Magnum One/Magnum One (Mid-American Digital) (Disc Manufacturing).iso/d20/tbe_001.arc/COOKIE.DAT

Text File | 1991-06-27 | 21KB | 653 lines

Murphy's Law:
If anything can go wrong.... it will!

Murphy's Law (Corollary #1) :
Nothing is as easy as it looks!

Murphy's Law (Corollary #2):
Everything takes longer than you think.

Murphy's Law (Corollary #3):
If there is a possibility of several things going wrong,
the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.

Murphy's Law (Corollary #4):
If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure
can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way will promptly appear.

Murphy's Law (Corollary #5):
Left to themselves,
things tend to go from bad to worse....

Murphy's Law (Corollary #6):
When you set out to do something,
something else must then be done first....

Murphy's Law (Corollary #7):
Every solution to a problem only creates new problems.

Murphy's Law (Corollary #8):
It is impossible to make anything fool-proof....
because fools are so incredibly ingenious.

Murphy's Law (Corollary #9):
Nature ALWAYS sides with hidden flaws.

Murphy's Philosophy:
Smile....   tomorrow will be much worse.

Murphy's Law Quantimized:
Everything goes wrong all at the same time.

Zymurgy's Corollary to Murphy's Law:
When it rains.... it pours!

Boling's Postulate:
If you're feeling good, don't worry.
You'll get over it.

Iles's Law:
There is always an easier way to do it!

Iles's Law (Corollary #1):
When looking directly at an easier way to do something,
especially for long periods of time, you will not see it.

Chisholm's Second Law:
When things are going well, something will inevitably go wrong.
Corollary #1: When things can't get worse, they will.
Corollary #2: Anytime things appear to be going better, you have
              overlooked something.

Murphy's Universal Constant:
Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value.

Hill's Commentary on Murphy's Law:
1. If we lose much by having things go wrong, take all possible care.
2. If we have nothing to lose by change, relax.
3. If we have everything to gain by change, relax.
4. If it doesn't matter, it does not matter.

Chisholm's Third Law:
Anytime you propose something, and do understand what you propose,
your proposal will not be understood by others.

Chisholm's Third Law (Corollary #1):
If you explain SO clearly that nobody can possibly misunderstand,
then somebody will misunderstand.

Chisholm's Third Law (Corollary #2):
If you do something which you are sure will meet with everybody's
approval, then somebody won't like it.

Scott's First Law:
No matter what goes wrong, it will probably look right!

Scott's Second Law:
When an error has been detected and then corrected,
it will be found to have been correct in the first place.

Finagle's First Law:
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.

Finagle's Second Law:
No matter what the anticipated result, there will always be someone
eager to: a) Misinterpret it,
          b) Fake it,
          c) believe it happened to his own theory.

Finagle's Third Law:
In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct,
beyond any doubt or need of checking, is the mistake.

Finagle's Third Law (Corollary #1):
In any collection of data - the most obviously correct figure is the
mistake.
Corollary #1:  Everyone who stops in with unasked for advice will see
               the mistake immediately!

Fiangle's Fourth Law:
Once something is fouled up.... anything done to correct the problem
will only make it worse.

Wingo's Axiom:
All Murphy's Laws may be by-passed by learning the simple art of
doing without thinking.

Gumperson's Law:
The probability of anything happening
is in inverse ratio to its desirability.

Issawi's Law of the Course of Progress:
Most things get steadily worse.

Issawi's Law of the Path of Progress:
A shortcut is the longest distance between two points.

Sodd's First Law:
When a person attempts a task, he or she will be thwarted in that task by
the unconscious intervention of some other presence (animate or inanimate).
Nevertheless, some tasks are completed, since the intervening presence is
itself attempting a task and is, then, subject to interference.

Sodd's Second Law:
Sooner or later, the worst possible set of circumstances is bound to occur.
Corollary: Any system must be designed to withstand the worst possible set
           of circumstances.

Simon's Law:
Everything put together falls apart, sooner or later.

Rudin's Law:
In a crisis that forces people to choose among several alternative
courses of action, most people will choose the worse course of action.

Ginsberg's Theorem:
     1. You can't win.
     2. You can't break even.
     3. You can't even quit the game.

Freeman's Commentary on Ginsberg's Theorem:
1. Capitalism is based on the assumption that you can win.
2. Socialism is based on the assumption that you can break even.
3. Mysticism is based on the assumption that you can quit the game.

Ehrman's Commentary:
     1. Things will get worse before they get better.
     2. Who said things would get better?

Murphy's Law of Thermodynamics:
Things get worse under pressure.

The Universal Constant:
If you catch an event in the act of occuring....
it is a common event.

Gillis' Second Law:
If an event occurs, and you observe it.....
then the event occurs frequently... don't make the mistake of
thinking you were lucky to observe a rare event.

Commoner's Second Law of Ecology:
Nothing EVER just goes away!

Pudder's Law:
Anything that begins well, ends badly.
Anything that begins badly, ends worse.

Stockmayer's Theorem:
If it looks easy, it's tough.
If it looks tough, it's almost impossible.

Howe's Law:
Everybody has an idea that will not work.

Zymurgy's First Law of Evolving Systems Dynamics:
Once you open a can of worms, the only way to recan them is
to use a larger can.

The Unspeakable Law:
As soon as you mention something....
     ...if it's good, it goes away.
     ...if it's bad, it happens.

Non-Reciprocal Laws of Expectations:
Negative expectations yield negative results.
Positive expectations yield negative reults.

Klipstein's Laws:
Applied to General Engineering:
     A patent application will be preceded by one week by a similar
     application made by an independent worker.

Klipstein's Laws:
Applied to General Engineering:
     Dimensions will always be expressed in the least usable terms.
     Velocity, for example, will be expressed in furlongs per fortnight.

Atwood's Fourteenth Corollary:
No books are lost by lending except those you particularly wanted to keep.

Johnson's Third Law:
If you miss any issue of any magazine, it will be the issue which
contained the article or story or installment you were most anxious
to read.

The Airplane Law:
When the plane you are on is late.....
the plane you wanted to transfer to is on time.

First Law of Bridge:
It's always your partners fault.

Lewis's Law:
No matter how long or how hard you shop for an item, after you've
bought it, you'll find it's being sold cheaper somewhere else.

Laws of Gardening:
1. Other people's tools work only in other people's gardens.
2. Fancy gizmos don't work.
3. If nobody uses it, there's a reason.
4. You get the most of what you need the least.

First Law of Bicycling:
No matter which way you ride........
it's always uphill and against the wind.

Etorre's Observation:
The other line always moves faster.

Boob's Law:
You always find something the last place you look.

Laws of Applied Confusion:
Corollary #2:
Trucks that normally take one day to deliver will take five if you are
waiting for the truck.

The Snafu Equations:
1. Given any problem containing 'n' equations, there will always be
   n+1 unknowns.
2. An object or bit of information most needed will be the least available.
3. Badness comes in waves.

Laws of Computer Programming:
1. Any program, when running, is obsolete.
2. Any program costs more and takes longer.
3. Any program will expand to fill available memory.

Gilb's Second Law of Unreliability:
Any system which depends on human reliability is unreliable.

Gilb's Third Law of Unreliability:
Undetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast to detectable
errors, which by definition are limited.

Lowery's Law:
If it jams - force it.
If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.

Anthony's Law of Force:
Don't force it; get a bigger hammer.

Cooper's Law:
All machines are amplifiers....

Cahn's Axiom:
When all else fails, read the instructions.

Schmidt's Law:
If you mess with something long enough....
it will break.

Maier's Law:
If the facts do not conform to the theory,
they must be disposed of.

Williams and Holland's Law:
If enough data is collected,
anything may be proven by statistical methods.

Young's Law:
All great discoveries are made by mistake.
Corollary:  The greater the funding, the longer it takes
            to make the mistake.

Mr. Cooper's Law:
If you do not understand a particular word in a piece of technical writing,
ignore it.  The piece will make perfect sense without it.

Futility Factor:
No experiment is ever a complete failure -
it can always serve as a negative example.

Meskimen's Law:
There's never time to do something right....
but there's always time to do it over.

Heller's Law:
The first myth of management is that it exists.

The Peter Principle:
In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his or her level
of incompetence.

The Peter Principle (Corollary #1):
In time, every post in an organization or hierarchy tends to be
occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties.

The Peter Principle (Corollary #2):
Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached
their level of incompetence within a hierarchy.

Peter's Prognosis:
Spend sufficient time in confirming the need...
and the need will disappear.

Peter's Placebo:
An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance.

Imhoff's Law:
The organization of any bureaucracy is very much like a septic tank -
the really big chunks always rise to the top.

Zymurgy's Law of Volunteer Labor:
People are always available for work - in the past tense.

The Army Axiom:
Any order that can be misunderstood has been misunderstood.

Jone's Law:
The man or woman who can smile when things go wrong -
has thought of someone he or she can blame it on.

Putt's Law:
Technology is dominated by two types of people:
Those who understand what they do not manage.
Those who manage what they do not understand.

Haldane's Law:
The universe is not only stranger than we can imagine....
it is stranger than we CAN imagine.

Newton's Little-Known Seventh Law:
A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead.

Persig's Postulate:
The number of rational hypotheses that can explain
any given phenomenon is infinite.

Issawi's Law of the Conservation of Evil:
The total amount of evil in any system remains constant.
Hence, any reduction in one direction, for example, a reduction
in poverty or unemployment - is accompanied by an increase
in another, e.g.,  crime or air pollution.

Cole's Axiom:
The sum of the intelligence on the planet
is a constant; the population is growing.

Beifeld's Principle:
The probability of a young man or woman meeting a desirable and receptive
person of the opposite sex increases by pryramidal progression when he or
she is in the company of: 1) a date, 2) his or her spouse, 3) a better
looking and richer friend.

Pardo's First Postulate:
Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.

Weiler's Law:
Nothing is impossible for the person who
can get someone else to do it.

The Golden Rule of Arts and Sciences:
Whoever has the gold... makes the rules.

Crane's Law:
There's no such thing as a free lunch.

Ninety-Ninety Rule of Schedules:
The first ninety percent of the task takes ten percent of the time,
and the last ten percent takes the other ninety percent.

John's Collateral Corollary:
In order to get a loan....
you must first prove you don't need it.

Any given program cost more and take longer.

Any given program will expand to fill all available memory.

Any given program, when running, is obsolete.

Any non-trivial program has a least one bug.

If a program is useful, it will be changed.

If a program is useless, it will be documented.

If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs,
then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.

Inside every large program is a small program struggling to get out.

Life is just another example of bad programming.

Make it possible for programmers to write programs in english and you will
find that programmers cannot write in english.

Make it right before you make it faster.

Make it work before you make it faster.

Old programmers never die - they just abend.

Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the
programmer who must maintain it.

Program design philosophy: Start at the beginning and continue
until the end, then stop.

Real programmers always have a better idea.

Real programmers are kind to rookies.

Real programmers are secure enough to write readable code,
which they then self-righteously refuse to explain.

Real programmers argue with the systems analyst as a matter of principle.

Real programmers can do octal, hexadecimal and binary math in their heads.

Real programmers do not apply dp terminology to non-dp situations.

Real programmers do not document. Documentation is for wimps
who can't read listings or object code.

Real programmers do not eat breakfast from the vending machines.

Real programmers do not practice four-syllable words before walkthroughs.

Real programmers do not read books like "effective listening"
and "communication skills".

Real programmers do not utter profanities at an elevated decibel level.

Real programmers don't advertise their hangovers.

Real programmers don't announce how many times the operations department
called them last night.

Real programmers don't comment their code. If it is hard to write,
it should be hard to understand.

Real programmers don't dress for success unless they are trying to
convince others that they are going on interviews.

Real programmers don't eat quiche. In fact, real programmers don't know
how to spell quiche. They eat twinkies and szechwan food.

Real programmers don't grumble about the disadvantages of Cobol
when they don't know any other language.

Real programmers don't notch their desks for each completed service request.

Real programmers don't number paragraph names consecutively.

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 play video games, they write them.

Real programmers don't write Cobol. Cobol is for
wimpy applications programmers.

Real programmers don't write applications programs; They program right down
on the bare metal. Application programming is for feebs who
can't do systems programming.

Real programmers don't write in Basic.
Actually, no programmers write in Basic after age 12.

Real programmers don't write in Fortran.
Fortran is for pipe stress freaks and crystallography weenies.

Real programmers don't write in PL/1. PL/1 is for programmers who
can't decide whether to write in Cobol or Fortran.

Real programmers don't write in Pascal, Bliss, or ADA, or any of those pinko
computer science languages. Strong typing is for people with weak memories.

Real programmers don't write memos.

Real programmers don't write specs - users should consider themselves lucky
to get any programs at all and take what they get.

Real programmers drink too much coffee so that they will always
seem tense and overworked.

Real programmers have read the standards manual but won't admit it.

Real programmers know it's not operations fault if their jobs go into "hogs".

Real programmers know what saad means.

Real programmers never work 9 to 5. If any real programmers are around at
9 a.m., it's because they were up all night.

Real programmers print only clean compiles, fixing all errors
through the terminal.

Real programmers programs never work the first time. But if you throw them on
the machine, they can be patched into working in
"only a few" 30-hour debugging sessions.

Real programmers punch up their own programs.

Real programmers understand Assembler.

Real programmers understand C.

Real programmers understand Pascal.

The organization of any program reflects the
organization of the people who developed it.

The program is absolutely right; Therefore the computer must be wrong.

The value of a program is proportional to the weight of it's output.

You should never program while drinking beer.

A language that doesn't affect the way you think about
programming is not worth knowing.

A Law of Computer Programming:
     Make it possible for programmers to write in English and
     you will find the programmers cannot write in English.

A Lisp programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
             -- Alan Perlis

Computer programmers do it byte by byte

Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are.

Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it
was written and another for which it wasn't.

Every program is a part of some other program, and rarely fits.

Everyone can be taught to sculpt: Michelangelo would have had to
be taught how not to. So it is with the great programmers.

Flon's Law:
     There is not now, and never will be, a language in which it
     is the least bit difficult to write bad programs.

If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.

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 English, every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in
our programming languages.

In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
     -- 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.

Old programmers never die. They just branch to a new address.

Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming
     Never test for an error condition you don't know how to
     handle.

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.

There are two ways to write error-free programs. Only the third one works.

When someone says "I want a programming language in which I need
only say what I wish done," give him a lollipop.

You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude
on the continuing viability of Fortran.
             -- Alan Perlis

I am a computer. I am dumber than any human and smarter than an administrator.

If you put nonsense into a computer, nothing but nonsense comes out again.
But this nonsense has been through a very expensive machine and has been
refined. Now nobody dares criticise it.

To err is human. To really foul things up you need a computer.

To iterate is human, to recurse, divine.

"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."

43rd Law of Computing:
     Anything that can go wr
Cookie: Segmentation Violation Core Dumped

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.

Bolub's Fourth Law of Computerdom:
     Project teams detest weekly progress reporting because it
     so vividly manifests their lack of progress.

Bradley's Bromide:
     If computers get too powerful, we can organize them
     into a committee that will do them in.

Bringing computers into the home won't change either one, but may
revitalize the corner saloon.

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
             -- Isaac Asimov

Motto of the Electrical Engineer:
     Working computer hardware is a lot like an erect penis:
     it stays up as long as you don't fuck with it.

One good reason why computers can do more work than people is
that they never have to stop and answer the phone.

The computer is the ultimate polluter:  Its shit is
indistinguishable from the food it produces.

Think of your family tonight. Try to crawl home after the
computer crashes.