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(Does this look like a fraction to you?) OS/2: Where's the other half?!
A Smith and Wesson beats four aces.
A man without a God is like a fish without a bicycle.
A masochist is anybody who does anything in COBOL.
A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a Unicorn.
Ahhhhhhhh, I forget what I was going to say.
An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more
violent. It takes a touch of genius-and a lot of courage-to move in the
opposite direction.
Anything free is worth what you pay for it.
In back of every achievement is a proud wife and a surprised mother-in-law.
Be a better psychiatrist and the world will beat a psychopath to your door.
Be alert, America needs more lerts.
COBOL programs are an exercise in Artificial Inelegance.
Counting in binary is just like counting in decimal, if you are all thumbs.
Courage is fear holding on a minute longer.
DEFINITION: Memory Map - A sheet of paper showing location of computer store.
DEFINITION: Macro - The last half of an expression of surprise:
"Holy Macro".
DEFINITION: Coding - An addictive drug.
DEFINITION: Dip- Inventor of a famous switch.
DEFINITION: Fixed Word Length - Certain four-letter words used
by programmers when under extreme duress.
DEFINITION: Language- A system of organizing and defining syntax errors.
DEFINITION: Computer- A device designed to speed and automate errors.
DEFINITION: COBOL- Confused Oriental Bean-cOunting Language.
DEFINITION: Bit - The increment by which programmers slowly go mad.
DEFINITION: Input - Food, whiskey, beer, aspirin, etc.
DEFINITION: Array - A blast from a CRT.
DEFINITION: Altair - A place where computers are sacrificed.
DEFINITION: Disassembler - An unattended five year old child.
DEFINITION: Buffer - A programmer who works in the nude.
DEFINITION: Password- The nonsense word taped to the CRT.
DEFINITION: FORTRAN- Formless Translations.
DEFINITION: Ibm- Computer company: "Itty-Bitty Machines" Corporation.
DEFINITION: Branch - A stick used for beating.
DEFINITION: IC - Understanding as in 'Oh, IC'.
DEFINITION: Joystick- A peripheral intended for use only by
consenting adults.
DEFINITION: BASIC- Beginner's All-purpose Sloppy Instruction Code.
DEFINITION: Initialize - Carving your initials on a floppy disk.
Difficult things take a long time; the impossible takes a little longer.
Digital circuits are made from analog parts.
Don't fight forces; use them.
Don`t force it, get a larger hammer.
Every Titanic has its iceberg.
Friction is a drag.
Give a woman an inch and she'll park a car in it.
Go climb a gravity well.
Going the speed of light is bad for your age.
Got Mole problem? Call Avogadro at 6.02 X 10^23
Gravity brings me down.
Gravity doesn`t exist: the earth sucks.
He who laughs last is probably your boss.
Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
186,000 Miles per Second.
It's not just a good idea;
IT'S THE LAW.
"I say we take off; nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way
to be sure."
-- Corporal Hicks, in Aliens
Anyone can become angry. That is easy. But to be angry with the
right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the
right purpose and in the right way-- that is not easy.
Aristotle
"It's a hundred and six miles to Chicago. We've got a full
tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're
wearing sunglasses."
"Hit it."
-- The Blues Brothers
"They won't catch us, we're on a mission from God!"
-- The Blues Brothers
I know not what weapons World War III will be fought with, but
World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
-- Albert Einstein
If the universe has any purpose more important than topping a
woman you love and making a baby with her hearty help, I've never
heard of it.
--Lazarus Long
Help stamp out and abolish redundancy!
Heroism is endurance for one moment more.
"Birth, Copulation, and Death. That's all the facts when you come
to brass tacks."
"God runs electromagnetics by wave theory on Monday,
Wednesday, and Friday, and the Devil runs them by quantum theory
on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday."
- William Bragg -
"I like a man who grins when he fights."
- Winston Churchill -
"If you're traveling at the speed of light and turn on headlights...
Will they work?"
- Steven Wright
"Make no little plans. They have no Magic to stir Men's blood."
"Reality is just a blip at the edge of the screen."
"Sir? Am I to understand that you people sell dead, fried
BIRDS here?"
- Penguin Opus
"To err is human, to compute divine. Trust your computer but
not its programmer."
"We hold these truths to be self-evident..."
-Found on an old scrap of paper after the blast
"Women are psychic... they know if men are going to get laid
or not!"
- Paul Rodriguez (Detroit Comedy Jam)
Anytime you wish to demonstrate something, the number of
faults encountered is proportional to the number of viewers.
Don't let your mouth write no check that your tail can't cash.
Bo Diddley
Give me a home where the buffalo roam, and you've got a room
full of buffalo chips.
Sitting Bull
I don't care what anybody says, it's STILL a primitive planet!
I object to you. I object to intellect without discipline. I
object to power without constructive purpose.
Spock of Vulcan
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote
programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy
civilization.
It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the
waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not
always right at the top.
Love is a matter of chemistry, but Sex is a matter of physics.
Profanity is the language most programmers know best.
Sex is hereditary. If your parents never had it, chances are
you won't either.
Tact is the art of convincing people that they know more than you do.
Tell a man that there are 300 billion stars in the universe,
and he'll believe you.... Tell him that a bench has wet paint
upon it and he'll have to touch it to be sure.
The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.
There is no remedy for sex but more sex.
To know the future absolutely is to be trapped into that
future absolutely.
Paul Muad'Dib
Trust everybody; but always cut the cards.
Under any conditions, anywhere, whatever you are doing, there
is some ordinance under which you can be booked.
What the world needs is more geniuses with humility--
there are so few of us left.
Whatever their faults, the communists never created canned laughter.
When I sell liquor, it's called bootlegging; when my patrons
serve it on Lake Shore Drive, it's called hospitality.
Al Capone
When choosing between two evils I always like to take the one
I've never tried before.
Mae West
You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.
I'm a survivor...being a survivor doesn't mean you have to be
made out of steel and it doesn't mean you have to be ruthless.
It means you have to basically be on your own side and want to
win.
Linda Ronstadt
I'm not afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it
happens.
If Columbus had an advisory committee he would probably still
be at the dock.
If at first you don't succeed, try again. Then quit. No use
being a damn fool about it.
If you wish to succeed, consult three old people.
Ignorance is not bliss-it's oblivion.
Invest in physics - own a piece of Dirac!
It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are
so ingenious.
It is morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.
Justice is incidental to law and order.
Kitman`s Law: Pure drivel tends to drive away ordinary drivel.
Life's a bitch; then you marry one; then you die.
Look out for yourself or they'll pee on your grave.
Monday is a hard way to spend one-seventh of your life.
More people have died in Teddy Kennedy's car than in nuclear
power plants.
Never try to outstubborn a cat.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
No problem is so formidable that you can't just walk away from it.
OS/2: JUST SAY NO!
On any IC protected by a fast acting fuse, the IC will protect
the fuse by blowing first.
Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.
Organization is the enemy of improvisation.
Perry`s Motto: Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate.
Please keep your hands off the secretary's reproducing equipment.
Pretend to spank me - I'm a pseudo-masochist!
Programmers get overlayed.
Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives.
Recursive, adj.; see Recursive
Remember, the fact that you're paranoid doesn't mean that
they're NOT out to get you!
Revenge is a dish best served cold.
- Klingon Proverb ca. 2443
Sign on women's restroom door aboard the Starship Enterprise:
"Where no man has gone before"
Sloppy, raggedy-assed old life. I love it. I never want to die.
Teamwork is vital! (It gives you someone to blame.)
That which does not destroy me, makes me strong.
That which is expedient, rather than that which is the truth.
The Fourth Law of Computing: On a slow day, you can wait forever.
The biggest things are always the easiest to do because there
is no competition.
The longer the title, the less important the job.
The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
The remarkable thing about my mother is that for 30 years, she
served the family nothing but leftovers. The orginal meal has
never been found.
There's little worse than being peerless in a peer-review system.
There's no future in time travel.
This place is so weird that the cockroaches have moved next door.
Three can keep a secret, if two are dead.
Time is just nature's way of keeping everything from happening
at once.
To err is human, to forgive is against company policy.
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the
real tragedy is when men are afraid of the light.
We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.
We die only once, and for such a long time.
When all else fails, RTFM!
When half-gods go, the gods arrive.
HOW TO LEAVE THE PLANET
1. Phone NASA. Their phone number is (713)483-3111. Explain
that it's very important that you get away as quickly as
possible.
2. If they do not cooperate, phone any friend you may
have in the White House-- (202)456-1414-- to have a word on your
behalf with the guys at NASA.
3. If you don't have any friends at the White House, phone the
Kremlin (ask the overseas operator for 0107-095-295-9051). They
don't have any friends there either (at least, none to speak of),
but they do seem to have a little influence, so you may as well
try.
4. If that also fails, phone the Pope for guidance. His
telephone number is 011-39-6-6982, and I gather his switchboard
is infallible.
5. If all these attempts fail, flag down a passing
flying saucer and explain that it's vitally important you get
away before your phone bill arrives.
-- Douglas Adams
You can't always go by expert opinion. A turkey, if you ask a
turkey, should be stuffed with grasshoppers, grit, and worms.
-- Changing Times, The Kiplinger Magazine
"Won't the US-Soviet 50% arms reduction treaty make the world
safer?" Assume for a moment that I extend my hand to you. In
this hand is a 9-mm Browning highpower automatic pistol, with a
13-round magazine room and one in the chamber makes 14 rounds. I
point it at your chest at a range of about ten feet. And I
promise you I will hit you from this range. Let's say I don't
really hate you as much today as I did last week. So I pop out
the magazine. I take out 7 rounds. I put the thing back in. I
point it at you again and say, "OK, now they're only seven rounds
pointed at your chest from a range of ten feet." Don't you feel
twice as safe now?
-- Tom Clancy, "Red October"
Now, I know you're probably asking yourself, "Did he fire six
shots, or only five?" Well, in all this excitement, I clean
forgot myself. Now, since this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful
handgun in the world, and could blow your head clean off, you
have to ask yourself one question; "Do I feel lucky?"... Well, DO
ya, punk?
-- Dirty Harry
The history of every major civilization tends to pass through
three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival,
Inquiry, and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why, and
Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by
the question, "How shall we eat?", the second by the question,
"Why do we eat?", and the third by the question, "Where shall we
have lunch?"
-- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
A towel is the most useful thing (besides the Guide) a
Galactic hitchhiker can have. Its uses include travel, combat,
communications, protection from the elements, hand-drying, and
reassurance. Towels have great symbolic value, with many
associated points of honour. Never mock the towel of another,
even if it has little pink and blue flowers on it. Never do
something to somebody else's towel that you would not want them
to do to yours. And, if you borrow the towel of another, you
MUST return it before leaving their world.
-- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
"You're really not going to like it," observed Deep Thought.
"Tell us!"
"All right," said Deep Thought. "The Answer to the Great Question..."
"Yes...!"
"Of Life, the Universe, and Everything..." said Deep Thought.
"Yes...!"
"Is..." said Deep Thought, and paused.
"Yes...!"
"Is..."
"Yes...!!!...?"
"Forty-two," said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.
-- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
A "critic" is a man who creates nothing and thereby feels
qualified to judge the work of creative men. There is logic in
this; he is unbiased-- he hates all creative people equally.
-- Lazarus Long
God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent-- it says so
right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing
all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a
wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small
bills.
-- Lazarus Long
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an
invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a
sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the
dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve
equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a
computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.
Specialization is for insects.
-- Lazarus Long
If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may
be no candidates and no measures you want to vote _for_... but
there are certain to be ones you want to vote _against_. In case
of doubt, vote _against_. By this rule you will rarely go wrong.
If this is too blind for your taste, consult some well-meaning
fool (there is always one around) and ask his advice. Then vote
the other way. This enables you to be a good citizen (if such is
your wish) without spending the enormous amount of time on it
that truly intelligent exercise of franchise requires.
-- Lazarus Long
The most preposterous notion that H. sapiens has ever dreamed
up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the
Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can
be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not
receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred
of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest,
largest, and least productive industry in all history.
--Lazarus Long
"You doubted Me," God tells the Lawgiver [Moses], "But I
forgave you that doubt. You doubted your own self and failed to
believe in your own powers as a leader, and I forgave you that
also. But you lost faith in these people and doubted the divine
possibilities of Human Nature. THIS loss of faith makes it
impossible for you to enter the Promised Land."
-- The Midrash
It may be that the race is not always to the swift, nor the
battle to the strong-- but that's the way to bet.
-- Damon Runyon
"Okay!! Let's get this party started! Break out the Perrier! Heat up the
asparagus! Who's got the ice?!"
- Penguin Opus (Bloom County)
"What does the term `Liberated Woman' mean to you?"
"Fat, manless and hairy legged."
- Steve Dallas and Quiche Lorraine (Bloom County)
"Okay, the chair has before it widow Pickleby's proposal to fill in the
nearest nuclear silo with her special zesty banana pudding. Any debate?"
- Milo Bloom (Bloom County)
"Cap'n, I dinna know how much longer the engines will hold out
under the stress o' warp factor nine!"
Montgomery Scott
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh."
- Voltaire -
"Might as well be frank, monsieur. It would take a miracle to get
you out of Casablanca."
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 ring of popsicle sticks around the sun, at a distance of 92 million miles,
a million miles wide, would use over 1.86 x 10(24) sticks. Even if you
used the kind with two sticks, that's quite a few popsicles.
Equality of the sexes is not when a female Einstein gets
recognized- equality is when a female incompetent is promoted as
quickly as a male incompetent.
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...
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
GOD IS REAL
Unless declared integer.
If you love something, let it go. If it doesn't come back to you,
hunt it down and kill it.
Real Programmers do it on the console panel.
Real Programmers do not read books like
"Effective Listening and Communication Skills."
Real Programmers loathe documentation.
Real Programmers make lousy managers.
Real Programmers print only clean compiles, fixing all errors through the
terminal.
Real Programmers started as operators.
SCORPIO (Oct 23 - Nov 21)
You are shrewd in business and cannot be trusted. You will achieve the
pinnacle of success because of your total lack of ethics. Most Scorpio
people are murdered.
Not responsible for direct, indirect, incidental or consequential
damages resulting from any defect, error or failure to perform.
WE ARE the people our parents warned us about!
When I woke up this morning, I had one nerve left;
Now you are getting on it!
The Joys of the Craft
First is the sheer joy of making things. As the child delights in
his mud pie, so the adult enjoys building things, especially things of
this own design. I think this delight must be an image of God's
delight in making things, a delight shown in the distinctness and
newness of each leaf and each snowflake.
Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
"The Mythical Man-month"
The Joys of the Craft
Second is the pleasure of making things that are useful to other
people. Deep within, we want others to use our work and to find it
helpful. In this respect the programming system is not essentially
different from the child's first clay pencil holder for Daddy's
office.
Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
"The Mythical Man-month"
The Joys of the Craft
Third is the fascination of fashioning complex puzzle-like objects
of interlocking moving parts and watching then work in subtle cycles,
playing out the consequences of principles built in from the
beginning. The programmed computer has all the fascination of the
pinball machine or the jukebox mechanism, carried to the ultimate.
Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
"The Mythical Man-month"
The Joys of the Craft
Fourth is the joy of always learning, which springs from the
nonrepeating nature of the task. In one way or another the problem is
ever new, and its solver learns something: sometimes practical,
sometimes theoretical, and sometimes both.
Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
"The Mythical Man-month"
The Joys of the Craft
Finally, there is the delight of working in such a tractable
medium. The programmer , like the poet, works only slightly removed
from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castle in the air, from air,
creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so
flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of
realizing grand conceptual structures.
Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
"The Mythical Man-month"
The Woes of the Craft
The computer resembles the magic of legend in this respect, too. If
one character, one pause, of the incantation is not strictly in proper
form, the magic doesn't work. Human beings are not accustomed to being
perfect, and few areas of human activity demand it.
Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
"The Mythical Man-month"
The Woes of the Craft
Other people set one's objectives, provides one's resources, and
furnish one's information. One rarely controls the circumstances of
his work, or even its goal. In management terms, one's authority is
not sufficient for his responsibility. It seems that in all fields,
however, the jobs where things get done never have formal authority
commensurate with responsibility. In practice, actual authority is
acquired from the very momentum of accomplishment.
Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
"The Mythical Man-month"
The Woes of the Craft
Designing grand concepts is fun; finding nitty little bugs is just
work. With any creative activity come dreary hours of tedious,
painstaking labor, and programming is no exception.
Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
"The Mythical Man-month"
The Woes of the Craft
One finds that debugging has a linear convergence, or worse, where
one somehow expects a quadratic sort of approach to the end. So
testing drags on and on, the last difficult bugs taking more time to
find than the first.
Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
"The Mythical Man-month"
The Woes of the Craft
The last woe, and sometimes the last straw, is that the product
over which one has labored so long appears to be obsolete upon (or
before) completion. Already colleagues and competitors are in hot
pursuit of new and better ideas. Already the displacement of one's
thought-child is not only conceived, but scheduled.
Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
"The Mythical Man-month"
A book, a computer, or a program comes into existence first as an
ideal construct, built outside time and space, but complete in the
mind of the author. It is realized in time and space, by pen, ink, and
paper, or by wire, silicon, and ferrite. The creation is complete
when someone reads the book, uses the computer, or runs the program,
thereby interacting with the mind of the maker.
Dorothy Sayers
"The Mind of the Maker"
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
Brook's Law
Ease of use is enhanced only if the time gained in functional
specifications exceeds the time lost in learning, remembering, and
searching manuals.
Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
"The Mythical Man-month"
Ease of use dictates unity of design, conceptual integrity.
Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
"The Mythical Man-month"
Show me your flowcharts and conceal your tables, and I shall continue to
be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won't usually need your flow-
charts; they'll be obvious.
Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
"The Mythical Man-month"
The Programmer at wit's end for lack of space can often do best by
disentangling himself from his code, rearing back, and contemplating
his data. Representation is the essence of programming.
Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
"The Mythical Man-month"
It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it
frankly and try another. But above all, try something.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
By documenting a design, the designer exposes himself to the criticisms
of everyone, and he must be able to defend everything he writes. If the
organizational structer is threatening in any way, nothing will be
documented until it is completely defensible.
J. Cosgrove
On a large project the manager needs to keep two or three top
programmers as a technical cavalry that can gallop to the rescue
wherever the battle is thickest.
Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
"The Mythical Man-month"
The fundamental problem with program maintenance is that fixing a
defect has a substantial (20-50 percent) chance of introducing
another. So the whole process is two steps forward and one step back.
Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
"The Mythical Man-month"
Developers won't tell you they don't understand it; they happily invent
their way through the gaps and obscurities.
V. A. Vyssotsky
For even the most private of programs, some such communications is
necessary; memory will fail the author-user, and he will require
refreshing on the details of his handiwork.
Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
"The Mythical Man-month"
A computer program is a message from a man to a machine. The rigidly
marshaled syntax and the scrupulous definitions all exist to make
intention clear to the dumb engine.
Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
"The Mythical Man-month"
A computer is the simplest of all creatures. It understands only one
thing on and off, yes and no, 1 and 0.
Jay Wilt
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from
mediocre minds.
Albert Einstein
Forgetting is part of life.
You forget 99 percent of everything that enters your head, and you can be
thankful this is true. If every sense impression and thought stayed with
you, your mind would soon become hopelessly cluttered. Important facts
would be buried under ever-mounting piles of trivia.
Roger Yepsen
The more complex the mind, the more the need
for the simplisity of play.
Dr. Leonard McCoy
The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding.
... In a cosmic perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant,
even petty.
Carl Sagan
If we were randomly inserted into the Cosmos, the chance we would find
ourselves on or near a planet would be less than one in 10^33.
Carl Sagan
There are some hundred billion ( 10^11 ) galaxies, each with, on the
average, a hundred billion ( 10^11 ) stars. In all the galaxies, there
are perfaps as many planets as stars, ( 10^11 x 10^11 = 10^22 ), ten
billion trillion. In the face of such overpowering numbers, what is the
likelihood that only one ordinary star, the Sun, is accompanied by an
inhabited planet?
Carl Sagan
Organisms are selected to engage in sex - the ones that find it
uninteresting quickly become extinct.
Carl Sagan
If at first you don't succed, destroy all the evidence.
We are all star dust scattered and drifting ...
Uncle Modrid
Alien Nation
