The World of Computer Software/The World of Computer Software.iso/cfortune.zip/COOMIT.SRC

Text File | 1989-05-25 | 69KB | 2,140 lines

Guard your eyes against flying bone fragments.
                        -- Grant's dissector.
%%
A terminal with red-shift capability requires an extremely fast modem.
%%
When in doubt, cut it out!
                        -- Surgeon's motto.
%%
  Q:how numb can an unworld get?
  A:number
%%
  What is status?...
  Status is when the President calls you for your opinion.
  Uh, no...
  Status is when the President calls you in to discuss a problem with him.
  Uh, that still ain't right...
  STATUS is when you're in the Oval Office talking to the President, and
  the phone rings.  The President picks it up, listens for a minute, and
  hands it to you, saying, "It's for you."
%%
"All of the animals except man know that the principal business of
life is to enjoy it."
%%
"And what will you do when you grow up to be as big as me" asked the
father of his little son.  "Diet."
%%
"Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise man to be able to
sell it."
%%
You can't do that in horizontal mode!
%%
Hackers of the world, unite!
%%
  There was a plain Christian called Carter,
  Who spoke what he hadn't oughter,
  So they sticked him and stoned him,
  And neatly deboned him,
  Making him a peanut martyr.
  (Let's hear it for Plains.......)
%%
A small package of value will come to you, shortly.
%%
You have several detached dead trees.
%%
"Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to
know how to lie well."
%%
"He is considered the most graceful speaker who can say nothing in
most words."
%%
Like the time I ran away...

And turned around and you were standing close to me.
                -- YES (Going For The One/Awaken)
%%
"How did you find the weather when you were on vacation?"

"Just went outside and there it was."
%%
The moving cursor writes, and having written, blinks on.
%%
Who took the MMMMMM out of MURINE?
%%
Could the high divorce rate be associated with a desire
to get more experience under one's belt?
%%
You can get more things done with a kind word and a gun than
with a kind word alone.  -- Lt. William Calley (attributed)
%%
"It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing,
but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous."
%%
"Mind your own business, Spock.  I'm sick of your halfbreed
interference."
%%
"What did you do when the ship sank?"

"I grabbed a cake of soap and washed myself ashore."
%%
"When do you plan to open your bakery?"

"When I can raise the dough."
%%
A bore is a man who talks so much about himself that you can't talk
about yourself.
%%
A dirty joke:  The boy fell into the mud!

A dirtier joke: A boy and a girl fell into the mud!

A more dirty joke: A boy and girl fell into the mud and stayed there!
%%
A good memory does not equal pale ink.
%%
A handful of friends is worth more than a wagon of gold.
%%
A holding company is a thing where you hand an accomplice the goods
while the policeman searches you.
%%
A man who fishes for marlin in ponds will put his money in
Etruscan bonds.
%%
A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
%%
SEMPER UBI SUB UBI !!!!
%%
A soft drink turneth away company.
%%
A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a Unicorn.
%%
A visit to a strange place will bring fresh work.
%%
A visit to a fresh place will bring strange work.
%%
About the only thing we have left that actually discriminates in
favor of the plain people is the stork.
%%
About the only thing on a farm that has an easy time is the dog.
%%
Absentee: A person with an income who has had the forethought to remove
himself from the sphere of exaction.
%%
  The Earth does not belong to man.
  Man belongs to the Earth.
%%
Academy: A modern school where football is taught.
%%
Acquaintance:  a person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but
not well enough to lend to.
%%
Admiration: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
%%
America is the country where you buy a lifetime supply of aspirin for
one dollar, and use it up in two weeks.
%%
American:  "The poor man was killed by a revolving crane."

Englishman:  "My, what fierce birds you have in America."
%%
An ounce of security is worth a pound of defense.
%%
As goatherd learns his trade by goat, so writer learns his
trade by wrote.
%%
Auribus teneo lupum.  (I hold a wolf by the ears.)
%%
Be careful how you get yourself involved with persons or situations
that can't bear inspection.
%%
Be careful!  Is it classified?
%%
Be security conscious - National defense is at stake.
%%
Biggest security gap - an open mouth.
%%
By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to
be a boss and work twelve hours a day.
%%
You will live a long, healthy, happy life and make bags of money.
%%
You will live a long, healthy, happy life and make bags of money,
after much hard work, as usual.
%%
Charity:  a thing that begins at home and usually stays there.
%%
Children should be seen, not heard.
%%
Classified material requires proper storage.
%%
Clyde: "What do you know about magnetic rocks?"
Hyde: "Not a thing.  Go ask Peter."

Clyde leaves to see Peter.

Peter: "There are these 4 poles, you see....
The 'unlike' poles attract and if we reverse them then the
'like' poles will repel....."

A while later:

Hyde: "What did he come up with?"
Clyde: "A lesson in Reverse Polish logic."
%%
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. -- Noam Chomsky
%%
Concentrate on security.
%%
Courage is your greatest present need.
%%
Cynic: A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as
they ought to be.  Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out
a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.
%%
Dawn:   The time when men of reason go to bed.  Certain old men prefer
to rise at about that time, taking a cold bath and a long walk with an
empty stomach, and otherwise mortifying the flesh.  They then point with
pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy health and ripe
years; the truth being that they are hearty and old, not because of
their habits, but in spite of them.  The reason we find only robust
persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the others who have
tried it.
%%
Unfortunately for you, it is nearly 5 pm and I have run out of
pithy things to say.
%%
Death:  to stop sinning suddenly.
%%
Deprive a mirror of its silver and even the Czar won't see
his face.
%%
Der Horizont vieler Menschen ist ein Kreis mit Radius Null -
und das nennen sie ihren Standpunkt.
%%
Disclose classified information only when a NEED TO KNOW exists.
%%
Ditat Deus.  (God enriches.)
%%
Do not clog intellect's sluices
with bits of knowledge of questionable uses.
%%
Do not take life too seriously; you will never get out of it alive.
%%
Do you think your mother and I should have lived comfortably so long
together if ever we had been married?
%%
Domestic happiness and faithful friends.
%%
Don't gamble with security.
%%
Don't guess - check your security regulations.
%%
Don't speak about Time, until you have spoken to him.
%%
Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.
%%
Duckies are fun!
%%
Employer:  "You're an hour late.  You should have been here at 9
o'clock" Office boy:  "Why, what happened?"
%%
Entropy isn't what it used to be.
%%
Even a hawk is an eagle among crows.
%%
Even the boldest zebra fears the hungry lion.
%%
Even the smallest candle burns brighter in the dark.
%%
Even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea.
                                -- Charles Algernon Swinburne
                                "The Garden of Proserpine"
%%
Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.
%%
Every silver lining has a cloud around it.
%%
Everybody ought to have a friend.
%%
Facta, non verba.
%%
Far duller than a serpent's tooth it is to spend a quiet youth.
%%
  For every Problem there is a simple Solution,
    Neat,
      Plausible,
        Wrong.
%%
For people who like that kind of book, that is the kind of book they
will like.
%%
  Force: "Force is but might," the teacher said--
    "That definition's just."
  The boy said naught but thought instead,
    Remembering his pounded head:
    "Force is not might but must!"
%%
Forgetfulness:   A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in
compensation for their destitution of conscience.
%%
Friends: people who borrow my books and set wet glasses on them.
%%
Genius is the talent of a man who is dead.
%%
He who laughs, lasts.
%%
Help me, I'm a prisoner in a Fortune cookie file.
%%
The sunlights differ, but there is only one darkness.
                        -- Ursula K. LeGuin, "The Dispossessed"
%%
Well, it's better than being Professor of Floating Point!
                        -- R. William Gosper
%%
I came to MIT to get an education for myself and a diploma for
my mother.              -- Brian Silverman
%%
Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and
can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.
%%
Then there was the angry man who flung himself from the room,
flung himself from the house, flung himself upon his horse, and
rode madly off in all directions.
                                        -- Stephen Leacock
%%
Happiness:  An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the
misery of another.
%%
Have you locked your file cabinet?
%%
He looked at me as if I was a side dish he hadn't ordered.
%%
He that bringeth a present, findeth the door open.
                                        -- Scottish proverb.
%%
He thinks by infection, catching an opinion like a cold.
%%
  In the room the women come and go
  Talking of Michelangelo.
                -- T.S. Eliot
                "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
%%
He walks as if balancing the family tree on his nose.
%%
He was so narrow-minded he could see through a keyhole with both eyes.
%%
He who has a shady past knows that nice guys finish last.
%%
He who spends a storm beneath a tree,
takes life with a grain of TNT.
%%
Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to
take you in.            -- Robert Frost
                "The Death of the Hired Man"
%%
How can you work when the system's so loaded?
%%
How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.
%%
How you look depends on where you go.
%%
I must have slipped a disk - my pack hurts!
%%
I fell asleep reading a dull book, and I dreamt that I was reading
on, so I woke up from sheer boredom.
%%
I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers; what I said was all
saloonkeepers were Democrats.
%%
I wish you humans would leave me alone.
%%
I'm a Hollywood writer; so I put on a sports jacket and take off my brain.
%%
  Once I went to the zoo,
  There to view the old gnu.
    But the old gnu was dead,
    And the new gnu, they said,
  Was too new a new gnu to be viewed.
                -- Edward Lear
%%
Ignorance is BLISS.
%%
It's later than you think.

Identify your visitor.
%%
If a loafer is not a nuisance to you, it is a sign that you are
somewhat of a loafer yourself.
%%
If it pours before seven, it has rained by eleven.
%%
If you always postpone pleasure you will never have it.
%%
If you think before you speak the other guy gets his joke in first.
%%
Everyone is enthusiastic about your work.
%%
  Do I dare
  Disturb the universe?
  In a minute there is time
  For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
                -- T.S. Eliot
                "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
%%
In this world, truth can wait; she's used to it.
%%
It got to a point where I had to get a haircut
or both feet firmly planted in the air.
%%
It is better to wear out than to rust out.
%%
It is easier to run down a hill than up one.
%%
It is the wise bird who builds her nest in a tree.
%%
It seems to make an auto driver mad if he misses you.
%%
It was a book to kill time for those who liked it better dead.
%%
It's a poor workman who blames his tools.
%%
It's later than you think.
%%
It's not reality that's important, but how you percieve
things.
%%
Jam yesterday, and jam tomorrow, but never jam today.
                -- Lewis Carroll
%%
Journalism will kill you, but it will keep you alive while you're at it.
%%
Kilroe hic erat!
%%
Long computations which yield 0 (zero) are probably all for naught.
%%
Lend money to a bad debtor and he will hate you.
%%
Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage.
%%
Let him who takes the Plunge remember to return it by Tuesday.
%%
Let not the sands of time get in your lunch.
%%
Liar:  One who tells an unpleasant truth.
%%
Life is a game of bridge -- and you've just been finessed.
%%
Life is a hospital in which every patient is possessed by the desire
to change his bed.
%%
Lighthouse:  A tall building on the seashore in which the government
maintains a lamp and the friend of a politician.
%%
Like winter snow on summer lawn, time past is time gone.
%%
Long life is in store for you.
%%
Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.
%%
Love is in the offing.  Be affectionate to one who adores you.
%%
Love is in the offing, said the homicidal maniac.
%%
Love the sea?  I dote upon it - from the beach.
%%
Man who arrives at party two hours late will probably
find he has been beaten to the punch.
%%
Man who falls in blast furnace is certain to feel overwrought.
%%
Mieux vaut tard que jamais!
%%
Make a wish, it might come true.
%%
Many changes of mind and mood; do not hesitate too long.
%%
Many pages make a thick book.
%%
Might as well be frank, monsieur.  It would take a miracle to get you
out of Casablanca and the Germans have outlawed miracles.
%%
Modesty:  the gentle art of enhancing your charm by pretending not to
be aware of it.
%%
Money will say more in one moment than the most eloquent
lover can in years.
%%
Mother:  "Where are you going to keep that goat, Joe?" Joe:  "In the
house." Mother:  "What about the smell?" Joe:  "He won't mind."
%%
My folks didn't come over on the Mayflower, but they were there to meet
the boat.
%%
National security is in your hands - guard it well.
%%
No doubt Jack the Ripper excused himself on the grounds that it was
human nature.
%%
No one can feel as helpless as the owner of a sick goldfish.
%%
Nobody can be as agreeable as an uninvited guest.
%%
Now and then an innocent man is sent to the Legislature.
%%
Of all forms of caution, caution in love is the most fatal.
%%
One man tells a falsehood, a hundred repeat it as true.
%%
Only someone with nothing to be sorry for smiles back at the rear of
an elephant.
%%
Passenger:  "When the train stops will you please tell me at which end
to get off?"

Conductor:  "It doesn't matter, lady, both ends stop."
%%
People who take cat naps don't usually sleep in a cat's cradle.
%%
People will buy anything that's one to a customer.
%%
Perhaps the purpose of categorical algebra is to show
that that which is trivial, is trivially trivial.
%%
Philosophy:  unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.
%%
  Plumber:  "Mrs. Brown, I'm the plumber."
  Mrs. Brown:  "I didn't send for the plumber."
  Plumber:  "I know, the people downstairs did."
%%
Amans tam erat lie sing hero ad digito ut mando.
%%
Populus vult decipi.  (The people like to be deceived.)
%%
Post proelium, praemium.  (After the battle, the reward.)
%%
Pretty much all the honest truth telling there is in the world is
done by children.
%%
Prevent security leaks.
%%
Promptness is its own reward, if one lives by the clock
instead of the sword.
%%
Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.
%%
Reading is thinking with someone else's head instead of one's own.
%%
Regnant populi.  (The people rule.)
%%
Religions revolve madly around sexual questions.
%%
Soft soap often has a high percentage of lye in it.
                                -- Salada tea.
%%
Satire does not look pretty upon a tombstone.
%%
Security is the individual's responsibility.
%%
Security is your responsibility.
%%
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
%%
Slang is language that takes off its coat, spits on its hands, and goes
to work.
%%
So live that you wouldn't be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the
town gossip.
%%
Some men are discovered; others are found out.
%%
Someday somebody has got to decide whether the typewriter is the
machine, or the person who operates it.
%%
Standing on head makes smile of frown, but rest of face also
upside down.
%%
Stop searching forever.  Happiness is just next to you.
%%
Stop searching forever.  Happiness is unattainable.
%%
Sum quod eris.  (I am what you will be.)
%%
  Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
  And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
  Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?...

  I should have been a pair of ragged claws
  Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
                -- T. S. Eliot
                "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
%%
Where was that stooped and mealy-colored man I used to call poppa
when the merry-go-round broke down?
                -- Joseph Heller (Catch-22)
%%
  The weed of crime bears bitter fruit...
  but the leaves are good to smoke!
                -- Stanley Kugell
%%
  Now the cycle is complete;
  before I was but the learner,
  now I am the master!
%%
Today is a good day to bribe a high ranking public official.
%%
Telling the truth to people who misunderstand you is generally
promoting a falsehood, isn't it?
%%
That must be wonderful! I dont understand it at all.
%%
The Tree of Learning bears the noblest fruit, but noble
fruit tastes bad.
%%
The absent-minded professor on the subway was strap-hanging with one
hand and carried a bundle of books in the other.  He looked worried.
"Can I help you?" asked a friendly traveler.  "Oh, thank you.  Would you
hold onto this strap while I get my fare out?"
%%
The best prophet of the future is the past.
%%
The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get
up in the morning, and does not stop until you get into the office.
%%
The chicken that clucks the loudest is the one most likely to show up
at the steamfitters picnic.
%%
The decision doesn't have to be logical, it was unanimous.
%%
The famous politician was trying to save both his faces.
%%
The future will bring you great success in business and in
your home life.
%%
The good die young - because they see it's no use living if you've
got to be good.
%%
  I'd rather laugh with the sinners
  Than cry with the saints
  The sinners have much more fun.
                -- Billy Joel, "Only the Good Die Young"
%%
The meek don't want it.
%%
The most important service rendered by the press is that of educating
people to approach printed matter with distrust.
%%
The most important reason for the drug laws in this country is
to encourage a healthy distrust for the law.
%%
The only way to amuse some people is to slip and fall on an icy pavement.
%%
The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible
worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.
%%
The person you rejected yesterday could make you happy, if
you say yes.
%%
  The rising People, hot and out of breath,
  Roared round the palace: "Liberty or death!"
  "If death will do," the King said, "let me reign;
  You'll have, I'm sure, no reason to complain."
%%
The thing that takes up the least amount of time and causes the greatest
amount of trouble is sex.
%%
The time is right to make new friends.
%%
The universe is laughing behind your back.
%%
The wise shepherd never trusts his flock to a smiling wolf.
%%
You will be indifferent where you would like to be kind.
%%
There are more old drunkards than old doctors.
%%
There is hardly a thing in the world that some man cannot make a little
worse and sell a litle cheaper.
%%
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear.
%%
There is no time like the pleasant.
%%
There must be at least 500,000,000 rats in the United States; of
course, I never heard the story before.
%%
There's so much to say but your eyes keep interrupting me.
%%
Those who in quarrels interpose must often wipe a bloody nose.
%%
Those who talk don't know.  Those who don't talk, know.
%%
Those who can, do.  Those who cannot, teach.  Those who cannot teach, HACK!
%%
Illegitimus non carborundum. (Don't let the bastards wear you down.)
%%
Tibi quuxandum est.
%%
Time flies like an arrow!

Fruit flies like a banana.
%%
To criticize the incompetent is easy; it is more difficult
to criticize the competent.
%%
To iterate is human, to recurse, divine.
%%
To laugh at men of sense is the privilege of fools.
%%
Why don't you come up and see me sometime?
            -- Mae West
%%
Barbra:  "Love means never having to say you're sorry."
Ryan:  "You know, that is the stupidest thing I've ever heard."
%%
Too much of a good thing is WONDERFUL.
                -- Mae West.
%%
Troglodytism does not necessarily imply a low cultural level.
%%
Troubles are like babies; they only grow by nursing.
%%
Try to divide your time evenly to keep others happy.
%%
Up against the wall!!!
%%
A hermit is a deserter from the army of humanity
%%
Computers are my life, they're my wife!
%%
What is my loftiest ambition?  I've always wanted to throw an egg at Smith.
%%
Vigilia pretium libertatis.  (Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.)
%%
Volcano - a mountain with hiccups.
%%
We learn from history that we do not learn anything from history.
%%
Barfucius say:
    A good memory does not equal an airsickness bag in an Electrolux.
%%
Will the last one out please turn off the lights?
%%
With Congress, every time they make a joke it's a law; and every time
they make a law it's a joke.
%%
With clothes the new are best, with friends the old are best.
%%
Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.
%%
You are going to have a new love affair.
%%
  You can watch a horse boil in a pot
  but you can't drink him.
%%
"Wrong," said Renner.

"The tactful way," Rod said quietly, "the polite way to disagree with
the Senator would be to say, 'That turns out not to be the case.'"
%%
You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.
%%
You have an ambitious nature and may make a name for yourself.
%%
You have a deep interest in all that is artistic.
%%
You have been selected for a secret mission.
%%
You have had a long-term stimulation relative to business.
%%
You have the power to influence all with whom you come in
contact.
%%
You may have a friend at the Chase Manhattan
but at our bank you have meshpocheh!
%%
A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.
%%
You plan things that you do not even attempt because of your
extreme caution.
%%
You should go home.
%%
You will attract cultured and artistic people to your home.
%%
You will be advanced socially, without any special effort
on your part.
%%
You will be recognized and honored as a community leader.
%%
You will be surprised by a loud noise.^G
%%
You will never know hunger.
%%
You will reach the highest possible point in your business
or profession.
%%
You'll be called to a post requiring high ability in
handling groups of people.
%%
Your business will go through a period of considerable
expansion.
%%
Your empty file directory has been deleted.
%%
Your ignorance cramps my conversation.
%%
Your salary will be increased.
%%
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not
certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
                                        -- Einstein.
%%
"The man has expanded my mind."
                        -- from "Apocalypse Now"
%%
The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex
facts.  Seek simplicity and distrust it.
                                        -- Whitehead.
%%
The only justification for our concepts and systems of concepts is
that they serve to represent the complex of our experiences; beyond
this they have not legitimacy.
                                        -- Einstein.
%%
To be is to be related.         -- C.J.Keyser.
%%
Never insult an alligator until you have crossed the river.
%%
The philosopher's treatment of a question is like the treatment
of an illness.               -- Wittgenstein.
%%
After a number of decimal places, nobody gives a damn.
%%
Enzymes are things invented by biologists that explain things
which otherwise require harder thinking.
                                -- Jerome Lettvin.
%%
In Oz, never say "krizzle kroo" to a Woozy.
%%
"Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore!"
%%
"Oh, Aunty Em, it's so good to be home!"
%%
The price of success in philosophy is triviality.
                                -- C. Glymour.
%%
Plots are like girdles.  Hidden, they hold your interest; revealed,
they're of no interest except to fetishists.  Like girdles, they
attempt to contain an uncontainable experience.
                                -- R. S. Knapp.
%%
We're living in a golden age.  All you need is gold.
                                -- D. W. Robertson.
%%
Those who do things in a noble spirit of self-sacrifice are to
be avoided at all costs.
                                -- N. Alexander.
%%
Sex is the mathematics urge sublimated.
                                -- M. C. Reed.
%%
Seen under an ubiquitous "Kilroy was here":

        "Heisenberg might have been here"!
%%
The reason they're called wisdom teeth is that
the experience makes you wise.
%%
A commune is where people join together to share
their lack of wealth.
      -- R. Stallman.
%%
What is it when, after breaking several bones, you
are about to leave the hospital, and you are told
that you have to stay longer?

It's a retraction.
%%
Biology is the only science in which multiplication means the
same thing as division.
                                -- 7.06 Lecturer.
%%
How many weeks are there in a light year?
%%
It's getting uncommonly easy to kill people in large numbers,
and the first thing a principle does -- if it really is a
principle -- is to kill somebody.
                                -- Dorothy Sayers.
%%
Sun in the night, everyone is together,
Ascending into the heavens, life is forever.
                -- Brand X (Moroccan Roll/Sun in the Night)
%%
You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if
you could know how seldom they do.
                                -- Olin Miller.
%%
Ignorance is when you don't know anything and somebody finds
it out.
%%
As long as the answer is right, who cares if the question is
wrong?
%%
The mud is alive!       -- Bing Crosby.
%%
Education helps earning capacity.  Ask any college professor.
%%
But we've only fondled the surface of that subject.
                                -- Virginia Masters (of M&J fame)
%%
Since aerosols are forbidden, the police are using roll-on Mace!
%%
I can't understand it.  I can't even understand the people who
can understand it.
                                -- Queen Juliana of the Netherlands.
%%
Above all, beware of Zeal!

Corrupt, adj.

        In politics, holding an office of trust or profit.
%%
Power is poison.
%%
Upon encountering happiness:

        Be wary at such times, since most of life's blows
        fall then.

Authentic, adj. Indubitably true, in somebody's opinion.
%%
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.
                          -- Kenneth E. Iverson
                             commenting on the Leaning Tower of Pisa
%%
-- Listen, Tyrone, you don't know how dangerous that stuff is. Suppose
someday you just plug in and go away and never come back? Eh?

-- Ho, ho! Don't I wish! What do you think every electrofreak dreams
about? You're such an old fuddyduddy! A-and who sez it's a dream, huh?
M-maybe it exists. Maybe there is a Machine to take us away, take us
completely, suck us out through the electrodes out of the skull 'n'
into the Machine and live there forever with all the other souls it's
got stored there. It could decide who it would suck out, a-and when.
Dope never gave you immortality. You hadda come back, every time, into
a dying hunk of smelly meat! But We can live forever, in a clean,
honest, purified, Electroworld-
                -- Thomas Pynchon
                "Gravity's Rainbow"
%%
Almost anything derogatory you could say about todays's software
design would be accurate.
                                 -- Kenneth E. Iverson
%%
Famous last words:
%%
We are getting into semantics again.  If we use words, there is
a lot of relatives on the train for home.
%%
A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that
balances are correct.
                                 -- from "Manual of Maud'Dib"
                                    by the Princess Irulan
%%
Any road followed to its end leads precisely nowhere.  Climb the
mountain just a little to test it's a mountain.  From the top of
the mountain, you cannot see the mountain.
                                 -- Bene Gesserit proverb
%%
TECO Madness:  a moment of convenience, a lifetime of regret.
                                -- Dave Moon
%%
Emacs:  a lifetime of convenience, a moment of regret.
%%
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible.
This was terrible with raisins in it.
                                -- Dorothy Parker
%%
When all else fails, read the instructions.
%%
By definition, when you are investigating the unknown, you do
not know what you will find or even when you have found it.
%%
The experiment may be considered a success if no more than 50%
of the observed measurements must be discarded to obtain a
correspondence with theory.
%%
No experiment is ever a complete failure, inasmuch as a well-written
account of it can serve admirably as a bad example.
%%
He missed an invaluable opportunity to give her a look that you could
have poured on a waffle.
%%
The plural of spouse is spice.
%%
Do not merely believe in miracles, rely on them.
%%
The program is absolutely right; therefore the computer must be wrong.
%%
Blessed are they that run around in circles, for they shall be known
as wheels.
%%
Programming errors which would normally require one day to find will
take five days when the programmer is in a hurry.
%%
I am a computer. I am dumber than any human and smarter than an
administrator.
%%
I am a computer.  As such I never have or will make a mistake
or error (I thought i did once, but I was wrong).
%%
Greatness is a transitory experience.  It is never consistent.
%%
How often it is that the angry man rages denial
of what his inner self is telling him.
%%
The new Congressmen say they're going to turn the government around.
I hope I don't get run over again.
%%
"But I don't like Spam!!!!"
%%
"Mate, this parrot wouldn't VOOM if you put four million
volts through it!"        -- Monty Python
%%
"Elegance and truth are inversely related."     -- Becker's Razor
%%
Your ignorance cramps my conversation.
%%
Somebody ought to cross ballpoint pens with coat hangers,
so that the pens will multiply instead of disappearing.
%%
A man forgives only when he is in the wrong.
%%
About all some men accomplish in life is to send a son to Harvard.
%%
If you want to know how old a man is, ask his brother-in-law.
%%
A Puritan is someone who is deathly afraid that someone, somewhere,
is having fun.
%%
A liberal is someone too poor to be a capitalist, and too
rich to be a communist.
%%
A hammer sometimes misses its mark - a bouquet never.
%%
Actors will happen in the best-regulated families.
%%
Nothing succeeds like -- failure.
%%
It's a funny thing that when a woman hasn't got anything on earth to
worry about, she goes off and gets married.
%%
A woman will sometimes devote all her life to the development of one
husband who can't cook and will.
%%
Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
                                -- Indian proverb
%%
Men still remember the first kiss after women have forgotten the last.
%%
Your latest program has been judged UNTASTEFUL by the T demon;
and automatically deleted.
%%
Don't gamble with security.
%%
Prevent security leaks.
%%
An ounce of security is worth a pound of defense.
%%
Passwords are implemented as a result of insecurity.
%%
Blame it on the *-Property.
%%
The walls have ears.
%%
Be security conscious - National defense is at stake.
%%
Don't guess -- check your security regulations.
%%
Fidelity:  A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.
%%
"Don't tell me what you dream'd last night for I've been reading Freud."
%%
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
%%
You can never trust a woman; she may be true to you.
%%
The gentlemen looked one another over with microscopic carelessness.
%%
My husband is the kind of boy who'll not go anywhere without his
father, and his father will go anywhere.
%%
Life is a hospital in which every patient is possessed by the desire
to change his bed.
%%
"Home, Sweet Home" must surely have been written by a bachelor.
%%
America's best buy for a nickel is a telephone call to the right man.
                    -- outdated
%%
"An elephant is like long-term memory"
         -- A blind psychologist
%%
In marriage, as in war, it is permitted to take every advantage of
the enemy.
%%
  A pig is a jolly companion,
  Boar, sow, barrow, or gilt -
  A pig is a pal, who'll boost your morale,
  Though mountains may topple and tilt.
  When they've blackballed, bamboozled, and burned you,
  When they've turned on you, Tory and Whig,
  Though you may be thrown over by Tabby or Rover,
  You'll never go wrong with a pig, a pig,
  You'll never go wrong with a pig!
                -- Thomas Pynchon
                "Gravity's Rainbow"
%%
  There was a young man named McGuire,
  Who was fond of the pitch amplifier.
    But a number of shorts
    Left him covered with warts,
  And set half the bedroom on fire.
                -- Thomas Pynchon
                "Gravity's Rainbow"
%%
My notion of a husband at forty is that a woman should be able to change
him, like a bank note, for two twenties.
%%
Troubles are like babies; they only grow by nursing.
%%
^GFINAL WARNING -- SYSTEM GOING DOWN IMMEDIATELY^G
%%
Older sister:  "Why are you wearing my new raincoat?"

Younger sister: "I didn't want to get your new dress wet."
%%
You have an ambitious nature and may make a name for yourself.
%%
To laugh at men of sense is the privilege of fools.
%%
You are going to have a new love affair.
%%
Institute: An archaic school where football in not taught.
%%
This is a good time to punt work.
%%
"Every creature has within him the wild, uncontrollable urge
to PUNT."
%%
Enlightenment is a major cause of unhappiness at MIT.
                -- J. Spencer Love (out of context)
%%
PUNT is a four-letter word.
%%
You are wasting your time.
%%
Don't look now, but there is a multi-legged creature on your shoulder
%%
  There was a young fellow named Pope,
  Who plugged into an oscilloscope.
    The cyclical trace
    Of their carnal embrace
  Had a damned nearly infinite slope.
                -- Thomas Pynchon
                "Gravity's Rainbow"
%%
Logic is a little bird, sitting in a tree; that smells BAD.
%%
  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,
  If God won't have you, the devil must.
%%
Chinese saying: "He who speak with forked tongue, not need chopsticks."
%%
Everybody ought to have a friend.
%%
You will be told about it tomorrow.
%%
Don't look now, but the man in the moon is laughing at you.
%%
Someone is unenthusiastic about your work.
%%
One man tells a falsehood, a hundred repeat it as true.
%%
You should talk to the DOCTOR.
%%
As of next week, passwords will be entered in Morse code.
%%
It is better to be at the head of the jackals than the tail
of the lions.
%%
Money will say more in one moment than the most eloquent
lover can in years.
%%
Alimony and bribes will engage a large share of your wealth.
%%
It's all in the mind, ya know.
%%
ARPA is unenthusiastic about your work.
%%
You look tired.
%%
This screen intentionally left blank.
%%
Parmenides:  If appearance really appears, it is not nothing,
and therefore must be a part of reality.
%%
"In short, N is Richardian if, and only if, N is not Richardian."
%%
A method of solution is perfect if we can forsee from the start,
and even prove, that following that method we shall attain our aim.
                                -- Leibnitz
%%
The solution of problems is the most characteristic and peculiar
sort of voluntary thinking.     -- William James
%%
"They are called computers simply because computation is the only
significant job that has so far been given to them."
                                -- Louis Ridenour
%%
Your code should be more efficient!
%%
The people's revolutionary committee has decided that the name "e"
is retrogressive, unmulticious and reactionary, and has been flushed.
Please update your abbrevs.
%%
  There once was a fellow named Moorehead,
  Who had an affair with a warhead.
    His wife moved away,
    The very next day --
  She was always kind of a sorehead.
                -- Thomas Pynchon
                "Gravity's Rainbow"
%%
Everybody ought to have a maid.
%%
Time and tide wait for no man.
%%
:$FATAL ERROR ILLEGAL UUO$
%%
:$FATAL ERROR - ERROR IN ERROR HANDLER$
%%
:$FATAL ERROR MPV IN GARBAGE COLLECTOR$
%%
:$FATAL ERROR BTB IN GARBAGE COLLECTOR$
%%
:$FATAL ERROR -- ERROR IN COMPILED CODE$
%%
:$FATAL ERROR VECTOR OUT OF HILBERT SPACE$
%%
:$FATAL ERROR YOU ARE OUT OF VECTOR SPACE$
%%
:$FATAL ERROR -- ILLEGAL ERROR$
%%
:$FATAL ERROR -- COULDN'T READ SYSTEM'S ERROR CODE?$
%%
Don't quit now, we might just as well lock the door and throw away the key.
%%
We could do that, but it would be wrong, that's for sure.
%%
Where the system is concerned, you're not allowed to ask "Why?".
%%
What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do it.
%%
Absent:  Exposed to the attacks of friends and acquaintances;
        defamed; slandered.
%%
Abscond:  To be unexpectedly called away to the bedside of a dying
relative and miss the return train.
%%
Brain:  To rebuke bluntly, but not pointedly; to dispel
  a source of error in an opponent.
%%
Truthful:  Dumb and illiterate.
%%
The following statement is not true:
%%
Who's afraid of ARPA?
%%
Who's afraid of the garbage collector?
%%
Murphy's Law: Any thing that can go wrong, Will.
%%
"Murphy's Law, that brash proletarian restatement of Godel's Theorem..."
                                -- Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow
%%
Parkinson's Law:  Work expands to fill the resources available to do
it with.
%%
Sturgeon's Law:  Ninety percent of everything is crap.
%%
Finagle's Law:  The perversity of the universe tends toward a maximum.
%%
  The Three Laws of Thermodynamics:
     1) You can't win.
     2) You can't break even.
     3) You can't even get out of the game.
%%
  There was a technician named Urban,
  Who had an affair with a turbine.
    "It's much nicer," he said,
    "Than a woman in bed,
  And it's sure as hell cheaper than bourbon!"
                -- Thomas Pynchon
                "Gravity's Rainbow"
%%
Clarke's Law:  Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable
from magic.
%%
Niven's Law:  Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable
from technology.
%%
Parkinson's Law of Committees:  The amount of time spent by a committee
on an agenda item is inversely proportional to the cost of the item.
%%
The Peter Principle:  People are promoted until they reach their level of
incompetence.
%%
Memory should be the starting point of the present.
%%
We all know that no one understands anything that isn't funny.
%%
The door is the key.
%%
What sin has not been committed in the name of efficiency?
%%
  A computer, to print out a fact,
  Will divide, multiply, and subtract.
    But this output can be
    No more than debris,
  If the input was short of exact.
                -- Gigo
%%
Early to rise and early to bed, makes a man healthy, and wealthy,
and dead.
%%
Your fly is open.
%%
Don't hit the keys so hard, it hurts.
%%
You have a tendency to feel you are superior to most computers.
%%
"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
%%
  There was a young fellow named Hector,
  Who was fond of a launcher-erector.
    But the squishes and pops
    Of acute pressure drops
  Wrecked Hector's hydraulic connector.
                -- Thomas Pynchon
                "Gravity's Rainbow"
%%
  "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
%%
The Ranger isn't gonna like it, Yogi.
%%
"... 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?"
                -- Isaac Asimov
                "The Feeling of Power", 1957
%%
But if you wish at once to do nothing and to be respectable
nowadays, the best pretext is to be at work on some profound study.
                -- Leslie Stephen
                "Sketches from Cambridge"
%%
Ever get the feeling that the world's on tape
and one of the reels is missing?
                -- Rich Little
%%
  Sometimes I wonder if I'm in my right mind.
  Then it passes off and I'm as intelligent as ever.
                -- Samuel Beckett
                "Endgame"
%%
  Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny -- old biology saw
  Ontology Recapitulages Philology -- old philosophy saw
  McCulloch -- old chain saw
%%
Our policy is:  When in doubt, do the right thing.
                -- Roy L. Ash
                (ex) president of Litton Industries
%%
Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know
in two hours.
                 -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
%%
God may be subtle, but he isn't plain mean.
                  -- Albert Einstein
%%
  That's all life is -- one big word game.
  Don't lie to yourself about it anymore.
  P.S. You are now enlightened.
                -- Carl Frederick
                "est:  Playing the Game the New Way"
%%
  Junk your mind.
  It is of no value to you in the game.
                -- Carl Frederick
                "est:  Playing the Game the New Way"
%%

  UU UU   M   M
  U U U   M   M
  U   U   M   M
  U   U   M   M
  U   U    MMM

%%
Plato, by the way, wanted to banish all poets from his proposed
Utopia because they were liars.  The truth was that Plato knew
philosophers couldn't compete sucessfully with poets.
                -- Kilgore Trout (Philip J. Farmer)
                "Venus on the Half Shell"
%%
  There are strange things done in the midnight sun
    By the men who moil for gold;
  The Arctic trails have their secret tales
    That would make your blood run cold;
  The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
    But the queerest they ever did see
  Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
    I cremated Sam McGee.
                -- Robert W. Service
%%
  There was a young fellow named Crockett,
  Who had an affair with a rocket.
    If you saw them out there,
    You'd be tempted to stare,
  But if you ain't tried it don't knock it!
                -- Thomas Pynchon
                "Gravity's Rainbow"
%%
  Say!  You've struck a heap of trouble--
    Bust in business, lost your wife;
  No one cares a cent about you,
    You don't care a cent for life;
  Hard luck has of hope bereft you,
    Health is failing, wish you'd die--
  Why, you've still the sunshine left you
    And the big blue sky.
                -- Robert W. Service
%%
  I have no doubt the Devil grins,
    As seas of ink I spatter.
  Ye gods, forgive my "literary" sins--
    The other kind don't matter.
                        -- Robert W. Service
%%
  A bunch of the boys were whooping it in the Malemute saloon;
  The kid that handles the music box was hitting a jag-time tune;
  Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
  And watching his luck was his light-o'-love,
      the lady that's known as Lou.
                        -- Robert W. Service
%%
  The Junior God now heads the roll
    In the list of heaven's peers;
  He sits in the House of High Control,
    And he regulates the spheres.
  Yet does he wonder, do you suppose,
    If, even in gods divine,
  The best and wisest may not be those
    Who have wallowed awhile with the swine?
                        -- Robert W. Service
%%
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.
%%
  There was a thing called a V-2,
  To pilot which you did not need to -
    You just pushed a button,
    And it would leave nuttin'
  But stiffs and big holes and debris, too.
                -- Thomas Pynchon
                "Gravity's Rainbow"
%%
And yet I should have dearly liked, I own, to have touched her lips;
to have questioned her, that she might have opened them; to have
looked upon the lashes of her downcast eyes, and never raised a blush;
to have let loose waves of hair, an inch of which would be a keepsake
beyond price:  in short, I should have liked, I do confess, to have
had the lightest license of a child, and yet been man enough to know
its value.
                        -- Charles Dickens
%%
How many IBM CPU's does it take to do a logical right-shift?
33-  1 to hold the bits and 32 to push the register.
%%
  Why did the program counter increment?
  To get to the next instruction.
%%
  How much does it cost to ride the Unibus?
  2 bits.
%%
  How was Thomas J. Watson buried?
  9 edge down.
%%
What is the difficulty with writing a PDP-8 program to emulate Jerry Ford?

Figuring out what to do with the other 3 K.
%%
VERITAS AETERNA -- DON'T SETQ T.
%%
PURITAS NECESSE EST -- DON'T DO RANDOM BINDINGS.
%%
NIHIL EX NIHIL -- DON'T SETQ NIL.
%%
Look up WHALES in the index to Thomas, 4th ed.
%%
If you had just a minute to live, and they granted you one final wish,
would you ask for something like another chance?
%%
"I don't mind going nowhere as long as it's an interesting path."
                                -- Ronald Mabbitt
%%
The Captain said, "Four hundred ninety-seven and a half feet of rope?
What you got that for?"  And the first mate said, "Oh, I just carry it."
%%
Do you realize that a modern computer can make a mistake that would have
taken a thousand men a million years?
%%
I don't want a pickle, I just wanna ride on my motorcycle.
And I don't want to die, I just want to ride on my motorcycle.
                -- Arlo Guthrie
%%
  I get up each morning, gather my wits.
    Pick up the paper, read the obits.
  If I'm not there I know I'm not dead.
    So I eat a good breakfast and go back to bed.

  Oh, how do I know my youth is all spent?
    My get-up-and-go has got up and went.
  But in spite of it all, I'm able to grin,
    And think of the places my get-up has been.
%%
  My analyst told me that I was right out of my head,
    But I said, "Dear Doctor, I think that it is you instead.
  Because I have got a thing that is unique and new,
    To prove it I'll have the last laugh on you.
  'Cause instead of one head-
    I've got two.

And you know two heads are better than one.
%%
ILGL UNDEF SYM?
%%
"They took some of the Van Goghs, most of the jewels,
and all of the Chivas!"
%%
Sign on bank:  "FREE BOTTLE OF CHIVAS WITH EVERY
MILLION-DOLLAR DEPOSIT."
%%
Beggar to well-dressed businessman:  "Could you
spare 14.95 for a fifth of Chivas?"
%%
Why must every generation think their folks are square?
%%
  Sometimes I live in the country,
    And sometimes I live in town.
  And sometimes I have a great notion,
    To jump in the river and drown.
                -- Big Bill Broonzy
%%
Good evening, gentlemen.  I am a HAL 9000 computer.
I was completed at the HAL plant in Urbana, Illinois, on January
eleventh, 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.
                -- Arthur Clarke and Stanely Kubrik
                "2001"
%%
Today is the first day of the rest of your lossage.
%%
Let the machine do the dirty work.
%%
Parenthesize to avoid ambiguity.
%%
Avoid unnecessary branches.
%%
If a logical expression is hard to understand, try transforming it.
%%
Be careful when a loop exits to the same place from side and bottom.
%%
Make sure your code "does nothing" gracefully.
%%
10.0 times 0.1 is hardly ever 1.0.
%%
The following new instruction has been added:

CHSE    Compare Half-words and Swap if Equal.

Please update your programs.
%%
The following new instruction has been added:

SWAR    Space War (in one instruction)
Please update your programs.
%%
The following new instruction has been added:

RIG     Read Interrecord Gap.

Please update your programs.
%%
The following new instruction has been added:

XOI     Execute Operator Immediate.

Please update your programs.
%%
The following new instruction has been added:

CIZ     Clear If Zero.

Please update your programs.
%%
The following new instruction has been added:

HCF     Halt and Catch Fire.

Please update your programs.
%%
The following new instruction has been added:

ROM     Read Operator's Mind.

Please update your programs.
%%
The following new instruction has been added:

COM     Clear Operator's Mind.

Please update your programs.
%%
The following new instruction has been added:

DAC     Divide and Conquer.

Please update your programs.
%%
The following new instruction has been added:

SETS    Set to Self.

Please update your programs.
%%
The following new instruction has been added:

PFLT    Prove Fermat's Last Theorem.

Please update your programs.
%%
The following new instruction has been added:

BFM     Be Fruitful and Multiply.

Please update your programs.
%%
The following new instruction has been added:

SPO     Skip if Power Off.

Please update your programs.
%%
The following new instruction has been added:

JFFZ    Jump if Find First Zero.

Please update your programs.
%%
The following new instruction has been added:

DWIM    Do What I Mean.

Please update your programs.
%%
The following new instruction has been added:

DTRT    Do The Right Thing.

Please update your programs.
%%
The following new instruction has been added:

BOT     Branch on Tree.

Please update your programs.
%%
The following new instruction has been added:

STMLMD  Skip To My Lou, My Darlin'

Please update your programs.
%%
The following new instruction has been added:

OPP     Optimize Programmer.

Please update your programs.
%%
The following new instruction has been added:

RLI     Rotate Left Intermittently

Please update your programs.
%%
The following new instruction has been added:

BAH     Branch and hang.

Please update your programs.
%%
The following new instruction has been added:

JOFD    Jump On Flag and Defect

Please update your programs.
%%
The following new instruction has been added:

PBN     Play Beethoven's Ninth

Please update your programs.
%%
A CONS is an object which cares.
                -- Bernie Greenberg.
%%
LISP car-and-cdr worlds are a more reasonable representation of the
things that make life interesting than fixed decimal(15) or
FILE OLDMSTR RECORD IS PAYROLL.
                -- Bernie Greenberg.
%%
As of next Tuesday, all terminal input will be line-at-a-time.
Please update your programs.
%%
"And you can't get any Watney's Red Barrel, because the bars
close every time you're thirsty..."
%%
You want to live forever?  Don't die.
%%
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
%%
Keeping instructions and operands in different
memories saves .20 (.09) microseconds.
%%
Just give Alice some pencils and she will stay busy for hours.
%%
Houdini escaping from New Jersey!
%%
"It was Hell", recalls former Child.
%%
Stability itself is nothing else than a more sluggish motion.
%%
Execute every act of thy life as though it were thy last.
                -- Marcus Aurelius
%%
Many receive advice, few profit from it.
%%
Better living a beggar than buried an emperor.
%%
That which is not good for the swarm, neither is it good for the bee.
%%
Men freely believe that what they wish to desire.
                -- Julius Caesar
%%
If you would know the value of money, go try to borrow some.
                -- Ben Franklin
%%
Business will be either better or worse.
                -- Calvin Coolidge
%%
Too clever is dumb.        -- Ogden Nash
%%
  Parsley
  is gharsley.
                -- Ogden Nash
%%
The only difference between a rut and a grave is their dimensions.
%%
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty
of work to do.
%%
No small art is it to sleep: it is necessary for that purpose
to keep awake all day.  -- Nietzsche
%%
There are three types of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
             -- Disraeli
%%
  A mathematician named Klein
  Thought the Mobius band was divine.
     Said he, "If you glue
     The edges of two,
  You'll get a weird bottle like mine!
%%
When you are up to your ass in alligators it is hard to
remember that your initial objective was to drain the swamp
%%
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here
%%
Abandon all hope, ye who exit here
%%
Any typographical error will occur in the place in which it will
do the most damage.
%%
Kiss your keyboard goodbye!
%%
When pleasure remains, does it remain a pleasure?
                -- A Sinbad the Sailor film
%%
Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything
else follows in the same way.
                -- Alan J. Perlis
%%
You are being paged.
%%
Multics is security spelled sideways.
%%
  From the sublime to the ridiculous,
   to the sublimely ridiculous,
   to the ridiculously sublime.
%%
A Dill Pickle makes a soggy bookmark
%%
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 privileged 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

In computer science, we stand on each other's feet.
                                                -- Brian. K. Reid
%%
Legareque loquere Latinam bene possum.

It's not the initial cost of the notebook that counts -- it's the upkeep.
%%
It is impossible to make something foolproof because
fools are so ingenious.
%%
Nasrudin, ferrying a pedant across a piece of rough water, said
something ungrammatical to him.  "Have you never studied grammar?",
asked the scholar.  "No."  "Then half your life has been wasted."
A few minutes later Nasrudin turned to the passenger, and asked
"Have you ever learned how to swim?"  "No."  "Then all your life
is wasted -- we are sinking!"
%%
Nasrudin used to take a donkey across a frontier every day, with
the panniers loaded with straw.  Since he admitted to being a smuggler
when he trudged home every night, the guards searched him again and
again.  They frisked him, sifted the straw, even tried burning it.
They found nothing, but as time went by Nasrudin became more and
more prosperous.  Many years later, in another country, a retired
customs guard met Nasrudin and asked him what he had been smuggling.
"Donkeys" was the reply.
%%
One day the King decided that he would force all his subjects to
tell the truth.  A gallows was erected in front of the city gates.
A herald announced, "Whoever would enter the city must first answer
the truth to a question which will be put to him."  Nasrudin was
first in line.  The captain of the guard asked him, "Where are you
going?  Tell the truth -- the alternative is death by hanging."  "I am
going," said Nasrudin, "to be hanged on that gallows."  "I don't
believe you."  "Very well, if I have told a lie, then hang me!"
"But that would make it the truth!"  "Exactly," said Nasrudin,
"your truth."
%%
A kinsman came to see Nasrudin, bringing a duck as a gift.  Delighted,
Nasrudin made duck soup and shared it with his guest.  Thereafter, one
man after another arrived, claiming to be a friend of a friend of the
man who brought the duck, but bringing no presents themselves.  One day
a stranger appeared, saying "I am the friend of the friend of the friend
of the relative who brought you a duck", and sat down like all the rest,
expecting a meal.  The exasperated Mullah set before him a bowl of
hot water, saying "This is the soup of the soup of the soup of the duck
which was brought by my relative."
%%
Nasrudin called at a large house to collect for charity.  The servant
said "My master is out."  Nasrudin replied, "Tell your master that next
time he goes out, he should not leave his face at the window.  Someone
might steal it."
%%
Nasrudin was taking a load of salt to market.  His donkey waded through
a stream, dissolving the salt.  Delighted to be relieved of his load,
the donkey frisked on the shore, but Nasrudin was angered.  The next
market day, Nasrudin loaded the donkey with wool.  The animal nearly
drowned from the weight of the wool after wetting it in the stream.
Nasrudin sold the heavy, damp wool for more than it was worth.
%%
Two men came before Nasrudin when he was magistrate.  The first man
said, "This man has bitten my ear -- I demand compensation."  The second
man said, "He bit it himself."  Nasrudin withdrew to his chambers, and
spent an hour trying to bite his own ear.  He succeeded only in falling
over and bruising his forehead.  Returning to the courtroom, Nasrudin
pronounced, "Examine the man whose ear was bitten.  If his forehead is
bruised, he did it himself and the case is dismissed.  If his forehead
is not bruised, the other man did it and must pay three silver pieces."
%%
Nasrudin walked into a shop one day, and the owner came forward to
serve him.  Nasrudin said, "First things first.  Did you see me walk
into your shop?"  "Of course."  "Have you ever seen me before?"
"Never."  "Then how do you know it was me?"
%%
One day Nasrudin was walking down a deserted road, when he saw several
mounted men approaching.  Fearing that they were bandits or army
recruiters, he hid in an adjacent graveyard.  The travelers, who
were innocent, had seen him leap the wall.  They left the road and
sought Nasrudin, asking if they could help him, and why he was cowering
in the graveyard.  The Mullah replied, "I am here because of you,
and you are here because of me."
%%
Nasrudin said, "I can see in the dark."  A student asked, "If that is
so, why do you sometimes carry a candle at night?"  "To prevent other
people from bumping into me."
%%
"'Nobody can ride that horse,' the King said to me," said Nasrudin.
"But I climbed into the saddle anyway."  "What happened?"  "I couldn't
move it either."
%%
One day Nasrudin encountered a meditating Yogi.  Hoping to learn something,
he asked the Yogi who and what he was.  "I am a Yogi," was the reply,
"and I seek communion with all living things."  "That is interesting,"
replied Nasrudin, "because a fish once saved my life."  The Yogi begged
him to join him, because he had such harmony with the animal world.
After weeks of meditation, the Yogi asked to hear more of the fish
that saved Nasrudin's life.  Nasrudin said, "I was starving, and the
fish provided sustenance for three days."
%%
"There is nothing which cannot be answered by means of my doctrine,"
said a monk, coming into a teahouse where Nasrudin sat.  "And yet just a
short time ago, I was challenged by a scholar with an unanswerable
question," said Nasrudin.  "I could have answered it if I had been there."
"Very well.  He asked, 'Why are you breaking into my house in the middle
of the night?'"
%%
Nasrudin walked into a teahouse and declaimed, "The moon is more useful
than the sun."  "Why?", he was asked.  "Because at night we need the light
more."
%%
Nasrudin was carrying home a piece of liver and the recipe for liver pie.
Suddenly a bird of prey swooped down and snatched the piece of meat from
his hand.  As the bird flew off, Nasrudin called after it, "Foolish bird!
You have the liver, but what can you do with it without the recipe?"
%%
A neighbor came to Nasrudin, asking to borrow his donkey.  "It is out
on loan," the teacher replied.  At that moment, the donkey brayed loudly
inside the stable.  "But I can hear it bray, over there."  "Whom do you
believe," asked Nasrudin, "me or a donkey?"
%%
A would-be disciple came to Nasrudin's hut on the mountain-side.  Knowing
that every action of such an enlightened one is significant, the seeker
watched the teacher closely.  "Why do you blow on your hands?"  "To warm
myself in the cold."  Later, Nasrudin poured bowls of hot soup for himself
and the newcomer, and blew on his own.  "Why are doing that, Master?"
"To cool the soup."  Unable to trust a man who uses the same process
to arrive at two different results -- hot and cold -- the disciple departed.
%%
Some boys wanted to run away with Nasrudin's slippers.  They crowded around
him and said, "Mullah, no one can climb this tree."  "Of course they can,"
Nasrudin said.  "I will show you how."  He removed his slippers, but then,
sensing something amiss, stuck them in his waistband and proceeded up
the tree.  The discomfited boys asked, "Why do you not leave your slippers
here on the ground?"  Nasrudin replied, "If this tree has never been
climbed, how do I know there is not a road up there?"
%%
Nasrudin returned to his village from the imperial capital, and the
villagers gathered around to hear what had passed.  "At this time,"
said Nasrudin, "I only want to say that the King spoke to me."  All
the villagers but the stupidest ran off to spread the wonderful news.
The remaining villager asked, "What did the King say to you?"  "What he
said -- and quite distinctly, for everyone to hear -- was
'Get out of my way!'"
The simpleton was overjoyed; he had heard words actually spoken by the
King, and seen the very man they were spoken to.
%%
Nasrudin said, "If your donkey allows someone to steal your coat,
steal his saddle."
%%
Incrementally extended heuristic algorithms tend inexorably toward
the incomprehensible.
%%
The difference between a child and a hacker is the amount he
flames about his toys.
                        -- Ed Schwalenberg
%%
You know, the mainspring of this country
wound up as tight as it is,
is guaranteed for the life of the watch.
%%
"Live long and prosper."
                  -- Spock of Vulcan
%%
"Man is ultimately superior to any mechanical device."
                  -- Kirk (Stardate 1514.0)
%%
"You (humans) are,after all, essentially irrational."
                  -- Spock (Stardate 3220.3)
%%
"If I let go of a hammer on a planet having a positive
  gravity, I need not see it fall to know that is has,
  in fact, fallen."
                  -- Spock (Stardate 2948.9)
%%
Read me Doctor Memory.
%%
"As we know, the value of pi is a transcendental figure
  without resolution."  -- Spock (Stardate 3615.4)
%%
".. the most important thing in the programming language
is the name.  A language will not succeed without a good
name.  I have recently invented a very good name and now
I am looking for a suitable language.
                  -- D. E. Knuth, 1967
%%
Security by Obscurity!
%%
Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
%%
If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.
%%
Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion.
%%
Excess of sorrow laughs.  Excess of joy weeps.
%%
One thought fills immensity.
%%
The eagle never lost so much time, as when he submitted to learn of the crow.
%%
The fox provides for himself, but God provides for the lion.
%%
Listen to the fools reproach!  It is a kingly title!
%%
The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall grow,
nor the lion, the horse, how he shall take his prey.
%%
If others had not been foolish, we should be so.
%%
As the caterpiller chooses the fairest leaves to lay her
eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.
%%
To create a little flower is the labour of ages.
%%
The best wine is the oldest, the best water the newest.
%%
One Law for the lion and ox is oppression.
%%
[It] would have taken hours to be fair and we're not employed
to do that sort of thing.
                                -- KMP (out of context)
%%
I dreamed last night that I was a muffler,
when I woke up, I was exhausted.
                                - CTH
%%
Perfection (Almost):
The Titanic Disaster

"The Captain may, by simply moving an electric switch,
instantly close the doors and make the vessel practically
unsinkable.
                - special 1911 edition of Shipbuilder
%%
MULTICS MAN!!!!

With his power ring PL-1, backed by the mighty
resources of the powerful H-6880, his faithful
sidekick, the Fso Eagle, and his trusted gang:
"The System Daemons", he fights a never ending
battle for truth, security, and the Honeywell Way!
                                - T Kenney
%%
Use Computers to Take Over the Word.
%%
'Burned out,' he lives in fear, and he wonders
%%
"To be responsive at this time, though I will
simply say, and therefore this is a repeat of
what I said previously, that which I am unable
to offer in response is based on information
avaliable to make no such statement."
%%
If a wolf is chasing your sleigh, throw him a raisin
cookie but don't stop to bake a cake.  -- Banacek
%%
If the butterfly had teeth like the tiger he would
never make it out of the hangar. -- Banacek
%%
It is an extraordinary yet readily apparent fact of our
lives that broadening our horizons proves to be a far
lesser challenge than horizontalizing our broads.
                        -Weiner
%%
  When in distress with fortune and men's eyes,
  I all alone beweep my outcast state
  And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
  And look upon myself and curse my fate;
  Wishing me like to one more rich in fate
  Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
  Desiring this man's art and that man's state,
  With what I most enjoy contented least.
  Then in these thoughts, myself almost despising,
  Haply I think of thee and then my state
  Like to the lark at break of day arising,
  From sullen Earth, sings hymns at Heaven's gate.
  For thy remembered love such sweet joy brings,
  That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

                        -- William Shakespeare, "Sonnets"
%%
"How eccentric can we be if we live in a place like Lexington?"
                        -- Boston Globe article on The High Tech Set
%%
"A programmer," he said with obvious amazement, is the sort
of person "who drinks Coke in the morning."
                        -- Boston Globe article on The High Tech Set
%%
I had a feeling about Mathematics -- that I saw it all. Depth beyond
Depth was revealed to me -- the Byss and the Abyss. I saw -- as one
might see the transit of Venus or even the Lord Mayor's Show -- a
quantity passing through infinity and changing its sign from plus to
minus. I saw exactly how it happened and why the tergiversation was
inevitable -- but it was after dinner and I let it go.
                        -- Winston S. Churchill
%%