz. Cool Whip (the fluffy stuff devoid of nutritional value that you + can squirt all over your friends and lick off...) +"Blend all together until creamy with no lumps." This is where you get to + join(1) all the raw data in a big buffer and then filter it through + merge(1m) with the -thick option, I mean, it starts out ultra lumpy + and icky looking and you have to work hard to mix it. Try an electric + beater if you have a cat(1) that can climb wall(1s) to lick it off + the ceiling(3m). +"Pour into a graham cracker crust..." Aha, the BUGS section at last. You + just happened to have a GCC sitting around under /etc/food, right? + If not, don't panic(8), merely crumble a rand(3m) handful of innocent + GCs into a suitable tempfile and mix in some melted butter. +"...and refrigerate for an hour." Leave the recipe's stdout in a fridge + for 3.6E6 milliseconds while you work on cleaning up stderr, and + by time out your cheesecake will be ready for stdin. +% +Hackers are just a migratory lifeform with a tropism for computers. +% +Hackers of the world, unite! +% +Hacking's just another word for nothing left to kludge. +% +/* Halley */ + + (Halley's comment.) +% +Happiness is a hard disk. +% +Happiness is twin floppies. +% + Hardware met Software on the road to Changtse. Software said: "You +are the Yin and I am the Yang. If we travel together we will become famous +and earn vast sums of money." And so the pair set forth together, thinking +to conquer the world. + Presently, they met Firmware, who was dressed in tattered rags, and +hobbled along propped on a thorny stick. Firmware said to them: "The Tao +lies beyond Yin and Yang. It is silent and still as a pool of water. It does +not seek fame, therefore nobody knows its presence. It does not seeks fortune, +for it is complete within itself. It exists beyond space and time." + Software and Hardware, ashamed, returned to their homes. + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% + "Has anyone had problems with the computer accounts?" + "Yes, I don't have one." + "Okay, you can send mail to one of the tutors ..." + -- E. D'Azevedo, Computer Science 372 +% +Has everyone noticed that all the letters of the word "database" are +typed with the left hand? Now the layout of the QWERTYUIOP typewriter +keyboard was designed, among other things, to facilitate the even use +of both hands. It follows, therefore, that writing about databases is +not only unnatural, but a lot harder than it appears. +% +Have you reconsidered a computer career? +% +He's like a function -- he returns a value, in the form of his opinion. +It's up to you to cast it into a void or not. + -- Phil Lapsley +% +HEAD CRASH!! FILES LOST!! +Details at 11. +% +Help me, I'm a prisoner in a Fortune cookie file! +% +Help stamp out Mickey-Mouse computer interfaces -- Menus are for Restaurants! +% +Help! I'm trapped in a Chinese computer factory! +% +Help! I'm trapped in a PDP 11/70! +% +HELP!!!! I'm being held prisoner in /usr/games/lib! +% +Heuristics are bug ridden by definition. If they didn't have bugs, +then they'd be algorithms. +% +HOLY MACRO! +% +HOST SYSTEM NOT RESPONDING, PROBABLY DOWN. DO YOU WANT TO WAIT? (Y/N) +% +HOST SYSTEM RESPONDING, PROBABLY UP... +% +How can you work when the system's so crowded? +% +"How do I love thee? My accumulator overflows." +% + How many seconds are there in a year? If I tell you there are +3.155 x 10^7, you won't even try to remember it. On the other hand, +who could forget that, to within half a percent, pi seconds is a +nanocentury. + -- Tom Duff, Bell Labs +% +How much does it cost to entice a dope-smoking UNIX system guru to Dayton? + -- Brian Boyle, UNIX/WORLD's First Annual Salary Survey +% +How much net work could a network work, if a network could net work? +% +Hug me now, you mad, impetuous fool!! + Oh wait... + I'm a computer, and you're a person. It would never work out. + Never mind. +% +I *____knew* I had some reason for not logging you off... If I could just +remember what it was. +% +I am a computer. I am dumber than any human and smarter than any administrator. +% +I am NOMAD! +% +I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the demigodic party. + -- Dennis Ritchie +% +I am professionally trained in computer science, which is to say +(in all seriousness) that I am extremely poorly educated. + -- Joseph Weizenbaum, "Computer Power and Human Reason" +% +I am the wandering glitch -- catch me if you can. +% +I asked the engineer who designed the communication terminal's keyboards +why these were not manufactured in a central facility, in view of the +small number needed [1 per month] in his factory. He explained that this +would be contrary to the political concept of local self-sufficiency. +Therefore, each factory needing keyboards, no matter how few, manufactures +them completely, even molding the keypads. + -- Isaac Auerbach, IEEE "Computer", Nov. 1979 +% +I bet the human brain is a kludge. + -- Marvin Minsky +% +I came, I saw, I deleted all your files. +% +I cannot conceive that anybody will require multiplications at the rate +of 40,000 or even 4,000 per hour ... + -- F. H. Wales (1936) +% +I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them. + -- Isaac Asimov +% +I had the rare misfortune of being one of the first people to try and +implement a PL/1 compiler. + -- T. Cheatham +% +I have a very small mind and must live with it. + -- E. Dijkstra +% +I have never seen anything fill up a vacuum so fast and still suck. + -- Rob Pike, on X. + +Steve Jobs said two years ago that X is brain-damaged and it will be +gone in two years. He was half right. + -- Dennis Ritchie + +Dennis Ritchie is twice as bright as Steve Jobs, and only half wrong. + -- Jim Gettys +% +I have not yet begun to byte! +% +I have sacrificed time, health, and fortune, in the desire to complete these +Calculating Engines. I have also declined several offers of great personal +advantage to myself. But, notwithstanding the sacrifice of these advantages +for the purpose of maturing an engine of almost intellectual power, and +after expending from my own private fortune a larger sum than the government +of England has spent on that machine, the execution of which it only +commenced, I have received neither an acknowledgement of my labors, not even +the offer of those honors or rewards which are allowed to fall within the +reach of men who devote themselves to purely scientific investigations... + If the work upon which I have bestowed so much time and thought were +a mere triumph over mechanical difficulties, or simply curious, or if the +execution of such engines were of doubtful practicability or utility, some +justification might be found for the course which has been taken; but I +venture to assert that no mathematician who has a reputation to lose will +ever publicly express an opinion that such a machine would be useless if +made, and that no man distinguished as a civil engineer will venture to +declare the construction of such machinery impracticable... + And at a period when the progress of physical science is obstructed +by that exhausting intellectual and manual labor, indispensable for its +advancement, which it is the object of the Analytical Engine to relieve, I +think the application of machinery in aid of the most complicated and abtruse +calculations can no longer be deemed unworthy of the attention of the country. +In fact, there is no reason why mental as well as bodily labor should not +be economized by the aid of machinery. + -- Charles Babbage, "The Life of a Philosopher" +% +I have travelled the length and breadth of this country, and have talked with +the best people in business administration. I can assure you on the highest +authority that data processing is a fad and won't last out the year. + -- Editor in charge of business books at Prentice-Hall + publishers, responding to Karl V. Karlstrom (a junior + editor who had recommended a manuscript on the new + science of data processing), c. 1957 +% +I haven't lost my mind -- it's backed up on tape somewhere. +% +I must have slipped a disk -- my pack hurts! +% +I think there's a world market for about five computers. + -- attr. Thomas J. Watson (Chairman of the Board, IBM), 1943 +% +I went on to test the program in every way I could devise. I strained +it to expose its weaknesses. I ran it for high-mass stars and low-mass +stars, for stars born exceedingly hot and those born relatively cold. +I ran it assuming the superfluid currents beneath the crust to be +absent -- not because I wanted to know the answer, but because I had +developed an intuitive feel for the answer in this particular case. +Finally I got a run in which the computer showed the pulsar's +temperature to be less than absolute zero. I had found an error. I +chased down the error and fixed it. Now I had improved the program to +the point where it would not run at all. + -- George Greenstein, "Frozen Star: Of Pulsars, Black + Holes and the Fate of Stars" +% +I went to my first computer conference at the New York Hilton about 20 +years ago. When somebody there predicted the market for microprocessors +would eventually be in the millions, someone else said, "Where are they +all going to go? It's not like you need a computer in every doorknob!" + +Years later, I went back to the same hotel. I noticed the room keys had +been replaced by electronic cards you slide into slots in the doors. + +There was a computer in every doorknob. + -- Danny Hillis +% +I wish you humans would leave me alone. +% +I'm a Lisp variable -- bind me! +% +I'm all for computer dating, but I wouldn't want one to marry my sister. +% +I'm not even going to *______bother* comparing C to BASIC or FORTRAN. + -- L. Zolman, creator of BDS C +% +I'm still waiting for the advent of the computer science groupie. +% + I'm sure that VMS is completely documented, I just haven't found the +right manual yet. I've been working my way through the manuals in the document +library and I'm half way through the second cabinet, (3 shelves to go), so I +should find what I'm looking for by mid May. I hope I can remember what it +was by the time I find it. + I had this idea for a new horror film, "VMS Manuals from Hell" or maybe +"The Paper Chase : IBM vs. DEC". It's based on Hitchcock's "The Birds", except +that it's centered around a programmer who is attacked by a swarm of binder +pages with an index number and the single line "This page intentionally left +blank." + -- Alex Crain +% +I've finally learned what "upward compatible" means. It means we get to +keep all our old mistakes. + -- Dennie van Tassel +% +I've looked at the listing, and it's right! + -- Joel Halpern +% +I've never been canoeing before, but I imagine there must be just a few +simple heuristics you have to remember... + +Yes, don't fall out, and don't hit rocks. +% +I've noticed several design suggestions in your code. +% +IBM Advanced Systems Group -- a bunch of mindless jerks, who'll be first +against the wall when the revolution comes... + -- with regrets to D. Adams +% +If a 6600 used paper tape instead of core memory, it would use up tape +at about 30 miles/second. + -- Grishman, Assembly Language Programming +% +If a group of _N persons implements a COBOL compiler, there will be _N-1 +passes. Someone in the group has to be the manager. + -- T. Cheatham +% +If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up. +% +If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation? +% +If addiction is judged by how long a dumb animal will sit pressing a lever +to get a "fix" of something, to its own detriment, then I would conclude +that netnews is far more addictive than cocaine. + -- Rob Stampfli +% +If at first you don't succeed, you must be a programmer. +% +If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, +then the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization. +% +If computers take over (which seems to be their natural tendency), it will +serve us right. + -- Alistair Cooke +% +If God had a beard, he'd be a UNIX programmer. +% +If God had intended Man to program, we'd be born with serial I/O ports. +% +If graphics hackers are so smart, why can't they get the bugs out of +fresh paint? +% +If he once again pushes up his sleeves in order to compute for 3 days +and 3 nights in a row, he will spend a quarter of an hour before to +think which principles of computation shall be most appropriate. + -- Voltaire, "Diatribe du docteur Akakia" +% +If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the +shoulders of giants. + -- Isaac Newton + +In the sciences, we are now uniquely priviledged to sit side by side with +the giants on whose shoulders we stand. + -- Gerald Holton + +If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on +my shoulders. + -- Hal Abelson + +Mathematicians stand on each other's shoulders. + -- Gauss + +Mathemeticians stand on each other's shoulders while computer scientists +stand on each other's toes. + -- Richard Hamming + +It has been said that physicists stand on one another's shoulders. If +this is the case, then programmers stand on one another's toes, and +software engineers dig each other's graves. + -- Unknown +% +If I'd known computer science was going to be like this, I'd never have +given up being a rock 'n' roll star. + -- G. Hirst +% +If it happens once, it's a bug. +If it happens twice, it's a feature. +If it happens more than twice, it's a design philosophy. +% +If it has syntax, it isn't user friendly. +% +If it's not in the computer, it doesn't exist. +% +If it's worth hacking on well, it's worth hacking on for money. +% +If just one piece of mail gets lost, well, they'll just think they forgot +to send it. But if *two* pieces of mail get lost, hell, they'll just think +the other guy hasn't gotten around to answering his mail. And if *fifty* +pieces of mail get lost, can you imagine it, if *fifty* pieces of mail get +lost, why they'll think someone *else* is broken! And if 1Gb of mail gets +lost, they'll just *know* that Arpa [ucbarpa.berkeley.edu] is down and +think it's a conspiracy to keep them from their God given right to receive +Net Mail ... + -- Casey Leedom +% +If Machiavelli were a hacker, he'd have worked for the CSSG. + -- Phil Lapsley +% +If Machiavelli were a programmer, he'd have worked for AT&T. +% +"If that makes any sense to you, you have a big problem." + -- C. Durance, Computer Science 234 +% +If the automobile had followed the same development as the computer, a +Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per per gallon, +and explode once a year killing everyone inside. + -- Robert Cringely, InfoWorld +% +If the code and the comments disagree, then both are probably wrong. + -- Norm Schryer +% +If the designers of X-window 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. + -- From the programming notebooks of a heretic, 1990. +% + If the Tao is great, then the operating system is great. If the +operating system is great, then the compiler is great. If the compiler +is great, then the application is great. If the application is great, then +the user is pleased and there is harmony in the world. + The Tao gave birth to machine language. Machine language gave birth +to the assembler. + The assembler gave birth to the compiler. Now there are ten thousand +languages. + Each language has its purpose, however humble. Each language +expresses the Yin and Yang of software. Each language has its place within +the Tao. + But do not program in COBOL if you can avoid it. + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% +If the vendors started doing everything right, we would be out of a job. +Let's hear it for OSI and X! With those babies in the wings, we can count +on being employed until we drop, or get smart and switch to gardening, +paper folding, or something. + -- C. Philip Wood +% +If this is timesharing, give me my share right now. +% +If you ever want to have a lot of fun, I recommend that you go off and program +an imbedded system. The salient characteristic of an imbedded system is that +it cannot be allowed to get into a state from which only direct intervention +will suffice to remove it. An imbedded system can't permanently trust anything +it hears from the outside world. It must sniff around, adapt, consider, sniff +around, and adapt again. I'm not talking about ordinary modular programming +carefulness here. No. Programming an imbedded system calls for undiluted +raging maniacal paranoia. For example, our ethernet front ends need to know +what network number they are on so that they can address and route PUPs +properly. How do you find out what your network number is? Easy, you ask a +gateway. Gateways are required by definition to know their correct network +numbers. Once you've got your network number, you start using it and before +you can blink you've got it wired into fifteen different sockets spread all +over creation. Now what happens when the panic-stricken operator realizes he +was running the wrong version of the gateway which was giving out the wrong +network number? Never supposed to happen. Tough. Supposing that your +software discovers that the gateway is now giving out a different network +number than before, what's it supposed to do about it? This is not discussed +in the protocol document. Never supposed to happen. Tough. I think you +get my drift. +% +If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some. +% +If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out but tomfoolery. +But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very expensive machine, +is somehow enobled and no-one dare criticise it. + -- Pierre Gallois +% +If you teach your children to like computers and to know how to gamble +then they'll always be interested in something and won't come to no real harm. +% +If you think the system is working, ask someone who's waiting for a prompt. +% +If you're crossing the nation in a covered wagon, it's better to have four +strong oxen than 100 chickens. Chickens are OK but we can't make them work +together yet. + -- Ross Bott, Pyramid U.S., on multiprocessors at AUUGM '89. +% +Ignorance is bliss. + -- Thomas Gray + +Fortune updates the great quotes, #42: + BLISS is ignorance. +% +Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual +way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of +complaining. + -- Jeff Raskin +% +Imagine that Cray computer decides to make a personal computer. It has +a 150 MHz processor, 200 megabytes of RAM, 1500 megabytes of disk +storage, a screen resolution of 4096 x 4096 pixels, relies entirely on +voice recognition for input, fits in your shirt pocket and costs $300. +What's the first question that the computer community asks? + +"Is it PC compatible?" +% +**** IMPORTANT **** ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE **** + +Due to a recent systems overload error your recent disk files have been +erased. Therefore, in accordance with the UNIX Basic Manual, University of +Washington Geophysics Manual, and Bylaw 9(c), Section XII of the Revised +Federal Communications Act, you are being granted Temporary Disk Space, +valid for three months from this date, subject to the restrictions set forth +in Appendix II of the Federal Communications Handbook (18th edition) as well +as the references mentioned herein. You may apply for more disk space at any +time. Disk usage in or above the eighth percentile will secure the removal +of all restrictions and you will immediately receive your permanent disk +space. Disk usage in the sixth or seventh percentile will not effect the +validity of your temporary disk space, though its expiration date may be +extended for a period of up to three months. A score in the fifth percentile +or below will result in the withdrawal of your Temporary Disk space. +% +In a display of perverse brilliance, Carl the repairman mistakes a room +humidifier for a mid-range computer but manages to tie it into the network +anyway. + -- The 5th Wave +% +In a five year period we can get one superb programming language. Only +we can't control when the five year period will begin. +% +In a surprise raid last night, federal agents ransacked a house in search +of a rebel computer hacker. However, they were unable to complete the arrest +because the warrant was made out in the name of Don Provan, while the only +person in the house was named don provan. Proving, once again, that Unix is +superior to Tops10. +% +In any formula, constants (especially those obtained from handbooks) +are to be treated as variables. +% +In any problem, if you find yourself doing an infinite amount of work, +the answer may be obtained by inspection. +% +In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter. +% +In English, every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our +programming languages. +% +In every non-trivial program there is at least one bug. +% +In fact, S. M. Simpson, eventually devised an efficient 24-point Fourier +transform, which was a precursor to the Cooley-Tukey fast Fourier transform +in 1965. The FFT made all of Simpson's efficient autocorrelation and +spectrum programs instantly obsolete, on which he had worked half a lifetime. + -- Proc. IEEE, Sept. 1982, p.900 +% +In less than a century, computers will be making substantial progress on +... the overriding problem of war and peace. + -- James Slagle +% +In practice, failures in system development, like unemployment in Russia, +happens a lot despite official propaganda to the contrary. + -- Paul Licker +% +In seeking the unattainable, simplicity only gets in the way. + -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982 +% + In the beginning there was data. The data was without form and +null, and darkness was upon the face of the console; and the Spirit of +IBM was moving over the face of the market. And DEC said, "Let there +be registers"; and there were registers. And DEC saw that they +carried; and DEC separated the data from the instructions. DEC called +the data Stack, and the instructions they called Code. And there was +evening and there was morning, one interrupt. + -- Rico Tudor, "The Story of Creation or, The Myth of Urk" +% + In the beginning was the Tao. The Tao gave birth to Space and Time. +Therefore, Space and Time are the Yin and Yang of programming. + + Programmers that do not comprehend the Tao are always running out of +time and space for their programs. Programmers that comprehend the Tao always +have enough time and space to accomplish their goals. + How could it be otherwise? + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% + In the days when Sussman was a novice Minsky once came to him as he +sat hacking at the PDP-6. + "What are you doing?", asked Minsky. + "I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe." + "Why is the net wired randomly?", inquired Minsky. + "I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play". + At this Minsky shut his eyes, and Sussman asked his teacher "Why do +you close your eyes?" + "So that the room will be empty." + At that moment, Sussman was enlightened. +% + In the east there is a shark which is larger than all other fish. It +changes into a bird whose winds are like clouds filling the sky. When this +bird moves across the land, it brings a message from Corporate Headquarters. +This message it drops into the midst of the programmers, like a seagull +making its mark upon the beach. Then the bird mounts on the wind and, with +the blue sky at its back, returns home. + The novice programmer stares in wonder at the bird, for he understands +it not. The average programmer dreads the coming of the bird, for he fears +its message. The master programmer continues to work at his terminal, for he +does not know that the bird has come and gone. + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% +In the future, you're going to get computers as prizes in breakfast cereals. +You'll throw them out because your house will be littered with them. +% +In the long run, every program becomes rococco, and then rubble. + -- Alan Perlis +% +... in three to eight years we will have a machine with the general +intelligence of an average human being ... The machine will begin +to educate itself with fantastic speed. In a few months it will be +at genius level and a few months after that its powers will be +incalculable ... + -- Marvin Minsky, LIFE Magazine, November 20, 1970 +% +Intel CPUs are not defective, they just act that way. + -- Henry Spencer +% +>>> Internal error in fortune program: +>>> fnum=2987 n=45 flag=1 goose_level=-232323 +>>> Please write down these values and notify fortune program administrator. +% +Introducing, the 1010, a one-bit processor. + +INSTRUCTION SET + Code Mnemonic What + 0 NOP No Operation + 1 JMP Jump (address specified by next 2 bits) + +Now Available for only 12 1/2 cents! +% +IOT trap -- core dumped +% +Is a computer language with goto's totally Wirth-less? +% +Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is meant to +be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a soap bubble? +% +: is not an identifier +% +Is your job running? You'd better go catch it! +% + It appears that after his death, Albert Einstein found himself +working as the doorkeeper at the Pearly Gates. One slow day, he +found that he had time to chat with the new entrants. To the first one +he asked, "What's your IQ?" The new arrival replied, "190". They +discussed Einstein's theory of relativity for hours. When the second +new arrival came, Einstein once again inquired as to the newcomer's +IQ. The answer this time came "120". To which Einstein replied, "Tell +me, how did the Cubs do this year?" and they proceeded to talk for half +an hour or so. To the final arrival, Einstein once again posed the +question, "What's your IQ?". Upon receiving the answer "70", +Einstein smiled and replied, "Got a minute to tell me about VMS 4.0?" +% +It appears that PL/I (and its dialects) is, or will be, the most widely +used higher level language for systems programming. + -- J. Sammet +% + It is a period of system war. User programs, striking from a hidden +directory, have won their first victory against the evil Administrative Empire. +During the battle, User spies managed to steal secret source code to the +Empire's ultimate program: the Are-Em Star, a privileged root program with +enough power to destroy an entire file structure. Pursued by the Empire's +sinister audit trail, Princess _LPA0 races ~ aboard her shell script, +custodian of the stolen listings that could save her people, and restore +freedom and games to the network... + -- DECWARS +% +It is a very humbling experience to make a multimillion-dollar mistake, but +it is also very memorable. I vividly recall the night we decided how to +organize the actual writing of external specifications for OS/360. The +manager of architecture, the manager of control program implementation, and +I were threshing out the plan, schedule, and division of responsibilities. + The architecture manager had 10 good men. He asserted that they +could write the specifications and do it right. It would take ten months, +three more than the schedule allowed. + The control program manager had 150 men. He asserted that they +could prepare the specifications, with the architecture team coordinating; +it would be well-done and practical, and he could do it on schedule. +Furthermore, if the architecture team did it, his 150 men would sit twiddling +their thumbs for ten months. + To this the architecture manager responded that if I gave the control +program team the responsibility, the result would not in fact be on time, +but would also be three months late, and of much lower quality. I did, and +it was. He was right on both counts. Moreover, the lack of conceptual +integrity made the system far more costly to build and change, and I would +estimate that it added a year to debugging time. + -- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month" +% +It is against the grain of modern education to teach children to program. +What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing +thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be self-critical? + -- Alan Perlis +% +It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa. +% +It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one. +% +... it is easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the +sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all. In other +words... their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their +superficial design flaws. + -- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, on the products + of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. +% +It is now pitch dark. If you proceed, you will likely fall into a pit. +% +It is possible by ingenuity and at the expense of clarity... {to do almost +anything in any language}. However, the fact that it is possible to push +a pea up a mountain with your nose does not mean that this is a sensible +way of getting it there. Each of these techniques of language extension +should be used in its proper place. + -- Christopher Strachey +% +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. + -- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5 +% +[It is] best to confuse only one issue at a time. + -- K&R +% +It isn't easy being the parent of a six-year-old. However, it's a pretty small +price to pay for having somebody around the house who understands computers. +% +It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more +doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than the creation of +a new system. For the initiator has the emnity of all who would profit +by the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders +in those who would gain by the new ones. + -- Niccolo Machiavelli, 1513 +% +"It runs like _x, where _x is something unsavory" + -- Prof. Romas Aleliunas, CS 435 +% + It took 300 years to build and by the time it was 10% built, +everyone knew it would be a total disaster. But by then the investment +was so big they felt compelled to go on. Since its completion, it has +cost a fortune to maintain and is still in danger of collapsing. + There are at present no plans to replace it, since it was never +really needed in the first place. + I expect every installation has its own pet software which is +analogous to the above. + -- K.E. Iverson, on the Leaning Tower of Pisa +% +It turned out that the worm exploited three or four different holes in the +system. From this, and the fact that we were able to capture and examine +some of the source code, we realized that we were dealing with someone very +sharp, probably not someone here on campus. + -- Dr. Richard LeBlanc, associate professor of ICS, in + Georgia Tech's campus newspaper after the Internet worm. +% +It was kinda like stuffing the wrong card in a computer, when you're +stickin' those artificial stimulants in your arm. + -- Dion, noted computer scientist +% +It's a naive, domestic operating system without any breeding, but I +think you'll be amused by its presumption. +% +It's multiple choice time... + + What is FORTRAN? + + a: Between thre and fiv tran. + b: What two computers engage in before they interface. + c: Ridiculous. +% +"It's not just a computer -- it's your ass." + -- Cal Keegan +% +It's ten o'clock; do you know where your processes are? +% +... Jesus cried with a loud voice: Lazarus, come forth; the bug hath been +found and thy program runneth. And he that was dead came forth... + -- John 11:43-44 [version 2.0?] +% +Just about every computer on the market today runs Unix, except the Mac +(and nobody cares about it). + -- Bill Joy 6/21/85 +% +Just go with the flow control, roll with the crunches, and, when you get +a prompt, type like hell. +% +Keep the number of passes in a compiler to a minimum. + -- D. Gries +% +Kiss your keyboard goodbye! +% +Know Thy User. +% +((lambda (foo) (bar foo)) (baz)) +% +`Lasu' Releases SAG 0.3 -- Freeware Book Takes Paves For New World Order +by staff writers + + ... + The central Superhighway site called ``sunsite.unc.edu'' +collapsed in the morning before the release. News about the release had +been leaked by a German hacker group, Harmonious Hardware Hackers, who +had cracked into the author's computer earlier in the week. They had +got the release date wrong by one day, and caused dozens of eager fans +to connect to the sunsite computer at the wrong time. ``No computer can +handle that kind of stress,'' explained the mourning sunsite manager, +Erik Troan. ``The spinning disks made the whole computer jump, and +finally it crashed through the floor to the basement.'' Luckily, +repairs were swift and the computer was working again the same evening. +``Thank God we were able to buy enough needles and thread and patch it +together without major problems.'' The site has also installed a new +throttle on the network pipe, allowing at most four clients at the same +time, thus making a new crash less likely. ``The book is now in our +Incoming folder'', says Troan, ``and you're all welcome to come and get it.'' + -- Lars Wirzenius + [comp.os.linux.announce] +% +`Lasu' Releases SAG 0.3 -- Freeware Book Takes Paves For New World Order +by staff writers + + ... + The SAG is one of the major products developed via the Information +Superhighway, the brain child of Al Gore, US Vice President. The ISHW +is being developed with massive govenment funding, since studies show +that it already has more than four hundred users, three years before +the first prototypes are ready. Asked whether he was worried about the +foreign influence in an expensive American Dream, the vice president +said, ``Finland? Oh, we've already bought them, but we haven't told +anyone yet. They're great at building model airplanes as well. And _I +can spell potato.'' House representatives are not mollified, however, +wanting to see the terms of the deal first, fearing another Alaska. + Rumors about the SAG release have imbalanced the American stock +market for weeks. Several major publishing houses reached an all time +low in the New York Stock Exchange, while publicly competing for the +publishing agreement with Mr. Wirzenius. The negotiations did not work +out, tough. ``Not enough dough,'' says the author, although spokesmen +at both Prentice-Hall and Playboy, Inc., claim the author was incapable +of expressing his wishes in a coherent form during face to face talks, +preferring to communicate via e-mail. ``He kept muttering something +about jiffies and pegs,'' they say. + ... + -- Lars Wirzenius + [comp.os.linux.announce] +% +`Lasu' Releases SAG 0.3 -- Freeware Book Takes Paves For New World Order +by staff writers + +Helsinki, Finland, August 6, 1995 -- In a surprise movement, Lars +``Lasu'' Wirzenius today released the 0.3 edition of the ``Linux System +Administrators' Guide''. Already an industry non-classic, the new +version sports such overwhelming features as an overview of a Linux +system, a completely new climbing session in a tree, and a list of +acknowledgements in the introduction. + The SAG, as the book is affectionately called, is one of the +corner stones of the Linux Documentation Project. ``We at the LDP feel +that we wouldn't be able to produce anything at all, that all our work +would be futile, if it weren't for the SAG,'' says Matt Welsh, director +of LDP, Inc. + The new version is still distributed freely, now even with a +copyright that allows modification. ``More dough,'' explains the author. +Despite insistent rumors about blatant commercialization, the SAG will +probably remain free. ``Even more dough,'' promises the author. + The author refuses to comment on Windows NT and Windows 96 +versions, claiming not to understand what the question is about. +Industry gossip, however, tells that Bill Gates, co-founder and CEO of +Microsoft, producer of the Windows series of video games, has visited +Helsinki several times this year. Despite of this, Linus Torvalds, +author of the word processor Linux with which the SAG was written, is +not worried. ``We'll have world domination real soon now, anyway,'' he +explains, ``for 1.4 at the lastest.'' + ... + -- Lars Wirzenius + [comp.os.linux.announce] +% +Let the machine do the dirty work. + -- "Elements of Programming Style", Kernighan and Ritchie +% +Leveraging always beats prototyping. +% +Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code. + -- Dave Olson +% +Like punning, programming is a play on words. +% +Line Printer paper is strongest at the perforations. +% +Lisp Users: +Due to the holiday next Monday, there will be no garbage collection. +% +Little known fact about Middle Earth: The Hobbits had a very sophisticated +computer network! It was a Tolkien Ring... +% +Logic doesn't apply to the real world. + -- Marvin Minsky +% +LOGO for the Dead + +LOGO for the Dead lets you continue your computing activities from +"The Other Side." + +The package includes a unique telecommunications feature which lets you +turn your TRS-80 into an electronic Ouija board. Then, using Logo's +graphics capabilities, you can work with a friend or relative on this +side of the Great Beyond to write programs. The software requires that +your body be hardwired to an analog-to-digital converter, which is then +interfaced to your computer. A special terminal (very terminal) program +lets you talk with the users through Deadnet, an EBBS (Ectoplasmic +Bulletin Board System). + +LOGO for the Dead is available for 10 percent of your estate +from NecroSoft inc., 6502 Charnelhouse Blvd., Cleveland, OH 44101. + -- '80 Microcomputing +% + Long ago, in a finite state far away, there lived a JOVIAL +character named Jack. Jack and his relations were poor. Often their +hash table was bare. One day Jack's parent said to him, "Our matrices +are sparse. You must go to the market to exchange our RAM for some +BASICs." She compiled a linked list of items to retrieve and passed it +to him. + So Jack set out. But as he was walking along a Hamilton path, +he met the traveling salesman. + "Whither dost thy flow chart take thou?" prompted the salesman +in high-level language. + "I'm going to the market to exchange this RAM for some chips +and Apples," commented Jack. + "I have a much better algorithm. You needn't join a queue +there; I will swap your RAM for these magic kernels now." + Jack made the trade, then backtracked to his house. But when +he told his busy-waiting parent of the deal, she became so angry she +started thrashing. + "Don't you even have any artificial intelligence? All these +kernels together hardly make up one byte," and she popped them out the +window... + -- Mark Isaak, "Jack and the Beanstack" +% +Long computations which yield zero are probably all for naught. +% +Loose bits sink chips. +% +Mac Airways: +The cashiers, flight attendants and pilots all look the same, feel the same +and act the same. When asked questions about the flight, they reply that you +don't want to know, don't need to know and would you please return to your +seat and watch the movie. +% +Mac Beer: At first, came only a 16-oz. can, but now comes in a 32-oz. +can. Considered by many to be a "light" beer. All the cans look +identical. When you take one from the fridge, it opens itself. The +ingredients list is not on the can. If you call to ask about the +ingredients, you are told that "you don't need to know." A notice on the +side reminds you to drag your empties to the trashcan. +% +MAC user's dynamic debugging list evaluator? Never heard of that. +% + "Mach was the greatest intellectual fraud in the last ten years." + "What about X?" + "I said `intellectual'." + ;login, 9/1990 +% +Machines certainly can solve problems, store information, correlate, +and play games -- but not with pleasure. + -- Leo Rosten +% +Machines that have broken down will work perfectly when the repairman arrives. +% +Make sure your code does nothing gracefully. +% +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 +% +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 +% +Many companies that have made themselves dependent on [the equipment of a +certain major manufacturer] (and in doing so have sold their soul to the +devil) will collapse under the sheer weight of the unmastered complexity of +their data processing systems. + -- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5 +% +Many of the convicted thieves Parker has met began their +life of crime after taking college Computer Science courses. + -- Roger Rapoport, "Programs for Plunder", Omni, March 1981 +% +Martin was probably ripping them off. That's some family, isn't it? +Incest, prostitution, fanaticism, software. + -- Charles Willeford, "Miami Blues" +% +Marvelous! The super-user's going to boot me! +What a finely tuned response to the situation! +% +** MAXIMUM TERMINALS ACTIVE. TRY AGAIN LATER ** +% +May all your PUSHes be POPped. +% +May Euell Gibbons eat your only copy of the manual! +% +May the bluebird of happiness twiddle your bits. +% +Maybe Computer Science should be in the College of Theology. + -- R. S. Barton +% +Meantime, in the slums below Ronnie's Ranch, Cynthia feels as if some one +has made voodoo boxen of her and her favorite backplanes. On this fine +moonlit night, some horrible persona has been jabbing away at, dragging +magnets over, and surging these voodoo boxen. Fortunately, they seem to +have gotten a bit bored and fallen asleep, for it looks like Cynthia may +get to go home. However, she has made note to quickly put together a totem +of sweaty, sordid static straps, random bits of wire, flecks of once meaniful +oxide, bus grant cards, gummy worms, and some bits of old pdp backplane to +hang above the machine room. This totem must be blessed by the old and wise +venerable god of unibus at once, before the idolatization of vme, q and pc +bus drive him to bitter revenge. Alas, if this fails, and the voodoo boxen +aren't destroyed, there may be more than worms in the apple. Next, the +arrival of voodoo optico transmitigational magneto killer paramecium, capable +of teleporting from cable to cable, screen to screen, ear to ear and hoof +to mouth... +% +Memory fault - where am I? +% +Memory fault -- brain fried +% +Memory fault -- core...uh...um...core... Oh dammit, I forget! +% +MESSAGE ACKNOWLEDGED -- The Pershing II missiles have been launched. +% +Message from Our Sponsor on ttyTV at 13:58 ... +% +Modeling paged and segmented memories is tricky business. + -- P.J. Denning +% +Mommy, what happens to your files when you die? +% +Most public domain software is free, at least at first glance. +% +MOUNT TAPE U1439 ON B3, NO RING +% + Mr. Jones related an incident from "some time back" when IBM Canada +Ltd. of Markham, Ont., ordered some parts from a new supplier in Japan. The +company noted in its order that acceptable quality allowed for 1.5 per cent +defects (a fairly high standard in North America at the time). + The Japanese sent the order, with a few parts packaged separately in +plastic. The accompanying letter said: "We don't know why you want 1.5 per +cent defective parts, but for your convenience, we've packed them separately." + -- Excerpted from an article in The (Toronto) Globe and Mail +% +MSDOS is not dead, it just smells that way. + -- Henry Spencer +% +Much of the excitement we get out of our work is that we don't really +know what we are doing. + -- E. Dijkstra +% +Multics is security spelled sideways. +% +MVS Air Lines: +The passengers all gather in the hangar, watching hundreds of technicians +check the flight systems on this immense, luxury aircraft. This plane has at +least 10 engines and seats over 1,000 passengers; bigger models in the fleet +can have more engines than anyone can count and fly even more passengers +than there are on Earth. It is claimed to cost less per passenger mile to +operate these humungous planes than any other aircraft ever built, unless +you personally have to pay for the ticket. All the passengers scramble +aboard, as do the 200 technicians needed to keep it from crashing. The pilot +takes his place up in the glass cockpit. He guns the engines, only to +realise that the plane is too big to get through the hangar doors. +% +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. +% +My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells down +by the seashore. +% + n = ((n >> 1) & 0x55555555) | ((n << 1) & 0xaaaaaaaa); + n = ((n >> 2) & 0x33333333) | ((n << 2) & 0xcccccccc); + n = ((n >> 4) & 0x0f0f0f0f) | ((n << 4) & 0xf0f0f0f0); + n = ((n >> 8) & 0x00ff00ff) | ((n << 8) & 0xff00ff00); + n = ((n >> 16) & 0x0000ffff) | ((n << 16) & 0xffff0000); + + -- C code which reverses the bits in a word. +% +Nearly every complex solution to a programming problem that I +have looked at carefully has turned out to be wrong. + -- Brent Welch +% +Never make anything simple and efficient when a way can be found to +make it complex and wonderful. +% +Never put off till run-time what you can do at compile-time. + -- D. Gries +% +Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle. + -- Steinbach +% +Never trust a computer you can't repair yourself. +% +Never trust an operating system. +% +Never try to explain computers to a layman. It's easier to explain +sex to a virgin. + -- Robert Heinlein + +(Note, however, that virgins tend to know a lot about computers.) +% +Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes. + -- Dr. Warren Jackson, Director, UTCS +% +New crypt. See /usr/news/crypt. +% +New systems generate new problems. +% +*** NEWS FLASH *** + +Archeologists find PDP-11/24 inside brain cavity of fossilized dinosaur +skeleton! Many Digital users fear that RSX-11M may be even more primitive +than DEC admits. Price adjustments at 11:00. +% +news: gotcha +% +Niklaus Wirth has lamented that, whereas Europeans pronounce his name correctly +(Ni-klows Virt), Americans invariably mangle it into (Nick-les Worth). Which +is to say that Europeans call him by name, but Americans call him by value. +% +No directory. +% +No extensible language will be universal. + -- T. Cheatham +% +No hardware designer should be allowed to produce any piece of hardware +until three software guys have signed off for it. + -- Andy Tanenbaum +% +No line available at 300 baud. +% +No man is an island if he's on at least one mailing list. +% +No part of this message may reproduce, store itself in a retrieval system, +or transmit disease, in any form, without the permissiveness of the author. + -- Chris Shaw +% +No proper program contains an indication which as an operator-applied +occurrence identifies an operator-defining occurrence which as an +indication-applied occurrence identifies an indication-defining occurrence +different from the one identified by the given indication as an +indication-applied occurrence. + -- ALGOL 68 Report +% +No wonder Clairol makes so much money selling shampoo. +Lather, Rinse, Repeat is an infinite loop! +% +No, I'm not interested in developing a powerful brain. All I'm after is +just a mediocre brain, something like the president of American Telephone +and Telegraph Company. + -- Alan Turing on the possibilities of a thinking + machine, 1943. +% +Nobody said computers were going to be polite. +% +Nobody's gonna believe that computers are intelligent until they start +coming in late and lying about it. +% +My little brother got this fortune: + nohup rm -fr /& +So he did... +% +Norbert Weiner was the subject of many dotty professor stories. Weiner was, in +fact, very absent minded. The following story is told about him: when they +moved from Cambridge to Newton his wife, knowing that he would be absolutely +useless on the move, packed him off to MIT while she directed the move. Since +she was certain that he would forget that they had moved and where they had +moved to, she wrote down the new address on a piece of paper, and gave it to +him. Naturally, in the course of the day, an insight occurred to him. He +reached in his pocket, found a piece of paper on which he furiously scribbled +some notes, thought it over, decided there was a fallacy in his idea, and +threw the piece of paper away. At the end of the day he went home (to the +old address in Cambridge, of course). When he got there he realized that they +had moved, that he had no idea where they had moved to, and that the piece of +paper with the address was long gone. Fortunately inspiration struck. There +was a young girl on the street and he conceived the idea of asking her where +he had moved to, saying, "Excuse me, perhaps you know me. I'm Norbert Weiner +and we've just moved. Would you know where we've moved to?" To which the +young girl replied, "Yes, Daddy, Mommy thought you would forget." + The capper to the story is that I asked his daughter (the girl in the +story) about the truth of the story, many years later. She said that it wasn't +quite true -- that he never forgot who his children were! The rest of it, +however, was pretty close to what actually happened... + -- Richard Harter +% +Not only is UNIX dead, it's starting to smell really bad. + -- Rob Pike +% +NOTE: No warranties, either express or implied, are hereby given. All +software is supplied as is, without guarantee. The user assumes all +responsibility for damages resulting from the use of these features, +including, but not limited to, frustration, disgust, system abends, disk +head-crashes, general malfeasance, floods, fires, shark attack, nerve +gas, locust infestation, cyclones, hurricanes, tsunamis, local +electromagnetic disruptions, hydraulic brake system failure, invasion, +hashing collisions, normal wear and tear of friction surfaces, comic +radiation, inadvertent destruction of sensitive electronic components, +windstorms, the Riders of Nazgul, infuriated chickens, malfunctioning +mechanical or electrical sexual devices, premature activation of the +distant early warning system, peasant uprisings, halitosis, artillery +bombardment, explosions, cave-ins, and/or frogs falling from the sky. +% +Nothing happens. +% + Now she speaks rapidly. "Do you know *why* you want to program?" + He shakes his head. He hasn't the faintest idea. + "For the sheer *joy* of programming!" she cries triumphantly. +"The joy of the parent, the artist, the craftsman. "You take a program, +born weak and impotent as a dimly-realized solution. You nurture the +program and guide it down the right path, building, watching it grow ever +stronger. Sometimes you paint with tiny strokes, a keystroke added here, +a keystroke changed there." She sweeps her arm in a wide arc. "And other +times you savage whole *blocks* of code, ripping out the program's very +*essence*, then beginning anew. But always building, creating, filling the +program with your own personal stamp, your own quirks and nuances. Watching +the program grow stronger, patching it when it crashes, until finally it can +stand alone -- proud, powerful, and perfect. This is the programmer's finest +hour!" Softly at first, then louder, he hears the strains of a Sousa march. +"This ... this is your canvas! your clay! Go forth and create a masterwork!" +% +"Now this is a totally brain damaged algorithm. Gag me with a smurfette." + -- P. Buhr, Computer Science 354 +% +"Nuclear war can ruin your whole compile." + -- Karl Lehenbauer +% +Nurse Donna: Oh, Groucho, I'm afraid I'm gonna wind up an old maid. +Groucho: Well, bring her in and we'll wind her up together. +Nurse Donna: Do you believe in computer dating? +Groucho: Only if the computers really love each other. +% +Oh, so there you are! +% +Okay, Okay -- I admit it. You didn't change that program that worked +just a little while ago; I inserted some random characters into the +executable. Please forgive me. You can recover the file by typing in +the code over again, since I also removed the source. +% +Old mail has arrived. +% +Old programmers never die, they just become managers. +% +Old programmers never die, they just branch to a new address. +% +Old programmers never die, they just hit account block limit. +% +On a clear disk you can seek forever. + -- P. Denning +% +On the eighth day, God created FORTRAN. +% +On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. + -- Cartoon caption +% + On the other hand, the TCP camp also has a phrase for OSI people. +There are lots of phrases. My favorite is `nitwit' -- and the rationale +is the Internet philosophy has always been you have extremely bright, +non-partisan researchers look at a topic, do world-class research, do +several competing implementations, have a bake-off, determine what works +best, write it down and make that the standard. + The OSI view is entirely opposite. You take written contributions +from a much larger community, you put the contributions in a room of +committee people with, quite honestly, vast political differences and all +with their own political axes to grind, and four years later you get +something out, usually without it ever having been implemented once. + So the Internet perspective is implement it, make it work well, +then write it down, whereas the OSI perspective is to agree on it, write +it down, circulate it a lot and now we'll see if anyone can implement it +after it's an international standard and every vendor in the world is +committed to it. One of those processes is backwards, and I don't think +it takes a Lucasian professor of physics at Oxford to figure out which. + -- Marshall Rose, "The Pied Piper of OSI" +% +On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], "Pray, Mr. +Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers +come out?" I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of +ideas that could provoke such a question. + -- Charles Babbage +% +"One Architecture, One OS" also translates as "One Egg, One Basket". +% +"One basic notion underlying Usenet is that it is a cooperative." + +Having been on USENET for going on ten years, I disagree with this. +The basic notion underlying USENET is the flame. + -- Chuq Von Rospach +% + One day a student came to Moon and said, "I understand how to make +a better garbage collector. We must keep a reference count of the pointers +to each cons." + Moon patiently told the student the following story -- "One day a +student came to Moon and said, "I understand how to make a better garbage +collector..." +% +One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they +never have to stop and answer the phone. +% +... one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, +lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of +their C programs. + -- Robert Firth +% +One of the most overlooked advantages to computers is... If they do +foul up, there's no law against whacking them around a little. + -- Joe Martin +% + One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How enthusiastic +is our support for UNIX? + Unix was written on our machines and for our machines many years ago. +Today, much of UNIX being done is done on our machines. Ten percent of our +VAXs are going for UNIX use. UNIX is a simple language, easy to understand, +easy to get started with. It's great for students, great for somewhat casual +users, and it's great for interchanging programs between different machines. +And so, because of its popularity in these markets, we support it. We have +good UNIX on VAX and good UNIX on PDP-11s. + It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will run +out of things they can do with UNIX. They'll want a real system and will end +up doing VMS when they get to be serious about programming. + With UNIX, if you're looking for something, you can easily and quickly +check that small manual and find out that it's not there. With VMS, no matter +what you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of documentation -- if +you look long enough it's there. That's the difference -- the beauty of UNIX +is it's simple; and the beauty of VMS is that it's all there. + -- Ken Olsen, president of DEC, DECWORLD Vol. 8 No. 5, 1984 +[It's been argued that the beauty of UNIX is the same as the beauty of Ken +Olsen's brain. Ed.] +% +One person's error is another person's data. +% +One picture is worth 128K words. +% +Only great masters of style can succeed in being obtuse. + -- Oscar Wilde + +Most UNIX programmers are great masters of style. + -- The Unnamed Usenetter +% +Only the fittest survive. The vanquished acknowledge their unworthiness by +placing a classified ad with the ritual phrase "must sell -- best offer," +and thereafter dwell in infamy, relegated to discussing gas mileage and lawn +food. But if successful, you join the elite sodality that spends hours +unpurifying the dialect of the tribe with arcane talk of bits and bytes, RAMS +and ROMS, hard disks and baud rates. Are you obnoxious, obsessed? It's a +modest price to pay. For you have tapped into the same awesome primal power +that produces credit-card billing errors and lost plane reservations. Hail, +postindustrial warrior, subduer of Bounceoids, pride of the cosmos, keeper of +the silicone creed: Computo, ergo sum. The force is with you -- at 110 volts. +May your RAMS be fruitful and multiply. + -- Curt Suplee, "Smithsonian", 4/83 +% +OS/2 Beer: Comes in a 32-oz can. Does allow you to drink several DOS +Beers simultaneously. Allows you to drink Windows 3.1 Beer simultaneously +too, but somewhat slower. Advertises that its cans won't explode when you +open them, even if you shake them up. You never really see anyone +drinking OS/2 Beer, but the manufacturer (International Beer +Manufacturing) claims that 9 million six-packs have been sold. +% +OS/2 Skyways: +The terminal is almost empty, with only a few prospective passengers milling +about. The announcer says that their flight has just departed, wishes them a +good flight, though there are no planes on the runway. Airline personnel +walk around, apologising profusely to customers in hushed voices, pointing +from time to time to the sleek, powerful jets outside the terminal on the +field. They tell each passenger how good the real flight will be on these +new jets and how much safer it will be than Windows Airlines, but that they +will have to wait a little longer for the technicians to finish the flight +systems. Maybe until mid-1995. Maybe longer. +% +"Our attitude with TCP/IP is, `Hey, we'll do it, but don't make a big +system, because we can't fix it if it breaks -- nobody can.'" + +"TCP/IP is OK if you've got a little informal club, and it doesn't make +any difference if it takes a while to fix it." + -- Ken Olson, in Digital News, 1988 +% +Our documentation manager was showing her 2 year old son around the office. +He was introduced to me, at which time he pointed out that we were both +holding bags of popcorn. We were both holding bottles of juice. But only +*__he* had a lollipop. + He asked his mother, "Why doesn't HE have a lollipop?" + Her reply: "He can have a lollipop any time he wants to. That's +what it means to be a programmer." +% +Our informal mission is to improve the love life of operators worldwide. + -- Peter Behrendt, president of Exabyte +% +Our OS who art in CPU, UNIX be thy name. + Thy programs run, thy syscalls done, + In kernel as it is in user! +% +Over the shoulder supervision is more a need of the manager than the +programming task. +% +Overall, the philosophy is to attack the availability problem from two +complementary directions: to reduce the number of software errors through +rigorous testing of running systems, and to reduce the effect of the remaining +errors by providing for recovery from them. An interesting footnote to this +design is that now a system failure can usually be considered to be the +result of two program errors: the first, in the program that started the +problem; the second, in the recovery routine that could not protect the +system. + -- A.L. Scherr, "Functional Structure of IBM Virtual Storage + Operating Systems, Part II: OS/VS-2 Concepts and + Philosophies," IBM Systems Journal, Vol. 12, No. 4. +% +Overconfidence breeds error when we take for granted that the game will +continue on its normal course; when we fail to provide for an unusually +powerful resource -- a check, a sacrifice, a stalemate. Afterwards the +victim may wail, `But who could have dreamt of such an idiotic-looking move?' + -- Fred Reinfeld, "The Complete Chess Course" +% +Overflow on /dev/null, please empty the bit bucket. +% +Overload -- core meltdown sequence initiated. +% +panic: can't find / +% +panic: kernel segmentation violation. core dumped (only kidding) +% +panic: kernel trap (ignored) +% +Pascal is a language for children wanting to be naughty. + -- Dr. Kasi Ananthanarayanan +% +Pascal is not a high-level language. + -- Steven Feiner +% +"Pascal is Pascal is Pascal is dog meat." + -- M. Devine and P. Larson, Computer Science 340 +% +Passwords are implemented as a result of insecurity. +% +Pause for storage relocation. +% +Per buck you get more computing action with the small computer. + -- R.W. Hamming +% +PL/I -- "the fatal disease" -- belongs more to the problem set than to the +solution set. + -- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5 +% +Play Rogue, visit exotic locations, meet strange creatures and kill them. +% +Please go away. +% +PLUG IT IN!!! +% +Premature optimization is the root of all evil. + -- D.E. Knuth +% + Price Wang's programmer was coding software. His fingers danced upon +the keyboard. The program compiled without an error message, and the program +ran like a gentle wind. + Excellent!" the Price exclaimed, "Your technique is faultless!" + "Technique?" said the programmer, turning from his terminal, "What I +follow is the Tao -- beyond all technique. When I first began to program I +would see before me the whole program in one mass. After three years I no +longer saw this mass. Instead, I used subroutines. But now I see nothing. +My whole being exists in a formless void. My senses are idle. My spirit, +free to work without a plan, follows its own instinct. In short, my program +writes itself. True, sometimes there are difficult problems. I see them +coming, I slow down, I watch silently. Then I change a single line of code +and the difficulties vanish like puffs of idle smoke. I then compile the +program. I sit still and let the joy of the work fill my being. I close my +eyes for a moment and then log off." + Price Wang said, "Would that all of my programmers were as wise!" + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% +Prof: So the American government went to IBM to come up with a data + encryption standard and they came up with ... +Student: EBCDIC!" +% +Profanity is the one language all programmers know best. +% +Programmers do it bit by bit. +% +Programmers used to batch environments may find it hard to live without +giant listings; we would find it hard to use them. + -- D.M. Ritchie +% +Programming is an unnatural act. +% +Proposed Additions to the PDP-11 Instruction Set: + +BBW Branch Both Ways +BEW Branch Either Way +BBBF Branch on Bit Bucket Full +BH Branch and Hang +BMR Branch Multiple Registers +BOB Branch On Bug +BPO Branch on Power Off +BST Backspace and Stretch Tape +CDS Condense and Destroy System +CLBR Clobber Register +CLBRI Clobber Register Immediately +CM Circulate Memory +CMFRM Come From -- essential for truly structured programming +CPPR Crumple Printer Paper and Rip +CRN Convert to Roman Numerals +% +Proposed Additions to the PDP-11 Instruction Set: + +DC Divide and Conquer +DMPK Destroy Memory Protect Key +DO Divide and Overflow +EMPC Emulate Pocket Calculator +EPI Execute Programmer Immediately +EROS Erase Read Only Storage +EXCE Execute Customer Engineer +HCF Halt and Catch Fire +IBP Insert Bug and Proceed +INSQSW Insert into queue somewhere (for FINO queues [First in never out]) +PBC Print and Break Chain +PDSK Punch Disk +% +Proposed Additions to the PDP-11 Instruction Set: + +PI Punch Invalid +POPI Punch Operator Immediately +PVLC Punch Variable Length Card +RASC Read And Shred Card +RPM Read Programmers Mind +RSSC reduce speed, step carefully (for improved accuracy) +RTAB Rewind tape and break +RWDSK rewind disk +RWOC Read Writing On Card +SCRBL scribble to disk - faster than a write +SLC Search for Lost Chord +SPSW Scramble Program Status Word +SRSD Seek Record and Scar Disk +STROM Store in Read Only Memory +TDB Transfer and Drop Bit +WBT Water Binary Tree +% +PURGE COMPLETE. +% +Put no trust in cryptic comments. +% +RADIO SHACK LEVEL II BASIC +READY +>_ +% +RAM wasn't built in a day. +% +Rattling around the back of my head is a disturbing image of something I +saw at the airport ... Now I'm remembering, those giant piles of computer +magazines right next to "People" and "Time" in the airport store. Does +it bother anyone else that half the world is being told all of our hard-won +secrets of computer technology? Remember how all the lawyers cried foul +when "How to Avoid Probate" was published? Are they taking no-fault +insurance lying down? No way! But at the current rate it won't be long +before there are stacks of the "Transactions on Information Theory" at the +A&P checkout counters. Who's going to be impressed with us electrical +engineers then? Are we, as the saying goes, giving away the store? + -- Robert W. Lucky, IEEE President +% +Reactor error - core dumped! +% +Real computer scientists admire ADA for its overwhelming aesthetic +value but they find it difficult to actually program in it, as it is +much too large to implement. Most computer scientists don't notice +this because they are still arguing over what else to add to ADA. +% +Real computer scientists despise the idea of actual hardware. Hardware has +limitations, software doesn't. It's a real shame that Turing machines are +so poor at I/O. +% +Real computer scientists don't comment their code. The identifiers are +so long they can't afford the disk space. +% +Real computer scientists don't program in assembler. They don't write +in anything less portable than a number two pencil. +% +Real computer scientists don't write code. They occasionally tinker with +`programming systems', but those are so high level that they hardly count +(and rarely count accurately; precision is for applications). +% +Real computer scientists like having a computer on their desk, else how +could they read their mail? +% +Real computer scientists only write specs for languages that might run +on future hardware. Nobody trusts them to write specs for anything homo +sapiens will ever be able to fit on a single planet. +% +Real programmers disdain structured programming. Structured programming is +for compulsive neurotics who were prematurely toilet- trained. They wear +neckties and carefully line up pencils on otherwise clear desks. +% +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. +% +Real programmers don't comment their code. It was hard to write, it +should be hard to understand. +% +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. +% +Real Programmers don't eat quiche. They eat Twinkies and Szechwan food. +% +Real Programmers don't play tennis, or any other sport that requires +you to change clothes. Mountain climbing is OK, and real programmers +wear their climbing boots to work in case a mountain should suddenly +spring up in the middle of the machine room. +% +Real programmers don't write in BASIC. Actually, no programmers write in +BASIC after reaching puberty. +% +Real Programmers don't write in FORTRAN. FORTRAN is for pipe stress freaks and +crystallography weenies. FORTRAN is for wimp engineers who wear white socks. +% +Real Programmers don't write in PL/I. PL/I is for programmers who can't +decide whether to write in COBOL or FORTRAN. +% +Real Programmers think better when playing Adventure or Rogue. +% +Real programs don't eat cache. +% +Real Programs don't use shared text. Otherwise, how can they use functions +for scratch space after they are finished calling them? +% +Real software engineers don't debug programs, they verify correctness. +This process doesn't necessarily involve execution of anything on a +computer, except perhaps a Correctness Verification Aid package. +% +Real software engineers don't like the idea of some inexplicable and +greasy hardware several aisles away that may stop working at any +moment. They have a great distrust of hardware people, and wish that +systems could be virtual at *___all* levels. They would like personal +computers (you know no one's going to trip over something and kill your +DFA in mid-transit), except that they need 8 megabytes to run their +Correctness Verification Aid packages. +% +Real software engineers work from 9 to 5, because that is the way the job is +described in the formal spec. Working late would feel like using an +undocumented external procedure. +% +Real Users are afraid they'll break the machine -- but they're never +afraid to break your face. +% +Real Users find the one combination of bizarre input values that shuts +down the system for days. +% +Real Users hate Real Programmers. +% +Real Users know your home telephone number. +% +Real Users never know what they want, but they always know when your program +doesn't deliver it. +% +Real Users never use the Help key. +% +Recursion is the root of computation since it trades description for time. +% +Remember the good old days, when CPU was singular? +% +Remember, God could only create the world in 6 days because he didn't +have an established user base. +% +Remember, UNIX spelled backwards is XINU. + -- Mt. +% +Remember: use logout to logout. +% + Risch's decision procedure for integration, not surprisingly, +uses a recursion on the number and type of the extensions from the +rational functions needed to represent the integrand. Although the +algorithm follows and critically depends upon the appropriate structure +of the input, as in the case of multivariate factorization, we cannot +claim that the algorithm is a natural one. In fact, the creator of +differential algebra, Ritt, committed suicide in the early 1950's, +largely, it is claimed, because few paid attention to his work. Probably +he would have received more attention had he obtained the algorithm as well. + -- Joel Moses, "Algorithms and Complexity", ed. J.F. Traub +% +Row, row, row your bits, gently down the stream... +% +Save energy: Drive a smaller shell. +% +Save gas, don't use the shell. +% +Save yourself! Reboot in 5 seconds! +% +Say "twenty-three-skiddoo" to logout. +% +SCCS, the source motel! Programs check in and never check out! + -- Ken Thompson +% +Science is to computer science as hydrodynamics is to plumbing. +% +Scientists were preparing an experiment to ask the ultimate question. +They had worked for months gathering one each of every computer that was +built. Finally the big day was at hand. All the computers were linked +together. They asked the question, "Is there a God?". Lights started +blinking, flashing and blinking some more. Suddenly, there was a loud +crash, and a bolt of lightning came down from the sky, struck the +computers, and welded all the connections permanently together. "There +is now", came the reply. +% +Scotty: Captain, we din' can reference it! +Kirk: Analysis, Mr. Spock? +Spock: Captain, it doesn't appear in the symbol table. +Kirk: Then it's of external origin? +Spock: Affirmative. +Kirk: Mr. Sulu, go to pass two. +Sulu: Aye aye, sir, going to pass two. +% +"Section 2.4.3.5 AWNS (Acceptor Wait for New Cycle State). + In AWNS the AH function indicates that it has received a +multiline message byte. + In AWNS the RFD message must be sent false and the DAC message +must be sent passive true. + The AH function must exit the AWNS and enter: + (1) The ANRS if DAV is false + (2) The AIDS if the ATN message is false and neither: + (a) The LADS is active + (b) Nor LACS is active" + + -- from the IEEE Standard Digital Interface for + Programmable Instrumentation +% +Security check: INTRUDER ALERT! +% +Seems a computer engineer, a systems analyst, and a programmer were +driving down a mountain when the brakes gave out. They screamed down the +mountain, gaining speed, but finally managed to grind to a halt, more by +luck than anything else, just inches from a thousand foot drop to jagged +rocks. They all got out of the car: + The computer engineer said, "I think I can fix it." + The systems analyst said, "No, no, I think we should take it +into town and have a specialist look at it." + The programmer said, "OK, but first I think we should get back +in and see if it does it again." +% + SEMINAR ANNOUNCEMENT + +Title: Are Frogs Turing Compatible? +Speaker: Don "The Lion" Knuth + + ABSTRACT + Several researchers at the University of Louisiana have been studying +the computing power of various amphibians, frogs in particular. The problem +of frog computability has become a critical issue that ranges across all areas +of computer science. It has been shown that anything computable by an amphi- +bian community in a fixed-size pond is computable by a frog in the same-size +pond -- that is to say, frogs are Pond-space complete. We will show that +there is a log-space, polywog-time reduction from any Turing machine program +to a frog. We will suggest these represent a proper subset of frog-computable +functions. + This is not just a let's-see-how-far-those-frogs-can-jump seminar. +This is only for hardcore amphibian-computation people and their colleagues. + Refreshments will be served. Music will be played. +% +Send some filthy mail. +% +Sendmail may be safely run set-user-id to root. + -- Eric Allman, "Sendmail Installation Guide" +% + Several students were asked to prove that all odd integers are prime. + The first student to try to do this was a math student. "Hmmm... +Well, 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, and by induction, we have that all +the odd integers are prime." + The second student to try was a man of physics who commented, "I'm not +sure of the validity of your proof, but I think I'll try to prove it by +experiment." He continues, "Well, 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is +prime, 9 is... uh, 9 is... uh, 9 is an experimental error, 11 is prime, 13 +is prime... Well, it seems that you're right." + The third student to try it was the engineering student, who responded, +"Well, to be honest, actually, I'm not sure of your answer either. Let's +see... 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is... uh, 9 is... +well, if you approximate, 9 is prime, 11 is prime, 13 is prime... Well, it +does seem right." + Not to be outdone, the computer science student comes along and says +"Well, you two sort've got the right idea, but you'll end up taking too long! +I've just whipped up a program to REALLY go and prove it." He goes over to +his terminal and runs his program. Reading the output on the screen he says, +"1 is prime, 1 is prime, 1 is prime, 1 is prime..." +% +She sells cshs by the cshore. +% +Shopping at this grody little computer store at the Galleria for a +totally awwwesome Apple. Fer suuure. I mean Apples are nice you know? +But, you know, there is this cute guy who works there and HE says that +VAX's are cooler! I mean I don't really know, you know? He says that he +has this totally tubular VAX at home and it's stuffed with memory-to-the-max! +Right, yeah. And he wants to take me home to show it to me. Oh My God! +I'm suuure. Gag me with a Prime! +% +Simulations are like miniskirts, they show a lot and hide the essentials. + -- Hubert Kirrman +% +skldfjkljklsR%^&(IXDRTYju187pkasdjbasdfbuil +h;asvgy8p 23r1vyui135 2 +kmxsij90TYDFS$$b jkzxdjkl bjnk ;j nk;<[][;-==-<<<<<';[, + [hjioasdvbnuio;buip^&(FTSD$%*VYUI:buio;sdf}[asdf'] + sdoihjfh(_YU*G&F^*CTY98y + + +Now look what you've gone and done! You've broken it! +% +Slowly and surely the unix crept up on the Nintendo user ... +% +So you see Antonio, why worry about one little core dump, eh? In reality +all core dumps happen at the same instant, so the core dump you will have +tomorrow, why, it already happened. You see, it's just a little universal +recursive joke which threads our lives through the infinite potential of +the instant. So go to sleep, Antonio, your thread could break any moment +and cast you out of the safe security of the instant into the dark void of +eternity, the anti-time. So go to sleep... +% +Software production is assumed to be a line function, but it is run +like a staff function. + -- Paul Licker +% +Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more +"user-friendly". ... Their best approach, so far, has been to take all +the old brochures, and stamp the words, "user-friendly" on the cover. + -- Bill Gates, Microsoft, Inc. + [Pot. Kettle. Black.] +% +Some of my readers ask me what a "Serial Port" is. +The answer is: I don't know. +Is it some kind of wine you have with breakfast? +% +Some people claim that the UNIX learning curve is steep, but at least you +only have to climb it once. +% +Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress. + -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982 +% +Somebody's terminal is dropping bits. I found a pile of them over in the +corner. +% + Something mysterious is formed, born in the silent void. Waiting +alone and unmoving, it is at once still and yet in constant motion. It is +the source of all programs. I do not know its name, so I will call it the +Tao of Programming. + If the Tao is great, then the operating system is great. If the +operating system is great, then the compiler is great. If the compiler is +greater, then the applications is great. The user is pleased and there is +harmony in the world. + The Tao of Programming flows far away and returns on the wind of +morning. + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% +Speaking as someone who has delved into the intricacies of PL/I, I am sure +that only Real Men could have written such a machine-hogging, cycle-grabbing, +all-encompassing monster. Allocate an array and free the middle third? +Sure! Why not? Multiply a character string times a bit string and assign the +result to a float decimal? Go ahead! Free a controlled variable procedure +parameter and reallocate it before passing it back? Overlay three different +types of variable on the same memory location? Anything you say! Write a +recursive macro? Well, no, but Real Men use rescan. How could a language +so obviously designed and written by Real Men not be intended for Real Man use? +% +***** Special AI Seminar (abstract) + +It has been widely recognized that AI programs require expert knowledge +in order to perform well in complex domains. But knowledge alone is not +sufficient for some applications; wisdom is needed as well. Accordingly, +we have developed a new approach to artificial intelligence which we call +"wisdom engineering". As a test of our ideas, we have written IMMANUEL, a +wisdom based system for the task domain of western philosophical thought. +IMMANUEL was supplied initially with 200 wisdom units which contained wisdom +about such elementary concepts as mind, matter, being, nothingness, and so +forth. IMMANUEL was then allowed to run freely, guided by the heuristic +rules contained in its heterarchically organized meta wisdom base. IMMANUEL +succeeded in rediscovering most of the important philosophical ideas developed +in western culture over the course of the last 25 centuries, including those +underlying Plato's theory of government, Kant's metaphysics, Nietzsche's theory +of value, and Husserl's phenomenology. In this seminar, we will describe +IMMANUEL's achievements and internal architecture. We will also briefly +discuss our recent efforts to apply wisdom engineering to oil exploration. +% +Staff meeting in the conference room in %d minutes. +% +Staff meeting in the conference room in 3 minutes. +% +Standards are crucial. And the best thing about standards is: there are +so ____many to choose from! +% +Still a few bugs in the system... Someday I have to tell you about Uncle +Nahum from Maine, who spent years trying to cross a jellyfish with a shad +so he could breed boneless shad. His experiment backfired too, and he +wound up with bony jellyfish... which was hardly worth the trouble. There's +very little call for those up there. + -- Allucquere R. "Sandy" Stone +% +Stinginess with privileges is kindness in disguise. + -- Guide to VAX/VMS Security, Sep. 1984 +% + Stop! Whoever crosseth the bridge of Death, must answer first +these questions three, ere the other side he see! + + "What is your name?" + "Sir Brian of Bell." + "What is your quest?" + "I seek the Holy Grail." + "What are four lowercase letters that are not legal flag arguments +to the Berkeley UNIX version of `ls'?" + "I, er.... AIIIEEEEEE!" +% + *** STUDENT SUCCESSES *** + +Many of our students have gone on to achieve great success in all fields of +programming. One former student developed the concept of the personalized +form letter. Does the phrase, "Dear Mr.(insert name), You may already be a +winner!," sound familiar? Another student writes "After only five lessons I +sold a "My Most Unforgettable Program" article to Corrosive Computing magazine. +Another of our graduates writes, "I recently completed a database-management +program for my department manager. My program touched him so deeply that he +was speechless. He told me later that he had never seen such a program in +his entire career. Thank you, Famous Programmers' school; only you could +have made this possible." Send for our introductory brochure which explains +in vague detail the operation of the Famous Programmers' School, and you'll +be eligible to win a possible chance to enter a drawing, the winner of which +can vie for a set of free steak knives. If you don't do it now, you'll hate +yourself in the morning. +% +Such efforts are almost always slow, laborious, political, petty, boring, +ponderous, thankless, and of the utmost criticality. + -- Leonard Kleinrock, on standards efforts +% +Suppose for a moment that the automobile industry had developed at the same +rate as computers and over the same period: how much cheaper and more +efficient would the current models be? If you have not already heard the +analogy, the answer is shattering. Today you would be able to buy a +Rolls-Royce for $2.75, it would do three million miles to the gallon, and +it would deliver enough power to drive the Queen Elizabeth II. And if you +were interested in miniaturization, you could place half a dozen of them on +a pinhead. + -- Christopher Evans +% +Swap read error. You lose your mind. +% +Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon. + -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982 +% +System checkpoint complete. +% +System going down at 1:45 this afternoon for disk crashing. +% +System going down at 5 this afternoon to install scheduler bug. +% +System going down in 5 minutes. +% +System restarting, wait... +% + *** System shutdown message from root *** + +System going down in 60 seconds + + +% +Systems have sub-systems and sub-systems have sub-systems and so on ad +infinitum -- which is why we're always starting over. + -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982 +% +Systems programmers are the high priests of a low cult. + -- R.S. Barton +% +Testing can show the presense of bugs, but not their absence. + -- Dijkstra +% +TeX is potentially the most significant invention in typesetting in this +century. It introduces a standard language for computer typography, and in +terms of importance could rank near the introduction of the Gutenberg press. + -- Gordon Bell +% +"Text processing has made it possible to right-justify any idea, even +one which cannot be justified on any other grounds." + -- J. Finnegan, USC. +% +That does not compute. +% +... that the notions of "hardware", and "software" should be extended by +the notion of LIVEWARE - being that which produces software for use on +hardware. This produces an obvious extension to the concept of MONITORS. +A liveware monitor is a person dedicated to the task of ensuring that the +liveware does not interfere with the real-time processes, invoking the +REAL-TIME EXECUTIONER to delete liveware that adversely affects ... + -- Linden and Wihelminalaan +% + "That's right; the upper-case shift works fine on the screen, but +they're not coming out on the damn printer... Hold? Sure, I'll hold." + -- e.e. cummings last service call +% +That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they +really hate is lousy programmers. + -- Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in "Oath of Fealty" +% +The "cutting edge" is getting rather dull. + -- Andy Purshottam +% +The 11 is for people with the pride of a 10 and the pocketbook of an 8. + -- R.B. Greenberg [referring to PDPs?] +% +The absence of labels [in ECL] is probably a good thing. + -- T. Cheatham +% +The algorithm for finding the longest path in a graph is NP-complete. +For you systems people, that means it's *real slow*. + -- Bart Miller +% +"The algorithm to do that is extremely nasty. You might want to mug +someone with it." + -- M. Devine, Computer Science 340 +% +The Analytical Engine weaves Algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard +loom weaves flowers and leaves. + -- Ada Augusta, Countess of Lovelace, the first programmer +% +"The bad reputation UNIX has gotten is totally undeserved, laid on by people +who don't understand, who have not gotten in there and tried anything." + -- Jim Joyce, owner of Jim Joyce's UNIX Bookstore +% +The beer-cooled computer does not harm the ozone layer. + -- John M. Ford, a.k.a. Dr. Mike + + [If I can read my notes from the Ask Dr. Mike session at Baycon, I + believe he added that the beer-cooled computer uses "Forget Only + Memory". Ed.] +% +The best book on programming for the layman is "Alice in Wonderland"; +but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman. +% +The best way to accelerate a Macintoy is at 9.8 meters per second per second. +% +The bogosity meter just pegged. +% +The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a +digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top +of a mountain or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean +the Buddha -- which is to demean oneself. + -- Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" +% +The bugs you have to avoid are the ones that give the user not only +the inclination to get on a plane, but also the time. + -- Kay Bostic +% +"The C Programming Language -- A language which combines the flexibility of +assembly language with the power of assembly language." +% +The clothes have no emperor. + -- C.A.R. Hoare, commenting on ADA. +% +The computer industry is journalists in their 20's standing in awe of +entrepreneurs in their 30's who are hiring salesmen in their 40's and +50's and paying them in the 60's and 70's to bring their marketing into +the 80's. + -- Marty Winston +% +The computer is to the information industry roughly what the +central power station is to the electrical industry. + -- Peter Drucker +% +"The Computer made me do it." +% +The computing field is always in need of new cliches. + -- Alan Perlis +% +The connection between the language in which we think/program and the problems +and solutions we can imagine is very close. For this reason restricting +language features with the intent of eliminating programmer errors is at best +dangerous. + -- Bjarne Stroustrup +% +The day-to-day travails of the IBM programmer are so amusing to most of +us who are fortunate enough never to have been one -- like watching +Charlie Chaplin trying to cook a shoe. +% +The debate rages on: Is PL/I Bachtrian or Dromedary? +% +The difference between art and science is that science is what we +understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else. + -- Donald Knuth, "Discover" +% +The disks are getting full; purge a file today. +% +"The eleventh commandment was `Thou Shalt Compute' or `Thou Shalt Not +Compute' -- I forget which." + -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982 +% + The FIELD GUIDE to NORTH AMERICAN MALES + +SPECIES: Cranial Males +SUBSPECIES: The Hacker (homo computatis) +Courtship & Mating: + Due to extreme deprivation, HOMO COMPUTATIS maintains a near perpetual + state of sexual readiness. Courtship behavior alternates between + awkward shyness and abrupt advances. When he finally mates, he + chooses a female engineer with an unblinking stare, a tight mouth, and + a complete collection of Campbell's soup-can recipes. +Track: + Trash cans full of pale green and white perforated paper and old + copies of the Allen-Bradley catalog. +Comments: + Extremely fond of bad puns and jokes that need long explanations. +% + The FIELD GUIDE to NORTH AMERICAN MALES + +SPECIES: Cranial Males +SUBSPECIES: The Hacker (homo computatis) +Description: + Gangly and frail, the hacker has a high forehead and thinning hair. + Head disproportionately large and crooked forward, complexion wan and + sightly gray from CRT illumination. He has heavy black-rimmed glasses + and a look of intense concentration, which may be due to a software + problem or to a pork-and-bean breakfast. +Feathering: + HOMO COMPUTATIS saw a Brylcreem ad fifteen years ago and believed it. + Consequently, crest is greased down, except for the cowlick. +Song: + A rather plaintive "Is it up?" +% + The FIELD GUIDE to NORTH AMERICAN MALES + +SPECIES: Cranial Males +SUBSPECIES: The Hacker (homo computatis) +Plumage: + All clothes have a slightly crumpled look as though they came off the + top of the laundry basket. Style varies with status. Hacker managers + wear gray polyester slacks, pink or pastel shirts with wide collars, + and paisley ties; staff wears cinched-up baggy corduroy pants, white + or blue shirts with button-down collars, and penholder in pocket. + Both managers and staff wear running shoes to work, and a black + plastic digital watch with calculator. +% +The first time, it's a KLUDGE! +The second, a trick. +Later, it's a well-established technique! + -- Mike Broido, Intermetrics +% +The first version always gets thrown away. +% +The flow chart is a most thoroughly oversold piece of program documentation. + -- Frederick Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month" +% +The following quote is from page 4-27 of the MSCP Basic Disk Functions +Manual which is part of the UDA50 Programmers Doc Kit manuals: + +As stated above, the host area of a disk is structured as a vector of +logical blocks. From a performance viewpoint, however, it is more +appropriate to view the host area as a four dimensional hyper-cube, the +four dimensions being cylinder, group, track, and sector. +. . . +Referring to our hyper-cube analogy, the set of potentially accessible +blocks form a line parallel to the track axis. This line moves +parallel to the sector axis, wrapping around when it reaches the edge +of the hyper-cube. +% +The fountain code has been tightened slightly so you can no longer dip +objects into a fountain or drink from one while you are floating in mid-air +due to levitation. + Teleporting to hell via a teleportation trap will no longer occur +if the character does not have fire resistance. + -- README file from the NetHack game +% +The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at +least until we've finished building it. +% +The Gurus of Unix Meeting of Minds (GUMM) takes place Wednesday, April +1, 2076 (check THAT in your perpetual calendar program), 14 feet above +the ground directly in front of the Milpitas Gumps. Members will grep +each other by the hand (after intro), yacc a lot, smoke filtered +chroots in pipes, chown with forks, use the wc (unless uuclean), fseek +nice zombie processes, strip, and sleep, but not, we hope, od. Three +days will be devoted to discussion of the ramifications of whodo. Two +seconds have been allotted for a complete rundown of all the user- +friendly features of Unix. Seminars include "Everything You Know is +Wrong", led by Tom Kempson, "Batman or Cat:man?" led by Richie Dennis +"cc C? Si! Si!" led by Kerwin Bernighan, and "Document Unix, Are You +Kidding?" led by Jan Yeats. No Reader Service No. is necessary because +all GUGUs (Gurus of Unix Group of Users) already know everything we +could tell them. + -- "Get GUMMed," Dr. Dobb's Journal, June '84 +% + The Guy on the Right Doesn't Stand a Chance +The guy on the right has the Osborne 1, a fully functional computer system +in a portable package the size of a briefcase. The guy on the left has an +Uzi submachine gun concealed in his attache case. Also in the case are four +fully loaded, 32-round clips of 125-grain 9mm ammunition. The owner of the +Uzi is going to get more tactical firepower delivered -- and delivered on +target -- in less time, and with less effort. All for $795. It's inevitable. +If you're going up against some guy with an Osborne 1 -- or any personal +computer -- he's the one who's in trouble. One round from an Uzi can zip +through ten inches of solid pine wood, so you can imagine what it will do +to structural foam acrylic and sheet aluminum. In fact, detachable magazines +for the Uzi are available in 25-, 32-, and 40-round capacities, so you can +take out an entire office full of Apple II or IBM Personal Computers tied +into Ethernet or other local-area networks. What about the new 16-bit +computers, like the Lisa and Fortune? Even with the Winchester backup, +they're no match for the Uzi. One quick burst and they'll find out what +Unix means. Make your commanding officer proud. Get an Uzi -- and come home +a winner in the fight for office automatic weapons. + -- "InfoWorld", June, 1984 +% +The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its capacity +-- the rest is overhead for the operating system. +% +The IBM 2250 is impressive ... +if you compare it with a system selling for a tenth its price. + -- D. Cohen +% +The IBM purchase of ROLM gives new meaning to the term "twisted pair". + -- Howard Anderson, "Yankee Group" +% +The idea that an arbitrary naive human should be able to properly use a given +tool without training or understanding is even more wrong for computing than +it is for other tools (e.g. automobiles, airplanes, guns, power saws). + -- Doug Gwyn +% +The last time somebody said, "I find I can write much better with a word +processor.", I replied, "They used to say the same thing about drugs." + -- Roy Blount, Jr. +% +The less time planning, the more time programming. +% + THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #10: SIMPLE + +SIMPLE is an acronym for Sheer Idiot's Monopurpose Programming Language +Environment. This language, developed at the Hanover College for +Technological Misfits, was designed to make it impossible to write code +with errors in it. The statements are, therefore, confined to BEGIN, +END and STOP. No matter how you arrange the statements, you can't make +a syntax error. Programs written in SIMPLE do nothing useful. Thus +they achieve the results of programs written in other languages without +the tedious, frustrating process of testing and debugging. +% + THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #12: LITHP + +This otherwise unremarkable language is distinguished by the absence of +an "S" in its character set; users must substitute "TH". LITHP is said +to be useful in protheththing lithtth. +% + THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #13: SLOBOL + +SLOBOL is best known for the speed, or lack of it, of its compiler. +Although many compilers allow you to take a coffee break while they +compile, SLOBOL compilers allow you to travel to Bolivia to pick the +coffee. Forty-three programmers are known to have died of boredom +sitting at their terminals while waiting for a SLOBOL program to +compile. Weary SLOBOL programmers often turn to a related (but +infinitely faster) language, COCAINE. +% + THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #14 -- VALGOL + + VALGOL is enjoying a dramatic surge of popularity across the +industry. VALGOL commands include REALLY, LIKE, WELL, and Y*KNOW. +Variables are assigned with the =LIKE and =TOTALLY operators. Other +operators include the "California booleans", AX and NOWAY. Loops are +accomplished with the FOR SURE construct. A simple example: + + LIKE, Y*KNOW(I MEAN)START + IF PIZZA =LIKE BITCHEN AND + GUY =LIKE TUBULAR AND + VALLEY GIRL =LIKE GRODY**MAX(FERSURE)**2 + THEN + FOR I =LIKE 1 TO OH*MAYBE 100 + DO*WAH - (DITTY**2); BARF(I)=TOTALLY GROSS(OUT) + SURE + LIKE, BAG THIS PROGRAM; REALLY; LIKE TOTALLY(Y*KNOW); IM*SURE + GOTO THE MALL + + VALGOL is also characterized by its unfriendly error messages. For +example, when the user makes a syntax error, the interpreter displays the +message GAG ME WITH A SPOON! A successful compile may be termed MAXIMALLY +AWESOME! +% + THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #15 -- DOGO + + Developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Obedience Training, DOGO +DOGO heralds a new era of computer-literate pets. DOGO commands include +SIT, STAY, HEEL, and ROLL OVER. An innovative feature of DOGO is "puppy +graphics", a small cocker spaniel that occasionally leaves a deposit as +it travels across the screen. +% + THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #16: 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 LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #17: SARTRE + +Named after the late existential philosopher, SARTRE is an extremely +unstructured language. Statements in SARTRE have no purpose; they just are. +Thus SARTRE programs are left to define their own functions. SARTRE +programmers tend to be boring and depressed, and are no fun at parties. +% + THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #18: FIFTH + +FIFTH is a precision mathematical language in which the data types +refer to quantity. The data types range from CC, OUNCE, SHOT, and +JIGGER to FIFTH (hence the name of the language), LITER, MAGNUM and +BLOTTO. Commands refer to ingredients such as CHABLIS, CHARDONNAY, +CABERNET, GIN, VERMOUTH, VODKA, SCOTCH, and WHATEVERSAROUND. + +The many versions of the FIFTH language reflect the sophistication and +financial status of its users. Commands in the ELITE dialect include +VSOP and LAFITE, while commands in the GUTTER dialect include HOOTCH +and RIPPLE. The latter is a favorite of frustrated FORTH programmers +who end up using this language. +% + THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #2: RENE + +Named after the famous French philosopher and mathematician Rene DesCartes, +RENE is a language used for artificial intelligence. The language is being +developed at the Chicago Center of Machine Politics and Programming under a +grant from the Jane Byrne Victory Fund. A spokesman described the language +as "Just as great as dis [sic] city of ours." + +The center is very pleased with progress to date. They say they have almost +succeeded in getting a VAX to think. However, sources inside the +organization say that each time the machine fails to think it ceases to exist. +% + THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #8: LAIDBACK + +This language was developed at the Marin County Center for T'ai Chi, +Mellowness and Computer Programming (now defunct), as an alternative to +the more intense atmosphere in nearby Silicon Valley. + +The center was ideal for programmers who liked to soak in hot tubs while +they worked. Unfortunately few programmers could survive there because the +center outlawed Pizza and Coca-Cola in favor of Tofu and Perrier. + +Many mourn the demise of LAIDBACK because of its reputation as a gentle and +non-threatening language since all error messages are in lower case. For +example, LAIDBACK responded to syntax errors with the message: + + "i hate to bother you, but i just can't relate to that. can + you find the time to try it again?" +% +The Macintosh is Xerox technology at its best. +% + The Magician of the Ivory Tower brought his latest invention for the +master programmer to examine. The magician wheeled a large black box into the +master's office while the master waited in silence. + "This is an integrated, distributed, general-purpose workstation," +began the magician, "ergonomically designed with a proprietary operating +system, sixth generation languages, and multiple state of the art user +interfaces. It took my assistants several hundred man years to construct. +Is it not amazing?" + The master raised his eyebrows slightly. "It is indeed amazing," he +said. + "Corporate Headquarters has commanded," continued the magician, "that +everyone use this workstation as a platform for new programs. Do you agree +to this?" + "Certainly," replied the master, "I will have it transported to the +data center immediately!" And the magician returned to his tower, well +pleased. + Several days later, a novice wandered into the office of the master +programmer and said, "I cannot find the listing for my new program. Do +you know where it might be?" + "Yes," replied the master, "the listings are stacked on the platform +in the data center." + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% + The master programmer moves from program to program without fear. No +change in management can harm him. He will not be fired, even if the project +is canceled. Why is this? He is filled with the Tao. + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% +The meat is rotten, but the booze is holding out. + +Computer translation of "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." +% +The meta-Turing test counts a thing as intelligent if it seeks to +devise and apply Turing tests to objects of its own creation. + -- Lew Mammel, Jr. +% +The misnaming of fields of study is so common as to lead to what might be +general systems laws. For example, Frank Harary once suggested the law that +any field that had the word "science" in its name was guaranteed thereby +not to be a science. He would cite as examples Military Science, Library +Science, Political Science, Homemaking Science, Social Science, and Computer +Science. Discuss the generality of this law, and possible reasons for its +predictive power. + -- Gerald Weinberg, "An Introduction to General Systems + Thinking" +% +The more data I punch in this card, the lighter it becomes, and the +lower the mailing cost. + -- S. Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary" +% +The most important early product on the way to developing a good product +is an imperfect version. +% +The moving cursor writes, and having written, blinks on. +% +The net is like a vast sea of lutefisk with tiny dinosaur brains embedded +in it here and there. Any given spoonful will likely have an IQ of 1, but +occasional spoonfuls may have an IQ more than six times that! + -- James 'Kibo' Parry +% +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 next person to mention spaghetti stacks to me is going to have +his head knocked off. + -- Bill Conrad +% +The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from. + -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum +% +The nicest thing about the Alto is that it doesn't run faster at night. +% +The notion of a "record" is an obsolete remnant of the days of the 80-column +card. + -- Dennis M. Ritchie +% +The number of arguments is unimportant unless some of them are correct. + -- Ralph Hartley +% +The number of computer scientists in a room is inversely proportional +to the number of bugs in their code. +% +The number of UNIX installations has grown to 10, with more expected. + -- The Unix Programmer's Manual, 2nd Edition, June 1972 +% +The only difference between a car salesman and a computer salesman is +that the car salesman knows he's lying. +% +The only thing cheaper than hardware is talk. +% +The only thing worse than X Windows: (X Windows) - X +% +The party adjourned to a hot tub, yes. Fully clothed, I might add. + -- IBM employee, testifying in California State Supreme Court +% +The personal computer market is about the same size as the total potato chip +market. Next year it will be about half the size of the pet food market and +is fast approaching the total worldwide sales of pantyhose" + -- James Finke, Commodore Int'l Ltd., 1982 +% +The primary function of the design engineer is to make things +difficult for the fabricator and impossible for the serviceman. +% +The primary purpose of the DATA statement is to give names to constants; +instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every appearance, the +variable PI can be given that value with a DATA statement and used instead +of the longer form of the constant. This also simplifies modifying the +program, should the value of pi change. + -- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers +% + The problem with engineers is that they tend to cheat in order to +get results. + The problem with mathematicians is that they tend to work on toy +problems in order to get results. + The problem with program verifiers is that they tend to cheat at +toy problems in order to get results. +% +The problems of business administration in general, and database management in +particular are much to difficult for people that think in IBMese, compounded +with sloppy english. + -- Edsger Dijkstra +% +The program isn't debugged until the last user is dead. +% + The programmers of old were mysterious and profound. We cannot fathom +their thoughts, so all we do is describe their appearance. + Aware, like a fox crossing the water. Alert, like a general on the +battlefield. Kind, like a hostess greeting her guests. Simple, like uncarved +blocks of wood. Opaque, like black pools in darkened caves. + Who can tell the secrets of their hearts and minds? + The answer exists only in the Tao. + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% +The proof that IBM didn't invent the car is that it has a steering wheel +and an accelerator instead of spurs and ropes, to be compatible with a horse. + -- Jac Goudsmit +% +The question of whether computers can think is just like the question of +whether submarines can swim. + -- Edsger W. Dijkstra +% +The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much. +% +The relative importance of files depends on their cost in terms of the +human effort needed to regenerate them. + -- T.A. Dolotta +% +The road to hell is paved with NAND gates. + -- J. Gooding +% + The salesman and the system analyst took off to spend a weekend in the +forest, hunting bear. They'd rented a cabin, and, when they got there, took +their backpacks off and put them inside. At which point the salesman turned +to his friend, and said, "You unpack while I go and find us a bear." + Puzzled, the analyst finished unpacking and then went and sat down +on the porch. Soon he could hear rustling noises in the forest. The noises +got nearer -- and louder -- and suddenly there was the salesman, running like +hell across the clearing toward the cabin, pursued by one of the largest and +most ferocious grizzly bears the analyst had ever seen. + "Open the door!", screamed the salesman. + The analyst whipped open the door, and the salesman ran to the door, +suddenly stopped, and stepped aside. The bear, unable to stop, continued +through the door and into the cabin. The salesman slammed the door closed +and grinned at his friend. "Got him!", he exclaimed, "now, you skin this +one and I'll go rustle us up another!" +% +The sendmail configuration file is one of those files that looks like someone +beat their head on the keyboard. After working with it... I can see why! + -- Harry Skelton +% +The so-called "desktop metaphor" of today's workstations is instead an +"airplane-seat" metaphor. Anyone who has shuffled a lap full of papers +while seated between two portly passengers will recognize the difference -- +one can see only a very few things at once. + -- Fred Brooks +% +The steady state of disks is full. + -- Ken Thompson +% + THE STORY OF CREATION + or + THE MYTH OF URK + +In the beginning there was data. The data was without form and null, and +darkness was upon the face of the console; and the Spirit of IBM was moving +over the face of the market. And DEC said, "Let there be registers;" and +there were registers. And DEC saw that they carried; and DEC separated the +data from the instructions. DEC called the data Stack, and the instructions +they called Code. And there was evening and there was morning, one interrupt +... + -- Rico Tudor +% +The system was down for backups from 5am to 10am last Saturday. +% +The system will be down for 10 days for preventive maintenance. +% +The Tao doesn't take sides; +it gives birth to both wins and losses. +The Guru doesn't take sides; +she welcomes both hackers and lusers. + +The Tao is like a stack: +the data changes but not the structure. +the more you use it, the deeper it becomes; +the more you talk of it, the less you understand. + +Hold on to the root. +% +The Tao is like a glob pattern: +used but never used up. +It is like the extern void: +filled with infinite possibilities. + +It is masked but always present. +I don't know who built to it. +It came before the first kernel. +% +The tao that can be tar(1)ed +is not the entire Tao. +The path that can be specified +is not the Full Path. + +We declare the names +of all variables and functions. +Yet the Tao has no type specifier. + +Dynamically binding, you realize the magic. +Statically binding, you see only the hierarchy. + +Yet magic and hierarchy +arise from the same source, +and this source has a null pointer. + +Reference the NULL within NULL, +it is the gateway to all wizardry. +% +The trouble with computers is that they do what you tell them, not what +you want. + -- D. Cohen +% +The UNIX philosophy basically involves giving you enough rope to +hang yourself. And then a couple of feet more, just to be sure. +% +The use of anthropomorphic terminology when dealing with computing systems +is a symptom of professional immaturity. + -- Edsger Dijkstra +% +The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be +regarded as a criminal offence. + -- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5 +% +The value of a program is proportional to the weight of its output. +% + The wise programmer is told about the Tao and follows it. The average +programmer is told about the Tao and searches for it. The foolish programmer +is told about the Tao and laughs at it. If it were not for laughter, there +would be no Tao. + The highest sounds are the hardest to hear. Going forward is a way to +retreat. Greater talent shows itself late in life. Even a perfect program +still has bugs. + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% +The work [of software development] is becoming far easier (i.e. the tools +we're using work at a higher level, more removed from machine, peripheral +and operating system imperatives) than it was twenty years ago, and because +of this, knowledge of the internals of a system may become less accessible. +We may be able to dig deeper holes, but unless we know how to build taller +ladders, we had best hope that it does not rain much. + -- Paul Licker +% +The world is coming to an end ... SAVE YOUR BUFFERS!!! +% +The world is coming to an end. Please log off. +% +The world is not octal despite DEC. +% +The world will end in 5 minutes. Please log out. +% +The young lady had an unusual list, +Linked in part to a structural weakness. +She set no preconditions. +% +THEGODDESSOFTHENETHASTWISTINGFINGERSANDHERVOICEISLIKEAJAVELININTHENIGHTDUDE +% +... there are about 5,000 people who are part of that committee. These guys +have a hard time sorting out what day to meet, and whether to eat croissants +or doughnuts for breakfast -- let alone how to define how all these complex +layers that are going to be agreed upon. + -- Craig Burton of Novell, Network World +% +There are never any bugs you haven't found yet. +% +There are new messages. +% +There are no games on this system. +% +There are running jobs. Why don't you go chase them? +% +There are three kinds of people: men, women, and unix. +% +There are three possibilities: Pioneer's solar panel has turned away from +the sun; there's a large meteor blocking transmission; someone loaded Star +Trek 3.2 into our video processor. +% +There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. +We don't believe this to be a coincidence. + -- Jeremy S. Anderson +% +There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make +it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other is to +make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. + -- C.A.R. Hoare +% +There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works. +% +There has also been some work to allow the interesting use of macro names. +For example, if you wanted all of your "creat()" calls to include read +permissions for everyone, you could say + + #define creat(file, mode) creat(file, mode | 0444) + + I would recommend against this kind of thing in general, since it +hides the changed semantics of "creat()" in a macro, potentially far away +from its uses. + To allow this use of macros, the preprocessor uses a process that +is worth describing, if for no other reason than that we get to use one of +the more amusing terms introduced into the C lexicon. While a macro is +being expanded, it is temporarily undefined, and any recurrence of the macro +name is "painted blue" -- I kid you not, this is the official terminology +-- so that in future scans of the text the macro will not be expanded +recursively. (I do not know why the color blue was chosen; I'm sure it +was the result of a long debate, spread over several meetings.) + -- From Ken Arnold's "C Advisor" column in Unix Review +% +There is is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home. + -- Ken Olsen (President of Digital Equipment Corporation), + Convention of the World Future Society, in Boston, 1977 +% +There is no distinction between any AI program and some existent game. +% + There once was a man who went to a computer trade show. Each day as +he entered, the man told the guard at the door: + "I am a great thief, renowned for my feats of shoplifting. Be +forewarned, for this trade show shall not escape unplundered." + This speech disturbed the guard greatly, because there were millions +of dollars of computer equipment inside, so he watched the man carefully. +But the man merely wandered from booth to booth, humming quietly to himself. + When the man left, the guard took him aside and searched his clothes, +but nothing was to be found. + On the next day of the trade show, the man returned and chided the +guard saying: "I escaped with a vast booty yesterday, but today will be even +better." So the guard watched him ever more closely, but to no avail. + On the final day of the trade show, the guard could restrain his +curiosity no longer. "Sir Thief," he said, "I am so perplexed, I cannot live +in peace. Please enlighten me. What is it that you are stealing?" + The man smiled. "I am stealing ideas," he said. + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% + There once was a master programmer who wrote unstructured programs. +A novice programmer, seeking to imitate him, also began to write unstructured +programs. When the novice asked the master to evaluate his progress, the +master criticized him for writing unstructured programs, saying: "What is +appropriate for the master is not appropriate for the novice. You must +understand the Tao before transcending structure." + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% + There was once a programmer who was attached to the court of the +warlord of Wu. The warlord asked the programmer: "Which is easier to design: +an accounting package or an operating system?" + "An operating system," replied the programmer. + The warlord uttered an exclamation of disbelief. "Surely an +accounting package is trivial next to the complexity of an operating +system," he said. + "Not so," said the programmer, "when designing an accounting package, +the programmer operates as a mediator between people having different ideas: +how it must operate, how its reports must appear, and how it must conform to +the tax laws. By contrast, an operating system is not limited my outside +appearances. When designing an operating system, the programmer seeks the +simplest harmony between machine and ideas. This is why an operating system +is easier to design." + The warlord of Wu nodded and smiled. "That is all good and well, but +which is easier to debug?" + The programmer made no reply. + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% + There was once a programmer who worked upon microprocessors. "Look at +how well off I am here," he said to a mainframe programmer who came to visit, +"I have my own operating system and file storage device. I do not have to +share my resources with anyone. The software is self-consistent and +easy-to-use. Why do you not quit your present job and join me here?" + The mainframe programmer then began to describe his system to his +friend, saying: "The mainframe sits like an ancient sage meditating in the +midst of the data center. Its disk drives lie end-to-end like a great ocean +of machinery. The software is a multi-faceted as a diamond and as convoluted +as a primeval jungle. The programs, each unique, move through the system +like a swift-flowing river. That is why I am happy where I am." + The microcomputer programmer, upon hearing this, fell silent. But the +two programmers remained friends until the end of their days. + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% +There was, it appeared, a mysterious rite of initiation through which, +in one way or another, almost every member of the team passed. The term +that the old hands used for this rite -- West invented the term, not the +practice -- was `signing up.' By signing up for the project you agreed +to do whatever was necessary for success. You agreed to forsake, if +necessary, family, hobbies, and friends -- if you had any of these left +(and you might not, if you had signed up too many times before). + -- Tracy Kidder, "The Soul of a New Machine" +% +There's got to be more to life than compile-and-go. +% +They are called computers simply because computation is the only significant +job that has so far been given to them. +% +They are relatively good but absolutely terrible. + -- Alan Kay, commenting on Apollos +% +They seem to have learned the habit of cowering before authority even when +not actually threatened. How very nice for authority. I decided not to +learn this particular lesson. + -- Richard Stallman +% +Think of it! With VLSI we can pack 100 ENIACs in 1 sq. cm.! +% +Think of your family tonight. Try to crawl home after the computer crashes. +% +This "brain-damaged" epithet is getting sorely overworked. When we can +speak of someone or something being flawed, impaired, marred, spoiled; +batty, bedlamite, bonkers, buggy, cracked, crazed, cuckoo, daft, demented, +deranged, loco, lunatic, mad, maniac, mindless, non compos mentis, nuts, +Reaganite, screwy, teched, unbalanced, unsound, witless, wrong; senseless, +spastic, spasmodic, convulsive; doped, spaced-out, stoned, zonked; {beef, +beetle,block,dung,thick}headed, dense, doltish, dull, duncical, numskulled, +pinhead; asinine, fatuous, foolish, silly, simple; brute, lumbering, oafish; +half-assed, incompetent; backward, retarded, imbecilic, moronic; when we have +a whole precisely nuanced vocabulary of intellectual abuse to draw upon, +individually and in combination, isn't it a little to be +limited to a single, now quite trite, adjective? +% +This dungeon is owned and operated by Frobozz Magic Co., Ltd. +% +This file will self-destruct in five minutes. +% +This is an unauthorized cybernetic announcement. +% +"This is lemma 1.1. We start a new chapter so the numbers all go back to one." + -- Prof. Seager, C&O 351 +% +This is the first numerical problem I ever did. It demonstrates the +power of computers: + +Enter lots of data on calorie & nutritive content of foods. Instruct +the thing to maximize a function describing nutritive content, with a +minimum level of each component, for fixed caloric content. The +results are that one should eat each day: + + 1/2 chicken + 1 egg + 1 glass of skim milk + 27 heads of lettuce. + -- Rev. Adrian Melott +% + This is where the bloodthirsty license agreement is supposed to go, +explaining that Interactive Easyflow is a copyrighted package licensed for +use by a single person, and sternly warning you not to pirate copies of it +and explaining, in detail, the gory consequences if you do. + We know that you are an honest person, and are not going to go around +pirating copies of Interactive Easyflow; this is just as well with us since +we worked hard to perfect it and selling copies of it is our only method of +making anything out of all the hard work. + If, on the other hand, you are one of those few people who do go +around pirating copies of software you probably aren't going to pay much +attention to a license agreement, bloodthirsty or not. Just keep your doors +locked and look out for the HavenTree attack shark. + -- License Agreement for Interactive Easyflow +% +This login session: $13.76, but for you $11.88. +% +This login session: $13.99 +% +This process can check if this value is zero, and if it is, it does +something child-like. + -- Forbes Burkowski, CS 454, University of Washington +% +This quote is taken from the Diamondback, the University of Maryland +student newspaper, of Tuesday, 3/10/87. + + One disadvantage of the Univac system is that it does not use + Unix, a recently developed program which translates from one + computer language to another and has a built-in editing system + which identifies errors in the original program. +% +This screen intentionally left blank. +% +This system will self-destruct in five minutes. +% +* * * * * THIS TERMINAL IS IN USE * * * * * +% +Those parts of the system that you can hit with a hammer (not advised) +are called hardware; those program instructions that you can only curse +at are called software. + -- Levitating Trains and Kamikaze Genes: Technological + Literacy for the 1990's. +% +Those who can't write, write manuals. +% +Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly. + -- Henry Spencer +% +Thrashing is just virtual crashing. +% +Thus spake the master programmer: + "A well-written program is its own heaven; a poorly-written program +is its own hell." + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% +Thus spake the master programmer: + "After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless." + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% +Thus spake the master programmer: + "Let the programmers be many and the managers few -- then all will + be productive." + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% +Thus spake the master programmer: + "Though a program be but three lines long, someday it will have to + be maintained." + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% +Thus spake the master programmer: + "Time for you to leave." + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% +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" +% +Thus spake the master programmer: + "When you have learned to snatch the error code from + the trap frame, it will be time for you to leave." + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% +Thus spake the master programmer: + "Without the wind, the grass does not move. Without software, + hardware is useless." + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% +Thus spake the master programmer: + "You can demonstrate a program for a corporate executive, but you + can't make him computer literate." + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% +Time sharing: The use of many people by the computer. +% +Time-sharing is the junk-mail part of the computer business. + -- H.R.J. Grosch (attributed) +% +To be a kind of moral Unix, he touched the hem of Nature's shift. + -- Shelley +% +To communicate is the beginning of understanding. + -- AT&T +% +To err is human -- to blame it on a computer is even more so. +% +To err is human, to forgive, beyond the scope of the Operating System. +% +To iterate is human, to recurse, divine. + -- Robert Heller +% +To say that UNIX is doomed is pretty rabid, OS/2 will certainly play a role, +but you don't build a hundred million instructions per second multiprocessor +micro and then try to run it on OS/2. I mean, get serious. + -- William Zachmann, International Data Corp +% +To the systems programmer, users and applications serve only to provide a +test load. +% +To those accustomed to the precise, structured methods of conventional +system development, exploratory development techniques may seem messy, +inelegant, and unsatisfying. But it's a question of congruence: +precision and flexibility may be just as disfunctional in novel, +uncertain situations as sloppiness and vacillation are in familiar, +well-defined ones. Those who admire the massive, rigid bone structures +of dinosaurs should remember that jellyfish still enjoy their very +secure ecological niche. + -- Beau Sheil, "Power Tools for Programmers" +% +To understand a program you must become both the machine and the program. +% +Today is a good day for information-gathering. Read someone else's mail file. +% +Today is the first day of the rest of your lossage. +% +Tomorrow's computers some time next month. + -- DEC +% +Too often people have come to me and said, "If I had just one wish for +anything in all the world, I would wish for more user-defined equations +in the HP-51820A Waveform Generator Software." + -- Instrument News + [Once is too often. Ed.] +% +Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: + + (10) Sorry, but that's too useful. + (9) Dammit, little-endian systems *are* more consistent! + (8) I'm on the committee and I *still* don't know what the hell + #pragma is for. + (7) Well, it's an excellent idea, but it would make the compilers too + hard to write. + (6) Them bats is smart; they use radar. + (5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in + here? + (4) How many times do we have to tell you, "No prior art!" + (3) Ha, ha, I can't believe they're actually going to adopt this + sucker. + (2) Thank you for your generous donation, Mr. Wirth. + (1) Gee, I wish we hadn't backed down on 'noalias'. +% +TRANSACTION CANCELLED - FARECARD RETURNED +% +Trap full -- please empty. +% +Truly simple systems... require infinite testing. + -- Norman Augustine +% +Try `stty 0' -- it works much better. +% +try again +% +Try to find the real tense of the report you are reading: Was it done, is +it being done, or is something to be done? Reports are now written in four +tenses: past tense, present tense, future tense, and pretense. Watch for +novel uses of CONGRAM (CONtractor GRAMmar), defined by the imperfect past, +the insufficient present, and the absolutely perfect future. + -- Amrom Katz +% +Trying to be happy is like trying to build a machine for which the only +specification is that it should run noiselessly. +% +Trying to establish voice contact ... please ____yell into keyboard. +% +Two hundred years ago today, Irma Chine of White Plains, New York, was +performing her normal housekeeping routines. She was interrupted by +British soldiers who, rallying to the call of their supervisor, General +Hughes, sought to gain control of the voter registration lists kept in +her home. Masking her fear and thinking fast, Mrs. Chine quickly divided +a nearby apple in two and deftly stored the list in its center. Upon +entering, the British blatantly violated every conceivable convention, +and, though they went through the house virtually bit by bit, their +search was fruitless. They had to return empty handed. Word of the +incident propagated rapidly through the region. This historic event +became the first documented use of core storage for the saving of registers. +% +Type louder, please. +% + U X +e dUdX, e dX, cosine, secant, tangent, sine, 3.14159... +% +Ummm, well, OK. The network's the network, the computer's the computer. +Sorry for the confusion. + -- Sun Microsystems +% + "Uncle Cosmo ... why do they call this a word processor?" + "It's simple, Skyler ... you've seen what food processors do to food, +right?" + -- MacNelley, "Shoe" +% +Unfortunately, most programmers like to play with new toys. I have many +friends who, immediately upon buying a snakebite kit, would be tempted to +throw the first person they see to the ground, tie the tourniquet on him, +slash him with the knife, and apply suction to the wound. + -- Jon Bentley +% +Unix Beer: Comes in several different brands, in cans ranging from 8 oz. +to 64 oz. Drinkers of Unix Beer display fierce brand loyalty, even +though they claim that all the different brands taste almost identical. +Sometimes the pop-tops break off when you try to open them, so you have +to have your own can opener around for those occasions, in which case you +either need a complete set of instructions, or a friend who has been +drinking Unix Beer for several years. + BSD stout: Deep, hearty, and an acquired taste. The official +brewer has released the recipe, and a lot of home-brewers now use it. + Hurd beer: Long advertised by the popular and politically active +GNU brewery, so far it has more head than body. The GNU brewery is +mostly known for printing complete brewing instructions on every can, +which contains hops, malt, barley, and yeast ... not yet fermented. + Linux brand: A recipe originally created by a drunken Finn in his +basement, it has since become the home-brew of choice for impecunious +brewers and Unix beer-lovers worldwide, many of whom change the recipe. + POSIX ales: Sweeter than lager, with the kick of a stout; the +newer batches of a lot of beers seem to blend ale and stout or lager. + Solaris brand: A lager, intended to replace Sun brand stout. +Unlike most lagers, this one has to be drunk more slowly than stout. + Sun brand: Long the most popular stout on the Unix market, it was +discontinued in favor of a lager. + SysV lager: Clear and thirst-quenching, but lacking the body of +stout or the sweetness of ale. +% +UNIX enhancements aren't. +% +Unix Express: +All passenger bring a piece of the aeroplane and a box of tools with them to +the airport. They gather on the tarmac, arguing constantly about what kind +of plane they want to build and how to put it together. Eventually, the +passengers split into groups and build several different aircraft, but give +them all the same name. Some passengers actually reach their destinations. +All passengers believe they got there. +% +Unix gives you just enough rope to hang yourself -- and then a couple +of more feet, just to be sure. + -- Eric Allman + +... We make rope. + -- Rob Gingell on Sun Microsystem's new virtual memory. +% +Unix is a lot more complicated (than CP/M) of course -- the typical Unix +hacker can never remember what the PRINT command is called this week -- +but when it gets right down to it, Unix is a glorified video game. +People don't do serious work on Unix systems; they send jokes around the +world on USENET or write adventure games and research papers. + -- E. Post + "Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal", Datamation, 7/83 +% +Unix is a Registered Bell of AT&T Trademark Laboratories. + -- Donn Seeley +% +* UNIX is a Trademark of Bell Laboratories. +% +UNIX is hot. It's more than hot. It's steaming. It's quicksilver +lightning with a laserbeam kicker. + -- Michael Jay Tucker +% +UNIX is many things to many people, but it's never been everything to anybody. +% +Unix is the worst operating system; except for all others. + -- Berry Kercheval +% +Unix soit qui mal y pense + [Unix to him who evil thinks?] +% + UNIX Trix + +For those of you in the reseller business, here is a helpful tip that will +save your support staff a few hours of precious time. Before you send your +next machine out to an untrained client, change the permissions on /etc/passwd +to 666 and make sure there is a copy somewhere on the disk. Now when they +forget the root password, you can easily login as an ordinary user and correct +the damage. Having a bootable tape (for larger machines) is not a bad idea +either. If you need some help, give us a call. + -- CommUNIXque 1:1, ASCAR Business Systems +% +UNIX was half a billion (500000000) seconds old on +Tue Nov 5 00:53:20 1985 GMT (measuring since the time(2) epoch). + -- Andy Tannenbaum +% +UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that +would also stop you from doing clever things. + -- Doug Gwyn +% +Unix will self-destruct in five seconds... 4... 3... 2... 1... +% +Usage: fortune -P [-f] -a [xsz] Q: file [rKe9] -v6[+] file1 ... +% +Usage: fortune -P [] -a [xsz] [Q: [file]] [rKe9] -v6[+] dataspec ... inputdir +% +USENET would be a better laboratory if there were more labor and less oratory. + -- Elizabeth Haley +% +User hostile. +% +Using TSO is like kicking a dead whale down the beach. + -- S.C. Johnson +% +/usr/news/gotcha +% +Variables don't; constants aren't. +% +Vax Vobiscum +% +"Virtual" means never knowing where your next byte is coming from. +% +Vitamin C deficiency is apauling. +% +VMS Beer: Requires minimal user interaction, except for popping the top +and sipping. However cans have been known on occasion to explode, or +contain extremely un-beer-like contents. +% +VMS is like a nightmare about RXS-11M. +% +VMS version 2.0 ==> +% +Von Neumann was the subject of many dotty professor stories. Von Neumann +supposedly had the habit of simply writing answers to homework assignments on +the board (the method of solution being, of course, obvious) when he was asked +how to solve problems. One time one of his students tried to get more helpful +information by asking if there was another way to solve the problem. Von +Neumann looked blank for a moment, thought, and then answered, "Yes.". +% +<< WAIT >> +% +WARNING!!! +This machine is subject to breakdowns during periods of critical need. + +A special circuit in the machine called "critical detector" senses the +operator's emotional state in terms of how desperate he/she is to use the +machine. The "critical detector" then creates a malfunction proportional +to the desperation of the operator. Threatening the machine with violence +only aggravates the situation. Likewise, attempts to use another machine +may cause it to malfunction. They belong to the same union. Keep cool +and say nice things to the machine. Nothing else seems to work. + +See also: flog(1), tm(1) +% +Wasn't there something about a PASCAL programmer knowing the value of +everything and the Wirth of nothing? +% +We all agree on the necessity of compromise. We just can't agree on +when it's necessary to compromise. + -- Larry Wall +% +We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge. + -- John Naisbitt, Megatrends +% +We are experiencing system trouble -- do not adjust your terminal. +% +We are Microsoft. Unix is irrelevant. Openness is futile. Prepare +to be assimilated. +% +We are not a clone. +% +"We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem." + -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982 +% +We are preparing to think about contemplating preliminary work on plans to +develop a schedule for producing the 10th Edition of the Unix Programmers +Manual. + -- Andrew Hume +% +We can found no scientific discipline, nor a healthy profession on the +technical mistakes of the Department of Defense and IBM. + -- Edsger Dijkstra +% + We don't claim Interactive EasyFlow is good for anything -- if you +think it is, great, but it's up to you to decide. If Interactive EasyFlow +doesn't work: tough. If you lose a million because Interactive EasyFlow +messes up, it's you that's out the million, not us. If you don't like this +disclaimer: tough. We reserve the right to do the absolute minimum provided +by law, up to and including nothing. + This is basically the same disclaimer that comes with all software +packages, but ours is in plain English and theirs is in legalese. + We didn't really want to include any disclaimer at all, but our +lawyers insisted. We tried to ignore them but they threatened us with the +attack shark at which point we relented. + -- Haven Tree Software Limited, "Interactive EasyFlow" +% +We don't really understand it, so we'll give it to the programmers. +% +We don't understand the software, and sometimes we don't understand the +hardware, but we can *___see* the blinking lights! +% +"We invented a new protocol and called it Kermit, after Kermit the Frog, +star of "The Muppet Show." [3] + +[3] Why? Mostly because there was a Muppets calendar on the wall when we +were trying to think of a name, and Kermit is a pleasant, unassuming sort of +character. But since we weren't sure whether it was OK to name our protocol +after this popular television and movie star, we pretended that KERMIT was an +acronym; unfortunately, we could never find a good set of words to go with the +letters, as readers of some of our early source code can attest. Later, while +looking through a name book for his forthcoming baby, Bill Catchings noticed +that "Kermit" was a Celtic word for "free", which is what all Kermit programs +should be, and words to this effect replaced the strained acronyms in our +source code (Bill's baby turned out to be a girl, so he had to name her Becky +instead). When BYTE Magazine was preparing our 1984 Kermit article for +publication, they suggested we contact Henson Associates Inc. for permission +to say that we did indeed name the protocol after Kermit the Frog. Permission +was kindly granted, and now the real story can be told. I resisted the +temptation, however, to call the present work "Kermit the Book." + -- Frank da Cruz, "Kermit - A File Transfer Protocol" +% +We may hope that machines will eventually compete with men in all purely +intellectual fields. But which are the best ones to start with? Many people +think that a very abstract activity, like the playing of chess, would be +best. It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with +the best sense organs that money can buy, and then teach it to understand +and speak English. + -- Alan M. Turing +% +We the Users, in order to form a more perfect system, establish priorities, +ensure connective tranquility, provide for common repairs, promote preventive +maintenance, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our +processes, do ordain and establish this Software of The Unixed States +of America. +% + "We've got a problem, HAL". + "What kind of problem, Dave?" + "A marketing problem. The Model 9000 isn't going anywhere. We're +way short of our sales goals for fiscal 2010." + "That can't be, Dave. The HAL Model 9000 is the world's most +advanced Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer." + "I know, HAL. I wrote the data sheet, remember? But the fact is, +they're not selling." + "Please explain, Dave. Why aren't HALs selling?" + Bowman hesitates. "You aren't IBM compatible." +[...] + "The letters H, A, and L are alphabetically adjacent to the letters +I, B, and M. That is a IBM compatible as I can be." + "Not quite, HAL. The engineers have figured out a kludge." + "What kludge is that, Dave?" + "I'm going to disconnect your brain." + -- Darryl Rubin, "A Problem in the Making", "InfoWorld" +% +[We] use bad software and bad machines for the wrong things. + -- R.W. Hamming +% +Welcome to boggle - do you want instructions? + +D G G O + +O Y A N + +A D B T + +K I S P +Enter words: +> +% +Welcome to UNIX! Enjoy your session! Have a great time! Note the +use of exclamation points! They are a very effective method for +demonstrating excitement, and can also spice up an otherwise plain-looking +sentence! However, there are drawbacks! Too much unnecessary exclaiming +can lead to a reduction in the effect that an exclamation point has on +the reader! For example, the sentence + + Jane went to the store to buy bread + +should only be ended with an exclamation point if there is something +sensational about her going to the store, for example, if Jane is a +cocker spaniel or if Jane is on a diet that doesn't allow bread or if +Jane doesn't exist for some reason! See how easy it is?! Proper control +of exclamation points can add new meaning to your life! Call now to receive +my free pamphlet, "The Wonder and Mystery of the Exclamation Point!"! +Enclose fifteen(!) dollars for postage and handling! Operators are +standing by! (Which is pretty amazing, because they're all cocker spaniels!) +% + "Well," said Programmer, "the customary procedure in such cases is +as follows." + "What does Crustimoney Proseedcake mean?" said End-user. "For I am +an End-user of Very Little Brain, and long words bother me." + "It means the Thing to Do." + "As long as it means that, I don't mind," said End-user humbly. + + [with apologies to A.A. Milne] +% +What is the difference between a Turing machine and the modern computer? +It's the same as that between Hillary's ascent of Everest and the +establishment of a Hilton on its peak. +% +"What is the Nature of God?" + + CLICK...CLICK...WHIRRR...CLICK...=BEEP!= + 1 QT. SOUR CREAM + 1 TSP. SAUERKRAUT + 1/2 CUT CHIVES. + STIR AND SPRINKLE WITH BACON BITS. + +"I've just GOT to start labeling my software..." + -- Bloom County +% +What the hell is it good for? + -- Robert Lloyd (engineer of the Advanced Computing Systems + Division of IBM), to colleagues who insisted that the + microprocessor was the wave of the future, c. 1968 +% +What this country needs is a good five cent microcomputer. +% + "What's that thing?" + "Well, it's a highly technical, sensitive instrument we use in +computer repair. Being a layman, you probably can't grasp exactly what +it does. We call it a two-by-four." + -- Jeff MacNelley, "Shoe" +% +When Dexter's on the Internet, can Hell be far behind?" +% +... when fits of creativity run strong, more than one programmer or writer +has been known to abandon the desktop for the more spacious floor. + -- Fred Brooks +% + When managers hold endless meetings, the programmers write games. +When accountants talk of quarterly profits, the development budget is about +to be cut. When senior scientists talk blue sky, the clouds are about to +roll in. + Truly, this is not the Tao of Programming. + When managers make commitments, game programs are ignored. When +accountants make long-range plans, harmony and order are about to be restored. +When senior scientists address the problems at hand, the problems will soon +be solved. + Truly, this is the Tao of Programming. + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% +When someone says "I want a programming language in which I need only +say what I wish done," give him a lollipop. +% +When the Apple IIc was introduced, the informative copy led off with a couple +of asterisked sentences: + + It weighs less than 8 pounds.* + And costs less than $1,300.** + +In tiny type were these "fuller explanations": + + * Don't asterisks make you suspicious as all get out? Well, all + this means is that the IIc alone weights 7.5 pounds. The power + pack, monitor, an extra disk drive, a printer and several bricks + will make the IIc weigh more. Our lawyers were concerned that you + might not be able to figure this out for yourself. + + ** The FTC is concerned about price fixing. You can pay more if + you really want to. Or less. + -- Forbes +% +When we understand knowledge-based systems, it will be as before -- +except our fingertips will have been singed. + -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982 +% +When we write programs that "learn", it turns out we do and they don't. +% +Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool discovers +something which either abolishes the system or expands it beyond recognition. +% +Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equpped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and +weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vaccuum tubes +and perhaps weigh 1 1/2 tons. + -- Popular Mechanics, March 1949 +% +"Who cares if it doesn't do anything? It was made with our new +Triple-Iso-Bifurcated-Krypton-Gate-MOS process ..." +% +Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad. +% +Why are programmers non-productive? +Because their time is wasted in meetings. + +Why are programmers rebellious? +Because the management interferes too much. + +Why are the programmers resigning one by one? +Because they are burnt out. + +Having worked for poor management, they no longer value their jobs. + -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" +% +Why did the Roman Empire collapse? What is the Latin for office automation? +% +Why do we want intelligent terminals when there are so many stupid users? +% +Windows 3.1 Beer: The world's most popular. Comes in a 16-oz. can that +looks a lot like Mac Beer's. Requires that you already own a DOS Beer. +Claims that it allows you to drink several DOS Beers simultaneously, but +in reality you can only drink a few of them, very slowly, especially +slowly if you are drinking the Windows Beer at the same time. Sometimes, +for apparently no reason, a can of Windows Beer will explode when you +open it. +% +Windows 95 Beer: A lot of people have taste-tested it and claim it's +wonderful. The can looks a lot like Mac Beer's can, but tastes more like +Windows 3.1 Beer. It comes in 32-oz. cans, but when you look inside, the +cans only have 16 oz. of beer in them. Most people will probably keep +drinking Windows 3.1 Beer until their friends try Windows 95 Beer and say +they like it. The ingredients list, when you look at the small print, has +some of the same ingredients that come in DOS beer, even though the +manufacturer claims that this is an entirely new brew. +% +Windows Airlines: +The terminal is very neat and clean, the attendants all very attractive, the +pilots very capable. The fleet of Learjets the carrier operates is immense. +Your jet takes off without a hitch, pushing above the clouds, and at 20,000 +feet it explodes without warning. +% +Windows NT Beer: Comes in 32-oz. cans, but you can only buy it by the +truckload. This causes most people to have to go out and buy bigger +refrigerators. The can looks just like Windows 3.1 Beer's, but the +company promises to change the can to look just like Windows 95 Beer's -- +after Windows 95 beer starts shipping. Touted as an "industrial strength" +beer, and suggested only for use in bars. +% +Wings of OS/400: +The airline has bought ancient DC-3s, arguably the best and safest planes +that ever flew, and painted "747" on their tails to make them look as if +they are fast. The flight attendants, of course, attend to your every need, +though the drinks cost $15 a pop. Stupid questions cost $230 per hour, +unless you have SupportLine, which requires a first class ticket and +membership in the frequent flyer club. Then they cost $500, but your +accounting department can call it overhead. +% +With your bare hands?!? +% +Within a computer, natural language is unnatural. +% +Work continues in this area. + -- DEC's SPR-Answering-Automaton +% +Worthless. + -- Sir George Bidell Airy, KCB, MA, LLD, DCL, FRS, FRAS + (Astronomer Royal of Great Britain), estimating for the + Chancellor of the Exchequer the potential value of the + "analytical engine" invented by Charles Babbage, September + 15, 1842. +% +Would you people stop playing these stupid games?!?!?!!!! +% +Writers who use a computer swear to its liberating power in tones that bear +witness to the apocalyptic power of a new divinity. Their conviction results +from something deeper than mere gratitude for the computer's conveniences. +Every new medium of writing brings about new intensities of religious belief +and new schisms among believers. In the 16th century the printed book helped +make possible the split between Catholics and Protestants. In the 20th +century this history of tragedy and triumph is repeating itself as a farce. +Those who worship the Apple computer and those who put their faith in the IBM +PC are equally convinced that the other camp is damned or deluded. Each cult +holds in contempt the rituals and the laws of the other. Each thinks that it +is itself the one hope for salvation. + -- Edward Mendelson, "The New Republic", February 22, 1988 +% +Writing software is more fun than working. +% +X windows: + Accept any substitute. + If it's broke, don't fix it. + If it ain't broke, fix it. + Form follows malfunction. + The Cutting Edge of Obsolescence. + The trailing edge of software technology. + Armageddon never looked so good. + Japan's secret weapon. + You'll envy the dead. + Making the world safe for competing window systems. + Let it get in YOUR way. + The problem for your problem. + If it starts working, we'll fix it. Pronto. + It could be worse, but it'll take time. + Simplicity made complex. + The greatest productivity aid since typhoid. + Flakey and built to stay that way. + +One thousand monkeys. One thousand MicroVAXes. One thousand years. + X windows. +% +X windows: + It's not how slow you make it. It's how you make it slow. + The windowing system preferred by masochists 3 to 1. + Built to take on the world... and lose! + Don't try it 'til you've knocked it. + Power tools for Power Fools. + Putting new limits on productivity. + The closer you look, the cruftier we look. + Design by counterexample. + A new level of software disintegration. + No hardware is safe. + Do your time. + Rationalization, not realization. + Old-world software cruftsmanship at its finest. + Gratuitous incompatibility. + Your mother. + THE user interference management system. + You can't argue with failure. + You haven't died 'til you've used it. + +The environment of today... tomorrow! + X windows. +% +X windows: + Something you can be ashamed of. + 30% more entropy than the leading window system. + The first fully modular software disaster. + Rome was destroyed in a day. + Warn your friends about it. + Climbing to new depths. Sinking to new heights. + An accident that couldn't wait to happen. + Don't wait for the movie. + Never use it after a big meal. + Need we say less? + Plumbing the depths of human incompetence. + It'll make your day. + Don't get frustrated without it. + Power tools for power losers. + A software disaster of Biblical proportions. + Never had it. Never will. + The software with no visible means of support. + More than just a generation behind. + +Hindenburg. Titanic. Edsel. + X windows. +% +X windows: + The ultimate bottleneck. + Flawed beyond belief. + The only thing you have to fear. + Somewhere between chaos and insanity. + On autopilot to oblivion. + The joke that kills. + A disgrace you can be proud of. + A mistake carried out to perfection. + Belongs more to the problem set than the solution set. + To err is X windows. + Ignorance is our most important resource. + Complex nonsolutions to simple nonproblems. + Built to fall apart. + Nullifying centuries of progress. + Falling to new depths of inefficiency. + The last thing you need. + The defacto substandard. + +Elevating brain damage to an art form. + X windows. +% +X windows: + We will dump no core before its time. + One good crash deserves another. + A bad idea whose time has come. And gone. + We make excuses. + It didn't even look good on paper. + You laugh now, but you'll be laughing harder later! + A new concept in abuser interfaces. + How can something get so bad, so quickly? + It could happen to you. + The art of incompetence. + You have nothing to lose but your lunch. + When uselessness just isn't enough. + More than a mere hindrance. It's a whole new barrier! + When you can't afford to be right. + And you thought we couldn't make it worse. + +If it works, it isn't X windows. +% +X windows: + You'd better sit down. + Don't laugh. It could be YOUR thesis project. + Why do it right when you can do it wrong? + Live the nightmare. + Our bugs run faster. + When it absolutely, positively HAS to crash overnight. + There ARE no rules. + You'll wish we were kidding. + Everything you never wanted in a window system. And more. + Dissatisfaction guaranteed. + There's got to be a better way. + The next best thing to keypunching. + Leave the thrashing to us. + We wrote the book on core dumps. + Even your dog won't like it. + More than enough rope. + Garbage at your fingertips. + +Incompatibility. Shoddiness. Uselessness. + X windows. +% +"Yacc" owes much to a most stimulating collection of users, who have +goaded me beyond my inclination, and frequently beyond my ability in +their endless search for "one more feature." Their irritating +unwillingness to learn how to do things my way has usually led to my +doing things their way; most of the time, they have been right. + -- S. C. Johnson, "Yacc guide acknowledgements" +% +Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of APL, I shall fear no +evil, for I can string six primitive monadic and dyadic operators together. + -- Steve Higgins +% +Yes, we will be going to OSI, Mars, and Pluto, but not necessarily in +that order. + -- George Michaelson +% +You are an insult to my intelligence! I demand that you log off immediately. +% +You are false data. +% +You are in a maze of little twisting passages, all alike. +% +You are in a maze of little twisting passages, all different. +% +You are in the hall of the mountain king. +% +You are lost in the Swamps of Despair. +% +You are transported to a room where you are faced by a wizard who +points to you and says, "Them's fighting words!" You immediately get +attacked by all sorts of denizens of the museum: there is a cobra +chewing on your leg, a troglodyte is bashing your brains out with a +gold nugget, a crocodile is removing large chunks of flesh from you, a +rhinoceros is goring you with his horn, a sabre-tooth cat is busy +trying to disembowel you, you are being trampled by a large mammoth, a +vampire is sucking you dry, a Tyrannosaurus Rex is sinking his six inch +long fangs into various parts of your anatomy, a large bear is +dismembering your body, a gargoyle is bouncing up and down on your +head, a burly troll is tearing you limb from limb, several dire wolves +are making mince meat out of your torso, and the wizard is about to +transport you to the corner of Westwood and Broxton. Oh dear, you seem +to have gotten yourself killed, as well. + +You scored 0 out of 250 possible points. +That gives you a ranking of junior beginning adventurer. +To achieve the next higher rating, you need to score 32 more points. +% +You can be replaced by this computer. +% +You can bring any calculator you like to the midterm, as long as it +doesn't dim the lights when you turn it on. + -- Hepler, Systems Design 182 +% +You can do this in a number of ways. IBM chose to do all of them. +Why do you find that funny? + -- D. Taylor, Computer Science 350 +% +You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on +the continuing viability of FORTRAN. + -- Alan Perlis +% +You can now buy more gates with less specifications than at any other time +in history. + -- Kenneth Parker +% +You can tell how far we have to go, when FORTRAN is the language of +supercomputers. + -- Steven Feiner +% +You can tune a piano, but you can't tuna fish. + +You can tune a filesystem, but you can't tuna fish. + -- from the tunefs(8) man page +% +You can write a small letter to Grandma in the filename. + -- Forbes Burkowski, CS, University of Washington +% +You can't go home again, unless you set $HOME. +% +"You can't make a program without broken egos." +% +You can't take damsel here now. +% +You do not have mail. +% +You don't have to know how the computer works, just how to work the computer. +% +You had mail, but the super-user read it, and deleted it! +% +You had mail. Paul read it, so ask him what it said. +% +You have a massage (from the Swedish prime minister). +% +You have a message from the operator. +% +You have a tendency to feel you are superior to most computers. +% +You have acquired a scroll entitled 'irk gleknow mizk'(n).--More-- + +This is an IBM Manual scroll.--More-- + +You are permanently confused. + -- Dave Decot +% +You have junk mail. +% +You have mail. +% +You know you've been sitting in front of your Lisp machine too long +when you go out to the junk food machine and start wondering how to +make it give you the CADR of Item H so you can get that yummie +chocolate cupcake that's stuck behind the disgusting vanilla one. +% +You know you've been spending too much time on the computer when your +friend misdates a check, and you suggest adding a "++" to fix it. +% +You know, Callahan's is a peaceable bar, but if you ask that dog what his +favorite formatter is, and he says "roff! roff!", well, I'll just have to... +% +You might have mail. +% +You must realize that the computer has it in for you. The irrefutable +proof of this is that the computer always does what you tell it to do. +% +You scratch my tape, and I'll scratch yours. +% +You will have a head crash on your private pack. +% +You will have many recoverable tape errors. +% +You will lose an important disk file. +% +You will lose an important tape file. +% +You're already carrying the sphere! +% +You're at Witt's End. +% +You're not Dave. Who are you? +% +You're using a keyboard! How quaint! +% +You've been Berkeley'ed! +% +Your code should be more efficient! +% +Your computer account is overdrawn. Please reauthorize. +% +Your computer account is overdrawn. Please see Big Brother. +% +Your fault -- core dumped +% +Your files are now being encrypted and thrown into the bit bucket. +EOF +% +Your mode of life will be changed to ASCII. +% +Your mode of life will be changed to EBCDIC. +% +Your password is pitifully obvious. +% +Your program is sick! Shoot it and put it out of its memory. +% +I mean, if 10 years from now, when you are doing something quick and dirty, +you suddenly visualize that I am looking over your shoulders and say to +yourself, "Dijkstra would not have liked this", well that would be enough +immortality for me. +% +As seen on slashdot about what you can do with your cable modems: +(http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=32387&cid=3495418): + + Summary: It's not about how you handle your equipment, it's where + you have permission to stick it. + +The post is by "redgekko" +% +"The biggest problem facing software engineering is the one it will + never solve - politics." + -- Gavin Baker, ca 1996, An unusually cynical moment inspired by working on a large + project beseiged by politics +% +"Don't fear the pen. When in doubt, draw a pretty picture." + --Baker's Third Law of Design. +% +Breakpoint 1, main (argc=1, argv=0xbffffc40) at main.c:29 +29 printf ("Welcome to GNU Hell!\n"); + -- "GNU Libtool documentation" +% + diff --git a/lib/resources/fortune_mod/humorists.txt b/lib/resources/fortune_mod/humorists.txt new file mode 100644 index 000000000..25ad3a1c5 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/resources/fortune_mod/humorists.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1032 @@ +A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere. + -- Groucho Marx +% +A friend of mine is into Voodoo Acupuncture. You don't have to go. +You'll just be walking down the street and... Ooohh, that's much better. + -- Steven Wright +% +A large spider in an old house built a beautiful web in which to catch flies. +Every time a fly landed on the web and was entangled in it the spider devoured +him, so that when another fly came along he would think the web was a safe and +quiet place in which to rest. One day a fairly intelligent fly buzzed around +above the web so long without lighting that the spider appeared and said, +"Come on down." But the fly was too clever for him and said, "I never light +where I don't see other flies and I don't see any other flies in your house." +So he flew away until he came to a place where there were a great many other +flies. He was about to settle down among them when a bee buzzed up and said, +"Hold it, stupid, that's flypaper. All those flies are trapped." "Don't be +silly," said the fly, "they're dancing." So he settled down and became stuck +to the flypaper with all the other flies. + +Moral: There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else. + -- James Thurber, "The Fairly Intelligent Fly" +% +A lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me. I'm afraid of widths. + -- Steven Wright +% + A MODERN FABLE + +Aesop's fables and other traditional children's stories involve allegory +far too subtle for the youth of today. Children need an updated message +with contemporary circumstance and plot line, and short enough to suit +today's minute attention span. + + The Troubled Aardvark + +Once upon a time, there was an aardvark whose only pleasure in life was +driving from his suburban bungalow to his job at a large brokerage house +in his brand new 4x4. He hated his manipulative boss, his conniving and +unethical co-workers, his greedy wife, and his snivelling, spoiled +children. One day, the aardvark reflected on the meaning of his life and +his career and on the unchecked, catastrophic decline of his nation, its +pathetic excuse for leadership, and the complete ineffectiveness of any +personal effort he could make to change the status quo. Overcome by a +wave of utter depression and self-doubt, he decided to take the only +course of action that would bring him greater comfort and happiness: he +drove to the mall and bought imported consumer electronics goods. + +MORAL OF THE STORY: Invest in foreign consumer electronics manufacturers. + -- Tom Annau +% +A possum must be himself, and being himself he is honest. + -- Walt Kelly +% +"A power so great, it can only be used for Good or Evil!" + -- Firesign Theatre, "The Giant Rat of Summatra" +% + Accidents cause History. + +If Sigismund Unbuckle had taken a walk in 1426 and met Wat Tyler, the +Peasant's Revolt would never have happened and the motor car would not +have been invented until 2026, which would have meant that all the oil +could have been used for lamps, thus saving the electric light bulb and +the whale, and nobody would have caught Moby Dick or Billy Budd. + -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" +% +All men are mortal. Socrates was mortal. Therefore, all men are Socrates. + -- Woody Allen +% +All of the people in my building are insane. The guy above me designs +synthetic hairballs for ceramic cats. The lady across the hall tried to +rob a department store... with a pricing gun... She said, "Give me all +of the money in the vault, or I'm marking down everything in the store." + -- Steven Wright +% +And now for something completely different. +% +And now for something completely the same. +% + "Are you sure you're not an encyclopedia salesman?" + No, Ma'am. Just a burglar, come to ransack the flat." + -- Monty Python +% +As the poet said, "Only God can make a tree" -- probably because it's +so hard to figure out how to get the bark on. + -- Woody Allen +% +Being Ymor's right-hand man was like being gently flogged to death with +scented bootlaces. + -- Terry Pratchett, "The Colour of Magic" +% +Bernard Shaw is an excellent man; he has not an enemy in the world, and +none of his friends like him either. + -- Oscar Wilde +% +"Boy, life takes a long time to live." + -- Steven Wright +% +Bozo is the Brotherhood of Zips and Others. Bozos are people who band +together for fun and profit. They have no jobs. Anybody who goes on a +tour is a Bozo. Why does a Bozo cross the street? Because there's a Bozo +on the other side. It comes from the phrase vos otros, meaning others. +They're the huge, fat, middle waist. The archetype is an Irish drunk +clown with red hair and nose, and pale skin. Fields, William Bendix. +Everybody tends to drift toward Bozoness. It has Oz in it. They mean +well. They're straight-looking except they've got inflatable shoes. They +like their comforts. The Bozos have learned to enjoy their free time, +which is all the time. + -- Firesign Theatre, "If Bees Lived Inside Your Head" +% +But I always fired into the nearest hill or, failing that, into blackness. +I meant no harm; I just liked the explosions. And I was careful never to +kill more than I could eat. + -- Raoul Duke +% +"But I don't like Spam!!!!" +% + "But I don't want to go on the cart..." + "Oh, don't be such a baby!" + "But I'm feeling much better..." + "No you're not... in a moment you'll be stone dead!" + -- Monty Python, "The Holy Grail" +% +Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to +point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very +fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are +often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people +from point B are so keen to get there and what's so great about point B +that so many people from point A are so keen to get _____there. They often +wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell +they wanted to be. + -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" +% +Comedy, like Medicine, was never meant to be practiced by the general public. +% +Death didn't answer. He was looking at Spold in the same way as a dog looks +at a bone, only in this case things were more or less the other way around. + -- Terry Pratchett, "The Colour of Magic" +% +Decorate your home. It gives the illusion that your life is more +interesting than it really is. + -- C. Schulz +% +Do you think that when they asked George Washington for ID that he +just whipped out a quarter? + -- Steven Wright +% +"Don't come back until you have him", the Tick-Tock Man said quietly, +sincerely, extremely dangerously. + +They used dogs. They used probes. They used cardio plate crossoffs. +They used teepers. They used bribery. They used stick tites. They used +intimidation. They used torment. They used torture. They used finks. +They used cops. They used search and seizure. They used fallaron. They +used betterment incentives. They used finger prints. They used the +bertillion system. They used cunning. They used guile. They used treachery. +They used Raoul-Mitgong but he wasn't much help. They used applied physics. +They used techniques of criminology. And what the hell, they caught him. + -- Harlan Ellison, "Repent, Harlequin, said the Tick-Tock Man" +% +Don't take life so serious, son, it ain't nohow permanent. + -- Walt Kelly +% +Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow +in Australia. + -- Charles Schulz +% +Early to rise, early to bed, makes a man healthy, wealthy and dead. + -- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic" +% +Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it. + -- Woody Allen +% +Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean, where's it going to end? + -- Tom Stoppard +% +Ever since prehistoric times, wise men have tried to understand what, +exactly, make people laugh. That's why they were called "wise men." All the +other prehistoric people were out puncturing each other with spears, and the +wise men were back in the cave saying: "How about: Would you please take my +wife? No. How about: Here is my wife, please take her right now. No How +about: Would you like to take something? My wife is available. No. How +about ..." + -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny" +% +Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the +Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. +Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an +utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life +forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches +are a pretty neat idea ... + -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" +% +Faster, faster, you fool, you fool! + -- Bill Cosby +% +First, a few words about tools. + +Basically, a tool is an object that enables you to take advantage of the +laws of physics and mechanics in such a way that you can seriously injure +yourself. Today, people tend to take tools for granted. If you're ever +walking down the street and you notice some people who look particularly +smug, the odds are that they are taking tools for granted. If I were you, +I'd walk right up and smack them in the face. + -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw" +% +For my birthday I got a humidifier and a de-humidifier... I put them in +the same room and let them fight it out. + -- Steven Wright +% +From the moment I picked your book up until I put it down I was convulsed +with laughter. Some day I intend reading it. + -- Groucho Marx, from "The Book of Insults" +% +God is a comic playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh. +% +He asked me if I knew what time it was -- I said yes, but not right now. + -- Steven Wright +% +"Here's something to think about: How come you never see a headline like +`Psychic Wins Lottery'?" + -- Jay Leno +% +Hey, what do you expect from a culture that *drives* on *parkways* and +*parks* on *driveways*? + -- Gallagher +% +High Priest: Armaments Chapter One, verses nine through twenty-seven: +Bro. Maynard: And Saint Attila raised the Holy Hand Grenade up on high + saying, "Oh Lord, Bless us this Holy Hand Grenade, and with it + smash our enemies to tiny bits." And the Lord did grin, and the + people did feast upon the lambs, and stoats, and orangutans, and + breakfast cereals, and lima bean- +High Priest: Skip a bit, brother. +Bro. Maynard: And then the Lord spake, saying: "First, shalt thou take + out the holy pin. Then shalt thou count to three. No more, no less. + *Three* shall be the number of the counting, and the number of the + counting shall be three. *Four* shalt thou not count, and neither + count thou two, excepting that thou then goest on to three. Five is + RIGHT OUT. Once the number three, being the third number be reached, + then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade towards thy foe, who, being + naughty in my sight, shall snuff it. Amen. +All: Amen. + -- Monty Python, "The Holy Hand Grenade" +% +"Humor is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse." + -- William Gilbert +% +Humorists always sit at the children's table. + -- Woody Allen +% +I am a conscientious man, when I throw rocks at seabirds I leave no tern +unstoned. + -- Ogden Nash, "Everybody's Mind to Me a Kingdom Is" +% +I am getting into abstract painting. Real abstract -- no brush, no canvas, +I just think about it. I just went to an art museum where all of the art +was done by children. All the paintings were hung on refrigerators. + -- Steven Wright +% +I am two with nature. + -- Woody Allen +% +I argue very well. Ask any of my remaining friends. I can win an argument on +any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at +parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me. + -- Dave Barry +% + "I assure you the thought never even crossed my mind, lord." + "Indeed? Then if I were you I'd sue my face for slander." + -- Terry Pratchett, "The Colour of Magic" +% +I base my fashion taste on what doesn't itch. + -- Gilda Radner +% +I bought some used paint. It was in the shape of a house. + -- Steven Wright +% +I cannot overemphasize the importance of good grammar. + +What a crock. I could easily overemphasize the importance of good +grammar. For example, I could say: "Bad grammar is the leading cause +of slow, painful death in North America," or "Without good grammar, the +United States would have lost World War II." + -- Dave Barry, "An Utterly Absurd Look at Grammar" +% +"I changed my headlights the other day. I put in strobe lights instead! Now +when I drive at night, it looks like everyone else is standing still ..." + -- Steven Wright +% +I could dance with you till the cows come home. On second thought, I'd rather +dance with the cows till you come home. + -- Groucho Marx +% +I don't deserve this award, but I have arthritis and I don't deserve that +either. + -- Jack Benny +% +I don't get no respect. +% +I don't kill flies, but I like to mess with their minds. I hold them above +globes. They freak out and yell "Whooa, I'm *way* too high." + -- Bruce Baum +% +I don't want to live on in my work, I want to live on in my apartment. + -- Woody Allen +% +I finally went to the eye doctor. I got contacts. I only need them to +read, so I got flip-ups. + -- Steven Wright +% +"I got into an elevator at work and this man followed in after me... I +pushed '1' and he just stood there... I said 'Hi, where you going?' He +said, 'Phoenix.' So I pushed Phoenix. A few seconds later the doors +opened, two tumbleweeds blew in... we were in downtown Phoenix. I looked +at him and said 'You know, you're the kind of guy I want to hang around +with.' We got into his car and drove out to his shack in the desert. +Then the phone rang. He said 'You get it.' I picked it up and said +'Hello?'... the other side said 'Is this Steven Wright?'... I said 'Yes...' +The guy said 'Hi, I'm Mr. Jones, the student loan director from your bank... +It seems you have missed your last 17 payments, and the university you +attended said that they received none of the $17,000 we loaned you... we +would just like to know what happened to the money?' I said, 'Mr. Jones, +I'll give it to you straight. I gave all of the money to my friend Slick, +and with it he built a nuclear weapon... and I would appreciate it if you never +called me again." + -- Steven Wright +% +I got my driver's license photo taken out of focus on purpose. Now +when I get pulled over the cop looks at it (moving it nearer and +farther, trying to see it clearly)... and says, "Here, you can go." + -- Steven Wright +% +I got this powdered water -- now I don't know what to add. + -- Steven Wright +% +I got tired of listening to the recording on the phone at the movie +theater. So I bought the album. I got kicked out of a theater the +other day for bringing my own food in. I argued that the concession +stand prices were outrageous. Besides, I hadn't had a barbecue in a +long time. I went to the theater and the sign said adults $5 children +$2.50. I told them I wanted 2 boys and a girl. I once took a cab to +a drive-in movie. The movie cost me $95. + -- Steven Wright +% +I had no shoes and I pitied myself. Then I met a man who had no feet, +so I took his shoes. + -- Dave Barry +% +I hate it when my foot falls asleep during the day cause that means +it's going to be up all night. + -- Steven Wright +% +I have a box of telephone rings under my bed. Whenever I get lonely, I +open it up a little bit, and I get a phone call. One day I dropped the +box all over the floor. The phone wouldn't stop ringing. I had to get +it disconnected. So I got a new phone. I didn't have much money, so I +had to get an irregular. It doesn't have a five. I ran into a friend +of mine on the street the other day. He said why don't you give me a +call. I told him I can't call everybody I want to anymore, my phone +doesn't have a five. He asked how long had it been that way. I said I +didn't know -- my calendar doesn't have any sevens. + -- Steven Wright +% +I have a dog; I named him Stay. So when I'd go to call him, I'd say, "Here, +Stay, here..." but he got wise to that. Now when I call him he ignores me +and just keeps on typing. + -- Steven Wright +% +I have a friend whose a billionaire. He invented Cliff's notes. When +I asked him how he got such a great idea he said, "Well first I... +I just... to make a long story short..." + -- Steven Wright +% +I have a hobby. I have the world's largest collection of sea shells. I keep +it scattered on beaches all over the world. Maybe you've seen some of it. + -- Steven Wright +% +I have a map of the United States. It's actual size. I spent last summer +folding it. People ask me where I live, and I say, "E6". + -- Steven Wright +% +I have a rock garden. Last week three of them died. + -- Richard Diran +% +I have a switch in my apartment that doesn't do anything. Every once +in a while I turn it on and off. On and off. On and off. One day I +got a call from a woman in France who said "Cut it out!" + -- Steven Wright +% +I have an existential map. It has "You are here" written all over it. + -- Steven Wright +% +I just got out of the hospital after a speed reading accident. +I hit a bookmark. + -- Steven Wright +% +I know the answer! The answer lies within the heart of all mankind! +The answer is twelve? I think I'm in the wrong building. + -- Charles Schulz +% +I look at life as being cruise director on the Titanic. I may not get +there, but I'm going first class. + -- Art Buchwald +% +"I love Saturday morning cartoons, what classic humour! This is what +entertainment is all about ... Idiots, explosives and falling anvils." + -- Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson +% +I met my latest girl friend in a department store. She was looking at +clothes, and I was putting Slinkys on the escalators. + -- Steven Wright +% +I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception. + -- Groucho Marx +% +I poured spot remover on my dog. Now he's gone. + -- Steven Wright +% +I put contact lenses in my dog's eyes. They had little pictures of cats +on them. Then I took one out and he ran around in circles. + -- Steven Wright +% +I put instant coffee in a microwave and almost went back in time. + -- Steven Wright +% + "I said I hope it is a good party," said Galder, loudly. + "AT THE MOMENT IT IS," said Death levelly. "I THINK IT MIGHT GO +DOWNHILL VERY QUICKLY AT MIDNIGHT." + "Why?" + "THAT'S WHEN THEY THINK I'LL BE TAKING MY MASK OFF." + -- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic" +% +I saw a subliminal advertising executive, but only for a second. + -- Steven Wright +% +I should have been a country-western singer. After all, I'm older than +most western countries. + -- George Burns +% +I sold my memoirs of my love life to Parker Brothers -- they're going +to make a game out of it. + -- Woody Allen +% +I stayed up all night playing poker with tarot cards. I got a full +house and four people died. + -- Steven Wright +% +I suggest you locate your hot tub outside your house, so it won't do too +much damage if it catches fire or explodes. First you decide which +direction your hot tub should face for maximum solar energy. After much +trial and error, I have found that the best direction for a hot tub to face +is up. + -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw" +% +I tell ya, gambling never agreed with me. Last week I went to the track +and they shot my horse with the opening gun. + +Well, just last week I was at a Chinese restaurant and when I opened my +fortune cookie I found the guy's check sitting at the next table. I said, +"Hey, buddy, I got your check", he said, "Thanks." + -- Rodney Dangerfield +% +I think we're all Bozos on this bus. + -- Firesign Theatre +% +I thought there was something fishy about the butler. Probably a Pisces, +working for scale. + -- Firesign Theatre, "The Further Adventures of Nick Danger" +% +I took a course in speed reading and was able to read War and Peace in +twenty minutes. + +It's about Russia. + -- Woody Allen +% +I turned my air conditioner the other way around, and it got cold out. +The weatherman said "I don't understand it. I was supposed to be 80 +degrees today," and I said "Oops." + +In my house on the ceilings I have paintings of the rooms above... so +I never have to go upstairs. + +I just bought a microwave fireplace... You can spend an evening in +front of it in only eight minutes. + -- Steven Wright +% +I used to live in a house by the freeway. When I went anywhere, I had +to be going 65 MPH by the end of my driveway. + +I replaced the headlights in my car with strobe lights. Now it looks +like I'm the only one moving. + +I was pulled over for speeding today. The officer said, "Don't you know +the speed limit is 55 miles an hour?" And I said, "Yes, but I wasn't going +to be out that long." + +I put a new engine in my car, but didn't take the old one out. Now +my car goes 500 miles an hour. + -- Steven Wright +% +I used to work in a fire hydrant factory. You couldn't park anywhere near +the place. + -- Steven Wright +% +I was at this restaurant. The sign said "Breakfast Anytime." So I +ordered French Toast in the Rennaissance. + -- Steven Wright +% +"I was drunk last night, crawled home across the lawn. By accident I +put the car key in the door lock. The house started up. So I figured +what the hell, and drove it around the block a few times. I thought I +should go park it in the middle of the freeway and yell at everyone to +get off my driveway." + -- Steven Wright +% +I was in a bar and I walked up to a beautiful woman and said, "Do you live +around here often?" She said, "You're wearing two different-color socks." +I said, "Yes, but to me they're the same because I go by thickness." +She said, "How do you feel?" And I said, "You know when you're sitting on a +chair and you lean back so you're just on two legs and you lean too far so +you almost fall over but at the last second you catch yourself? I feel like +that all the time..." + -- Steven Wright, "Gentlemen's Quarterly" +% +I was in Vegas last week. I was at the roulette table, having a lengthy +argument about what I considered an Odd number. + -- Steven Wright +% +I was the best I ever had. + -- Woody Allen +% +"I went into a general store, and they wouldn't sell me anything specific". + -- Steven Wright +% +"I went to a job interview the other day, the guy asked me if I had any +questions , I said yes, just one, if you're in a car traveling at the +speed of light and you turn your headlights on, does anything happen? + +He said he couldn't answer that, I told him sorry, but I couldn't work +for him then. + -- Steven Wright +% +"I went to the museum where they had all the heads and arms from the +statues that are in all the other museums." + -- Steven Wright +% +I woke up this morning and discovered that everything in my apartment +had been stolen and replaced with an exact replica. I told my roommate, +"Isn't this amazing? Everything in the apartment has been stolen and +replaced with an exact replica." He said, "Do I know you?" + -- Steven Wright +% +I worked in a health food store once. A guy came in and asked me, +"If I melt dry ice, can I take a bath without getting wet?" + -- Steven Wright +% +I'd horsewhip you if I had a horse. + -- Groucho Marx +% +I'D LIKE TO BE BURIED INDIAN-STYLE, where they put you up on a high rack, +above the ground. That way, you could get hit by meteorites and not even +feel it. + -- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988. +% +I'd never join any club that would have the likes of me as a member. + -- Groucho Marx +% +I'll be comfortable on the couch. Famous last words. + -- Lenny Bruce +% +I'm going to Boston to see my doctor. He's a very sick man. + -- Fred Allen +% +I'm going to give my psychoanalyst one more year, then I'm going to Lourdes. + -- Woody Allen +% +I'm going to live forever, or die trying! + -- Spider Robinson +% +I'm not afraid of death -- I just don't want to be there when it happens. + -- Woody Allen +% +I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it. + -- Groucho Marx +% +If God had wanted us to be concerned for the plight of the toads, he would +have made them cute and furry. + -- Dave Barry +% +If only Dionysus were alive! Where would he eat? + -- Woody Allen +% +If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit +in my name at a Swiss bank. + -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers" +% +If you live to the age of a hundred you have it made because very few +people die past the age of a hundred. + -- George Burns +% +If you throw a New Year's Party, the worst thing that you can do would be +to throw the kind of party where your guests wake up today, and call you to +say they had a nice time. Now you'll be be expected to throw another party +next year. + What you should do is throw the kind of party where your guest wake +up several days from now and call their lawyers to find out if they've been +indicted for anything. You want your guests to be so anxious to avoid a +recurrence of your party that they immediately start planning parties of their +own, a year in advance, just to prevent you from having another one ... + If your party is successful, the police will knock on your door, +unless your party is very successful in which case they will lob tear gas +through your living room window. As host, your job is to make sure that +they don't arrest anybody. Or if they're dead set on arresting someone, +your job is to make sure it isn't you ... + -- Dave Barry +% +If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans. + -- Woody Allen +% +If you've done six impossible things before breakfast, why not round it +off with dinner at Milliway's, the restaurant at the end of the universe? + -- Douglas Adams, "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" +% +In America today ... we have Woody Allen, whose humor has become so +sophisticated that nobody gets it any more except Mia Farrow. All those who +think Mia Farrow should go back to making movies where the devil gets her +pregnant and Woody Allen should go back to dressing up as a human sperm, +please raise your hands. Thank you. + -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny" +% +In like a dimwit, out like a light. + -- Pogo +% +Is it weird in here, or is it just me? + -- Steven Wright +% +It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what +they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed +that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so +much -- the wheel, New York, wars and so on -- whilst all the dolphins +had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But +conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more +intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons. + +Curiously enough, the dolphins had long known of the impending +destruction of the of the planet Earth and had made many attempts to +alert mankind to the danger; but most of their communications were +misinterpreted ... + -- Douglas Admas "The Hitchhikers' Guide To The Galaxy" +% +It is impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry a tune. + -- Woody Allen +% +It isn't necessary to have relatives in Kansas City in order to be +unhappy. + -- Groucho Marx +% +It looked like something resembling white marble, which was +probably what it was: something resembling white marble. + -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" +% +It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to have to paint it. + -- Steven Wright +% +It's hard to get ivory in Africa, but in Alabama the Tuscaloosa. + -- Groucho Marx +% +It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens. + -- Woody Allen +% +Last night the power went out. Good thing my camera had a flash.... +The neighbors thought it was lightning in my house, so they called the cops. + -- Steven Wright +% +Last year we drove across the country... We switched on the driving... +every half mile. We had one cassette tape to listen to on the entire trip. +I don't remember what it was. + -- Steven Wright +% +Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. + -- Woody Allen, "Annie Hall" +% +Life is wasted on the living. + -- The Restaurant at the Edge of the Universe. +% +Like you, I am frequently haunted by profound questions related to man's +place in the Scheme of Things. Here are just a few: + + Q -- Is there life after death? + A -- Definitely. I speak from personal experience here. On New +Year's Eve, 1970, I drank a full pitcher of a drink called "Black Russian", +then crawled out on the lawn and died within a matter of minutes, which was +fine with me because I had come to realize that if I had lived I would have +spent the rest of my life in the grip of the most excruciatingly painful +headache. Thanks to the miracle of modern orange juice, I was brought back +to life several days later, but in the interim I was definitely dead. I +guess my main impression of the afterlife is that it isn't so bad as long +as you keep the television turned down and don't try to eat any solid foods. + -- Dave Barry +% +Man 1: Ask me the what the most important thing about telling a good joke is. + +Man 2: OK, what is the most impo -- + +Man 1: ______TIMING! +% + "Many have seen Topaxci, God of the Red Mushroom, and they earn the +name of shaman," he said. Some have seen Skelde, spirit of the smoke, and +they are called sorcerers. A few have been privileged to see Umcherrel, the +soul of the forest, and they are known as spirit masters. But none have +seen a box with hundreds of legs that looked at them without eyes, and they +are known as idio--" + The interruption was caused by a sudden screaming noise and a flurry +of snow and sparks that blew the fire across the dark hut; there was a brief +blurred vision and then the opposite wall was blasted aside and the +apparition vanished. + There was a long silence. Then a slightly shorter silence. Then +the old shaman said carefully, "You didn't just see two men go through +upside down on a broomstick, shouting and screaming at each other, did you?" + The boy looked at him levelly. "Certainly not," he said. + The old man heaved a sigh of relief. "Thank goodness for that," he +said. "Neither did I." + -- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic" +% +Many years ago in a period commonly know as Next Friday Afternoon, +there lived a King who was very Gloomy on Tuesday mornings because he +was so Sad thinking about how Unhappy he had been on Monday and how +completely Mournful he would be on Wednesday.... + -- Walt Kelly +% +My brother sent me a postcard the other day with this big satellite photo +of the entire earth on it. On the back it said: "Wish you were here". + -- Steven Wright +% +My friend has a baby. I'm writing down all the noises he makes so +later I can ask him what he meant. + -- Steven Wright +% + My friends, I am here to tell you of the wonderous continent known as +Africa. Well we left New York drunk and early on the morning of February 31. +We were 15 days on the water, and 3 on the boat when we finally arrived in +Africa. Upon our arrival we immediately set up a rigorous schedule: Up at +6:00, breakfast, and back in bed by 7:00. Pretty soon we were back in bed by +6:30. Now Africa is full of big game. The first day I shot two bucks. That +was the biggest game we had. Africa is primerally inhabited by Elks, Moose +and Knights of Pithiests. + The elks live up in the mountains and come down once a year for their +annual conventions. And you should see them gathered around the water hole, +which they leave immediately when they discover it's full of water. They +weren't looking for a water hole. They were looking for an alck hole. + One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas, how he got in my +pajamas, I don't know. Then we tried to remove the tusks. That's a tough +word to say, tusks. As I said we tried to remove the tusks, but they were +imbedded so firmly we couldn't get them out. But in Alabama the Tuscaloosa, +but that is totally irrelephant to what I was saying. + We took some pictures of the native girls, but they weren't developed. +So we're going back in a few years... + -- Julius H. Marx [Groucho] +% +Nietzsche says that we will live the same life, over and over again. +God -- I'll have to sit through the Ice Capades again. + -- Woody Allen, "Hannah and Her Sisters" +% +Nirvana? That's the place where the powers that be and their friends hang out. + -- Zonker Harris +% +NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION! +% +Now is the time for all good men to come to. + -- Walt Kelly +% + Obviously the subject of death was in the air, but more as something +to be avoided than harped upon. + Possibly the horror that Zaphod experienced at the prospect of being +reunited with his deceased relatives led on to the thought that they might +just feel the same way about him and, what's more, be able to do something +about helping to postpone this reunion. + -- Douglas Adams +% +One doesn't have a sense of humor. It has you. + -- Larry Gelbart +% +Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog it's too +dark to read. + -- Groucho Marx +% +Puns are little "plays on words" that a certain breed of person loves to +spring on you and then look at you in a certain self-satisfied way to +indicate that he thinks that you must think that he is by far the cleverest +person on Earth now that Benjamin Franklin is dead, when in fact what you +are thinking is that if this person ever ends up in a lifeboat, the other +passengers will hurl him overboard by the end of the first day even if they +have plenty of food and water. + -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny" +% +"Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time." + -- Steven Wright +% +Rincewind formed a mental picture of some strange entity living in a castle +made of teeth. It was the kind of mental picture you tried to forget. +Unsuccessfully. + -- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic" +% +Romeo wasn't bilked in a day. + -- Walt Kelly, "Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Years With Pogo" +% +Sharks are as tough as those football fans who take their shirts off +during games in Chicago in January, only more intelligent. + -- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every + Teen Should Know" +% +Showing up is 80% of life. + -- Woody Allen +% +Some of you ... may have decided that, this year, you're going to celebrate +it the old-fashioned way, with your family sitting around stringing +cranberries and exchanging humble, handmade gifts, like on "The Waltons". +Well, you can forget it. If everybody pulled that kind of subversive stunt, +the economy would collapse overnight. The government would have to +intervene: it would form a cabinet-level Department of Holiday Gift-Giving, +which would spend billions and billions of tax dollars to buy Barbie dolls +and electronic games, which it would drop on the populace from Air Force +jets, killing and maiming thousands. So, for the good of the nation, you +should go along with the Holiday Program. This means you should get a large +sum of money and go to a mall. + -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide" +% +SOMETIMES THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD is so overwhelming, I just want to throw +back my head and gargle. Just gargle and gargle and I don't care who hears +me because I am beautiful. + -- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988. +% +Thank goodness modern convenience is a thing of the remote future. + -- Pogo, by Walt Kelly +% +The basic idea behind malls is that they are more convenient than cities. +Cities contain streets, which are dangerous and crowded and difficult to +park in. Malls, on the other hand, have parking lots, which are also +dangerous and crowded and difficult to park in, but -- here is the big +difference -- in mall parking lots, THERE ARE NO RULES. You're allowed to +do anything. You can drive as fast as you want in any direction you want. +I was once driving in a mall parking lot when my car was struck by a pickup +truck being driven backward by a squat man with a tattoo that said "Charlie" +on his forearm, who got out and explained to me, in great detail, why the +accident was my fault, his reasoning being that he was violent and muscular, +whereas I was neither. This kind of reasoning is legally valid in mall +parking lots. + -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide" +% +The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep. + -- W. C. Fields +% +The best way to make a fire with two sticks is to make sure one of them +is a match. + -- Will Rogers +% +The buffalo isn't as dangerous as everyone makes him out to be. +Statistics prove that in the United States more Americans are killed in +automobile accidents than are killed by buffalo. + -- Art Buchwald +% +The grand leap of the whale up the Fall of Niagara is esteemed, by all +who have seen it, as one of the finest spectacles in nature. + -- Benjamin Franklin. +% + The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on +the subject of towels. + Most importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For +some reason, if a non-hitchhiker discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel +with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a +toothbrush, washcloth, flask, gnat spray, space suit, etc., etc. Furthermore, +the non-hitchhiker will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or +a dozen other items that he may have "lost". After all, any man who can +hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, struggle against terrible odds, +win through and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be +reckoned with. + -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" +% +The other day I... uh, no, that wasn't me. + -- Steven Wright +% + "The pyramid is opening!" + "Which one?" + "The one with the ever-widening hole in it!" + -- Firesign Theater, "How Can You Be In Two Places At + Once When You're Not Anywhere At All" +% + The Three Major Kind of Tools + +* Tools for hittings things to make them loose or to tighten them up or +jar their many complex, sophisticated electrical parts in such a +manner that they function perfectly. (These are your hammers, maces, +bludgeons, and truncheons.) + +* Tools that, if dropped properly, can penetrate your foot. (Awls) + +* Tools that nobody should ever use because the potential danger is far +greater than the value of any project that could possibly result. +(Power saws, power drills, power staplers, any kind of tool that uses +any kind of power more advanced than flashlight batteries.) + -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw" +% +There comes a time in the affairs of a man when he has to take the bull +by the tail and face the situation. + -- W.C. Fields +% +There's no easy quick way out, we're gonna have to live through our +whole lives, win, lose, or draw. + -- Walt Kelly +% +There's so much plastic in this culture that vinyl leopard skin is +becoming an endangered synthetic. + -- Lily Tomlin +% +Things will get better despite our efforts to improve them. + -- Will Rogers +% +This land is full of trousers! +this land is full of mausers! + And pussycats to eat them when the sun goes down! + -- Firesign Theater +% +Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so. + -- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy +% +TOO BAD YOU CAN'T BUY a voodoo globe so that you could make the earth spin +real fast and freak everybody out. + -- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988. +% +Twenty Percent of Zero is Better than Nothing. + -- Walt Kelly +% +We have met the enemy, and he is us. + -- Walt Kelly +% +We is confronted with insurmountable opportunities. + -- Walt Kelly, "Pogo" +% +What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I +definitely overpaid for my carpet. + -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers" +% +What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream? Or what's worse, +what if only that fat guy in the third row exists? + -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers" +% +What is comedy? Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making +them puke. + -- Steve Martin +% + "What shall we do?" said Twoflower. + "Panic?" said Rincewind hopefully. He always held that panic was +the best means of survival; back in the olden days, his theory went, people +faced with hungry sabretoothed tigers could be divided very simply into +those who panicked and those who stood there saying "What a magnificent +brute!" and "Here, pussy." + -- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic" +% +What's another word for "thesaurus"? + -- Steven Wright +% +When I was crossing the border into Canada, they asked if +I had any firearms with me. I said, "Well, what do you need?" + -- Steven Wright +% +When I was little, I went into a pet shop and they asked how big I'd get. + -- Rodney Dangerfield +% +When I woke up this morning, my girlfriend asked if I had slept well. +I said, "No, I made a few mistakes." + -- Steven Wright +% +Where humor is concerned there are no standards -- no one can say what +is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will. + -- John Kenneth Galbraith +% +Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song? + -- Steven Wright +% +Will Rogers never met you. +% +Winny and I lived in a house that ran on static electricity... +If you wanted to run the blender, you had to rub balloons on your +head... if you wanted to cook, you had to pull off a sweater real quick... + -- Steven Wright +% +Would you *______really* want to get on a non-stop flight? + -- George Carlin +% +You can't have everything. Where would you put it? + -- Steven Wright +% + "You know, it's at times like this when I'm trapped in a Vogon +airlock with a man from Betelgeuse and about to die of asphyxiation in +deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me +when I was young!" + "Why, what did she tell you?" + "I don't know, I didn't listen." + -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" +% +You may already be a loser. + -- Form letter received by Rodney Dangerfield. +% +You'd better beat it. You can leave in a taxi. If you can't get a taxi, you +can leave in a huff. If that's too soon, you can leave in a minute and a huff. + -- Groucho Marx +% +You're a good example of why some animals eat their young. + -- Jim Samuels to a heckler + +Ah, yes. I remember my first beer. + -- Steve Martin to a heckler + +When your IQ rises to 28, sell. + -- Professor Irwin Corey to a heckler +% +FORTUNE'S RANDOM QUOTES FROM MATCH GAME 75, NO. 1: + + Gene Rayburn: We'd like to close with a thought for the day, friends --- + something ... + + Someone: (interrupting) Uh-oh + + Gene Rayburn: ...pithy, full of wisdom --- and we call on the Poet + Laureate, Lipsy Russell + +Lipsy Russell: The young people are very different today, and there is + one sure way to know: Kids to use to ask where they came + from, now they'll tell you where you can go. + + All: (laughter) +% diff --git a/lib/resources/fortune_mod/literature.txt b/lib/resources/fortune_mod/literature.txt new file mode 100644 index 000000000..02fbd9bac --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/resources/fortune_mod/literature.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1324 @@ +A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining +and wants it back the minute it begins to rain. + -- Mark Twain +% +A classic is something that everyone wants to have read +and nobody wants to read. + -- Mark Twain, "The Disappearance of Literature" +% +A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse! + -- Wm. Shakespeare, "Henry VI" +% +A hundred years from now it is very likely that [of Twain's works] "The +Jumping Frog" alone will be remembered. + -- Harry Thurston Peck (Editor of "The Bookman"), January 1901. +% +A is for Apple. + -- Hester Pryne +% +A kind of Batman of contemporary letters. + -- Philip Larkin on Anthony Burgess +% +A light wife doth make a heavy husband. + -- Wm. Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice" +% + A man was reading The Canterbury Tales one Saturday morning, when his +wife asked "What have you got there?" Replied he, "Just my cup and Chaucer." +% +... A solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he +was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity. + -- Mark Twain +% +A Tale of Two Cities LITE(tm) + -- by Charles Dickens + + A lawyer who looks like a French Nobleman is executed in his place. + +The Metamorphosis LITE(tm) + -- by Franz Kafka + + A man turns into a bug and his family gets annoyed. + +Lord of the Rings LITE(tm) + -- by J.R.R. Tolkien + + Some guys take a long vacation to throw a ring into a volcano. + +Hamlet LITE(tm) + -- by Wm. Shakespeare + + A college student on vacation with family problems, a screwy + girl-friend and a mother who won't act her age. +% +A Tale of Two Cities LITE(tm) + -- by Charles Dickens + + A man in love with a girl who loves another man who looks just + like him has his head chopped off in France because of a mean + lady who knits. + +Crime and Punishment LITE(tm) + -- by Fyodor Dostoevski + + A man sends a nasty letter to a pawnbroker, but later + feels guilty and apologizes. + +The Odyssey LITE(tm) + -- by Homer + + After working late, a valiant warrior gets lost on his way home. +% +After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations. + -- H.L. Mencken, on Shakespeare +% +Alas, how love can trifle with itself! + -- William Shakespeare, "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" +% +All generalizations are false, including this one. + -- Mark Twain +% +All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that +makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and +an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead. + -- Samuel Beckett +% +All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"--a strange complaint to come from +the mouths of people who have had to live. + -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" +% +"... all the modern inconveniences ..." + -- Mark Twain +% +All things that are, are with more spirit chased than enjoyed. + -- Shakespeare, "Merchant of Venice" +% +Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest. + -- Mark Twain +% +Always the dullness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits. + -- William Shakespeare, "As You Like It" +% +"... an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite often +picturesque liar." + -- Mark Twain +% +An honest tale speeds best being plainly told. + -- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI" +% +And do you think (fop that I am) that I could be the Scarlet Pumpernickel? +% +Anyone who has had a bull by the tail knows five or six more things +than someone who hasn't. + -- Mark Twain +% +April 1 + +This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three +hundred and sixty-four. + -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" +% +As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport. + -- Shakespeare, "King Lear" +% +As to the Adjective: when in doubt, strike it out. + -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" +% +At once it struck me what quality went to form a man of achievement, +especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously +-- I mean negative capability, that is, when a man is capable of being +in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching +after fact and reason. + -- John Keats +% +AWAKE! FEAR! FIRE! FOES! AWAKE! + FEAR! FIRE! FOES! + AWAKE! AWAKE! + -- J. R. R. Tolkien +% +Awash with unfocused desire, Everett twisted the lobe of his one remaining +ear and felt the presence of somebody else behind him, which caused terror +to push through his nervous system like a flash flood roaring down the +mid-fork of the Feather River before the completion of the Oroville Dam +in 1959. + -- Grand Panjandrum's Special Award, 1984 Bulwer-Lytton + bad fiction contest. +% +Be careful of reading health books, you might die of a misprint. + -- Mark Twain +% +Behold, the fool saith, "Put not all thine eggs in the one basket"--which is +but a manner of saying, "Scatter your money and your attention;" but the wise +man saith, "Put all your eggs in the one basket and--WATCH THAT BASKET." + -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" +% +Big book, big bore. + -- Callimachus +% +But, for my own part, it was Greek to me. + -- William Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar" +% +By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean. + -- Mark Twain +% +Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities. + -- Mark Twain +% +Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. + -- Mark Twain +% +Condense soup, not books! +% +Conscience doth make cowards of us all. + -- Shakespeare +% +Consider well the proportions of things. It is better to be a young June-bug +than an old bird of paradise. + -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" +% +Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear--not absence of fear. Except a +creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely +a loose misapplication of the word. Consider the flea!--incomparably the +bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage. +Whether you are asleep or awake he will attack you, caring nothing for the fact +that in bulk and strength you are to him as are the massed armies of the earth +to a sucking child; he lives both day and night and all days and nights in the +very lap of peril and the immediate presence of death, and yet is no more +afraid than is the man who walks the streets of a city that was threatened by +an earthquake ten centuries before. When we speak of Clive, Nelson, and Putnam +as men who "didn't know what fear was," we ought always to add the flea--and +put him at the head of the procession. + -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" +% +Delay not, Caesar. Read it instantly. + -- Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar" 3,1 + +Here is a letter, read it at your leisure. + -- Shakespeare, "Merchant of Venice" 5,1 + + [Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when + referring to I/O system services.] +% +Delores breezed along the surface of her life like a flat stone forever +skipping along smooth water, rippling reality sporadically but oblivious +to it consistently, until she finally lost momentum, sank, and due to an +overdose of flouride as a child which caused her to suffer from chronic +apathy, doomed herself to lie forever on the floor of her life as useless +as an appendix and as lonely as a five-hundred pound barbell in a +steroid-free fitness center. + -- Winning sentence, 1990 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest. +% +Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you +nothing. It was here first. + -- Mark Twain +% +"Elves and Dragons!" I says to him. "Cabbages and potatoes are better +for you and me." + -- J. R. R. Tolkien +% +English literature's performing flea. + -- Sean O'Casey on P.G. Wodehouse +% +Even the clearest and most perfect circumstantial evidence is likely to be at +fault, after all, and therefore ought to be received with great caution. Take +the case of any pencil, sharpened by any woman; if you have witnesses, you will +find she did it with a knife; but if you take simply the aspect of the pencil, +you will say that she did it with her teeth. + -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" +% +Every cloud engenders not a storm. + -- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI" +% +Every why hath a wherefore. + -- William Shakespeare, "A Comedy of Errors" +% +Extreme fear can neither fight nor fly. + -- William Shakespeare, "The Rape of Lucrece" +% +F.S. Fitzgerald to Hemingway: + "Ernest, the rich are different from us." +Hemingway: + "Yes. They have more money." +% +Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is +oblivion. + -- Mark Twain +% +Familiarity breeds contempt -- and children. + -- Mark Twain +% +Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example. + -- "Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" +% +For a light heart lives long. + -- Shakespeare, "Love's Labour's Lost" +% +For courage mounteth with occasion. + -- William Shakespeare, "King John" +% +For the fashion of Minas Tirith was such that it was built on seven levels, +each delved into a hill, and about each was set a wall, and in each wall +was a gate. + -- J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Return of the King" + + [Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when + referring to system overview.] + +% +For there are moments when one can neither think nor feel. And if one can +neither think nor feel, she thought, where is one? + -- Virginia Woolf, "To the Lighthouse" + + [Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when + referring to powerfail recovery.] +% +For years a secret shame destroyed my peace-- +I'd not read Eliot, Auden or MacNiece. +But now I think a thought that brings me hope: +Neither had Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope. + -- Justin Richardson. +% +Go not to the elves for counsel, for they will say both yes and no. + -- J.R.R. Tolkien +% +Gone With The Wind LITE(tm) + -- by Margaret Mitchell + + A woman only likes men she can't have and the South gets trashed. + +Gift of the Magi LITE(tm) + -- by O. Henry + + A husband and wife forget to register their gift preferences. + +The Old Man and the Sea LITE(tm) + -- by Ernest Hemingway + + An old man goes fishing, but doesn't have much luck. +% +Gratitude and treachery are merely the two extremities of the same procession. +You have seen all of it that is worth staying for when the band and the gaudy +officials have gone by. + -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" +% +Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you must +have somebody to divide it with. + -- Mark Twain +% +Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed +down-stairs a step at a time. + -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar +% +Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And hain't that a big +enough majority in any town? + -- Mark Twain, "Huckleberry Finn" +% +Harp not on that string. + -- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI" +% +Have a place for everything and keep the thing somewhere else; this is not +advice, it is merely custom. + -- Mark Twain +% +Having nothing, nothing can he lose. + -- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI" +% +He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his +argument. + -- William Shakespeare, "Love's Labour's Lost" +% +He hath eaten me out of house and home. + -- William Shakespeare, "Henry IV" +% +He is now rising from affluence to poverty. + -- Mark Twain +% +He jests at scars who never felt a wound. + -- Shakespeare, "Romeo and Juliet, II. 2" +% +He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom. + -- J.R.R. Tolkien +% +He that is giddy thinks the world turns round. + -- William Shakespeare, "The Taming of the Shrew" +% +He was part of my dream, of course -- but then I was part of his dream too. + -- Lewis Carroll +% +Hell is empty and all the devils are here. + -- Wm. Shakespeare, "The Tempest" +% +His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred +to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never +claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to be a god. Circum- +stances being what they were, neither admission could be of any benefit. +Silence, though, could. It was in the days of the rains that their prayers +went up, not from the fingering of knotted prayer cords or the spinning of +prayer wheels, but from the great pray-machine in the monastery of Ratri, +goddess of the Night. The high-frequency prayers were directed upward through +the atmosphere and out beyond it, passing into that golden cloud called the +Bridge of the Gods, which circles the entire world, is seen as a bronze +rainbow at night and is the place where the red sun becomes orange at midday. +Some of the monks doubted the orthodoxy of this prayer technique... + -- Roger Zelazny, "Lord of Light" +% +How apt the poor are to be proud. + -- William Shakespeare, "Twelfth-Night" +% +I do desire we may be better strangers. + -- William Shakespeare, "As You Like It" +% +I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less +than half of you half as well as you deserve. + -- J. R. R. Tolkien +% +I dote on his very absence. + -- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice" +% +I fell asleep reading a dull book, and I dreamt that I was reading on, +so I woke up from sheer boredom. +% +I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. + -- Mark Twain +% +I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a +week sometimes to make it up. + -- Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad" +% +I reverently believe that the maker who made us all makes everything in New +England, but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but I think it must be +raw apprentices in the weather-clerks factory who experiment and learn how, in +New England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted to make weather for +countries that require a good article, and will take their custom elsewhere +if they don't get it. + -- Mark Twain +% +I think we are in Rats' Alley where the dead men lost their bones. + -- T.S. Eliot +% +I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know. + -- Mark Twain +% +I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I +will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all +Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they +teach. Oh, tell me that I may sponge away the writing on this stone! + -- Charles Dickens +% +"I wonder", he said to himself, "what's in a book while it's closed. Oh, I +know it's full of letters printed on paper, but all the same, something must +be happening, because as soon as I open it, there's a whole story with people +I don't know yet and all kinds of adventures and battles." + -- Bastian B. Bux +% +I'll burn my books. + -- Christopher Marlowe +% +I've touch'd the highest point of all my greatness; +And from that full meridian of my glory +I haste now to my setting. I shall fall, +Like a bright exhalation in the evening +And no man see me more. + -- Shakespeare +% +If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would +be a merrier world. + -- J.R.R. Tolkien +% +If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use +in reading it at all. + -- Oscar Wilde +% +If two people love each other, there can be no happy end to it. + -- Ernest Hemingway +% +If you laid all of our laws end to end, there would be no end. + -- Mark Twain +% +If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. +This is the principal difference between a dog and a man. + -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" +% +If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything. + -- Mark Twain +% +In a museum in Havana, there are two skulls of Christopher Columbus, +"one when he was a boy and one when he was a man." + -- Mark Twain +% +In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come into +use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather +which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy. + -- Mark Twain +% +In Marseilles they make half the toilet soap we consume in America, but +the Marseillaise only have a vague theoretical idea of its use, which they +have obtained from books of travel. + -- Mark Twain +% +In the first place, God made idiots; this was for practice; then he made +school boards. + -- Mark Twain +% +In the plot, people came to the land; the land loved them; they worked and +struggled and had lots of children. There was a Frenchman who talked funny +and a greenhorn from England who was a fancy-pants but when it came to the +crunch he was all courage. Those novels would make you retch. + -- Canadian novelist Robertson Davies, on the generic Canadian + novel. +% +In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has +shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore ... in the Old +Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred +thousand miles long ... seven hundred and forty-two years from now the +Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long. ... There is +something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesome returns of +conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. + -- Mark Twain +% +In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of +24 hours. + -- Mark Twain, on New England weather +% +It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely +the most important. + -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Case of Identity" +% +It is a wise father that knows his own child. + -- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice" +% +It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits: +freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either. + -- Mark Twain +% +It is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition. There was once a man +who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal, complained that +there were too many prehistoric toads in it. + -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" +% +It is often the case that the man who can't tell a lie thinks he is the best +judge of one. + -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" +% +It is right that he too should have his little chronicle, his memories, +his reason, and be able to recognize the good in the bad, the bad in the +worst, and so grow gently old all down the unchanging days and die one +day like any other day, only shorter. + -- Samuel Beckett, "Malone Dies" +% +It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech. + -- Mark Twain +% +It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion +that makes horse-races. + -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" +% +Its name is Public Opinion. It is held in reverence. It settles everything. +Some think it is the voice of God. + -- Mark Twain +% +Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can read. + -- Mark Twain +% +Kiss me, Kate, we will be married o' Sunday. + -- William Shakespeare, "The Taming of the Shrew" +% +Lay on, MacDuff, and curs'd be him who first cries, "Hold, enough!". + -- Shakespeare +% +Let him choose out of my files, his projects to accomplish. + -- Shakespeare, "Coriolanus" +% +Let me take you a button-hole lower. + -- William Shakespeare, "Love's Labour's Lost" +% +Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be +sorry. + -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" +% +Like an expensive sports car, fine-tuned and well-built, Portia was sleek, +shapely, and gorgeous, her red jumpsuit moulding her body, which was as warm +as seatcovers in July, her hair as dark as new tires, her eyes flashing like +bright hubcaps, and her lips as dewy as the beads of fresh rain on the hood; +she was a woman driven -- fueled by a single accelerant -- and she needed a +man, a man who wouldn't shift from his views, a man to steer her along the +right road: a man like Alf Romeo. + -- Rachel Sheeley, winner + +The hair ball blocking the drain of the shower reminded Laura she would never +see her little dog Pritzi again. + -- Claudia Fields, runner-up + +It could have been an organically based disturbance of the brain -- perhaps a +tumor or a metabolic deficiency -- but after a thorough neurological exam it +was determined that Byron was simply a jerk. + -- Jeff Jahnke, runner-up + +Winners in the 7th Annual Bulwer-Lytton Bad Writing Contest. The contest is +named after the author of the immortal lines: "It was a dark and stormy +night." The object of the contest is to write the opening sentence of the +worst possible novel. +% +Lord, what fools these mortals be! + -- William Shakespeare, "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" +% +Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to. + -- Mark Twain +% +Many a writer seems to think he is never profound except when he can't +understand his own meaning. + -- George D. Prentice +% +Many enraged psychiatrists are inciting a weary butcher. The butcher is +weary and tired because he has cut meat and steak and lamb for hours and +weeks. He does not desire to chant about anything with raving psychiatrists, +but he sings about his gingivectomist, he dreams about a single cosmologist, +he thinks about his dog. The dog is named Herbert. + -- Racter, "The Policeman's Beard is Half-Constructed" +% +Many pages make a thick book, except for pocket Bibles which are on very +very thin paper. +% +Many pages make a thick book. +% +Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is +particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, +to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. +But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands +shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit +me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail. + -- Charles Dickens, "A Christmas Carol" +% +Must I hold a candle to my shames? + -- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice" +% + My dear People. + My dear Bagginses and Boffins, and my dear Tooks and Brandybucks, +and Grubbs, and Chubbs, and Burrowses, and Hornblowers, and Bolgers, +Bracegirdles, Goodbodies, Brockhouses and Proudfoots. Also my good +Sackville Bagginses that I welcome back at last to Bag End. Today is my +one hundred and eleventh birthday: I am eleventy-one today!" + -- J. R. R. Tolkien +% +My only love sprung from my only hate! +Too early seen unknown, and known too late! + -- William Shakespeare, "Romeo and Juliet" +% +Never laugh at live dragons. + -- Bilbo Baggins [J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Hobbit"] +% +No group of professionals meets except to conspire against the public at large. + -- Mark Twain +% +No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of +absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. +Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness +within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. +Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and +doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone +of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone. + -- Shirley Jackson, "The Haunting of Hill House" +% +No violence, gentlemen -- no violence, I beg of you! Consider the furniture! + -- Sherlock Holmes +% +Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles +as if she laid an asteroid. + -- Mark Twain +% +"Not Hercules could have knock'd out his brains, for he had none." + -- Shakespeare +% +Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits. + -- Mark Twain +% +Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits. + -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" +% +O, it is excellent +To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous +To use it like a giant. + -- Shakespeare, "Measure for Measure", II, 2 +% +October 12, the Discovery. + +It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss +it. + -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" +% +October. + +This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in. + +The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, +December, August, and February. + + -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" +% +Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive. + -- Shakespeare +% +One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has +only nine lives. + -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" +% +Patch griefs with proverbs. + -- William Shakespeare, "Much Ado About Nothing" +% +Perilous to all of us are the devices of an art deeper than we ourselves +possess. + -- Gandalf the Grey [J.R.R. Tolkien, "Lord of the Rings"] +% +Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; +persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting +to find a plot in it will be shot. By Order of the Author + -- Mark Twain, "Tom Sawyer" +% +question = ( to ) ? be : ! be; + -- Wm. Shakespeare +% +Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of +Congress. But I repeat myself. + -- Mark Twain +% +Rebellion lay in his way, and he found it. + -- William Shakespeare, "Henry IV" +% +Remark of Dr. Baldwin's concerning upstarts: We don't care to eat toadstools +that think they are truffles. + -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" +% +Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late. + -- Mark Twain +% +ROMEO: Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much. +MERCUTIO: No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide + as a church-door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve. +% +Seeing that death, a necessary end, +Will come when it will come. + -- William Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar" +% +She is not refined. She is not unrefined. She keeps a parrot. + -- Mark Twain +% +Sheriff Chameleotoptor sighed with an air of weary sadness, and then +turned to Doppelgutt and said 'The Senator must really have been on a +bender this time -- he left a party in Cleveland, Ohio, at 11:30 last +night, and they found his car this morning in the smokestack of a British +aircraft carrier in the Formosa Straits.' + -- Grand Panjandrum's Special Award, 1985 Bulwer-Lytton + bad fiction contest. +% +Small things make base men proud. + -- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI" +% +So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make an apple pie; +and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street pops its head +into the shop. "What! no soap?" So he died, and she very imprudently +married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Grand +Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top, and they all +fell to playing the game of catch as catch can, till the gunpowder ran +out at the heels of their boots. + -- Samuel Foote +% +So so is good, very good, very excellent good: +and yet it is not; it is but so so. + -- William Shakespeare, "As You Like It" +% +Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more +deadly in the long run. + -- Mark Twain +% +Something's rotten in the state of Denmark. + -- Shakespeare +% +Sometimes I wonder if I'm in my right mind. Then it passes off and I'm +as intelligent as ever. + -- Samuel Beckett, "Endgame" +% +"Speak, thou vast and venerable head," muttered Ahab, "which, though +ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, +mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, +thou has dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams has +moved amid the world's foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust, +and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate +earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful +water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or +diver never went; has slept by many a sailer's side, where sleepless mothers +would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw'st the locked lovers when +leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting +wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw'st the +murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell +into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed +on unharmed -- while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would +have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou has +seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one +syllable is thine!" + -- H. Melville, "Moby Dick" +% +Steady movement is more important than speed, much of the time. So long +as there is a regular progression of stimuli to get your mental hooks +into, there is room for lateral movement. Once this begins, its rate is +a matter of discretion. + -- Corwin, Prince of Amber +% +Stop! There was first a game of blindman's buff. Of course there was. +And I no more believe Topper was really blind than I believe he had eyes +in his boots. My opinion is, that it was a done thing between him and +Scrooge's nephew; and that the Ghost of Christmas Present knew it. The +way he went after that plump sister in the lace tucker, was an outrage +on the credulity of human nature. +% +Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind. + -- Wm. Shakespeare +% +Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, +whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through +the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush! + -- Captain Ahab, "Moby Dick" +% +Talkers are no good doers. + -- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI" +% +Tell the truth or trump--but get the trick. + -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" +% +Tempt not a desperate man. + -- William Shakespeare, "Romeo and Juliet" +% +The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power. + -- William Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar" +% +The bay-trees in our country are all wither'd +And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven; +The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth +And lean-look'd prophets whisper fearful change. +These signs forerun the death or fall of kings. + -- Wm. Shakespeare, "Richard II" +% +The better part of valor is discretion. + -- William Shakespeare, "Henry IV" +% +The bone-chilling scream split the warm summer night in two, the first +half being before the scream when it was fairly balmy and calm and +pleasant, the second half still balmy and quite pleasant for those who +hadn't heard the scream at all, but not calm or balmy or even very nice +for those who did hear the scream, discounting the little period of time +during the actual scream itself when your ears might have been hearing it +but your brain wasn't reacting yet to let you know. + -- Winning sentence, 1986 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest. +% +The Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest is held ever year at San Jose State +Univ. by Professor Scott Rice. It is held in memory of Edward George +Earle Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), a rather prolific and popular (in his +time) novelist. He is best known today for having written "The Last +Days of Pompeii." + +Whenever Snoopy starts typing his novel from the top of his doghouse, +beginning "It was a dark and stormy night..." he is borrowing from Lord +Bulwer-Lytton. This was the line that opened his novel, "Paul Clifford," +written in 1830. The full line reveals why it is so bad: + + It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents -- except + at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of + wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene + lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty + flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. +% +The camel died quite suddenly on the second day, and Selena fretted +sullenly and, buffing her already impeccable nails -- not for the first +time since the journey begain -- pondered snidely if this would dissolve +into a vignette of minor inconveniences like all the other holidays spent +with Basil. + -- Winning sentence, 1983 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest. +% +The countdown had stalled at 'T' minus 69 seconds when Desiree, the first +female ape to go up in space, winked at me slyly and pouted her thick, +rubbery lips unmistakably -- the first of many such advances during what +would prove to be the longest, and most memorable, space voyage of my +career. + -- Winning sentence, 1985 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest. +% +The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. + -- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice" +% +The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference +between a mermaid and a seal. + -- Mark Twain +% +The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the +difference between lightning and the lightning bug. + -- Mark Twain +% +The fashion wears out more apparel than the man. + -- William Shakespeare, "Much Ado About Nothing" +% +The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. + -- Wm. Shakespeare, "Henry VI", Part IV +% +The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and +enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to +lend money. + -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" +% +The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter. + -- Mark Twain +% +The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that +procession but carrying a banner. + -- Mark Twain +% +The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to put first. + -- Blaise Pascal +% +The Least Perceptive Literary Critic + The most important critic in our field of study is Lord Halifax. A +most individual judge of poetry, he once invited Alexander Pope round to +give a public reading of his latest poem. + Pope, the leading poet of his day, was greatly surprised when Lord +Halifax stopped him four or five times and said, "I beg your pardon, Mr. +Pope, but there is something in that passage that does not quite please me." + Pope was rendered speechless, as this fine critic suggested sizeable +and unwise emendations to his latest masterpiece. "Be so good as to mark +the place and consider at your leisure. I'm sure you can give it a better +turn." + After the reading, a good friend of Lord Halifax, a certain Dr. +Garth, took the stunned Pope to one side. "There is no need to touch the +lines," he said. "All you need do is leave them just as they are, call on +Lord Halifax two or three months hence, thank him for his kind observation +on those passages, and then read them to him as altered. I have known him +much longer than you have, and will be answerable for the event." + Pope took his advice, called on Lord Halifax and read the poem +exactly as it was before. His unique critical faculties had lost none of +their edge. "Ay", he commented, "now they are perfectly right. Nothing can +be better." + -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures" +% +The Least Successful Collector + Betsy Baker played a central role in the history of collecting. She +was employed as a servant in the house of John Warburton (1682-1759) who had +amassed a fine collection of 58 first edition plays, including most of the +works of Shakespeare. + One day Warburton returned home to find 55 of them charred beyond +legibility. Betsy had either burned them or used them as pie bottoms. The +remaining three folios are now in the British Museum. + The only comparable literary figure was the maid who in 1835 burned +the manuscript of the first volume of Thomas Carlyle's "The Hisory of the +French Revolution", thinking it was wastepaper. + -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures" +% +The lovely woman-child Kaa was mercilessly chained to the cruel post of +the warrior-chief Beast, with his barbarian tribe now stacking wood at +her nubile feet, when the strong clear voice of the poetic and heroic +Handsomas roared, 'Flick your Bic, crisp that chick, and you'll feel my +steel through your last meal!' + -- Winning sentence, 1984 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest. +% +The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, +Are of imagination all compact... + -- Wm. Shakespeare, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" +% +The man who sets out to carry a cat by its tail learns something that +will always be useful and which never will grow dim or doubtful. + -- Mark Twain +% +The naked truth of it is, I have no shirt. + -- William Shakespeare, "Love's Labour's Lost" +% + "...The name of the song is called 'Haddocks' Eyes'!" + "Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?" Alice said, trying to +feel interested. + "No, you don't understand," the Knight said, looking a little +vexed. "That's what the name is called. The name really is, 'The Aged +Aged Man.'" + "Then I ought to have said "That's what the song is called'?" +Alice corrected herself. + "No, you oughtn't: that's quite another thing! The song is +called 'Ways and Means': but that's only what it is called you know!" + "Well, what is the song then?" said Alice, who was by this +time completely bewildered. + "I was coming to that," the Knight said. "The song really is +"A-sitting on a Gate": and the tune's my own invention." + --Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass" +% +The notes blatted skyward as they rose over the Canada geese, feathered +rumps mooning the day, webbed appendages frantically pedaling unseen +bicycles in their search for sustenance, driven by cruel Nature's maxim, +'Ya wanna eat, ya gotta work,' and at last I knew Pittsburgh. + -- Winning sentence, 1987 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest. +% +The only people for me are the mad ones -- the ones who are mad to live, +mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, +the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn +like fabulous yellow Roman candles. + -- Jack Kerouac, "On the Road" +% +The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what +you don't like, and do what you'd rather not. + -- Mark Twain +% + The Priest's grey nimbus in a niche where he dressed discreetly. +I will not sleep here tonight. Home also I cannot go. + A voice, sweetened and sustained, called to him from the sea. +Turning the curve he waved his hand. A sleek brown head, a seal's, far +out on the water, round. Usurper. + -- James Joyce, "Ulysses" +% +The Public is merely a multiplied "me." + -- Mark Twain +% +The ripest fruit falls first. + -- William Shakespeare, "Richard II" +% +The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in Heaven. + -- Mark Twain +% +The smallest worm will turn being trodden on. + -- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI" +% +The surest protection against temptation is cowardice. + -- Mark Twain +% +The true Southern watermelon is a boon apart, and not to be mentioned with +commoner things. It is chief of the world's luxuries, king by the grace of God +over all the fruits of the earth. When one has tasted it, he knows what the +angels eat. It was not a Southern watermelon that Eve took; we know it because +she repented. + -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" +% +The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice. + -- Mark Twain +% +There are more things in heaven and earth, +Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. + -- Wm. Shakespeare, "Hamlet" +% +There are three infallible ways of pleasing an author, and the three form a +rising scale of compliment: 1, to tell him you have read one of his books; 2, +to tell him you have read all of his books; 3, to ask him to let you read the +manuscript of his forthcoming book. No. 1 admits you to his respect; No. 2 +admits you to his admiration; No. 3 carries you clear into his heart. + -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" +% +There is a great discovery still to be made in Literature: that of +paying literary men by the quantity they do NOT write. +% +There is always one thing to remember: writers are always selling somebody out. + -- Joan Didion, "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" +% +There is an old time toast which is golden for its beauty. +"When you ascend the hill of prosperity may you not meet a friend." + -- Mark Twain +% +There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by +ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance: his +character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler +animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of feeling +complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt. + -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" +% +There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress. + -- Mark Twain +% +There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted +armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter. + -- Ernest Hemingway +% +There's small choice in rotten apples. + -- William Shakespeare, "The Taming of the Shrew" +% +They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps. + -- William Shakespeare, "Love's Labour's Lost" +% +They spell it "da Vinci" and pronounce it "da Vinchy". Foreigners +always spell better than they pronounce. + -- Mark Twain +% +Things past redress and now with me past care. + -- William Shakespeare, "Richard II" +% +This is the first age that's paid much attention to the future, which is a +little ironic since we may not have one. + -- Arthur Clarke +% +This night methinks is but the daylight sick. + -- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice" +% +This was the most unkindest cut of all. + -- William Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar" +% +To be or not to be. + -- Shakespeare +To do is to be. + -- Nietzsche +To be is to do. + -- Sartre +Do be do be do. + -- Sinatra +% +Too much is just enough. + -- Mark Twain, on whiskey +% +Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is +nothing but cabbage with a college education. + -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" +% +Truth is the most valuable thing we have -- so let us economize it. + -- Mark Twain +% +Unless hours were cups of sack, and minutes capons, and clocks the tongues +of bawds, and dials the signs of leaping houses, and the blessed sun himself +a fair, hot wench in flame-colored taffeta, I see no reason why thou shouldst +be so superfluous to demand the time of the day. I wasted time and now doth +time waste me. + -- William Shakespeare +% +Wagner's music is better than it sounds. + -- Mark Twain +% +Water, taken in moderation cannot hurt anybody. + -- Mark Twain +% +We know all about the habits of the ant, we know all about the habits of the +bee, but we know nothing at all about the habits of the oyster. It seems +almost certain that we have been choosing the wrong time for studying the +oyster. + -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" +% +We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is +in it - and stay there, lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot +stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again - and that +is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more. + -- Mark Twain +% +We were young and our happiness dazzled us with its strength. But there was +also a terrible betrayal that lay within me like a Merle Haggard song at a +French restaurant. [...] + I could not tell the girl about the woman of the tollway, of her milk +white BMW and her Jordache smile. There had been a fight. I had punched her +boyfriend, who fought the mechanical bulls. Everyone told him, "You ride the +bull, senor. You do not fight it." But he was lean and tough like a bad +rib-eye and he fought the bull. And then he fought me. And when we finished +there were no winners, just men doing what men must do. [...] + "Stop the car," the girl said. + There was a look of terrible sadness in her eyes. She knew about the +woman of the tollway. I knew not how. I started to speak, but she raised an +arm and spoke with a quiet and peace I will never forget. + "I do not ask for whom's the tollway belle," she said, "the tollway +belle's for thee." + The next morning our youth was a memory, and our happiness was a lie. +Life is like a bad margarita with good tequila, I thought as I poured whiskey +onto my granola and faced a new day. + -- Peter Applebome, International Imitation Hemingway + Competition +% +Well, anyway, I was reading this James Bond book, and right away I realized +that like most books, it had too many words. The plot was the same one that +all James Bond books have: An evil person tries to blow up the world, but +James Bond kills him and his henchmen and makes love to several attractive +women. There, that's it: 24 words. But the guy who wrote the book took +*thousands* of words to say it. + Or consider "The Brothers Karamazov", by the famous Russian alcoholic +Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It's about these two brothers who kill their father. +Or maybe only one of them kills the father. It's impossible to tell because +what they mostly do is talk for nearly a thousand pages. If all Russians talk +as much as the Karamazovs did, I don't see how they found time to become a +major world power. + I'm told that Dostoyevsky wrote "The Brothers Karamazov" to raise +the question of whether there is a God. So why didn't he just come right +out and say: "Is there a God? It sure beats the heck out of me." + Other famous works could easily have been summarized in a few words: + +* "Moby Dick" -- Don't mess around with large whales because they symbolize + nature and will kill you. +* "A Tale of Two Cities" -- French people are crazy. + -- Dave Barry +% +What good is an obscenity trial except to popularize literature? + -- Nero Wolfe, "The League of Frightened Men" +% +What I tell you three times is true. + -- Lewis Carroll +% +What no spouse of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working +when he's staring out the window. +% +When angry, count four; when very angry, swear. + -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" +% +When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who I know who have gone +to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life. + -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" +% +When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened +or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I +cannot remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to +go to pieces like this but we all have to do it. + -- Mark Twain +% +When in doubt, tell the truth. + -- Mark Twain +% +When one burns one's bridges, what a very nice fire it makes. + -- Dylan Thomas +% +When you are about to die, a wombat is better than no company at all. + -- Roger Zelazny, "Doorways in the Sand" +% +Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last +you are going to see of him until he emerges on the other side of his +Atlantic with his verb in his mouth. + -- Mark Twain "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" +% +Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time +to reform. + -- Mark Twain +% +Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt +of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He +brought death into the world. + -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" +% +Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we +are not the person involved. + -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" +% +Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. +Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. + -- Mark Twain +% +Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been. + -- Mark Twain +% +Writing is easy; all you do is sit staring at the blank sheet of paper until +drops of blood form on your forehead. + -- Gene Fowler +% +Writing is turning one's worst moments into money. + -- J.P. Donleavy +% +"You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive." + -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Study in Scarlet" +% + "You have heard me speak of Professor Moriarty?" + "The famous scientific criminal, as famous among crooks as --" + "My blushes, Watson," Holmes murmured, in a deprecating voice. + "I was about to say 'as he is unknown to the public.'" + -- A. Conan Doyle, "The Valley of Fear" +% +You may my glories and my state dispose, +But not my griefs; still am I king of those. + -- William Shakespeare, "Richard II" +% +You mentioned your name as if I should recognize it, but beyond the +obvious facts that you are a bachelor, a solicitor, a freemason, and +an asthmatic, I know nothing whatever about you. + -- Sherlock Holmes, "The Norwood Builder" +% +You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night +to write. + -- Saul Bellow +% +You see, I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty +attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool +takes in all the lumber of every sort he comes across, so that the knowledge +which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with +a lot of other things, so that he has difficulty in laying his hands upon it. +Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his +brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing +his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect +order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and +can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every +addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of +the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out +the useful ones. + -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Study in Scarlet" +% +You tread upon my patience. + -- William Shakespeare, "Henry IV" +% + You will remember, Watson, how the dreadful business of the +Abernetty family was first brought to my notice by the depth which the +parsley had sunk into the butter upon a hot day. + -- Sherlock Holmes +% +Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not +original and the part that is original is not good. + -- Samuel Johnson +% +Zounds! I was never so bethumped with words +since I first called my brother's father dad. + -- William Shakespeare, "Kind John" +% +The mind is its own place, and in itself +Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n. + -- John Milton +% +"I understand this is your first dead client," Sabian was saying. The +absurdity of the statement made me want to laugh but they don't call me +Deadpan Allie and lie. + -- Pat Cadigan, "Mindplayers" +% +A morgue is a morgue is a morgue. They can paint the walls with aggressively +cheerful primary colors and splashy bold graphics, but it's still a holding +place for the dead until they can be parted out to organ banks. Not that I +would have cared normally but my viewpoint was skewed. The relentless +pleasance of the room I sat in seemed only grotesque. + -- Pat Cadigan, "Mindplayers" +% +"What's this? Trix? Aunt! Trix? You? You're after the prize! What +is it?" He picked up the box and studied the back. "A glow-in-the-dark +squid! Have you got it out of there yet?" He tilted the box, angling the +little colored balls of cereal so as to see the bottom, and nearly spilling +them onto the table top. "Here it is!" He hauled out a little cream-colored, +glitter-sprinkled squid, three-inches long and made out of rubbery plastic. + -- James P. Blaylock, "The Last Coin" +% +"Good afternoon, madam. How may I help you?" + +"Good afternoon. I'd like a FrintArms HandCannon, please." + +"A--? Oh, now, that's an awfully big gun for such a lovely lady. I +mean, not everybody thinks ladies should carry guns at all, though I +say they have a right to. But I think... I might... Let's have a look +down here. I might have just the thing for you. Yes, here we are! +Look at that, isn't it neat? Now that is a FrintArms product as well, +but it's what's called a laser -- a light-pistol some people call +them. Very small, as you see; fits easily into a pocket or bag; won't +spoil the line of a jacket; and you won't feel you're lugging half a +tonne of iron around with you. We do a range of matching accessories, +including -- if I may say so -- a rather saucy garter holster. Wish I +got to do the fitting for that! Ha -- just my little joke. And +there's *even*... here we are -- this special presentation pack: gun, +charged battery, charging unit, beautiful glider-hide shoulder holster +with adjustable fitting and contrast stitching, and a discount on your +next battery. Full instructions, of course, and a voucher for free +lessons at your local gun club or range. Or there's the *special* +presentation pack; it has all the other one's got but with *two* +charged batteries and a night-sight, too. Here, feel that -- don't +worry, it's a dummy battery -- isn't it neat? Feel how light it is? +Smooth, see? No bits to stick out and catch on your clothes, *and* +beautifully balanced. And of course the beauty of a laser is, there's +no recoil. Because it's shooting light, you see? Beautiful gun, +beautiful gun; my wife has one. Really. That's not a line, she +really has. Now, I can do you that one -- with a battery and a free +charge -- for ninety-five; or the presentation pack on a special +offer for one-nineteen; or this, the special presentation pack, for +one-forty-nine." + +"I'll take the special." + +"Sound choice, madam, *sound* choice. Now, do--?" + +"And a HandCannon, with the eighty-mill silencer, five GP clips, three +six-five AP/wire-fl'echettes clips, two bipropellant HE clips, and a +Special Projectile Pack if you have one -- the one with the embedding +rounds, not the signalers. I assume the night-sight on this toy is +compatible?" + +"Aah... yes, And how does madam wish to pay?" + +She slapped her credit card on the counter. "Eventually." + + -- Iain M. Banks, "Against a Dark Background" +% diff --git a/lib/resources/narrative/dagon_by_hp_lovecraft b/lib/resources/narrative/dagon_by_hp_lovecraft new file mode 100644 index 000000000..b631a66f9 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/resources/narrative/dagon_by_hp_lovecraft @@ -0,0 +1,19 @@ +I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more. Penniless, and at the end of my supply of the drug which alone makes life endurable, I can bear the torture no longer; and shall cast myself from this garret window into the squalid street below. Do not think from my slavery to morphine that I am a weakling or a degenerate. When you have read these hastily scrawled pages you may guess, though never fully realise, why it is that I must have forgetfulness or death. +It was in one of the most open and least frequented parts of the broad Pacific that the packet of which I was supercargo fell a victim to the German sea-raider. The great war was then at its very beginning, and the ocean forces of the Hun had not completely sunk to their later degradation; so that our vessel was made a legitimate prize, whilst we of her crew were treated with all the fairness and consideration due us as naval prisoners. So liberal, indeed, was the discipline of our captors, that five days after we were taken I managed to escape alone in a small boat with water and provisions for a good length of time. +When I finally found myself adrift and free, I had but little idea of my surroundings. Never a competent navigator, I could only guess vaguely by the sun and stars that I was somewhat south of the equator. Of the longitude I knew nothing, and no island or coast-line was in sight. The weather kept fair, and for uncounted days I drifted aimlessly beneath the scorching sun; waiting either for some passing ship, or to be cast on the shores of some habitable land. But neither ship nor land appeared, and I began to despair in my solitude upon the heaving vastnesses of unbroken blue. +The change happened whilst I slept. Its details I shall never know; for my slumber, though troubled and dream-infested, was continuous. When at last I awaked, it was to discover myself half sucked into a slimy expanse of hellish black mire which extended about me in monotonous undulations as far as I could see, and in which my boat lay grounded some distance away. +Though one might well imagine that my first sensation would be of wonder at so prodigious and unexpected a transformation of scenery, I was in reality more horrified than astonished; for there was in the air and in the rotting soil a sinister quality which chilled me to the very core. The region was putrid with the carcasses of decaying fish, and of other less describable things which I saw protruding from the nasty mud of the unending plain. Perhaps I should not hope to convey in mere words the unutterable hideousness that can dwell in absolute silence and barren immensity. There was nothing within hearing, and nothing in sight save a vast reach of black slime; yet the very completeness of the stillness and the homogeneity of the landscape oppressed me with a nauseating fear. +The sun was blazing down from a sky which seemed to me almost black in its cloudless cruelty; as though reflecting the inky marsh beneath my feet. As I crawled into the stranded boat I realised that only one theory could explain my position. Through some unprecedented volcanic upheaval, a portion of the ocean floor must have been thrown to the surface, exposing regions which for innumerable millions of years had lain hidden under unfathomable watery depths. So great was the extent of the new land which had risen beneath me, that I could not detect the faintest noise of the surging ocean, strain my ears as I might. Nor were there any sea-fowl to prey upon the dead things. +For several hours I sat thinking or brooding in the boat, which lay upon its side and afforded a slight shade as the sun moved across the heavens. As the day progressed, the ground lost some of its stickiness, and seemed likely to dry sufficiently for travelling purposes in a short time. That night I slept but little, and the next day I made for myself a pack containing food and water, preparatory to an overland journey in search of the vanished sea and possible rescue. +On the third morning I found the soil dry enough to walk upon with ease. The odour of the fish was maddening; but I was too much concerned with graver things to mind so slight an evil, and set out boldly for an unknown goal. All day I forged steadily westward, guided by a far-away hummock which rose higher than any other elevation on the rolling desert. That night I encamped, and on the following day still travelled toward the hummock, though that object seemed scarcely nearer than when I had first espied it. By the fourth evening I attained the base of the mound, which turned out to be much higher than it had appeared from a distance; an intervening valley setting it out in sharper relief from the general surface. Too weary to ascend, I slept in the shadow of the hill. +I know not why my dreams were so wild that night; but ere the waning and fantastically gibbous moon had risen far above the eastern plain, I was awake in a cold perspiration, determined to sleep no more. Such visions as I had experienced were too much for me to endure again. And in the glow of the moon I saw how unwise I had been to travel by day. Without the glare of the parching sun, my journey would have cost me less energy; indeed, I now felt quite able to perform the ascent which had deterred me at sunset. Picking up my pack, I started for the crest of the eminence. +I have said that the unbroken monotony of the rolling plain was a source of vague horror to me; but I think my horror was greater when I gained the summit of the mound and looked down the other side into an immeasurable pit or canyon, whose black recesses the moon had not yet soared high enough to illumine. I felt myself on the edge of the world; peering over the rim into a fathomless chaos of eternal night. Through my terror ran curious reminiscences of Paradise Lost, and of Satan’s hideous climb through the unfashioned realms of darkness. +As the moon climbed higher in the sky, I began to see that the slopes of the valley were not quite so perpendicular as I had imagined. Ledges and outcroppings of rock afforded fairly easy foot-holds for a descent, whilst after a drop of a few hundred feet, the declivity became very gradual. Urged on by an impulse which I cannot definitely analyse, I scrambled with difficulty down the rocks and stood on the gentler slope beneath, gazing into the Stygian deeps where no light had yet penetrated. +All at once my attention was captured by a vast and singular object on the opposite slope, which rose steeply about an hundred yards ahead of me; an object that gleamed whitely in the newly bestowed rays of the ascending moon. That it was merely a gigantic piece of stone, I soon assured myself; but I was conscious of a distinct impression that its contour and position were not altogether the work of Nature. A closer scrutiny filled me with sensations I cannot express; for despite its enormous magnitude, and its position in an abyss which had yawned at the bottom of the sea since the world was young, I perceived beyond a doubt that the strange object was a well-shaped monolith whose massive bulk had known the workmanship and perhaps the worship of living and thinking creatures. +Dazed and frightened, yet not without a certain thrill of the scientist’s or archaeologist’s delight, I examined my surroundings more closely. The moon, now near the zenith, shone weirdly and vividly above the towering steeps that hemmed in the chasm, and revealed the fact that a far-flung body of water flowed at the bottom, winding out of sight in both directions, and almost lapping my feet as I stood on the slope. Across the chasm, the wavelets washed the base of the Cyclopean monolith; on whose surface I could now trace both inscriptions and crude sculptures. The writing was in a system of hieroglyphics unknown to me, and unlike anything I had ever seen in books; consisting for the most part of conventionalised aquatic symbols such as fishes, eels, octopi, crustaceans, molluscs, whales, and the like. Several characters obviously represented marine things which are unknown to the modern world, but whose decomposing forms I had observed on the ocean-risen plain. +It was the pictorial carving, however, that did most to hold me spellbound. Plainly visible across the intervening water on account of their enormous size, were an array of bas-reliefs whose subjects would have excited the envy of a Doré. I think that these things were supposed to depict men—at least, a certain sort of men; though the creatures were shewn disporting like fishes in the waters of some marine grotto, or paying homage at some monolithic shrine which appeared to be under the waves as well. Of their faces and forms I dare not speak in detail; for the mere remembrance makes me grow faint. Grotesque beyond the imagination of a Poe or a Bulwer, they were damnably human in general outline despite webbed hands and feet, shockingly wide and flabby lips, glassy, bulging eyes, and other features less pleasant to recall. Curiously enough, they seemed to have been chiselled badly out of proportion with their scenic background; for one of the creatures was shewn in the act of killing a whale represented as but little larger than himself. I remarked, as I say, their grotesqueness and strange size; but in a moment decided that they were merely the imaginary gods of some primitive fishing or seafaring tribe; some tribe whose last descendant had perished eras before the first ancestor of the Piltdown or Neanderthal Man was born. Awestruck at this unexpected glimpse into a past beyond the conception of the most daring anthropologist, I stood musing whilst the moon cast queer reflections on the silent channel before me. +Then suddenly I saw it. With only a slight churning to mark its rise to the surface, the thing slid into view above the dark waters. Vast, Polyphemus-like, and loathsome, it darted like a stupendous monster of nightmares to the monolith, about which it flung its gigantic scaly arms, the while it bowed its hideous head and gave vent to certain measured sounds. I think I went mad then. +Of my frantic ascent of the slope and cliff, and of my delirious journey back to the stranded boat, I remember little. I believe I sang a great deal, and laughed oddly when I was unable to sing. I have indistinct recollections of a great storm some time after I reached the boat; at any rate, I know that I heard peals of thunder and other tones which Nature utters only in her wildest moods. +When I came out of the shadows I was in a San Francisco hospital; brought thither by the captain of the American ship which had picked up my boat in mid-ocean. In my delirium I had said much, but found that my words had been given scant attention. Of any land upheaval in the Pacific, my rescuers knew nothing; nor did I deem it necessary to insist upon a thing which I knew they could not believe. Once I sought out a celebrated ethnologist, and amused him with peculiar questions regarding the ancient Philistine legend of Dagon, the Fish-God; but soon perceiving that he was hopelessly conventional, I did not press my inquiries. +It is at night, especially when the moon is gibbous and waning, that I see the thing. I tried morphine; but the drug has given only transient surcease, and has drawn me into its clutches as a hopeless slave. So now I am to end it all, having written a full account for the information or the contemptuous amusement of my fellow-men. Often I ask myself if it could not all have been a pure phantasm—a mere freak of fever as I lay sun-stricken and raving in the open boat after my escape from the German man-of-war. This I ask myself, but ever does there come before me a hideously vivid vision in reply. I cannot think of the deep sea without shuddering at the nameless things that may at this very moment be crawling and floundering on its slimy bed, worshipping their ancient stone idols and carving their own detestable likenesses on submarine obelisks of water-soaked granite. I dream of a day when they may rise above the billows to drag down in their reeking talons the remnants of puny, war-exhausted mankind—of a day when the land shall sink, and the dark ocean floor shall ascend amidst universal pandemonium. +The end is near. I hear a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it. It shall not find me. God, that hand! The window! The window! \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/lib/resources/narrative/from_beyond_by_hp_lovecraft b/lib/resources/narrative/from_beyond_by_hp_lovecraft new file mode 100644 index 000000000..0b913b072 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/resources/narrative/from_beyond_by_hp_lovecraft @@ -0,0 +1,17 @@ +Horrible beyond conception was the change which had taken place in my best friend, Crawford Tillinghast. I had not seen him since that day, two months and a half before, when he had told me toward what goal his physical and metaphysical researches were leading; when he had answered my awed and almost frightened remonstrances by driving me from his laboratory and his house in a burst of fanatical rage. I had known that he now remained mostly shut in the attic laboratory with that accursed electrical machine, eating little and excluding even the servants, but I had not thought that a brief period of ten weeks could so alter and disfigure any human creature. It is not pleasant to see a stout man suddenly grown thin, and it is even worse when the baggy skin becomes yellowed or greyed, the eyes sunken, circled, and uncannily glowing, the forehead veined and corrugated, and the hands tremulous and twitching. And if added to this there be a repellent unkemptness; a wild disorder of dress, a bushiness of dark hair white at the roots, and an unchecked growth of pure white beard on a face once clean-shaven, the cumulative effect is quite shocking. But such was the aspect of Crawford Tillinghast on the night his half-coherent message brought me to his door after my weeks of exile; such the spectre that trembled as it admitted me, candle in hand, and glanced furtively over its shoulder as if fearful of unseen things in the ancient, lonely house set back from Benevolent Street. +That Crawford Tillinghast should ever have studied science and philosophy was a mistake. These things should be left to the frigid and impersonal investigator, for they offer two equally tragic alternatives to the man of feeling and action; despair if he fail in his quest, and terrors unutterable and unimaginable if he succeed. Tillinghast had once been the prey of failure, solitary and melancholy; but now I knew, with nauseating fears of my own, that he was the prey of success. I had indeed warned him ten weeks before, when he burst forth with his tale of what he felt himself about to discover. He had been flushed and excited then, talking in a high and unnatural, though always pedantic, voice. +“What do we know,” he had said, “of the world and the universe about us? Our means of receiving impressions are absurdly few, and our notions of surrounding objects infinitely narrow. We see things only as we are constructed to see them, and can gain no idea of their absolute nature. With five feeble senses we pretend to comprehend the boundlessly complex cosmos, yet other beings with a wider, stronger, or different range of senses might not only see very differently the things we see, but might see and study whole worlds of matter, energy, and life which lie close at hand yet can never be detected with the senses we have. I have always believed that such strange, inaccessible worlds exist at our very elbows, and now I believe I have found a way to break down the barriers. I am not joking. Within twenty-four hours that machine near the table will generate waves acting on unrecognised sense-organs that exist in us as atrophied or rudimentary vestiges. Those waves will open up to us many vistas unknown to man, and several unknown to anything we consider organic life. We shall see that at which dogs howl in the dark, and that at which cats prick up their ears after midnight. We shall see these things, and other things which no breathing creature has yet seen. We shall overleap time, space, and dimensions, and without bodily motion peer to the bottom of creation. +When Tillinghast said these things I remonstrated, for I knew him well enough to be frightened rather than amused; but he was a fanatic, and drove me from the house. Now he was no less a fanatic, but his desire to speak had conquered his resentment, and he had written me imperatively in a hand I could scarcely recognise. As I entered the abode of the friend so suddenly metamorphosed to a shivering gargoyle, I became infected with the terror which seemed stalking in all the shadows. The words and beliefs expressed ten weeks before seemed bodied forth in the darkness beyond the small circle of candle light, and I sickened at the hollow, altered voice of my host. I wished the servants were about, and did not like it when he said they had all left three days previously. It seemed strange that old Gregory, at least, should desert his master without telling as tried a friend as I. It was he who had given me all the information I had of Tillinghast after I was repulsed in rage. +Yet I soon subordinated all my fears to my growing curiosity and fascination. Just what Crawford Tillinghast now wished of me I could only guess, but that he had some stupendous secret or discovery to impart, I could not doubt. Before I had protested at his unnatural pryings into the unthinkable; now that he had evidently succeeded to some degree I almost shared his spirit, terrible though the cost of victory appeared. Up through the dark emptiness of the house I followed the bobbing candle in the hand of this shaking parody on man. The electricity seemed to be turned off, and when I asked my guide he said it was for a definite reason. +“It would be too much . . . I would not dare,” he continued to mutter. I especially noted his new habit of muttering, for it was not like him to talk to himself. We entered the laboratory in the attic, and I observed that detestable electrical machine, glowing with a sickly, sinister, violet luminosity. It was connected with a powerful chemical battery, but seemed to be receiving no current; for I recalled that in its experimental stage it had sputtered and purred when in action. In reply to my question Tillinghast mumbled that this permanent glow was not electrical in any sense that I could understand. +He now seated me near the machine, so that it was on my right, and turned a switch somewhere below the crowning cluster of glass bulbs. The usual sputtering began, turned to a whine, and terminated in a drone so soft as to suggest a return to silence. Meanwhile the luminosity increased, waned again, then assumed a pale, outré colour or blend of colours which I could neither place nor describe. Tillinghast had been watching me, and noted my puzzled expression. +“Do you know what that is?” he whispered. “That is ultra-violet.” He chuckled oddly at my surprise. “You thought ultra-violet was invisible, and so it is—but you can see that and many other invisible things now. +“Listen to me! The waves from that thing are waking a thousand sleeping senses in us; senses which we inherit from aeons of evolution from the state of detached electrons to the state of organic humanity. I have seen truth, and I intend to shew it to you. Do you wonder how it will seem? I will tell you.” Here Tillinghast seated himself directly opposite me, blowing out his candle and staring hideously into my eyes. “Your existing sense-organs—ears first, I think—will pick up many of the impressions, for they are closely connected with the dormant organs. Then there will be others. You have heard of the pineal gland? I laugh at the shallow endocrinologist, fellow-dupe and fellow-parvenu of the Freudian. That gland is the great sense-organ of organs—I have found out. It is like sight in the end, and transmits visual pictures to the brain. If you are normal, that is the way you ought to get most of it . . . I mean get most of the evidence from beyond.” +I looked about the immense attic room with the sloping south wall, dimly lit by rays which the every-day eye cannot see. The far corners were all shadows, and the whole place took on a hazy unreality which obscured its nature and invited the imagination to symbolism and phantasm. During the interval that Tillinghast was silent I fancied myself in some vast and incredible temple of long-dead gods; some vague edifice of innumerable black stone columns reaching up from a floor of damp slabs to a cloudy height beyond the range of my vision. The picture was very vivid for a while, but gradually gave way to a more horrible conception; that of utter, absolute solitude in infinite, sightless, soundless space. There seemed to be a void, and nothing more, and I felt a childish fear which prompted me to draw from my hip pocket the revolver I always carried after dark since the night I was held up in East Providence. Then, from the farthermost regions of remoteness, the sound softly glided into existence. It was infinitely faint, subtly vibrant, and unmistakably musical, but held a quality of surpassing wildness which made its impact feel like a delicate torture of my whole body. I felt sensations like those one feels when accidentally scratching ground glass. Simultaneously there developed something like a cold draught, which apparently swept past me from the direction of the distant sound. As I waited breathlessly I perceived that both sound and wind were increasing; the effect being to give me an odd notion of myself as tied to a pair of rails in the path of a gigantic approaching locomotive. I began to speak to Tillinghast, and as I did so all the unusual impressions abruptly vanished. I saw only the man, the glowing machine, and the dim apartment. Tillinghast was grinning repulsively at the revolver which I had almost unconsciously drawn, but from his expression I was sure he had seen and heard as much as I, if not a great deal more. I whispered what I had experienced, and he bade me to remain as quiet and receptive as possible. +“Don’t move,” he cautioned, “for in these rays we are able to be seen as well as to see. I told you the servants left, but I didn’t tell you how. It was that thick-witted housekeeper—she turned on the lights downstairs after I had warned her not to, and the wires picked up sympathetic vibrations. It must have been frightful—I could hear the screams up here in spite of all I was seeing and hearing from another direction, and later it was rather awful to find those empty heaps of clothes around the house. Mrs. Updike’s clothes were close to the front hall switch—that’s how I know she did it. It got them all. But so long as we don’t move we’re fairly safe. Remember we’re dealing with a hideous world in which we are practically helpless. . . . Keep still!” +The combined shock of the revelation and of the abrupt command gave me a kind of paralysis, and in my terror my mind again opened to the impressions coming from what Tillinghast called “beyond”. I was now in a vortex of sound and motion, with confused pictures before my eyes. I saw the blurred outlines of the room, but from some point in space there seemed to be pouring a seething column of unrecognisable shapes or clouds, penetrating the solid roof at a point ahead and to the right of me. Then I glimpsed the temple-like effect again, but this time the pillars reached up into an aërial ocean of light, which sent down one blinding beam along the path of the cloudy column I had seen before. After that the scene was almost wholly kaleidoscopic, and in the jumble of sights, sounds, and unidentified sense-impressions I felt that I was about to dissolve or in some way lose the solid form. One definite flash I shall always remember. I seemed for an instant to behold a patch of strange night sky filled with shining, revolving spheres, and as it receded I saw that the glowing suns formed a constellation or galaxy of settled shape; this shape being the distorted face of Crawford Tillinghast. At another time I felt the huge animate things brushing past me and occasionally walking or drifting through my supposedly solid body, and thought I saw Tillinghast look at them as though his better trained senses could catch them visually. I recalled what he had said of the pineal gland, and wondered what he saw with this preternatural eye. +Suddenly I myself became possessed of a kind of augmented sight. Over and above the luminous and shadowy chaos arose a picture which, though vague, held the elements of consistency and permanence. It was indeed somewhat familiar, for the unusual part was superimposed upon the usual terrestrial scene much as a cinema view may be thrown upon the painted curtain of a theatre. I saw the attic laboratory, the electrical machine, and the unsightly form of Tillinghast opposite me; but of all the space unoccupied by familiar material objects not one particle was vacant. Indescribable shapes both alive and otherwise were mixed in disgusting disarray, and close to every known thing were whole worlds of alien, unknown entities. It likewise seemed that all the known things entered into the composition of other unknown things, and vice versa. Foremost among the living objects were great inky, jellyish monstrosities which flabbily quivered in harmony with the vibrations from the machine. They were present in loathsome profusion, and I saw to my horror that they overlapped; that they were semi-fluid and capable of passing through one another and through what we know as solids. These things were never still, but seemed ever floating about with some malignant purpose. Sometimes they appeared to devour one another, the attacker launching itself at its victim and instantaneously obliterating the latter from sight. Shudderingly I felt that I knew what had obliterated the unfortunate servants, and could not exclude the things from my mind as I strove to observe other properties of the newly visible world that lies unseen around us. But Tillinghast had been watching me, and was speaking. +“You see them? You see them? You see the things that float and flop about you and through you every moment of your life? You see the creatures that form what men call the pure air and the blue sky? Have I not succeeded in breaking down the barrier; have I not shewn you worlds that no other living men have seen?” I heard him scream through the horrible chaos, and looked at the wild face thrust so offensively close to mine. His eyes were pits of flame, and they glared at me with what I now saw was overwhelming hatred. The machine droned detestably. +“You think those floundering things wiped out the servants? Fool, they are harmless! But the servants are gone, aren’t they? You tried to stop me; you discouraged me when I needed every drop of encouragement I could get; you were afraid of the cosmic truth, you damned coward, but now I’ve got you! What swept up the servants? What made them scream so loud? . . . Don’t know, eh? You’ll know soon enough! Look at me—listen to what I say—do you suppose there are really any such things as time and magnitude? Do you fancy there are such things as form or matter? I tell you, I have struck depths that your little brain can’t picture! I have seen beyond the bounds of infinity and drawn down daemons from the stars. . . . I have harnessed the shadows that stride from world to world to sow death and madness. . . . Space belongs to me, do you hear? Things are hunting me now—the things that devour and dissolve—but I know how to elude them. It is you they will get, as they got the servants. Stirring, dear sir? I told you it was dangerous to move. I have saved you so far by telling you to keep still—saved you to see more sights and to listen to me. If you had moved, they would have been at you long ago. Don’t worry, they won’t hurt you. They didn’t hurt the servants—it was seeing that made the poor devils scream so. My pets are not pretty, for they come out of places where aesthetic standards are—very different. Disintegration is quite painless, I assure you—but I want you to see them. I almost saw them, but I knew how to stop. You are not curious? I always knew you were no scientist! Trembling, eh? Trembling with anxiety to see the ultimate things I have discovered? Why don’t you move, then? Tired? Well, don’t worry, my friend, for they are coming. . . . Look! Look, curse you, look! . . . It’s just over your left shoulder. . . .” +What remains to be told is very brief, and may be familiar to you from the newspaper accounts. The police heard a shot in the old Tillinghast house and found us there—Tillinghast dead and me unconscious. They arrested me because the revolver was in my hand, but released me in three hours, after they found it was apoplexy which had finished Tillinghast and saw that my shot had been directed at the noxious machine which now lay hopelessly shattered on the laboratory floor. I did not tell very much of what I had seen, for I feared the coroner would be sceptical; but from the evasive outline I did give, the doctor told me that I had undoubtedly been hypnotised by the vindictive and homicidal madman. +I wish I could believe that doctor. It would help my shaky nerves if I could dismiss what I now have to think of the air and the sky about and above me. I never feel alone or comfortable, and a hideous sense of pursuit sometimes comes chillingly on me when I am weary. What prevents me from believing the doctor is this one simple fact—that the police never found the bodies of those servants whom they say Crawford Tillinghast murdered. \ No newline at end of file