Magnum One

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Text File | 1990-02-18 | 31.0 KB | 843 lines

(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