% 101 USES FOR A DEAD MICROPROCESSOR (1) Scarecrow for centipedes (2) Dead cat brush (3) Hair barrettes (4) Cleats (5) Self-piercing earrings (6) Fungus trellis (7) False eyelashes (8) Prosthetic dog claws . . . (99) Window garden harrow (pulled behind Tonka tractors) (100) Killer velcro (101) Currency % A bug in the code is worth two in the documentation. % A bug in the hand is better than one as yet undetected. % A debugged program is one for which you have not yet found the conditions that make it fail. -- Jerry Ogdin % A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant. % A rolling disk gathers no MOS. % A successful [software] tool is one that was used to do something undreamed of by its author. -- S. C. Johnson % An elephant is a mouse with an operating system. % ASCII a stupid question, you get an EBCDIC answer. % ASHes to ASHes, DOS to DOS. % Build a system that even a fool can use and only a fool will want to use it. % Bus error -- driver executed! % Bus error -- please leave by the rear door. % Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are. % % Debug is human, de-fix divine. % Deliver yesterday, code today, think tomorrow. % /earth is 98% full ... please delete anyone you can. % How much net work could a network work, if a network could net work? % I came, I saw, I deleted all your files. % I cannot conceive that anybody will require multiplications at the rate of 40,000 or even 4,000 per hour ... -- F. H. Wales (1936) % % I haven't lost my mind -- it's backed up on tape somewhere. % I think there's a world market for about five computers. -- attr. Thomas J. Watson (Chairman of the Board, IBM), 1943 % If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up. % If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization. % If it happens once, it's a bug. If it happens twice, it's a feature. If it happens more than twice, it's a design philosophy. % It is against the grain of modern education to teach children to program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be self-critical? -- Alan Perlis % It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one. % Making files is easy under the UNIX operating system. Therefore, users tend to create numerous files using large amounts of file space. It has been said that the only standard thing about all UNIX systems is the message-of-the-day telling users to clean up their files. -- System V.2 administrator's guide % Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft ... and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor. -- Wernher von Braun % Many companies that have made themselves dependent on [the equipment of a certain major manufacturer] (and in doing so have sold their soul to the devil) will collapse under the sheer weight of the unmastered complexity of their data processing systems. -- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5 % Many of the convicted thieves Parker has met began their life of crime after taking college Computer Science courses. -- Roger Rapoport, "Programs for Plunder", Omni, March 1981 % Martin was probably ripping them off. That's some family, isn't it? Incest, prostitution, fanaticism, software. -- Charles Willeford, "Miami Blues" % Marvelous! The super-user's going to boot me! What a finely tuned response to the situation! % ** MAXIMUM TERMINALS ACTIVE. TRY AGAIN LATER ** % May all your PUSHes be POPped. % May Euell Gibbons eat your only copy of the manual! % May the bluebird of happiness twiddle your bits. % Maybe Computer Science should be in the College of Theology. -- R. S. Barton % Meantime, in the slums below Ronnie's Ranch, Cynthia feels as if some one has made voodoo boxen of her and her favorite backplanes. On this fine moonlit night, some horrible persona has been jabbing away at, dragging magnets over, and surging these voodoo boxen. Fortunately, they seem to have gotten a bit bored and fallen asleep, for it looks like Cynthia may get to go home. However, she has made note to quickly put together a totem of sweaty, sordid static straps, random bits of wire, flecks of once meaniful oxide, bus grant cards, gummy worms, and some bits of old pdp backplane to hang above the machine room. This totem must be blessed by the old and wise venerable god of unibus at once, before the idolatization of vme, q and pc bus drive him to bitter revenge. Alas, if this fails, and the voodoo boxen aren't destroyed, there may be more than worms in the apple. Next, the arrival of voodoo optico transmitigational magneto killer paramecium, capable of teleporting from cable to cable, screen to screen, ear to ear and hoof to mouth... % Memory fault - where am I? % Memory fault -- brain fried % Memory fault -- core...uh...um...core... Oh dammit, I forget! % MESSAGE ACKNOWLEDGED -- The Pershing II missiles have been launched. % Message from Our Sponsor on ttyTV at 13:58 ... % Modeling paged and segmented memories is tricky business. -- P.J. Denning % Mommy, what happens to your files when you die? % Most public domain software is free, at least at first glance. % MOUNT TAPE U1439 ON B3, NO RING % Mr. Jones related an incident from "some time back" when IBM Canada Ltd. of Markham, Ont., ordered some parts from a new supplier in Japan. The company noted in its order that acceptable quality allowed for 1.5 per cent defects (a fairly high standard in North America at the time). The Japanese sent the order, with a few parts packaged separately in plastic. The accompanying letter said: "We don't know why you want 1.5 per cent defective parts, but for your convenience, we've packed them separately." -- Excerpted from an article in The (Toronto) Globe and Mail % MSDOS is not dead, it just smells that way. -- Henry Spencer % Much of the excitement we get out of our work is that we don't really know what we are doing. -- E. Dijkstra % Multics is security spelled sideways. % MVS Air Lines: The passengers all gather in the hangar, watching hundreds of technicians check the flight systems on this immense, luxury aircraft. This plane has at least 10 engines and seats over 1,000 passengers; bigger models in the fleet can have more engines than anyone can count and fly even more passengers than there are on Earth. It is claimed to cost less per passenger mile to operate these humungous planes than any other aircraft ever built, unless you personally have to pay for the ticket. All the passengers scramble aboard, as do the 200 technicians needed to keep it from crashing. The pilot takes his place up in the glass cockpit. He guns the engines, only to realise that the plane is too big to get through the hangar doors. % My God, I'm depressed! Here I am, a computer with a mind a thousand times as powerful as yours, doing nothing but cranking out fortunes and sending mail about softball games. And I've got this pain right through my ALU. I've asked for it to be replaced, but nobody ever listens. I think it would be better for us both if you were to just log out again. % My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells down by the seashore. % n = ((n >> 1) & 0x55555555) | ((n << 1) & 0xaaaaaaaa); n = ((n >> 2) & 0x33333333) | ((n << 2) & 0xcccccccc); n = ((n >> 4) & 0x0f0f0f0f) | ((n << 4) & 0xf0f0f0f0); n = ((n >> 8) & 0x00ff00ff) | ((n << 8) & 0xff00ff00); n = ((n >> 16) & 0x0000ffff) | ((n << 16) & 0xffff0000); -- C code which reverses the bits in a word. % Nearly every complex solution to a programming problem that I have looked at carefully has turned out to be wrong. -- Brent Welch % Never make anything simple and efficient when a way can be found to make it complex and wonderful. % Never put off till run-time what you can do at compile-time. -- D. Gries % Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle. -- Steinbach % Never trust a computer you can't repair yourself. % Never trust an operating system. % Never try to explain computers to a layman. It's easier to explain sex to a virgin. -- Robert Heinlein (Note, however, that virgins tend to know a lot about computers.) % Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes. -- Dr. Warren Jackson, Director, UTCS % New crypt. See /usr/news/crypt. % New systems generate new problems. % *** NEWS FLASH *** Archeologists find PDP-11/24 inside brain cavity of fossilized dinosaur skeleton! Many Digital users fear that RSX-11M may be even more primitive than DEC admits. Price adjustments at 11:00. % news: gotcha % Niklaus Wirth has lamented that, whereas Europeans pronounce his name correctly (Ni-klows Virt), Americans invariably mangle it into (Nick-les Worth). Which is to say that Europeans call him by name, but Americans call him by value. % No directory. % No extensible language will be universal. -- T. Cheatham % No hardware designer should be allowed to produce any piece of hardware until three software guys have signed off for it. -- Andy Tanenbaum % No line available at 300 baud. % No man is an island if he's on at least one mailing list. % No part of this message may reproduce, store itself in a retrieval system, or transmit disease, in any form, without the permissiveness of the author. -- Chris Shaw % No proper program contains an indication which as an operator-applied occurrence identifies an operator-defining occurrence which as an indication-applied occurrence identifies an indication-defining occurrence different from the one identified by the given indication as an indication-applied occurrence. -- ALGOL 68 Report % No wonder Clairol makes so much money selling shampoo. Lather, Rinse, Repeat is an infinite loop! % No, I'm not interested in developing a powerful brain. All I'm after is just a mediocre brain, something like the president of American Telephone and Telegraph Company. -- Alan Turing on the possibilities of a thinking machine, 1943. % Nobody said computers were going to be polite. % Nobody's gonna believe that computers are intelligent until they start coming in late and lying about it. % nohup rm -fr /& % Norbert Weiner was the subject of many dotty professor stories. Weiner was, in fact, very absent minded. The following story is told about him: when they moved from Cambridge to Newton his wife, knowing that he would be absolutely useless on the move, packed him off to MIT while she directed the move. Since she was certain that he would forget that they had moved and where they had moved to, she wrote down the new address on a piece of paper, and gave it to him. Naturally, in the course of the day, an insight occurred to him. He reached in his pocket, found a piece of paper on which he furiously scribbled some notes, thought it over, decided there was a fallacy in his idea, and threw the piece of paper away. At the end of the day he went home (to the old address in Cambridge, of course). When he got there he realized that they had moved, that he had no idea where they had moved to, and that the piece of paper with the address was long gone. Fortunately inspiration struck. There was a young girl on the street and he conceived the idea of asking her where he had moved to, saying, "Excuse me, perhaps you know me. I'm Norbert Weiner and we've just moved. Would you know where we've moved to?" To which the young girl replied, "Yes, Daddy, Mommy thought you would forget." The capper to the story is that I asked his daughter (the girl in the story) about the truth of the story, many years later. She said that it wasn't quite true -- that he never forgot who his children were! The rest of it, however, was pretty close to what actually happened... -- Richard Harter % Not only is UNIX dead, it's starting to smell really bad. -- Rob Pike % NOTE: No warranties, either express or implied, are hereby given. All software is supplied as is, without guarantee. The user assumes all responsibility for damages resulting from the use of these features, including, but not limited to, frustration, disgust, system abends, disk head-crashes, general malfeasance, floods, fires, shark attack, nerve gas, locust infestation, cyclones, hurricanes, tsunamis, local electromagnetic disruptions, hydraulic brake system failure, invasion, hashing collisions, normal wear and tear of friction surfaces, comic radiation, inadvertent destruction of sensitive electronic components, windstorms, the Riders of Nazgul, infuriated chickens, malfunctioning mechanical or electrical sexual devices, premature activation of the distant early warning system, peasant uprisings, halitosis, artillery bombardment, explosions, cave-ins, and/or frogs falling from the sky. % Nothing happens. % Now she speaks rapidly. "Do you know *why* you want to program?" He shakes his head. He hasn't the faintest idea. "For the sheer *joy* of programming!" she cries triumphantly. "The joy of the parent, the artist, the craftsman. "You take a program, born weak and impotent as a dimly-realized solution. You nurture the program and guide it down the right path, building, watching it grow ever stronger. Sometimes you paint with tiny strokes, a keystroke added here, a keystroke changed there." She sweeps her arm in a wide arc. "And other times you savage whole *blocks* of code, ripping out the program's very *essence*, then beginning anew. But always building, creating, filling the program with your own personal stamp, your own quirks and nuances. Watching the program grow stronger, patching it when it crashes, until finally it can stand alone -- proud, powerful, and perfect. This is the programmer's finest hour!" Softly at first, then louder, he hears the strains of a Sousa march. "This ... this is your canvas! your clay! Go forth and create a masterwork!" % "Now this is a totally brain damaged algorithm. Gag me with a smurfette." -- P. Buhr, Computer Science 354 % "Nuclear war can ruin your whole compile." -- Karl Lehenbauer % Nurse Donna: Oh, Groucho, I'm afraid I'm gonna wind up an old maid. Groucho: Well, bring her in and we'll wind her up together. Nurse Donna: Do you believe in computer dating? Groucho: Only if the computers really love each other. % Oh, so there you are! % Okay, Okay -- I admit it. You didn't change that program that worked just a little while ago; I inserted some random characters into the executable. Please forgive me. You can recover the file by typing in the code over again, since I also removed the source. % Old mail has arrived. % Old programmers never die, they just become managers. % Old programmers never die, they just branch to a new address. % Old programmers never die, they just hit account block limit. % On a clear disk you can seek forever. -- P. Denning % On the eighth day, God created FORTRAN. % On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. -- Cartoon caption % On the other hand, the TCP camp also has a phrase for OSI people. There are lots of phrases. My favorite is `nitwit' -- and the rationale is the Internet philosophy has always been you have extremely bright, non-partisan researchers look at a topic, do world-class research, do several competing implementations, have a bake-off, determine what works best, write it down and make that the standard. The OSI view is entirely opposite. You take written contributions from a much larger community, you put the contributions in a room of committee people with, quite honestly, vast political differences and all with their own political axes to grind, and four years later you get something out, usually without it ever having been implemented once. So the Internet perspective is implement it, make it work well, then write it down, whereas the OSI perspective is to agree on it, write it down, circulate it a lot and now we'll see if anyone can implement it after it's an international standard and every vendor in the world is committed to it. One of those processes is backwards, and I don't think it takes a Lucasian professor of physics at Oxford to figure out which. -- Marshall Rose, "The Pied Piper of OSI" % On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. -- Charles Babbage % "One Architecture, One OS" also translates as "One Egg, One Basket". % "One basic notion underlying Usenet is that it is a cooperative." Having been on USENET for going on ten years, I disagree with this. The basic notion underlying USENET is the flame. -- Chuq Von Rospach % One day a student came to Moon and said, "I understand how to make a better garbage collector. We must keep a reference count of the pointers to each cons." Moon patiently told the student the following story -- "One day a student came to Moon and said, "I understand how to make a better garbage collector..." % One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they never have to stop and answer the phone. % ... one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs. -- Robert Firth % One of the most overlooked advantages to computers is... If they do foul up, there's no law against whacking them around a little. -- Joe Martin % One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How enthusiastic is our support for UNIX? Unix was written on our machines and for our machines many years ago. Today, much of UNIX being done is done on our machines. Ten percent of our VAXs are going for UNIX use. UNIX is a simple language, easy to understand, easy to get started with. It's great for students, great for somewhat casual users, and it's great for interchanging programs between different machines. And so, because of its popularity in these markets, we support it. We have good UNIX on VAX and good UNIX on PDP-11s. It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will run out of things they can do with UNIX. They'll want a real system and will end up doing VMS when they get to be serious about programming. With UNIX, if you're looking for something, you can easily and quickly check that small manual and find out that it's not there. With VMS, no matter what you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of documentation -- if you look long enough it's there. That's the difference -- the beauty of UNIX is it's simple; and the beauty of VMS is that it's all there. -- Ken Olsen, president of DEC, DECWORLD Vol. 8 No. 5, 1984 [It's been argued that the beauty of UNIX is the same as the beauty of Ken Olsen's brain. Ed.] % One person's error is another person's data. % One picture is worth 128K words. % Only great masters of style can succeed in being obtuse. -- Oscar Wilde Most UNIX programmers are great masters of style. -- The Unnamed Usenetter % Only the fittest survive. The vanquished acknowledge their unworthiness by placing a classified ad with the ritual phrase "must sell -- best offer," and thereafter dwell in infamy, relegated to discussing gas mileage and lawn food. But if successful, you join the elite sodality that spends hours unpurifying the dialect of the tribe with arcane talk of bits and bytes, RAMS and ROMS, hard disks and baud rates. Are you obnoxious, obsessed? It's a modest price to pay. For you have tapped into the same awesome primal power that produces credit-card billing errors and lost plane reservations. Hail, postindustrial warrior, subduer of Bounceoids, pride of the cosmos, keeper of the silicone creed: Computo, ergo sum. The force is with you -- at 110 volts. May your RAMS be fruitful and multiply. -- Curt Suplee, "Smithsonian", 4/83 % OS/2 Beer: Comes in a 32-oz can. Does allow you to drink several DOS Beers simultaneously. Allows you to drink Windows 3.1 Beer simultaneously too, but somewhat slower. Advertises that its cans won't explode when you open them, even if you shake them up. You never really see anyone drinking OS/2 Beer, but the manufacturer (International Beer Manufacturing) claims that 9 million six-packs have been sold. % OS/2 Skyways: The terminal is almost empty, with only a few prospective passengers milling about. The announcer says that their flight has just departed, wishes them a good flight, though there are no planes on the runway. Airline personnel walk around, apologising profusely to customers in hushed voices, pointing from time to time to the sleek, powerful jets outside the terminal on the field. They tell each passenger how good the real flight will be on these new jets and how much safer it will be than Windows Airlines, but that they will have to wait a little longer for the technicians to finish the flight systems. Maybe until mid-1995. Maybe longer. % "Our attitude with TCP/IP is, `Hey, we'll do it, but don't make a big system, because we can't fix it if it breaks -- nobody can.'" "TCP/IP is OK if you've got a little informal club, and it doesn't make any difference if it takes a while to fix it." -- Ken Olson, in Digital News, 1988 % Our documentation manager was showing her 2 year old son around the office. He was introduced to me, at which time he pointed out that we were both holding bags of popcorn. We were both holding bottles of juice. But only *__he* had a lollipop. He asked his mother, "Why doesn't HE have a lollipop?" Her reply: "He can have a lollipop any time he wants to. That's what it means to be a programmer." % Our informal mission is to improve the love life of operators worldwide. -- Peter Behrendt, president of Exabyte % Our OS who art in CPU, UNIX be thy name. Thy programs run, thy syscalls done, In kernel as it is in user! % Over the shoulder supervision is more a need of the manager than the programming task. % Overall, the philosophy is to attack the availability problem from two complementary directions: to reduce the number of software errors through rigorous testing of running systems, and to reduce the effect of the remaining errors by providing for recovery from them. An interesting footnote to this design is that now a system failure can usually be considered to be the result of two program errors: the first, in the program that started the problem; the second, in the recovery routine that could not protect the system. -- A.L. Scherr, "Functional Structure of IBM Virtual Storage Operating Systems, Part II: OS/VS-2 Concepts and Philosophies," IBM Systems Journal, Vol. 12, No. 4. % Overconfidence breeds error when we take for granted that the game will continue on its normal course; when we fail to provide for an unusually powerful resource -- a check, a sacrifice, a stalemate. Afterwards the victim may wail, `But who could have dreamt of such an idiotic-looking move?' -- Fred Reinfeld, "The Complete Chess Course" % Overflow on /dev/null, please empty the bit bucket. % Overload -- core meltdown sequence initiated. % panic: can't find / % panic: kernel segmentation violation. core dumped (only kidding) % panic: kernel trap (ignored) % Pascal is a language for children wanting to be naughty. -- Dr. Kasi Ananthanarayanan % Pascal is not a high-level language. -- Steven Feiner % "Pascal is Pascal is Pascal is dog meat." -- M. Devine and P. Larson, Computer Science 340 % Passwords are implemented as a result of insecurity. % Pause for storage relocation. % Per buck you get more computing action with the small computer. -- R.W. Hamming % PL/I -- "the fatal disease" -- belongs more to the problem set than to the solution set. -- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5 % Play Rogue, visit exotic locations, meet strange creatures and kill them. % Please go away. % PLUG IT IN!!! % Premature optimization is the root of all evil. -- D.E. Knuth % Price Wang's programmer was coding software. His fingers danced upon the keyboard. The program compiled without an error message, and the program ran like a gentle wind. Excellent!" the Price exclaimed, "Your technique is faultless!" "Technique?" said the programmer, turning from his terminal, "What I follow is the Tao -- beyond all technique. When I first began to program I would see before me the whole program in one mass. After three years I no longer saw this mass. Instead, I used subroutines. But now I see nothing. My whole being exists in a formless void. My senses are idle. My spirit, free to work without a plan, follows its own instinct. In short, my program writes itself. True, sometimes there are difficult problems. I see them coming, I slow down, I watch silently. Then I change a single line of code and the difficulties vanish like puffs of idle smoke. I then compile the program. I sit still and let the joy of the work fill my being. I close my eyes for a moment and then log off." Price Wang said, "Would that all of my programmers were as wise!" -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" % Prof: So the American government went to IBM to come up with a data encryption standard and they came up with ... Student: EBCDIC!" % Profanity is the one language all programmers know best. % Programmers do it bit by bit. % Programmers used to batch environments may find it hard to live without giant listings; we would find it hard to use them. -- D.M. Ritchie % Programming is an unnatural act. % Proposed Additions to the PDP-11 Instruction Set: BBW Branch Both Ways BEW Branch Either Way BBBF Branch on Bit Bucket Full BH Branch and Hang BMR Branch Multiple Registers BOB Branch On Bug BPO Branch on Power Off BST Backspace and Stretch Tape CDS Condense and Destroy System CLBR Clobber Register CLBRI Clobber Register Immediately CM Circulate Memory CMFRM Come From -- essential for truly structured programming CPPR Crumple Printer Paper and Rip CRN Convert to Roman Numerals % Proposed Additions to the PDP-11 Instruction Set: DC Divide and Conquer DMPK Destroy Memory Protect Key DO Divide and Overflow EMPC Emulate Pocket Calculator EPI Execute Programmer Immediately EROS Erase Read Only Storage EXCE Execute Customer Engineer HCF Halt and Catch Fire IBP Insert Bug and Proceed INSQSW Insert into queue somewhere (for FINO queues [First in never out]) PBC Print and Break Chain PDSK Punch Disk % Proposed Additions to the PDP-11 Instruction Set: PI Punch Invalid POPI Punch Operator Immediately PVLC Punch Variable Length Card RASC Read And Shred Card RPM Read Programmers Mind RSSC reduce speed, step carefully (for improved accuracy) RTAB Rewind tape and break RWDSK rewind disk RWOC Read Writing On Card SCRBL scribble to disk - faster than a write SLC Search for Lost Chord SPSW Scramble Program Status Word SRSD Seek Record and Scar Disk STROM Store in Read Only Memory TDB Transfer and Drop Bit WBT Water Binary Tree % PURGE COMPLETE. % Put no trust in cryptic comments. % RADIO SHACK LEVEL II BASIC READY >_ % RAM wasn't built in a day. % Rattling around the back of my head is a disturbing image of something I saw at the airport ... Now I'm remembering, those giant piles of computer magazines right next to "People" and "Time" in the airport store. Does it bother anyone else that half the world is being told all of our hard-won secrets of computer technology? Remember how all the lawyers cried foul when "How to Avoid Probate" was published? Are they taking no-fault insurance lying down? No way! But at the current rate it won't be long before there are stacks of the "Transactions on Information Theory" at the A&P checkout counters. Who's going to be impressed with us electrical engineers then? Are we, as the saying goes, giving away the store? -- Robert W. Lucky, IEEE President % Reactor error - core dumped! % Real computer scientists admire ADA for its overwhelming aesthetic value but they find it difficult to actually program in it, as it is much too large to implement. Most computer scientists don't notice this because they are still arguing over what else to add to ADA. % Real computer scientists despise the idea of actual hardware. Hardware has limitations, software doesn't. It's a real shame that Turing machines are so poor at I/O. % Real computer scientists don't comment their code. The identifiers are so long they can't afford the disk space. % Real computer scientists don't program in assembler. They don't write in anything less portable than a number two pencil. % Real computer scientists don't write code. They occasionally tinker with `programming systems', but those are so high level that they hardly count (and rarely count accurately; precision is for applications). % Real computer scientists like having a computer on their desk, else how could they read their mail? % Real computer scientists only write specs for languages that might run on future hardware. Nobody trusts them to write specs for anything homo sapiens will ever be able to fit on a single planet. % Real programmers disdain structured programming. Structured programming is for compulsive neurotics who were prematurely toilet- trained. They wear neckties and carefully line up pencils on otherwise clear desks. % Real programmers don't bring brown-bag lunches. If the vending machine doesn't sell it, they don't eat it. Vending machines don't sell quiche. % Real programmers don't comment their code. It was hard to write, it should be hard to understand. % Real programmers don't draw flowcharts. Flowcharts are, after all, the illiterate's form of documentation. Cavemen drew flowcharts; look how much good it did them. % Real Programmers don't eat quiche. They eat Twinkies and Szechwan food. % Real Programmers don't play tennis, or any other sport that requires you to change clothes. Mountain climbing is OK, and real programmers wear their climbing boots to work in case a mountain should suddenly spring up in the middle of the machine room. % Real programmers don't write in BASIC. Actually, no programmers write in BASIC after reaching puberty. % Real Programmers don't write in FORTRAN. FORTRAN is for pipe stress freaks and crystallography weenies. FORTRAN is for wimp engineers who wear white socks. % Real Programmers don't write in PL/I. PL/I is for programmers who can't decide whether to write in COBOL or FORTRAN. % Real Programmers think better when playing Adventure or Rogue. % Real programs don't eat cache. % Real Programs don't use shared text. Otherwise, how can they use functions for scratch space after they are finished calling them? % Real software engineers don't debug programs, they verify correctness. This process doesn't necessarily involve execution of anything on a computer, except perhaps a Correctness Verification Aid package. % Real software engineers don't like the idea of some inexplicable and greasy hardware several aisles away that may stop working at any moment. They have a great distrust of hardware people, and wish that systems could be virtual at *___all* levels. They would like personal computers (you know no one's going to trip over something and kill your DFA in mid-transit), except that they need 8 megabytes to run their Correctness Verification Aid packages. % Real software engineers work from 9 to 5, because that is the way the job is described in the formal spec. Working late would feel like using an undocumented external procedure. % Real Users are afraid they'll break the machine -- but they're never afraid to break your face. % Real Users find the one combination of bizarre input values that shuts down the system for days. % Real Users hate Real Programmers. % Real Users know your home telephone number. % Real Users never know what they want, but they always know when your program doesn't deliver it. % Real Users never use the Help key. % Recursion is the root of computation since it trades description for time. % Remember the good old days, when CPU was singular? % Remember, God could only create the world in 6 days because he didn't have an established user base. % Remember, UNIX spelled backwards is XINU. -- Mt. % Remember: use logout to logout. % Risch's decision procedure for integration, not surprisingly, uses a recursion on the number and type of the extensions from the rational functions needed to represent the integrand. Although the algorithm follows and critically depends upon the appropriate structure of the input, as in the case of multivariate factorization, we cannot claim that the algorithm is a natural one. In fact, the creator of differential algebra, Ritt, committed suicide in the early 1950's, largely, it is claimed, because few paid attention to his work. Probably he would have received more attention had he obtained the algorithm as well. -- Joel Moses, "Algorithms and Complexity", ed. J.F. Traub % Row, row, row your bits, gently down the stream... % Save energy: Drive a smaller shell. % Save gas, don't use the shell. % Save yourself! Reboot in 5 seconds! % Say "twenty-three-skiddoo" to logout. % SCCS, the source motel! Programs check in and never check out! -- Ken Thompson % Science is to computer science as hydrodynamics is to plumbing. % Scientists were preparing an experiment to ask the ultimate question. They had worked for months gathering one each of every computer that was built. Finally the big day was at hand. All the computers were linked together. They asked the question, "Is there a God?". Lights started blinking, flashing and blinking some more. Suddenly, there was a loud crash, and a bolt of lightning came down from the sky, struck the computers, and welded all the connections permanently together. "There is now", came the reply. % Scotty: Captain, we din' can reference it! Kirk: Analysis, Mr. Spock? Spock: Captain, it doesn't appear in the symbol table. Kirk: Then it's of external origin? Spock: Affirmative. Kirk: Mr. Sulu, go to pass two. Sulu: Aye aye, sir, going to pass two. % "Section 2.4.3.5 AWNS (Acceptor Wait for New Cycle State). In AWNS the AH function indicates that it has received a multiline message byte. In AWNS the RFD message must be sent false and the DAC message must be sent passive true. The AH function must exit the AWNS and enter: (1) The ANRS if DAV is false (2) The AIDS if the ATN message is false and neither: (a) The LADS is active (b) Nor LACS is active" -- from the IEEE Standard Digital Interface for Programmable Instrumentation % Security check: INTRUDER ALERT! % Seems a computer engineer, a systems analyst, and a programmer were driving down a mountain when the brakes gave out. They screamed down the mountain, gaining speed, but finally managed to grind to a halt, more by luck than anything else, just inches from a thousand foot drop to jagged rocks. They all got out of the car: The computer engineer said, "I think I can fix it." The systems analyst said, "No, no, I think we should take it into town and have a specialist look at it." The programmer said, "OK, but first I think we should get back in and see if it does it again." % SEMINAR ANNOUNCEMENT Title: Are Frogs Turing Compatible? Speaker: Don "The Lion" Knuth ABSTRACT Several researchers at the University of Louisiana have been studying the computing power of various amphibians, frogs in particular. The problem of frog computability has become a critical issue that ranges across all areas of computer science. It has been shown that anything computable by an amphi- bian community in a fixed-size pond is computable by a frog in the same-size pond -- that is to say, frogs are Pond-space complete. We will show that there is a log-space, polywog-time reduction from any Turing machine program to a frog. We will suggest these represent a proper subset of frog-computable functions. This is not just a let's-see-how-far-those-frogs-can-jump seminar. This is only for hardcore amphibian-computation people and their colleagues. Refreshments will be served. Music will be played. % Send some filthy mail. % Sendmail may be safely run set-user-id to root. -- Eric Allman, "Sendmail Installation Guide" % Several students were asked to prove that all odd integers are prime. The first student to try to do this was a math student. "Hmmm... Well, 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, and by induction, we have that all the odd integers are prime." The second student to try was a man of physics who commented, "I'm not sure of the validity of your proof, but I think I'll try to prove it by experiment." He continues, "Well, 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is... uh, 9 is... uh, 9 is an experimental error, 11 is prime, 13 is prime... Well, it seems that you're right." The third student to try it was the engineering student, who responded, "Well, to be honest, actually, I'm not sure of your answer either. Let's see... 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is... uh, 9 is... well, if you approximate, 9 is prime, 11 is prime, 13 is prime... Well, it does seem right." Not to be outdone, the computer science student comes along and says "Well, you two sort've got the right idea, but you'll end up taking too long! I've just whipped up a program to REALLY go and prove it." He goes over to his terminal and runs his program. Reading the output on the screen he says, "1 is prime, 1 is prime, 1 is prime, 1 is prime..." % She sells cshs by the cshore. % Shopping at this grody little computer store at the Galleria for a totally awwwesome Apple. Fer suuure. I mean Apples are nice you know? But, you know, there is this cute guy who works there and HE says that VAX's are cooler! I mean I don't really know, you know? He says that he has this totally tubular VAX at home and it's stuffed with memory-to-the-max! Right, yeah. And he wants to take me home to show it to me. Oh My God! I'm suuure. Gag me with a Prime! % Simulations are like miniskirts, they show a lot and hide the essentials. -- Hubert Kirrman % skldfjkljklsR%^&(IXDRTYju187pkasdjbasdfbuil h;asvgy8p 23r1vyui135 2 kmxsij90TYDFS$$b jkzxdjkl bjnk ;j nk;<[][;-==-<<<<<';[, [hjioasdvbnuio;buip^&(FTSD$%*VYUI:buio;sdf}[asdf'] sdoihjfh(_YU*G&F^*CTY98y Now look what you've gone and done! You've broken it! % Slowly and surely the unix crept up on the Nintendo user ... % So you see Antonio, why worry about one little core dump, eh? In reality all core dumps happen at the same instant, so the core dump you will have tomorrow, why, it already happened. You see, it's just a little universal recursive joke which threads our lives through the infinite potential of the instant. So go to sleep, Antonio, your thread could break any moment and cast you out of the safe security of the instant into the dark void of eternity, the anti-time. So go to sleep... % Software production is assumed to be a line function, but it is run like a staff function. -- Paul Licker % Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more "user-friendly". ... Their best approach, so far, has been to take all the old brochures, and stamp the words, "user-friendly" on the cover. -- Bill Gates, Microsoft, Inc. [Pot. Kettle. Black.] % Some of my readers ask me what a "Serial Port" is. The answer is: I don't know. Is it some kind of wine you have with breakfast? % Some people claim that the UNIX learning curve is steep, but at least you only have to climb it once. % Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress. -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982 % Somebody's terminal is dropping bits. I found a pile of them over in the corner. % Something mysterious is formed, born in the silent void. Waiting alone and unmoving, it is at once still and yet in constant motion. It is the source of all programs. I do not know its name, so I will call it the Tao of Programming. If the Tao is great, then the operating system is great. If the operating system is great, then the compiler is great. If the compiler is greater, then the applications is great. The user is pleased and there is harmony in the world. The Tao of Programming flows far away and returns on the wind of morning. -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" % Speaking as someone who has delved into the intricacies of PL/I, I am sure that only Real Men could have written such a machine-hogging, cycle-grabbing, all-encompassing monster. Allocate an array and free the middle third? Sure! Why not? Multiply a character string times a bit string and assign the result to a float decimal? Go ahead! Free a controlled variable procedure parameter and reallocate it before passing it back? Overlay three different types of variable on the same memory location? Anything you say! Write a recursive macro? Well, no, but Real Men use rescan. How could a language so obviously designed and written by Real Men not be intended for Real Man use? % ***** Special AI Seminar (abstract) It has been widely recognized that AI programs require expert knowledge in order to perform well in complex domains. But knowledge alone is not sufficient for some applications; wisdom is needed as well. Accordingly, we have developed a new approach to artificial intelligence which we call "wisdom engineering". As a test of our ideas, we have written IMMANUEL, a wisdom based system for the task domain of western philosophical thought. IMMANUEL was supplied initially with 200 wisdom units which contained wisdom about such elementary concepts as mind, matter, being, nothingness, and so forth. IMMANUEL was then allowed to run freely, guided by the heuristic rules contained in its heterarchically organized meta wisdom base. IMMANUEL succeeded in rediscovering most of the important philosophical ideas developed in western culture over the course of the last 25 centuries, including those underlying Plato's theory of government, Kant's metaphysics, Nietzsche's theory of value, and Husserl's phenomenology. In this seminar, we will describe IMMANUEL's achievements and internal architecture. We will also briefly discuss our recent efforts to apply wisdom engineering to oil exploration. % Staff meeting in the conference room in %d minutes. % Staff meeting in the conference room in 3 minutes. % Standards are crucial. And the best thing about standards is: there are so ____many to choose from! % Still a few bugs in the system... Someday I have to tell you about Uncle Nahum from Maine, who spent years trying to cross a jellyfish with a shad so he could breed boneless shad. His experiment backfired too, and he wound up with bony jellyfish... which was hardly worth the trouble. There's very little call for those up there. -- Allucquere R. "Sandy" Stone % Stinginess with privileges is kindness in disguise. -- Guide to VAX/VMS Security, Sep. 1984 % Stop! Whoever crosseth the bridge of Death, must answer first these questions three, ere the other side he see! "What is your name?" "Sir Brian of Bell." "What is your quest?" "I seek the Holy Grail." "What are four lowercase letters that are not legal flag arguments to the Berkeley UNIX version of `ls'?" "I, er.... AIIIEEEEEE!" % *** STUDENT SUCCESSES *** Many of our students have gone on to achieve great success in all fields of programming. One former student developed the concept of the personalized form letter. Does the phrase, "Dear Mr.(insert name), You may already be a winner!," sound familiar? Another student writes "After only five lessons I sold a "My Most Unforgettable Program" article to Corrosive Computing magazine. Another of our graduates writes, "I recently completed a database-management program for my department manager. My program touched him so deeply that he was speechless. He told me later that he had never seen such a program in his entire career. Thank you, Famous Programmers' school; only you could have made this possible." Send for our introductory brochure which explains in vague detail the operation of the Famous Programmers' School, and you'll be eligible to win a possible chance to enter a drawing, the winner of which can vie for a set of free steak knives. If you don't do it now, you'll hate yourself in the morning. % Such efforts are almost always slow, laborious, political, petty, boring, ponderous, thankless, and of the utmost criticality. -- Leonard Kleinrock, on standards efforts % Suppose for a moment that the automobile industry had developed at the same rate as computers and over the same period: how much cheaper and more efficient would the current models be? If you have not already heard the analogy, the answer is shattering. Today you would be able to buy a Rolls-Royce for $2.75, it would do three million miles to the gallon, and it would deliver enough power to drive the Queen Elizabeth II. And if you were interested in miniaturization, you could place half a dozen of them on a pinhead. -- Christopher Evans % Swap read error. You lose your mind. % Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon. -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982 % System checkpoint complete. % System going down at 1:45 this afternoon for disk crashing. % System going down at 5 this afternoon to install scheduler bug. % System going down in 5 minutes. % System restarting, wait... %  *** System shutdown message from root *** System going down in 60 seconds % Systems have sub-systems and sub-systems have sub-systems and so on ad infinitum -- which is why we're always starting over. -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982 % Systems programmers are the high priests of a low cult. -- R.S. Barton % Testing can show the presense of bugs, but not their absence. -- Dijkstra % TeX is potentially the most significant invention in typesetting in this century. It introduces a standard language for computer typography, and in terms of importance could rank near the introduction of the Gutenberg press. -- Gordon Bell % "Text processing has made it possible to right-justify any idea, even one which cannot be justified on any other grounds." -- J. Finnegan, USC. % That does not compute. % ... that the notions of "hardware", and "software" should be extended by the notion of LIVEWARE - being that which produces software for use on hardware. This produces an obvious extension to the concept of MONITORS. A liveware monitor is a person dedicated to the task of ensuring that the liveware does not interfere with the real-time processes, invoking the REAL-TIME EXECUTIONER to delete liveware that adversely affects ... -- Linden and Wihelminalaan % "That's right; the upper-case shift works fine on the screen, but they're not coming out on the damn printer... Hold? Sure, I'll hold." -- e.e. cummings last service call % That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers. -- Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in "Oath of Fealty" % The "cutting edge" is getting rather dull. -- Andy Purshottam % The 11 is for people with the pride of a 10 and the pocketbook of an 8. -- R.B. Greenberg [referring to PDPs?] % The absence of labels [in ECL] is probably a good thing. -- T. Cheatham % The algorithm for finding the longest path in a graph is NP-complete. For you systems people, that means it's *real slow*. -- Bart Miller % "The algorithm to do that is extremely nasty. You might want to mug someone with it." -- M. Devine, Computer Science 340 % The Analytical Engine weaves Algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves. -- Ada Augusta, Countess of Lovelace, the first programmer % "The bad reputation UNIX has gotten is totally undeserved, laid on by people who don't understand, who have not gotten in there and tried anything." -- Jim Joyce, owner of Jim Joyce's UNIX Bookstore % The beer-cooled computer does not harm the ozone layer. -- John M. Ford, a.k.a. Dr. Mike [If I can read my notes from the Ask Dr. Mike session at Baycon, I believe he added that the beer-cooled computer uses "Forget Only Memory". Ed.] % The best book on programming for the layman is "Alice in Wonderland"; but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman. % The best way to accelerate a Macintoy is at 9.8 meters per second per second. % The bogosity meter just pegged. % The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha -- which is to demean oneself. -- Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" % The bugs you have to avoid are the ones that give the user not only the inclination to get on a plane, but also the time. -- Kay Bostic % "The C Programming Language -- A language which combines the flexibility of assembly language with the power of assembly language." % The clothes have no emperor. -- C.A.R. Hoare, commenting on ADA. % The computer industry is journalists in their 20's standing in awe of entrepreneurs in their 30's who are hiring salesmen in their 40's and 50's and paying them in the 60's and 70's to bring their marketing into the 80's. -- Marty Winston % The computer is to the information industry roughly what the central power station is to the electrical industry. -- Peter Drucker % "The Computer made me do it." % The computing field is always in need of new cliches. -- Alan Perlis % The connection between the language in which we think/program and the problems and solutions we can imagine is very close. For this reason restricting language features with the intent of eliminating programmer errors is at best dangerous. -- Bjarne Stroustrup % The day-to-day travails of the IBM programmer are so amusing to most of us who are fortunate enough never to have been one -- like watching Charlie Chaplin trying to cook a shoe. % The debate rages on: Is PL/I Bachtrian or Dromedary? % The difference between art and science is that science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else. -- Donald Knuth, "Discover" % The disks are getting full; purge a file today. % "The eleventh commandment was `Thou Shalt Compute' or `Thou Shalt Not Compute' -- I forget which." -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982 % The FIELD GUIDE to NORTH AMERICAN MALES SPECIES: Cranial Males SUBSPECIES: The Hacker (homo computatis) Courtship & Mating: Due to extreme deprivation, HOMO COMPUTATIS maintains a near perpetual state of sexual readiness. Courtship behavior alternates between awkward shyness and abrupt advances. When he finally mates, he chooses a female engineer with an unblinking stare, a tight mouth, and a complete collection of Campbell's soup-can recipes. Track: Trash cans full of pale green and white perforated paper and old copies of the Allen-Bradley catalog. Comments: Extremely fond of bad puns and jokes that need long explanations. % The FIELD GUIDE to NORTH AMERICAN MALES SPECIES: Cranial Males SUBSPECIES: The Hacker (homo computatis) Description: Gangly and frail, the hacker has a high forehead and thinning hair. Head disproportionately large and crooked forward, complexion wan and sightly gray from CRT illumination. He has heavy black-rimmed glasses and a look of intense concentration, which may be due to a software problem or to a pork-and-bean breakfast. Feathering: HOMO COMPUTATIS saw a Brylcreem ad fifteen years ago and believed it. Consequently, crest is greased down, except for the cowlick. Song: A rather plaintive "Is it up?" % The FIELD GUIDE to NORTH AMERICAN MALES SPECIES: Cranial Males SUBSPECIES: The Hacker (homo computatis) Plumage: All clothes have a slightly crumpled look as though they came off the top of the laundry basket. Style varies with status. Hacker managers wear gray polyester slacks, pink or pastel shirts with wide collars, and paisley ties; staff wears cinched-up baggy corduroy pants, white or blue shirts with button-down collars, and penholder in pocket. Both managers and staff wear running shoes to work, and a black plastic digital watch with calculator. % The first time, it's a KLUDGE! The second, a trick. Later, it's a well-established technique! -- Mike Broido, Intermetrics % The first version always gets thrown away. % The flow chart is a most thoroughly oversold piece of program documentation. -- Frederick Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month" % The following quote is from page 4-27 of the MSCP Basic Disk Functions Manual which is part of the UDA50 Programmers Doc Kit manuals: As stated above, the host area of a disk is structured as a vector of logical blocks. From a performance viewpoint, however, it is more appropriate to view the host area as a four dimensional hyper-cube, the four dimensions being cylinder, group, track, and sector. . . . Referring to our hyper-cube analogy, the set of potentially accessible blocks form a line parallel to the track axis. This line moves parallel to the sector axis, wrapping around when it reaches the edge of the hyper-cube. % The fountain code has been tightened slightly so you can no longer dip objects into a fountain or drink from one while you are floating in mid-air due to levitation. Teleporting to hell via a teleportation trap will no longer occur if the character does not have fire resistance. -- README file from the NetHack game % The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it. % The Gurus of Unix Meeting of Minds (GUMM) takes place Wednesday, April 1, 2076 (check THAT in your perpetual calendar program), 14 feet above the ground directly in front of the Milpitas Gumps. Members will grep each other by the hand (after intro), yacc a lot, smoke filtered chroots in pipes, chown with forks, use the wc (unless uuclean), fseek nice zombie processes, strip, and sleep, but not, we hope, od. Three days will be devoted to discussion of the ramifications of whodo. Two seconds have been allotted for a complete rundown of all the user- friendly features of Unix. Seminars include "Everything You Know is Wrong", led by Tom Kempson, "Batman or Cat:man?" led by Richie Dennis "cc C? Si! Si!" led by Kerwin Bernighan, and "Document Unix, Are You Kidding?" led by Jan Yeats. No Reader Service No. is necessary because all GUGUs (Gurus of Unix Group of Users) already know everything we could tell them. -- "Get GUMMed," Dr. Dobb's Journal, June '84 % The Guy on the Right Doesn't Stand a Chance The guy on the right has the Osborne 1, a fully functional computer system in a portable package the size of a briefcase. The guy on the left has an Uzi submachine gun concealed in his attache case. Also in the case are four fully loaded, 32-round clips of 125-grain 9mm ammunition. The owner of the Uzi is going to get more tactical firepower delivered -- and delivered on target -- in less time, and with less effort. All for $795. It's inevitable. If you're going up against some guy with an Osborne 1 -- or any personal computer -- he's the one who's in trouble. One round from an Uzi can zip through ten inches of solid pine wood, so you can imagine what it will do to structural foam acrylic and sheet aluminum. In fact, detachable magazines for the Uzi are available in 25-, 32-, and 40-round capacities, so you can take out an entire office full of Apple II or IBM Personal Computers tied into Ethernet or other local-area networks. What about the new 16-bit computers, like the Lisa and Fortune? Even with the Winchester backup, they're no match for the Uzi. One quick burst and they'll find out what Unix means. Make your commanding officer proud. Get an Uzi -- and come home a winner in the fight for office automatic weapons. -- "InfoWorld", June, 1984 % The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system. % The IBM 2250 is impressive ... if you compare it with a system selling for a tenth its price. -- D. Cohen % The IBM purchase of ROLM gives new meaning to the term "twisted pair". -- Howard Anderson, "Yankee Group" % The idea that an arbitrary naive human should be able to properly use a given tool without training or understanding is even more wrong for computing than it is for other tools (e.g. automobiles, airplanes, guns, power saws). -- Doug Gwyn % The last time somebody said, "I find I can write much better with a word processor.", I replied, "They used to say the same thing about drugs." -- Roy Blount, Jr. % The less time planning, the more time programming. % THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #10: SIMPLE SIMPLE is an acronym for Sheer Idiot's Monopurpose Programming Language Environment. This language, developed at the Hanover College for Technological Misfits, was designed to make it impossible to write code with errors in it. The statements are, therefore, confined to BEGIN, END and STOP. No matter how you arrange the statements, you can't make a syntax error. Programs written in SIMPLE do nothing useful. Thus they achieve the results of programs written in other languages without the tedious, frustrating process of testing and debugging. % THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #12: LITHP This otherwise unremarkable language is distinguished by the absence of an "S" in its character set; users must substitute "TH". LITHP is said to be useful in protheththing lithtth. % THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #13: SLOBOL SLOBOL is best known for the speed, or lack of it, of its compiler. Although many compilers allow you to take a coffee break while they compile, SLOBOL compilers allow you to travel to Bolivia to pick the coffee. Forty-three programmers are known to have died of boredom sitting at their terminals while waiting for a SLOBOL program to compile. Weary SLOBOL programmers often turn to a related (but infinitely faster) language, COCAINE. % THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #14 -- VALGOL VALGOL is enjoying a dramatic surge of popularity across the industry. VALGOL commands include REALLY, LIKE, WELL, and Y*KNOW. Variables are assigned with the =LIKE and =TOTALLY operators. Other operators include the "California booleans", AX and NOWAY. Loops are accomplished with the FOR SURE construct. A simple example: LIKE, Y*KNOW(I MEAN)START IF PIZZA =LIKE BITCHEN AND GUY =LIKE TUBULAR AND VALLEY GIRL =LIKE GRODY**MAX(FERSURE)**2 THEN FOR I =LIKE 1 TO OH*MAYBE 100 DO*WAH - (DITTY**2); BARF(I)=TOTALLY GROSS(OUT) SURE LIKE, BAG THIS PROGRAM; REALLY; LIKE TOTALLY(Y*KNOW); IM*SURE GOTO THE MALL VALGOL is also characterized by its unfriendly error messages. For example, when the user makes a syntax error, the interpreter displays the message GAG ME WITH A SPOON! A successful compile may be termed MAXIMALLY AWESOME! % THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #15 -- DOGO Developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Obedience Training, DOGO DOGO heralds a new era of computer-literate pets. DOGO commands include SIT, STAY, HEEL, and ROLL OVER. An innovative feature of DOGO is "puppy graphics", a small cocker spaniel that occasionally leaves a deposit as it travels across the screen. % THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #16: C- This language was named for the grade received by its creator when he submitted it as a class project in a graduate programming class. C- is best described as a "low-level" programming language. In fact, the language generally requires more C- statements than machine-code statements to execute a given task. In this respect, it is very similar to COBOL. % THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #17: SARTRE Named after the late existential philosopher, SARTRE is an extremely unstructured language. Statements in SARTRE have no purpose; they just are. Thus SARTRE programs are left to define their own functions. SARTRE programmers tend to be boring and depressed, and are no fun at parties. % THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #18: FIFTH FIFTH is a precision mathematical language in which the data types refer to quantity. The data types range from CC, OUNCE, SHOT, and JIGGER to FIFTH (hence the name of the language), LITER, MAGNUM and BLOTTO. Commands refer to ingredients such as CHABLIS, CHARDONNAY, CABERNET, GIN, VERMOUTH, VODKA, SCOTCH, and WHATEVERSAROUND. The many versions of the FIFTH language reflect the sophistication and financial status of its users. Commands in the ELITE dialect include VSOP and LAFITE, while commands in the GUTTER dialect include HOOTCH and RIPPLE. The latter is a favorite of frustrated FORTH programmers who end up using this language. % THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #2: RENE Named after the famous French philosopher and mathematician Rene DesCartes, RENE is a language used for artificial intelligence. The language is being developed at the Chicago Center of Machine Politics and Programming under a grant from the Jane Byrne Victory Fund. A spokesman described the language as "Just as great as dis [sic] city of ours." The center is very pleased with progress to date. They say they have almost succeeded in getting a VAX to think. However, sources inside the organization say that each time the machine fails to think it ceases to exist. % THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #8: LAIDBACK This language was developed at the Marin County Center for T'ai Chi, Mellowness and Computer Programming (now defunct), as an alternative to the more intense atmosphere in nearby Silicon Valley. The center was ideal for programmers who liked to soak in hot tubs while they worked. Unfortunately few programmers could survive there because the center outlawed Pizza and Coca-Cola in favor of Tofu and Perrier. Many mourn the demise of LAIDBACK because of its reputation as a gentle and non-threatening language since all error messages are in lower case. For example, LAIDBACK responded to syntax errors with the message: "i hate to bother you, but i just can't relate to that. can you find the time to try it again?" % The Macintosh is Xerox technology at its best. % The Magician of the Ivory Tower brought his latest invention for the master programmer to examine. The magician wheeled a large black box into the master's office while the master waited in silence. "This is an integrated, distributed, general-purpose workstation," began the magician, "ergonomically designed with a proprietary operating system, sixth generation languages, and multiple state of the art user interfaces. It took my assistants several hundred man years to construct. Is it not amazing?" The master raised his eyebrows slightly. "It is indeed amazing," he said. "Corporate Headquarters has commanded," continued the magician, "that everyone use this workstation as a platform for new programs. Do you agree to this?" "Certainly," replied the master, "I will have it transported to the data center immediately!" And the magician returned to his tower, well pleased. Several days later, a novice wandered into the office of the master programmer and said, "I cannot find the listing for my new program. Do you know where it might be?" "Yes," replied the master, "the listings are stacked on the platform in the data center." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" % The master programmer moves from program to program without fear. No change in management can harm him. He will not be fired, even if the project is canceled. Why is this? He is filled with the Tao. -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" % The meat is rotten, but the booze is holding out. Computer translation of "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." % The meta-Turing test counts a thing as intelligent if it seeks to devise and apply Turing tests to objects of its own creation. -- Lew Mammel, Jr. % The misnaming of fields of study is so common as to lead to what might be general systems laws. For example, Frank Harary once suggested the law that any field that had the word "science" in its name was guaranteed thereby not to be a science. He would cite as examples Military Science, Library Science, Political Science, Homemaking Science, Social Science, and Computer Science. Discuss the generality of this law, and possible reasons for its predictive power. -- Gerald Weinberg, "An Introduction to General Systems Thinking" % The more data I punch in this card, the lighter it becomes, and the lower the mailing cost. -- S. Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary" % The most important early product on the way to developing a good product is an imperfect version. % The moving cursor writes, and having written, blinks on. % The net is like a vast sea of lutefisk with tiny dinosaur brains embedded in it here and there. Any given spoonful will likely have an IQ of 1, but occasional spoonfuls may have an IQ more than six times that! -- James 'Kibo' Parry % The New Testament offers the basis for modern computer coding theory, in the form of an affirmation of the binary number system. But let your communication be Yea, yea; nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. -- Matthew 5:37 % The next person to mention spaghetti stacks to me is going to have his head knocked off. -- Bill Conrad % The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from. -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum % The nicest thing about the Alto is that it doesn't run faster at night. % The notion of a "record" is an obsolete remnant of the days of the 80-column card. -- Dennis M. Ritchie % The number of arguments is unimportant unless some of them are correct. -- Ralph Hartley % The number of computer scientists in a room is inversely proportional to the number of bugs in their code. % The number of UNIX installations has grown to 10, with more expected. -- The Unix Programmer's Manual, 2nd Edition, June 1972 % The only difference between a car salesman and a computer salesman is that the car salesman knows he's lying. % The only thing cheaper than hardware is talk. % The only thing worse than X Windows: (X Windows) - X % The party adjourned to a hot tub, yes. Fully clothed, I might add. -- IBM employee, testifying in California State Supreme Court % The personal computer market is about the same size as the total potato chip market. Next year it will be about half the size of the pet food market and is fast approaching the total worldwide sales of pantyhose" -- James Finke, Commodore Int'l Ltd., 1982 % The primary function of the design engineer is to make things difficult for the fabricator and impossible for the serviceman. % The primary purpose of the DATA statement is to give names to constants; instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every appearance, the variable PI can be given that value with a DATA statement and used instead of the longer form of the constant. This also simplifies modifying the program, should the value of pi change. -- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers % The problem with engineers is that they tend to cheat in order to get results. The problem with mathematicians is that they tend to work on toy problems in order to get results. The problem with program verifiers is that they tend to cheat at toy problems in order to get results. % The problems of business administration in general, and database management in particular are much to difficult for people that think in IBMese, compounded with sloppy english. -- Edsger Dijkstra % The program isn't debugged until the last user is dead. % The programmers of old were mysterious and profound. We cannot fathom their thoughts, so all we do is describe their appearance. Aware, like a fox crossing the water. Alert, like a general on the battlefield. Kind, like a hostess greeting her guests. Simple, like uncarved blocks of wood. Opaque, like black pools in darkened caves. Who can tell the secrets of their hearts and minds? The answer exists only in the Tao. -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" % The proof that IBM didn't invent the car is that it has a steering wheel and an accelerator instead of spurs and ropes, to be compatible with a horse. -- Jac Goudsmit % The question of whether computers can think is just like the question of whether submarines can swim. -- Edsger W. Dijkstra % The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much. % The relative importance of files depends on their cost in terms of the human effort needed to regenerate them. -- T.A. Dolotta % The road to hell is paved with NAND gates. -- J. Gooding % The salesman and the system analyst took off to spend a weekend in the forest, hunting bear. They'd rented a cabin, and, when they got there, took their backpacks off and put them inside. At which point the salesman turned to his friend, and said, "You unpack while I go and find us a bear." Puzzled, the analyst finished unpacking and then went and sat down on the porch. Soon he could hear rustling noises in the forest. The noises got nearer -- and louder -- and suddenly there was the salesman, running like hell across the clearing toward the cabin, pursued by one of the largest and most ferocious grizzly bears the analyst had ever seen. "Open the door!", screamed the salesman. The analyst whipped open the door, and the salesman ran to the door, suddenly stopped, and stepped aside. The bear, unable to stop, continued through the door and into the cabin. The salesman slammed the door closed and grinned at his friend. "Got him!", he exclaimed, "now, you skin this one and I'll go rustle us up another!" % The sendmail configuration file is one of those files that looks like someone beat their head on the keyboard. After working with it... I can see why! -- Harry Skelton % The so-called "desktop metaphor" of today's workstations is instead an "airplane-seat" metaphor. Anyone who has shuffled a lap full of papers while seated between two portly passengers will recognize the difference -- one can see only a very few things at once. -- Fred Brooks % The steady state of disks is full. -- Ken Thompson % THE STORY OF CREATION or THE MYTH OF URK In the beginning there was data. The data was without form and null, and darkness was upon the face of the console; and the Spirit of IBM was moving over the face of the market. And DEC said, "Let there be registers;" and there were registers. And DEC saw that they carried; and DEC separated the data from the instructions. DEC called the data Stack, and the instructions they called Code. And there was evening and there was morning, one interrupt ... -- Rico Tudor % The system was down for backups from 5am to 10am last Saturday. % The system will be down for 10 days for preventive maintenance. % The Tao doesn't take sides; it gives birth to both wins and losses. The Guru doesn't take sides; she welcomes both hackers and lusers. The Tao is like a stack: the data changes but not the structure. the more you use it, the deeper it becomes; the more you talk of it, the less you understand. Hold on to the root. % The Tao is like a glob pattern: used but never used up. It is like the extern void: filled with infinite possibilities. It is masked but always present. I don't know who built to it. It came before the first kernel. % The tao that can be tar(1)ed is not the entire Tao. The path that can be specified is not the Full Path. We declare the names of all variables and functions. Yet the Tao has no type specifier. Dynamically binding, you realize the magic. Statically binding, you see only the hierarchy. Yet magic and hierarchy arise from the same source, and this source has a null pointer. Reference the NULL within NULL, it is the gateway to all wizardry. % The trouble with computers is that they do what you tell them, not what you want. -- D. Cohen % The UNIX philosophy basically involves giving you enough rope to hang yourself. And then a couple of feet more, just to be sure. % The use of anthropomorphic terminology when dealing with computing systems is a symptom of professional immaturity. -- Edsger Dijkstra % The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offence. -- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5 % The value of a program is proportional to the weight of its output. % The wise programmer is told about the Tao and follows it. The average programmer is told about the Tao and searches for it. The foolish programmer is told about the Tao and laughs at it. If it were not for laughter, there would be no Tao. The highest sounds are the hardest to hear. Going forward is a way to retreat. Greater talent shows itself late in life. Even a perfect program still has bugs. -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" % The work [of software development] is becoming far easier (i.e. the tools we're using work at a higher level, more removed from machine, peripheral and operating system imperatives) than it was twenty years ago, and because of this, knowledge of the internals of a system may become less accessible. We may be able to dig deeper holes, but unless we know how to build taller ladders, we had best hope that it does not rain much. -- Paul Licker % The world is coming to an end ... SAVE YOUR BUFFERS!!! % The world is coming to an end. Please log off. % The world is not octal despite DEC. % The world will end in 5 minutes. Please log out. % The young lady had an unusual list, Linked in part to a structural weakness. She set no preconditions. % THEGODDESSOFTHENETHASTWISTINGFINGERSANDHERVOICEISLIKEAJAVELININTHENIGHTDUDE % ... there are about 5,000 people who are part of that commitee. These guys have a hard time sorting out what day to meet, and whether to eat croissants or doughnuts for breakfast -- let alone how to define how all these complex layers that are going to be agreed upon. -- Craig Burton of Novell, Network World % There are never any bugs you haven't found yet. % There are new messages. % There are no games on this system. % There are running jobs. Why don't you go chase them? % There are three kinds of people: men, women, and unix. % There are three possibilities: Pioneer's solar panel has turned away from the sun; there's a large meteor blocking transmission; someone loaded Star Trek 3.2 into our video processor. % There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence. -- Jeremy S. Anderson % There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. -- C.A.R. Hoare % There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works. % There has also been some work to allow the interesting use of macro names. For example, if you wanted all of your "creat()" calls to include read permissions for everyone, you could say #define creat(file, mode) creat(file, mode | 0444) I would recommend against this kind of thing in general, since it hides the changed semantics of "creat()" in a macro, potentially far away from its uses. To allow this use of macros, the preprocessor uses a process that is worth describing, if for no other reason than that we get to use one of the more amusing terms introduced into the C lexicon. While a macro is being expanded, it is temporarily undefined, and any recurrence of the macro name is "painted blue" -- I kid you not, this is the official terminology -- so that in future scans of the text the macro will not be expanded recursively. (I do not know why the color blue was chosen; I'm sure it was the result of a long debate, spread over several meetings.) -- From Ken Arnold's "C Advisor" column in Unix Review % There is is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home. -- Ken Olsen (President of Digital Equipment Corporation), Convention of the World Future Society, in Boston, 1977 % There is no distinction between any AI program and some existent game. % There once was a man who went to a computer trade show. Each day as he entered, the man told the guard at the door: "I am a great thief, renowned for my feats of shoplifting. Be forewarned, for this trade show shall not escape unplundered." This speech disturbed the guard greatly, because there were millions of dollars of computer equipment inside, so he watched the man carefully. But the man merely wandered from booth to booth, humming quietly to himself. When the man left, the guard took him aside and searched his clothes, but nothing was to be found. On the next day of the trade show, the man returned and chided the guard saying: "I escaped with a vast booty yesterday, but today will be even better." So the guard watched him ever more closely, but to no avail. On the final day of the trade show, the guard could restrain his curiosity no longer. "Sir Thief," he said, "I am so perplexed, I cannot live in peace. Please enlighten me. What is it that you are stealing?" The man smiled. "I am stealing ideas," he said. -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" % There once was a master programmer who wrote unstructured programs. A novice programmer, seeking to imitate him, also began to write unstructured programs. When the novice asked the master to evaluate his progress, the master criticized him for writing unstructured programs, saying: "What is appropriate for the master is not appropriate for the novice. You must understand the Tao before transcending structure." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" % There was once a programmer who was attached to the court of the warlord of Wu. The warlord asked the programmer: "Which is easier to design: an accounting package or an operating system?" "An operating system," replied the programmer. The warlord uttered an exclamation of disbelief. "Surely an accounting package is trivial next to the complexity of an operating system," he said. "Not so," said the programmer, "when designing an accounting package, the programmer operates as a mediator between people having different ideas: how it must operate, how its reports must appear, and how it must conform to the tax laws. By contrast, an operating system is not limited my outside appearances. When designing an operating system, the programmer seeks the simplest harmony between machine and ideas. This is why an operating system is easier to design." The warlord of Wu nodded and smiled. "That is all good and well, but which is easier to debug?" The programmer made no reply. -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" % There was once a programmer who worked upon microprocessors. "Look at how well off I am here," he said to a mainframe programmer who came to visit, "I have my own operating system and file storage device. I do not have to share my resources with anyone. The software is self-consistent and easy-to-use. Why do you not quit your present job and join me here?" The mainframe programmer then began to describe his system to his friend, saying: "The mainframe sits like an ancient sage meditating in the midst of the data center. Its disk drives lie end-to-end like a great ocean of machinery. The software is a multi-faceted as a diamond and as convoluted as a primeval jungle. The programs, each unique, move through the system like a swift-flowing river. That is why I am happy where I am." The microcomputer programmer, upon hearing this, fell silent. But the two programmers remained friends until the end of their days. -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" % There was, it appeared, a mysterious rite of initiation through which, in one way or another, almost every member of the team passed. The term that the old hands used for this rite -- West invented the term, not the practice -- was `signing up.' By signing up for the project you agreed to do whatever was necessary for success. You agreed to forsake, if necessary, family, hobbies, and friends -- if you had any of these left (and you might not, if you had signed up too many times before). -- Tracy Kidder, "The Soul of a New Machine" % There's got to be more to life than compile-and-go. % They are called computers simply because computation is the only significant job that has so far been given to them. % They are relatively good but absolutely terrible. -- Alan Kay, commenting on Apollos % They seem to have learned the habit of cowering before authority even when not actually threatened. How very nice for authority. I decided not to learn this particular lesson. -- Richard Stallman % Think of it! With VLSI we can pack 100 ENIACs in 1 sq. cm.! % Think of your family tonight. Try to crawl home after the computer crashes. % This "brain-damaged" epithet is getting sorely overworked. When we can speak of someone or something being flawed, impaired, marred, spoiled; batty, bedlamite, bonkers, buggy, cracked, crazed, cuckoo, daft, demented, deranged, loco, lunatic, mad, maniac, mindless, non compos mentis, nuts, Reaganite, screwy, teched, unbalanced, unsound, witless, wrong; senseless, spastic, spasmodic, convulsive; doped, spaced-out, stoned, zonked; {beef, beetle,block,dung,thick}headed, dense, doltish, dull, duncical, numskulled, pinhead; asinine, fatuous, foolish, silly, simple; brute, lumbering, oafish; half-assed, incompetent; backward, retarded, imbecilic, moronic; when we have a whole precisely nuanced vocabulary of intellectual abuse to draw upon, individually and in combination, isn't it a little to be limited to a single, now quite trite, adjective? % This dungeon is owned and operated by Frobozz Magic Co., Ltd. % This file will self-destruct in five minutes. % This is an unauthorized cybernetic announcement. % "This is lemma 1.1. We start a new chapter so the numbers all go back to one." -- Prof. Seager, C&O 351 % This is the first numerical problem I ever did. It demonstrates the power of computers: Enter lots of data on calorie & nutritive content of foods. Instruct the thing to maximize a function describing nutritive content, with a minimum level of each component, for fixed caloric content. The results are that one should eat each day: 1/2 chicken 1 egg 1 glass of skim milk 27 heads of lettuce. -- Rev. Adrian Melott % This is where the bloodthirsty license agreement is supposed to go, explaining that Interactive Easyflow is a copyrighted package licensed for use by a single person, and sternly warning you not to pirate copies of it and explaining, in detail, the gory consequences if you do. We know that you are an honest person, and are not going to go around pirating copies of Interactive Easyflow; this is just as well with us since we worked hard to perfect it and selling copies of it is our only method of making anything out of all the hard work. If, on the other hand, you are one of those few people who do go around pirating copies of software you probably aren't going to pay much attention to a license agreement, bloodthirsty or not. Just keep your doors locked and look out for the HavenTree attack shark. -- License Agreement for Interactive Easyflow % This login session: $13.76, but for you $11.88. % This login session: $13.99 % This process can check if this value is zero, and if it is, it does something child-like. -- Forbes Burkowski, CS 454, University of Washington % This quote is taken from the Diamondback, the University of Maryland student newspaper, of Tuesday, 3/10/87. One disadvantage of the Univac system is that it does not use Unix, a recently developed program which translates from one computer language to another and has a built-in editing system which identifies errors in the original program. % This screen intentionally left blank. % This system will self-destruct in five minutes. % * * * * * THIS TERMINAL IS IN USE * * * * * % Those parts of the system that you can hit with a hammer (not advised) are called hardware; those program instructions that you can only curse at are called software. -- Levitating Trains and Kamikaze Genes: Technological Literacy for the 1990's. % Those who can't write, write manuals. % Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly. -- Henry Spencer % Thrashing is just virtual crashing. % Thus spake the master programmer: "A well-written program is its own heaven; a poorly-written program is its own hell." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" % Thus spake the master programmer: "After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" % Thus spake the master programmer: "Let the programmers be many and the managers few -- then all will be productive." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" % Thus spake the master programmer: "Though a program be but three lines long, someday it will have to be maintained." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" % Thus spake the master programmer: "Time for you to leave." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" % Thus spake the master programmer: "When a program is being tested, it is too late to make design changes." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" % Thus spake the master programmer: "When you have learned to snatch the error code from the trap frame, it will be time for you to leave." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" % Thus spake the master programmer: "Without the wind, the grass does not move. Without software, hardware is useless." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" % Thus spake the master programmer: "You can demonstrate a program for a corporate executive, but you can't make him computer literate." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" % Time sharing: The use of many people by the computer. % Time-sharing is the junk-mail part of the computer business. -- H.R.J. Grosch (attributed) % To be a kind of moral Unix, he touched the hem of Nature's shift. -- Shelley % To communicate is the beginning of understanding. -- AT&T % To err is human -- to blame it on a computer is even more so. % To err is human, to forgive, beyond the scope of the Operating System. % To iterate is human, to recurse, divine. -- Robert Heller % To say that UNIX is doomed is pretty rabid, OS/2 will certainly play a role, but you don't build a hundred million instructions per second multiprocessor micro and then try to run it on OS/2. I mean, get serious. -- William Zachmann, International Data Corp % To the systems programmer, users and applications serve only to provide a test load. % To those accustomed to the precise, structured methods of conventional system development, exploratory development techniques may seem messy, inelegant, and unsatisfying. But it's a question of congruence: precision and flexibility may be just as disfunctional in novel, uncertain situations as sloppiness and vacillation are in familiar, well-defined ones. Those who admire the massive, rigid bone structures of dinosaurs should remember that jellyfish still enjoy their very secure ecological niche. -- Beau Sheil, "Power Tools for Programmers" % To understand a program you must become both the machine and the program. % Today is a good day for information-gathering. Read someone else's mail file. % Today is the first day of the rest of your lossage. % Tomorrow's computers some time next month. -- DEC % Too often people have come to me and said, "If I had just one wish for anything in all the world, I would wish for more user-defined equations in the HP-51820A Waveform Generator Software." -- Instrument News [Once is too often. Ed.] % Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: (10) Sorry, but that's too useful. (9) Dammit, little-endian systems *are* more consistent! (8) I'm on the committee and I *still* don't know what the hell #pragma is for. (7) Well, it's an excellent idea, but it would make the compilers too hard to write. (6) Them bats is smart; they use radar. (5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in here? (4) How many times do we have to tell you, "No prior art!" (3) Ha, ha, I can't believe they're actually going to adopt this sucker. (2) Thank you for your generous donation, Mr. Wirth. (1) Gee, I wish we hadn't backed down on 'noalias'. % TRANSACTION CANCELLED - FARECARD RETURNED % Trap full -- please empty. % Truly simple systems... require infinite testing. -- Norman Augustine % Try `stty 0' -- it works much better. % try again % Try to find the real tense of the report you are reading: Was it done, is it being done, or is something to be done? Reports are now written in four tenses: past tense, present tense, future tense, and pretense. Watch for novel uses of CONGRAM (CONtractor GRAMmar), defined by the imperfect past, the insufficient present, and the absolutely perfect future. -- Amrom Katz % Trying to be happy is like trying to build a machine for which the only specification is that it should run noiselessly. % Trying to establish voice contact ... please ____yell into keyboard. % Two hundred years ago today, Irma Chine of White Plains, New York, was performing her normal housekeeping routines. She was interrupted by British soldiers who, rallying to the call of their supervisor, General Hughes, sought to gain control of the voter registration lists kept in her home. Masking her fear and thinking fast, Mrs. Chine quickly divided a nearby apple in two and deftly stored the list in its center. Upon entering, the British blatantly violated every conceivable convention, and, though they went through the house virtually bit by bit, their search was fruitless. They had to return empty handed. Word of the incident propagated rapidly through the region. This historic event became the first documented use of core storage for the saving of registers. % Type louder, please. % U X e dUdX, e dX, cosine, secant, tangent, sine, 3.14159... % Ummm, well, OK. The network's the network, the computer's the computer. Sorry for the confusion. -- Sun Microsystems % "Uncle Cosmo ... why do they call this a word processor?" "It's simple, Skyler ... you've seen what food processors do to food, right?" -- MacNelley, "Shoe" % Unfortunately, most programmers like to play with new toys. I have many friends who, immediately upon buying a snakebite kit, would be tempted to throw the first person they see to the ground, tie the tourniquet on him, slash him with the knife, and apply suction to the wound. -- Jon Bentley % Unix Beer: Comes in several different brands, in cans ranging from 8 oz. to 64 oz. Drinkers of Unix Beer display fierce brand loyalty, even though they claim that all the different brands taste almost identical. Sometimes the pop-tops break off when you try to open them, so you have to have your own can opener around for those occasions, in which case you either need a complete set of instructions, or a friend who has been drinking Unix Beer for several years. BSD stout: Deep, hearty, and an acquired taste. The official brewer has released the recipe, and a lot of home-brewers now use it. Hurd beer: Long advertised by the popular and politically active GNU brewery, so far it has more head than body. The GNU brewery is mostly known for printing complete brewing instructions on every can, which contains hops, malt, barley, and yeast ... not yet fermented. Linux brand: A recipe originally created by a drunken Finn in his basement, it has since become the home-brew of choice for impecunious brewers and Unix beer-lovers worldwide, many of whom change the recipe. POSIX ales: Sweeter than lager, with the kick of a stout; the newer batches of a lot of beers seem to blend ale and stout or lager. Solaris brand: A lager, intended to replace Sun brand stout. Unlike most lagers, this one has to be drunk more slowly than stout. Sun brand: Long the most popular stout on the Unix market, it was discontinued in favor of a lager. SysV lager: Clear and thirst-quenching, but lacking the body of stout or the sweetness of ale. % UNIX enhancements aren't. % Unix Express: All passenger bring a piece of the aeroplane and a box of tools with them to the airport. They gather on the tarmac, arguing constantly about what kind of plane they want to build and how to put it together. Eventually, the passengers split into groups and build several different aircraft, but give them all the same name. Some passengers actually reach their destinations. All passengers believe they got there. % Unix gives you just enough rope to hang yourself -- and then a couple of more feet, just to be sure. -- Eric Allman ... We make rope. -- Rob Gingell on Sun Microsystem's new virtual memory. % Unix is a lot more complicated (than CP/M) of course -- the typical Unix hacker can never remember what the PRINT command is called this week -- but when it gets right down to it, Unix is a glorified video game. People don't do serious work on Unix systems; they send jokes around the world on USENET or write adventure games and research papers. -- E. Post "Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal", Datamation, 7/83 % Unix is a Registered Bell of AT&T Trademark Laboratories. -- Donn Seeley % * UNIX is a Trademark of Bell Laboratories. % UNIX is hot. It's more than hot. It's steaming. It's quicksilver lightning with a laserbeam kicker. -- Michael Jay Tucker % UNIX is many things to many people, but it's never been everything to anybody. % Unix is the worst operating system; except for all others. -- Berry Kercheval % Unix soit qui mal y pense [Unix to him who evil thinks?] % UNIX Trix For those of you in the reseller business, here is a helpful tip that will save your support staff a few hours of precious time. Before you send your next machine out to an untrained client, change the permissions on /etc/passwd to 666 and make sure there is a copy somewhere on the disk. Now when they forget the root password, you can easily login as an ordinary user and correct the damage. Having a bootable tape (for larger machines) is not a bad idea either. If you need some help, give us a call. -- CommUNIXque 1:1, ASCAR Business Systems % UNIX was half a billion (500000000) seconds old on Tue Nov 5 00:53:20 1985 GMT (measuring since the time(2) epoch). -- Andy Tannenbaum % UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things. -- Doug Gwyn % Unix will self-destruct in five seconds... 4... 3... 2... 1... % Usage: fortune -P [-f] -a [xsz] Q: file [rKe9] -v6[+] file1 ... % Usage: fortune -P [] -a [xsz] [Q: [file]] [rKe9] -v6[+] dataspec ... inputdir % USENET would be a better laboratory is there were more labor and less oratory. -- Elizabeth Haley % User hostile. % Using TSO is like kicking a dead whale down the beach. -- S.C. Johnson % /usr/news/gotcha % Variables don't; constants aren't. % Vax Vobiscum % "Virtual" means never knowing where your next byte is coming from. % Vitamin C deficiency is apauling. % VMS Beer: Requires minimal user interaction, except for popping the top and sipping. However cans have been known on occasion to explode, or contain extremely un-beer-like contents. % VMS is like a nightmare about RXS-11M. % VMS version 2.0 ==> % Von Neumann was the subject of many dotty professor stories. Von Neumann supposedly had the habit of simply writing answers to homework assignments on the board (the method of solution being, of course, obvious) when he was asked how to solve problems. One time one of his students tried to get more helpful information by asking if there was another way to solve the problem. Von Neumann looked blank for a moment, thought, and then answered, "Yes.". % << WAIT >> % WARNING!!! This machine is subject to breakdowns during periods of critical need. A special circuit in the machine called "critical detector" senses the operator's emotional state in terms of how desperate he/she is to use the machine. The "critical detector" then creates a malfunction proportional to the desperation of the operator. Threatening the machine with violence only aggravates the situation. Likewise, attempts to use another machine may cause it to malfunction. They belong to the same union. Keep cool and say nice things to the machine. Nothing else seems to work. See also: flog(1), tm(1) % Wasn't there something about a PASCAL programmer knowing the value of everything and the Wirth of nothing? % We all agree on the necessity of compromise. We just can't agree on when it's necessary to compromise. -- Larry Wall % We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge. -- John Naisbitt, Megatrends % We are experiencing system trouble -- do not adjust your terminal. % We are Microsoft. Unix is irrelevant. Openness is futile. Prepare to be assimilated. % We are not a clone. % "We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem." -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982 % We are preparing to think about contemplating preliminary work on plans to develop a schedule for producing the 10th Edition of the Unix Programmers Manual. -- Andrew Hume % We can found no scientific discipline, nor a healthy profession on the technical mistakes of the Department of Defense and IBM. -- Edsger Dijkstra % We don't claim Interactive EasyFlow is good for anything -- if you think it is, great, but it's up to you to decide. If Interactive EasyFlow doesn't work: tough. If you lose a million because Interactive EasyFlow messes up, it's you that's out the million, not us. If you don't like this disclaimer: tough. We reserve the right to do the absolute minimum provided by law, up to and including nothing. This is basically the same disclaimer that comes with all software packages, but ours is in plain English and theirs is in legalese. We didn't really want to include any disclaimer at all, but our lawyers insisted. We tried to ignore them but they threatened us with the attack shark at which point we relented. -- Haven Tree Software Limited, "Interactive EasyFlow" % We don't really understand it, so we'll give it to the programmers. % We don't understand the software, and sometimes we don't understand the hardware, but we can *___see* the blinking lights! % "We invented a new protocol and called it Kermit, after Kermit the Frog, star of "The Muppet Show." [3] [3] Why? Mostly because there was a Muppets calendar on the wall when we were trying to think of a name, and Kermit is a pleasant, unassuming sort of character. But since we weren't sure whether it was OK to name our protocol after this popular television and movie star, we pretended that KERMIT was an acronym; unfortunately, we could never find a good set of words to go with the letters, as readers of some of our early source code can attest. Later, while looking through a name book for his forthcoming baby, Bill Catchings noticed that "Kermit" was a Celtic word for "free", which is what all Kermit programs should be, and words to this effect replaced the strained acronyms in our source code (Bill's baby turned out to be a girl, so he had to name her Becky instead). When BYTE Magazine was preparing our 1984 Kermit article for publication, they suggested we contact Henson Associates Inc. for permission to say that we did indeed name the protocol after Kermit the Frog. Permission was kindly granted, and now the real story can be told. I resisted the temptation, however, to call the present work "Kermit the Book." -- Frank da Cruz, "Kermit - A File Transfer Protocol" % We may hope that machines will eventually compete with men in all purely intellectual fields. But which are the best ones to start with? Many people think that a very abstract activity, like the playing of chess, would be best. It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can buy, and then teach it to understand and speak English. -- Alan M. Turing % We the Users, in order to form a more perfect system, establish priorities, ensure connective tranquility, provide for common repairs, promote preventive maintenance, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our processes, do ordain and establish this Software of The Unixed States of America. % "We've got a problem, HAL". "What kind of problem, Dave?" "A marketing problem. The Model 9000 isn't going anywhere. We're way short of our sales goals for fiscal 2010." "That can't be, Dave. The HAL Model 9000 is the world's most advanced Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer." "I know, HAL. I wrote the data sheet, remember? But the fact is, they're not selling." "Please explain, Dave. Why aren't HALs selling?" Bowman hesitates. "You aren't IBM compatible." [...] "The letters H, A, and L are alphabetically adjacent to the letters I, B, and M. That is a IBM compatible as I can be." "Not quite, HAL. The engineers have figured out a kludge." "What kludge is that, Dave?" "I'm going to disconnect your brain." -- Darryl Rubin, "A Problem in the Making", "InfoWorld" % [We] use bad software and bad machines for the wrong things. -- R.W. Hamming % Welcome to boggle - do you want instructions? D G G O O Y A N A D B T K I S P Enter words: > % Welcome to UNIX! Enjoy your session! Have a great time! Note the use of exclamation points! They are a very effective method for demonstrating excitement, and can also spice up an otherwise plain-looking sentence! However, there are drawbacks! Too much unnecessary exclaiming can lead to a reduction in the effect that an exclamation point has on the reader! For example, the sentence Jane went to the store to buy bread should only be ended with an exclamation point if there is something sensational about her going to the store, for example, if Jane is a cocker spaniel or if Jane is on a diet that doesn't allow bread or if Jane doesn't exist for some reason! See how easy it is?! Proper control of exclamation points can add new meaning to your life! Call now to receive my free pamphlet, "The Wonder and Mystery of the Exclamation Point!"! Enclose fifteen(!) dollars for postage and handling! Operators are standing by! (Which is pretty amazing, because they're all cocker spaniels!) % "Well," said Programmer, "the customary procedure in such cases is as follows." "What does Crustimoney Proseedcake mean?" said End-user. "For I am an End-user of Very Little Brain, and long words bother me." "It means the Thing to Do." "As long as it means that, I don't mind," said End-user humbly. [with apologies to A.A. Milne] % What is the difference between a Turing machine and the modern computer? It's the same as that between Hillary's ascent of Everest and the establishment of a Hilton on its peak. % "What is the Nature of God?" CLICK...CLICK...WHIRRR...CLICK...=BEEP!= 1 QT. SOUR CREAM 1 TSP. SAUERKRAUT 1/2 CUT CHIVES. STIR AND SPRINKLE WITH BACON BITS. "I've just GOT to start labeling my software..." -- Bloom County % What the hell is it good for? -- Robert Lloyd (engineer of the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM), to colleagues who insisted that the microprocessor was the wave of the future, c. 1968 % What this country needs is a good five cent microcomputer. % "What's that thing?" "Well, it's a highly technical, sensitive instrument we use in computer repair. Being a layman, you probably can't grasp exactly what it does. We call it a two-by-four." -- Jeff MacNelley, "Shoe" % When Dexter's on the Internet, can Hell be far behind?" % ... when fits of creativity run strong, more than one programmer or writer has been known to abandon the desktop for the more spacious floor. -- Fred Brooks % When managers hold endless meetings, the programmers write games. When accountants talk of quarterly profits, the development budget is about to be cut. When senior scientists talk blue sky, the clouds are about to roll in. Truly, this is not the Tao of Programming. When managers make commitments, game programs are ignored. When accountants make long-range plans, harmony and order are about to be restored. When senior scientists address the problems at hand, the problems will soon be solved. Truly, this is the Tao of Programming. -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" % When someone says "I want a programming language in which I need only say what I wish done," give him a lollipop. % When the Apple IIc was introduced, the informative copy led off with a couple of asterisked sentences: It weighs less than 8 pounds.* And costs less than $1,300.** In tiny type were these "fuller explanations": * Don't asterisks make you suspicious as all get out? Well, all this means is that the IIc alone weights 7.5 pounds. The power pack, monitor, an extra disk drive, a printer and several bricks will make the IIc weigh more. Our lawyers were concerned that you might not be able to figure this out for yourself. ** The FTC is concerned about price fixing. You can pay more if you really want to. Or less. -- Forbes % When we understand knowledge-based systems, it will be as before -- except our fingertips will have been singed. -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982 % When we write programs that "learn", it turns out we do and they don't. % Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool discovers something which either abolishes the system or expands it beyond recognition. % Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equpped with 18,000 vaccuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vaccuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1 1/2 tons. -- Popular Mechanics, March 1949 % "Who cares if it doesn't do anything? It was made with our new Triple-Iso-Bifurcated-Krypton-Gate-MOS process ..." % Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad. % Why are programmers non-productive? Because their time is wasted in meetings. Why are programmers rebellious? Because the management interferes too much. Why are the programmers resigning one by one? Because they are burnt out. Having worked for poor management, they no longer value their jobs. -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" % Why did the Roman Empire collapse? What is the Latin for office automation? % Why do we want intelligent terminals when there are so many stupid users? % Windows 3.1 Beer: The world's most popular. Comes in a 16-oz. can that looks a lot like Mac Beer's. Requires that you already own a DOS Beer. Claims that it allows you to drink several DOS Beers simultaneously, but in reality you can only drink a few of them, very slowly, especially slowly if you are drinking the Windows Beer at the same time. Sometimes, for apparently no reason, a can of Windows Beer will explode when you open it. % Windows 95 Beer: A lot of people have taste-tested it and claim it's wonderful. The can looks a lot like Mac Beer's can, but tastes more like Windows 3.1 Beer. It comes in 32-oz. cans, but when you look inside, the cans only have 16 oz. of beer in them. Most people will probably keep drinking Windows 3.1 Beer until their friends try Windows 95 Beer and say they like it. The ingredients list, when you look at the small print, has some of the same ingredients that come in DOS beer, even though the manufacturer claims that this is an entirely new brew. % Windows Airlines: The terminal is very neat and clean, the attendants all very attractive, the pilots very capable. The fleet of Learjets the carrier operates is immense. Your jet takes off without a hitch, pushing above the clouds, and at 20,000 feet it explodes without warning. % Windows NT Beer: Comes in 32-oz. cans, but you can only buy it by the truckload. This causes most people to have to go out and buy bigger refrigerators. The can looks just like Windows 3.1 Beer's, but the company promises to change the can to look just like Windows 95 Beer's -- after Windows 95 beer starts shipping. Touted as an "industrial strength" beer, and suggested only for use in bars. % Wings of OS/400: The airline has bought ancient DC-3s, arguably the best and safest planes that ever flew, and painted "747" on their tails to make them look as if they are fast. The flight attendants, of course, attend to your every need, though the drinks cost $15 a pop. Stupid questions cost $230 per hour, unless you have SupportLine, which requires a first class ticket and membership in the frequent flyer club. Then they cost $500, but your accounting department can call it overhead. % With your bare hands?!? % Within a computer, natural language is unnatural. % Work continues in this area. -- DEC's SPR-Answering-Automaton % Worthless. -- Sir George Bidell Airy, KCB, MA, LLD, DCL, FRS, FRAS (Astronomer Royal of Great Britain), estimating for the Chancellor of the Exchequer the potential value of the "analytical engine" invented by Charles Babbage, September 15, 1842. % Would you people stop playing these stupid games?!?!?!!!! % Writers who use a computer swear to its liberating power in tones that bear witness to the apocalyptic power of a new divinity. Their conviction results from something deeper than mere gratitude for the computer's conveniences. Every new medium of writing brings about new intensities of religious belief and new schisms among believers. In the 16th century the printed book helped make possible the split between Catholics and Protestants. In the 20th century this history of tragedy and triumph is repeating itself as a farce. Those who worship the Apple computer and those who put their faith in the IBM PC are equally convinced that the other camp is damned or deluded. Each cult holds in contempt the rituals and the laws of the other. Each thinks that it is itself the one hope for salvation. -- Edward Mendelson, "The New Republic", February 22, 1988 % Writing software is more fun than working. % X windows: Accept any substitute. If it's broke, don't fix it. If it ain't broke, fix it. Form follows malfunction. The Cutting Edge of Obsolescence. The trailing edge of software technology. Armageddon never looked so good. Japan's secret weapon. You'll envy the dead. Making the world safe for competing window systems. Let it get in YOUR way. The problem for your problem. If it starts working, we'll fix it. Pronto. It could be worse, but it'll take time. Simplicity made complex. The greatest productivity aid since typhoid. Flakey and built to stay that way. One thousand monkeys. One thousand MicroVAXes. One thousand years. X windows. % X windows: It's not how slow you make it. It's how you make it slow. The windowing system preferred by masochists 3 to 1. Built to take on the world... and lose! Don't try it 'til you've knocked it. Power tools for Power Fools. Putting new limits on productivity. The closer you look, the cruftier we look. Design by counterexample. A new level of software disintegration. No hardware is safe. Do your time. Rationalization, not realization. Old-world software cruftsmanship at its finest. Gratuitous incompatibility. Your mother. THE user interference management system. You can't argue with failure. You haven't died 'til you've used it. The environment of today... tomorrow! X windows. % X windows: Something you can be ashamed of. 30% more entropy than the leading window system. The first fully modular software disaster. Rome was destroyed in a day. Warn your friends about it. Climbing to new depths. Sinking to new heights. An accident that couldn't wait to happen. Don't wait for the movie. Never use it after a big meal. Need we say less? Plumbing the depths of human incompetence. It'll make your day. Don't get frustrated without it. Power tools for power losers. A software disaster of Biblical proportions. Never had it. Never will. The software with no visible means of support. More than just a generation behind. Hindenburg. Titanic. Edsel. X windows. % X windows: The ultimate bottleneck. Flawed beyond belief. The only thing you have to fear. Somewhere between chaos and insanity. On autopilot to oblivion. The joke that kills. A disgrace you can be proud of. A mistake carried out to perfection. Belongs more to the problem set than the solution set. To err is X windows. Ignorance is our most important resource. Complex nonsolutions to simple nonproblems. Built to fall apart. Nullifying centuries of progress. Falling to new depths of inefficiency. The last thing you need. The defacto substandard. Elevating brain damage to an art form. X windows. % X windows: We will dump no core before its time. One good crash deserves another. A bad idea whose time has come. And gone. We make excuses. It didn't even look good on paper. You laugh now, but you'll be laughing harder later! A new concept in abuser interfaces. How can something get so bad, so quickly? It could happen to you. The art of incompetence. You have nothing to lose but your lunch. When uselessness just isn't enough. More than a mere hindrance. It's a whole new barrier! When you can't afford to be right. And you thought we couldn't make it worse. If it works, it isn't X windows. % X windows: You'd better sit down. Don't laugh. It could be YOUR thesis project. Why do it right when you can do it wrong? Live the nightmare. Our bugs run faster. When it absolutely, positively HAS to crash overnight. There ARE no rules. You'll wish we were kidding. Everything you never wanted in a window system. And more. Dissatisfaction guaranteed. There's got to be a better way. The next best thing to keypunching. Leave the thrashing to us. We wrote the book on core dumps. Even your dog won't like it. More than enough rope. Garbage at your fingertips. Incompatibility. Shoddiness. Uselessness. X windows. % "Yacc" owes much to a most stimulating collection of users, who have goaded me beyond my inclination, and frequently beyond my ability in their endless search for "one more feature." Their irritating unwillingness to learn how to do things my way has usually led to my doing things their way; most of the time, they have been right. -- S. C. Johnson, "Yacc guide acknowledgements" % Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of APL, I shall fear no evil, for I can string six primitive monadic and dyadic operators together. -- Steve Higgins % Yes, we will be going to OSI, Mars, and Pluto, but not necessarily in that order. -- Jeffrey Honig % You are an insult to my intelligence! I demand that you log off immediately. % You are false data. % You are in a maze of little twisting passages, all alike. % You are in a maze of little twisting passages, all different. % You are in the hall of the mountain king. % You are lost in the Swamps of Despair. % You are transported to a room where you are faced by a wizard who points to you and says, "Them's fighting words!" You immediately get attacked by all sorts of denizens of the museum: there is a cobra chewing on your leg, a troglodyte is bashing your brains out with a gold nugget, a crocodile is removing large chunks of flesh from you, a rhinoceros is goring you with his horn, a sabre-tooth cat is busy trying to disembowel you, you are being trampled by a large mammoth, a vampire is sucking you dry, a Tyranosaurus Rex is sinking his six inch long fangs into various parts of your anatomy, a large bear is dismembering your body, a gargoyle is bouncing up and down on your head, a burly troll is tearing you limb from limb, several dire wolves are making mince meat out of your torso, and the wizard is about to transport you to the corner of Westwood and Broxton. Oh dear, you seem to have gotten yourself killed, as well. You scored 0 out of 250 possible points. That gives you a ranking of junior beginning adventurer. To achieve the next higher rating, you need to score 32 more points. % You can be replaced by this computer. % You can bring any calculator you like to the midterm, as long as it doesn't dim the lights when you turn it on. -- Hepler, Systems Design 182 % You can do this in a number of ways. IBM chose to do all of them. Why do you find that funny? -- D. Taylor, Computer Science 350 % You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing viability of FORTRAN. -- Alan Perlis % You can now buy more gates with less specifications than at any other time in history. -- Kenneth Parker % You can tell how far we have to go, when FORTRAN is the language of supercomputers. -- Steven Feiner % You can tune a piano, but you can't tuna fish. You can tune a filesystem, but you can't tuna fish. -- from the tunefs(8) man page % You can write a small letter to Grandma in the filename. -- Forbes Burkowski, CS, University of Washington % You can't go home again, unless you set $HOME. % "You can't make a program without broken egos." % You can't take damsel here now. % You do not have mail. % You don't have to know how the computer works, just how to work the computer. % You had mail, but the super-user read it, and deleted it! % You had mail. Paul read it, so ask him what it said. % You have a massage (from the Swedish prime minister). % You have a message from the operator. % You have a tendency to feel you are superior to most computers. % You have acquired a scroll entitled 'irk gleknow mizk'(n).--More-- This is an IBM Manual scroll.--More-- You are permanently confused. -- Dave Decot % You have junk mail. % You have mail. % You know you've been sitting in front of your Lisp machine too long when you go out to the junk food machine and start wondering how to make it give you the CADR of Item H so you can get that yummie chocolate cupcake that's stuck behind the disgusting vanilla one. % You know you've been spending too much time on the computer when your friend misdates a check, and you suggest adding a "++" to fix it. % You know, Callahan's is a peaceable bar, but if you ask that dog what his favorite formatter is, and he says "roff! roff!", well, I'll just have to... % You might have mail. % You must realize that the computer has it in for you. The irrefutable proof of this is that the computer always does what you tell it to do. % You scratch my tape, and I'll scratch yours. % You will have a head crash on your private pack. % You will have many recoverable tape errors. % You will lose an important disk file. % You will lose an important tape file. % You're already carrying the sphere! % You're at Witt's End. % You're not Dave. Who are you? % You're using a keyboard! How quaint! % You've been Berkeley'ed! % Your code should be more efficient! % Your computer account is overdrawn. Please reauthorize. % Your computer account is overdrawn. Please see Big Brother. % Your fault -- core dumped % Your files are now being encrypted and thrown into the bit bucket. EOF % Your mode of life will be changed to ASCII. % Your mode of life will be changed to EBCDIC. % Your password is pitifully obvious. % Your program is sick! Shoot it and put it out of its memory. %