You are taught how to think so that no issue may be given to you by 
others; you must think it through for yourself.  
	    -- James Dolliver, Swarthmore '49
%
"When one has a 186 IQ and constantly fears sounding too prigish, it
serves to emanitize the escatcheon, to quote Hagbard Celine." 
-- Steven Zanvil Sawolkin
%
"If you want knowledge, you must take part in the practice of changing
reality.  If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear
by eating it yourself."			     	             --Mao Tse Tung
%
But how can one accuraely *write* "hear, hear?"  Shouldn't it be "read,
read?"  Mistyped as "reed, reed?"  Unless you're applauding a clarinet solo?
		 -- Rich Clark, in rec.arts.sf.written
%
 "Dazed and confused, but trying to continue" - Linux kernel (traps.c)
%
It's not the voices in my head that bother me, but when they start to
MIME they really freak me out.
%
"Oh where, is my hairbrush....Oh, where is my hairbrush...."
	      -- Bob the Tomato, "Veggie Tales"
%
 "I'm Bob.  I'm a tomato.  I'm here to help."      -- "Veggie Tales"
%
"We don't employ knees on an individual basis, we'd look stupid!"
		 -- Mr. Slatt, "Chalk"
%
My heart cannot be trusted, I give you fair warning,
I humbly confess, tonight I love you less
Than I will tomorrow morning                    -- "Once Upon a Mattress"
%
It used to be said [...] that AIX looks like one space alien discovered
Unix, and described it to another different space alien who then implemented
AIX. But their universal translators were broken and they'd had to gesture a
lot.					  -- Paul Tomblin, in asr
%
Dennis Ritchie: "So fsck was originally called something else"
Question: "What was it called?"
Dennis Ritchie: "Well, the second letter was different."
		-- Q&A at Usenix 
%
...the Windows NT machines at work work much like the reannual wine of the
Discworld. They reboot as a reaction to the crash they will have later that
day.							    -- Art, in asr
%
Move along, move along, nothing to see here, definitely no evil mind control
software here, move along, move along...  -- Thorf, in asr
%
I love the way Microsoft follows standards.B  In much the same manner 
that fish follow migrating caribou.
                         -- Paul Tomblin
%
ALL programs are poems, it's just that not all programmers are poets. 
	     -- Jonathan Guthrie, in asr
%
I am now taking bets on when this planet will reach its window manager event
horizon. At some distant point in the future some sort of alien life-form is
going to land on this planet and find everything dead except for a lone
Sparcstation in an abandoned building waiting for a consignment of small
lemon-soaked Motif widgets to be loaded.            -- Peter Gutmann, in asr
%
Oh, how I wish lusers could read documentation more than they read porn... 
	 -- Pete Krawczyk
That's IT! PORNOGRAPHIC DOCUMENTATION! 
"...and as she finally reached orgasm, she screamed 'the mail server will be
down for three hours tonight! Yes! Oh, yes!'"
	 -- J.D. Falk, in asr
%
"Actually, we have scientifically determined that Heisenberg did indeed
sleep exactly here.  However, we have no idea whatsoever just how fast
asleep he was."  -- Dave Aronson, in asr
%
'I can't stand burnt toast. I loathe bus stations. Terrible places, full of
lost luggage and lost souls... And then there's unrequited love. And
tyranny. And cruelty.'
%
Compassion, emotional stability, tact, all these things are pretty trivial
to feign when you've got a backspace key.              -- Erin M. McMullen
%
`The purpose of a windowing system is to put some amusing
 fluff around your one almighty emacs window.' -- Mark on gnu.emacs.help
%
New game, a la "Jenga": take turns deleting a file from the Windows
directory, until a) you get three files in a row that are not deletable,
or b) Windows crashes, at which point(s) you lose. -- Joe Thompson, a.s.r.
%
#!/usr/bin/perl -iake_one_down_pass_it_around:_bottles_of_beer:_on_the_wall:99
for(($t,$a,$b,$i)=split/:/,$^I;$i;print){$_="-$i$a$b,-$i$a,-T$t,-".--$i."$a$b";
s/(-1_.*?e)s/$1/g;y/_-/ \n/}          #     by Randolph Chung and Joey Hess
%
"Faced with the prospect of rereading this book, I would rather have my brains
ripped out by a plastic fork." - Charles Cooper reviews the new Gates book.
%
"Just because something used to work does not mean it was supposed to
work."                -- Mike Septimus
%
"Solipsists are only a figment of my imagination." -- Jason Mutford
%
I'm a member of 'Time Travellers for a Better Yesterday', would you like to
have donated?
%
Of course I make a U-turn here. There are 4 yellow lines, that's an escaped
double yellow; one without special meaning.
	       -- abigail @ fnx.com
%
And the Platinum Yendorian Express Card definitely wins on style points over
Stormbringer any day:
   "I have a dark sword which eats souls."
   "Oh yeah?  Well I have a magically enchanted CREDIT CARD!"
		-- Andrew J. Petrarca, in rec.games.roguelike.nethack
%
Incidentally, has anyone noticed that the Voyager opening credit sequence
must be an excerpt from the Starfleet training film "Things Not To Do"?
"DON'T fly through dense clouds of gas.  DON'T fly close to a ring
system.  DON'T skim the surface of small planets.  These all may look
'cool' but have all been the causes of tragic accidents.  Accidents which
could have been prevented through proper attention to safe operating
procedures."                        -- cambias@heliograph."spahmtrap".com
%
 "I want to stand with you on a mountain.  I want to bathe with you
  in the sea.  I want to lay like this forever, until the sky falls
  down on me."                -- Savage Garden, "Truly, Madly, Deeply"
%
"A free press can of course be good or bad, but, most certainly, without
 freedom it will never be anything but bad."
		 -- Albert Camus, Homage to an Exile (1955)
%
"I openly confess,
     Tonight I love you less,
	   Than I will tomorrow morning."
						-- "Once Upon a Mattress"
%
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5,(41*2),sqrt(7056),(unpack(c,H)-2),oct(115),10);'
%
"ABSENT, adj.  Peculiarly exposed to the tooth of detraction; vilifed;
hopelessly in the wrong; superseded in the consideration and affection
of another."		   -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Be kind, everyone you meet is fighting a tough battle.
%
"... [person] said 'Well, it seems to have a lot of momentum.' Of course it
has momentum.  You gain momentum very fast when you're rolling downhill out
of control.  What I want here is not momentum.  What I want is progress."
		  -- Elizabeth Zwicky
%
"It should be illegal to yell "Y2K" in a crowded economy."   -- Larry Wall
%
"We were reminded that software engineering was not about right and wrong
but only better and worse, solutions that solved some problems while
ignoring or exacerbating others.  That the machine that all the world seems
to want to see as possessing some supreme power and intelligence was indeed
intelligent, but only as we humans are: full of hedge and error, brilliance
and backtrack and compromise."            -- software engineer Ellen Ullman
%
Freeze this moment a little bit longer
Make each sensation a little bit stronger
Experience slips away...					--Rush
%
Pervert the dominant paradigm
%
I don't suffer from insanity; I enjoy every minute of it.
		    -- Lieven Marchand
%
Ask not for whom the post trolls. It trolls for thee.
		 -- William Clifford
%
"The first rule of magic is simple.  Don't waste your time waving your
hands and hoping when a rock or a club will do."
                -- McCloctnik the Lucid
%
It takes 42 muscles to frown
It only takes four muscles to flip somebody off
%
In the truest spirit of usenet I actually have zero idea what I'm talking
about and am making all this up, but it does seem reasonable and has the
added benefit of possibly even being true.
                                        - Richard Sexton <richard@vrx.net>
%
"Maybe we're thoughts in the minds of the gods, burrowing our way through
the infinite solidity of the Universe.  And maybe we're a couple of cuckoos
chirping in the dark to cheer each other up.  If so, we're doing a bad job
of it."	                             -- Keith Laumer, "Knight of Delusions"
%
They come after you if you blow up federal buildings, even if you leave the
ones you like alone.					 -- Daniel Barkalow
%
"By embracing any utopia, we sow the seeds of cynicism when things don't
work out as advertised."                              -- Buckaroo Banzai
%
"If somebody took a gun and pointed at me and said write proprietary
software or I'll shoot, I think under those circumstances, I'd be justified
in writing some proprietary software, although I would never get to work
reliably."                                           -- Richard M. Stallman
%
Q: How many IBM CPUs does it take to left-shift a 32-bit register?
A: 33!  32 to hold the bits and one to shift the register.
	   -- Alan J Rosenthal
%
Twisted mind? No, just bent in several strategic places.
%
The calender of the Theocracy of Muntab counts down, not up. No-one knows
why, but it might not be a good idea to hang around and find out.
        -- Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters
%
If the Creator had said, "Let there be light" in Ankh-Morpork, he'd have
gotten no further because of all the people saying "What colour?"
        -- Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms
%
The man gave a shrug which indicated that, although the world did indeed
have many problems, this was one of them that was not his.
        -- Terry Pratchett, Soul Music
%
"Of course, just because we've heard a spine-chilling, blood-curdling
scream of the sort to make your very marrow freeze in your bones doesn't
automatically mean there's anything wrong."
        -- Terry Pratchett, Soul Music
%
++?????++ Out of Cheese Error. Redo From Start.
        -- Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times
%
"Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first
name is Bad."
        -- Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times
%
Natural selection saw to it that professional heroes who at a crucial
moment tended to ask themselves questions like "What is my purpose in
life?" very quickly lacked both.
        -- Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times
%
The Emperor had all the qualifications for a corpse except, as it were, the
most vital one.
        -- Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times
%
The Alchemist's Guild is opposite the Gambler's Guild. Usually. Sometimes
it's above it, or below it, or falling in bits around it.
        -- Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms
%
Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.
        -- Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms
%
"It's got three keyboards and a hundred extra knobs, including twelve with
'?' on them."
        -- The Unseen University Organ, as designed by B. S. Johnson
           Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms
%
It is said that whosoever the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. In
fact, whosoever the gods wish to destroy, they first hand the equivalent of
a stick with a fizzing fuse and Acme Dynamite Company written on the side.
It's more interesting, and doesn't take so long.
        -- Terry Pratchett, Soul Music
%
The question seldom addressed is *where* Medusa had snakes. Underarm hair
is an even more embarassing problem when it keeps biting the top of the
deodorant bottle.
        -- Terry Pratchett, Soul Music
%
The class was learning about some revolt in which some peasants had wanted
to stop being peasants and, since the nobles had won, had stopped being
peasants *really quickly*.
        -- Terry Pratchett, Soul Music
%
The hippo of recollection stirred in the muddy waters of the mind.
        -- Terry Pratchett, Soul Music
%
They looked at one another in incomprehension, two minds driving opposite
ways up a narrow street and waiting for the other man to reverse first.
        -- Terry Pratchett, Soul Music
%
"Yes," said the skull. "Quit while you're a head, that's what I say."
        -- Terry Pratchett, Soul Music
%
I think that sick people in Ankh-Morpork generally go to a vet.  It's
generally a better bet. There's more pressure on a vet to get it right.
People say "it was god's will" when granny dies, but they get *angry* when
they lose a cow.
        -- Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett
%
I mean, I wouldn't pay more than a couple of quid to see me, and *I'm* me.
        -- Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett
%
That seems to point up a significant difference between Europeans and
Americans. A European says: "I can't understand this, what's wrong with
me?" An American says: "I can't understand this, what's wrong with him?"
        -- Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett
%
"[...] a number of offences of murder by means of a blunt instrument, to
whit, a dragon, and many further offences of generalized abetting [...]"
        -- Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!
%
No enemies had ever taken Ankh-Morpock. Well *technically* they had, quite
often; the city welcomed free-spending barbarian invaders, but somehow the
puzzled raiders found, after a few days, that they didn't own their horses
any more, and within a couple of months they were just another minority
group with its own graffiti and food shops.
        -- Terry Pratchett, Eric
%
There was a polite beeping from the Thing. "You may be interested to know,"
it said, "that we've broken the sound barrier."  Masklin turned wearily to
the others. "All right, own up. Who broke it?"
        -- Terry Pratchett, Wings
%
He was always at a loss when people acted like this. When machines went
funny you just oiled them or prodded them or, if nothing else worked, hit
them with a hammer. Nomes didn't respond well to this treatment.
        -- Terry Pratchett, Diggers
%
- "Outside! What's it like?"
- "Well -- It's sort of big"
        -- Terry Pratchett, Truckers
%
No-one could sit in that chair. It was full of old T-shirts and books and
supper plates and junk. There was a deep sock layer and possibly the Lost
Strawberry Yoghurt. No-one could sit down there without special equipment.
        -- Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind
%
"Chain letters," said the Tyrant. "The Chain Letter to the Ephebians.
Forget Your Gods. Be Subjugated. Learn to Fear. Do not break the chain --
the last people who did woke up one morning to find fifty thousand armed
men on their lawn."
       -- Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
%
Asking someone to repeat a phrase you'd not only heard very clearly but
were also exceedingly angry about was around Defcon II in the lexicon of
squabble.
        -- Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad
%
"I saw a film where there was an alien crawling around inside a spaceship's
air ducts and it could come out wherever it liked," said Johnny
reproachfully.
"Doubtless it had a map," said the Captain.
        -- Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind
%
"You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could
do is give them a meaningful look."
        -- Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
%
His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools -- the Cynics, the
Stoics and the Epicureans -- and summed up all three of them in his famous
phrase, "You can't trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and
there's nothing you can do about it, so let's have a drink."
        -- Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
%
Kids! Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in
your home.
        -- Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens
%
"Why's it called Ming?" said the Archchancellor, on cue.
The Bursar tapped the pot. It went *ming*.
        -- Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures
%
Old Tom was the single cracked bronze bell in the University bell tower.
The clapper dropped out shortly after it was cast, but the bell still
tolled out some tremendously sonorous silences every hour.
        -- Terry Pratchett, Eric
%
Rincewind had been told that death was just like going into another room.
The difference is, when you shout, "Where's my clean socks?", no-one
answers.
        -- Terry Pratchett, Eric
%
He'd never realized that, deep down inside, what he really wanted to do
was make things go splat.
        -- Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man
%
Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.
        -- Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man
%
No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got
there first, and is waiting for it.
        -- Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man
%
Using a metaphor in front of a man as unimaginative as Ridcully was like a
red flag to a bu-- was like putting something very annoying in front of
someone who was annoyed by it.
        -- Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies
%
In fact, the mere act of opening the box will determine the state of the
cat, although in this case there were three determinate states the cat
could be in: these being Alive, Dead, and Bloody Furious.
        -- Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies
%
The shortest unit of time in the multiverse is the New York Second, defined
as the period of time between the traffic lights turning green and the cab
behind you honking.
        -- Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies
%
DON'T THINK OF IT AS DYING, said Death. JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING
EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.
        -- Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens
%
Death and Famine and War and Pollution continued biking towards Tadfield.
And Grievous Bodily Harm, Cruelty To Animals, Things Not Working Properly
Even After You've Given Them A Good Thumping but secretly No Alcohol Lager,
and Really Cool People travelled with them.
        -- The eight Bikers of the Apocalypse
           Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens
%
The only things known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy,
according to the philosopher Ly Tin Weedle. He reasoned like this: you
can't have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap
between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to
the heir *instantaneously*. Presumably, he said, there must be some
elementary particles -- kingons, or possibly queons -- that do this job,
but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an
anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to
send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to
modulate the signal, were never fully expanded because, at that point, the
bar closed.
        -- Terry Pratchett, Mort
%
Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up
with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was
the Man; he had the Vote.
        -- Terry Pratchett, Mort
%
"It's going to look pretty good, then, isn't it," said War testily, "the
One Horseman and Three Pedestrians of the Apocralypse."
        -- Terry Pratchett, Sourcery
%
He moved in a way that suggested he was attempting the world speed record
for the nonchalant walk.
        -- Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic
%
The librarian was, ex officio, a member of the college council. No-one had
been able to find any rule about orang-utans being barred, although they
had surreptiously looked very hard for one.
        -- Terry Pratchett, Eric
%
A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.
        -- Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!
%
People who are rather more than six feet tall and nearly as broad across
the shoulders often have uneventful journeys. People jump out at them from
behind rocks then say things like, "Oh. Sorry. I thought you were someone
else."
        -- Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!
%
The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: 1) Silence; 2)
Books must be returned no later than the date last shown; and 3) Do not
interfere with the nature of causality.
        -- Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!
%
Crowley [the demon] had been extremely impressed with the warranties offered
by the computer industry, and had in fact sent a bundle Below to the
department that drew up the Immortal Soul agreements, with a yellow memo
form attached just saying: "Learn, guys."
        -- Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens
%
"This isn't how I imagined it, chaps," said War. "I haven't been waiting
for thousands of years just to fiddle around with bits of wire.  It's not
what you'd call *dramatic*. Albrecht Duerer didn't waste his time doing
woodcuts of the Four Button-Pressers of the Apocalypse, I do know that."
        -- Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens
%
"I meant," said Iplsore bitterly, "what is there in this world that makes
living worthwhile?"
Death thought about it. "CATS," he said eventually, "CATS ARE NICE."
        -- Terry Pratchett, Sourcery
%
In fact, no gods anywhere play chess. They prefer simple, vicious games,
where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight to Oblivion; a key
to the understanding of all religion is that a god's idea of amusement is
Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs.
        -- Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters
%
They may have been ugly. they may have been evil. But when it came to
poetry in motion, the Things had all the grace and coordination of a
deck-chair.
        -- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites
%
They stared at the branch. There wasn't just one flower out there, there
were dozens, although the frogs weren't able to think like this because
frogs can't count beyond one. They saw lots of ones.
        -- Terry Pratchett, Wings
%
Nature abhors dimensional abnormalities, and seals them neatly away so that
they don't upset people. Nature, in fact, abhors a lot of things, including
vacuums, ships called the "Marie Celeste", and the chuck keys for electric
drills.
        -- Terry Pratchett, Pyramids
%
If you take the small view, the universe is just something small and round,
like those water-filled balls which produce a miniature snowstorm when you
shake them. Although, unless the ineffable plan is a lot more ineffable
than it's given credit for, it does not have a large plastic snowman at the
bottom.
        -- Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens
%
Our garden was debated territory between five local cats, and we'd heard
that the best way to keep other cats out of the garden was to have one
yourself. A moment's rational thought here will spot the slight flaw in
this reasoning.
        -- Terry Pratchett, The Unadulterated Cat
%
There are *no* inconsistencies in the Discworld books; ocassionally, however,
there are alternate pasts.
        -- Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett
%
Any town built by filling a mud hole with sawdust and proudly having a slug
as a sort of civic totem is a town, one feels, where Rincewind would feel
right at home.
        -- Terry Pratchett looks forward to his visit to Seattle, WA
%
It's an old magical principle -- it's even filtered down into RPG systems
-- that magic, while taking a lot of effort, can be 'stored' -- in a staff,
for example.  No doubt a wizard spends a little time each day charging up
his staff, although you go blind if you do it too much, of course.
        -- Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett
%
"Scum," said Crash, his voice low with resigned menace, "you've bought a
leopard."
        -- Terry Pratchett, Soul Music
%
"There are no bugs in any Microsoft software that the majority of users want
fixed" -- Bill Gates.
%
Space Aliens commit mass suicide - In 1998 a cult group of space aliens on
the planet Uranus will all commit suicide when a comet fails to bring a long
awaited earthling space ship that is supposed to take them to enlightenment
and paradise on the planet Earth.  Details at 11.
%
"And 1.1.81 is officially BugFree(tm), so if you receive any bug-reports
on it, you know they are just evil lies."              -- Linus Torvalds
%
 Many people are concerned about the security of ActiveX controls.  Once on
your machine, an ActiveX control has full access to your system.  if you are
not careful, it could delete your hard drive, corrupt your politician, or
order an unauthorized pizza.
 Fortunately there are some solutions to the security problem.
 First, the designer of the control marks the control as safe only if the
control is actually safe to use.  It is almost unthinkable that someone with
hostile intentions would lie about something like this.
 Next, most pizza shops call back to confirm your phone number before
delivery.						        -- Mr. Bunny
%
GNU does not eliminate all the world's problems, only some of them.
                                                -- The GNU Manifesto
%
"Reality is a crutch for those who can't handle Science Fiction."
     --Sharyn McCrumb, Bimbos of the Death Sun
%
"Every day millions of disk sectors go unused," he said.  "The Windows
Registry helps solve this problem by accumulating information about every
device you every attach to your computer and every version of all the
software you ever try."  -- Mr. Bunny
%
Try to spark up a long-term relationship by dropping hints that you might be
having an affair.
		-- Kaz Cooke "the little book of stress"
%
"Seargent Colon had had a broad education.  He'd been to the school of My
Dad Always Said, the College of It Stands To Reason, and was now a post-
graduate student at the University of What Some Bloke In The Pub Told Me."
		    -- Terry Pratchett
%
Among other things, this means that the ravioli is aging more slowly than
usual, and the ravioli can looks compressed in the direction of travel.  But
that's not important right now.
%
If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was
that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life.
	           -- Terry Pratchett, "Guards! Guards!"
%
"Verbogeny is one of the pleasurettes of a creatific thinkerizer."
		  --Peter da Silva in a.s.r
%
fools are reliant/on POSIX compliant/buzzword encumbered/ever renumbered/
bloated behemoths./resource extremists/from those software pornographers/
named by cartographers/as Redmond -/or Armonk -/or Cupertino./take your
choice sisters and brothers/"They all suck, some worse than others".-G.Kinnel
%
"I'm sorry for the double slash."
        -- Tim Berners-Lee in a Panel Discussion, WWW7, Brisbane, 1998.
%
"Power corrupts.  Absolute power is kind of neat"
                -- John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy 1981-1987
%
This email was sent to you via email in much the same way bricks aren't.
%
"Satan, danger of....p. 627"  - _Essential_System_Administration_, p. 748
%
Debating unix flavors in the context of anything Microsoft is like talking
about which ice cream flavor tastes least like sawdust with turpentine
sauce.
			-- Ben, in alt.sysadmin.recovery
%
ER way to handle HTML postings is to cancel the article, then hire a
hitman to kill the poster, his wife and kids, and fuck his dog and smash his
computer into little bits.  Anything more is just extremism.
		-- Paul Tomblin
%
The Constitution admittedly has a few defects and blemishes, but it still
seems a hell of a lot better than the system we have now.
			-- Robert Anton Wilson
%
I have lived on the lip / of insanity / knocking on the door.
It opens.
I have been knocking from the inside.
		 -- Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273)
%
Everytime I have quarrelled with memory, I have lost.
		 -- Imrul Choudhury, "From Memory"
%
You roll your dice, you move your mice, nobody gets hurt.
	 	 -- Bob the Tomato, "Veggie Tales Christmas Special"
%
"Surely the 4 sysadmins of the apocalypse should be: edquota, rm -rf, kill
-9, and shutdown" 
		  -- Rob Blake
%
"If everyone is thinking alike, no one is thinking."
           - General George S. Patton, Jr.
%
Semi-professional windmill-tilter
%
"Not only does the English Language borrow words from other languages, it
sometimes chases them down dark alleys, hits them over the head, and goes
through their pockets." -- Eddy Peters
%
But nature tends to create much more deeply nested branches than I'd ever
care to, and its notion of a changelog--i.e., dumping old versions into
sediment--isn't exactly what I'd consider good programming style.  For that
matter, its code is poorly commented, and too buggy for my taste...
	        -- Ben Pfaff
%
"But where, after all, would be the poetry of the sea were there no wild
 waves?"
		-- Joshua Slocum, Sailing Alone Around the World
%
Many an ancient lord's last words had been, "You can't kill me because I've
got magic aaargh." - Magic armour is not all it's cracked up to be.
                 -- Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times
%
SHR: Looking for planet to exploit. Must have own water supply and
indiginous life form for slave labor. Bi-peds are not necessary, but it is
helpful. Easily dominated life-forms with opposible thumbs are also a plus.
%
When computers emit smoke, it means they've chosen a new Pope.
Unfortunately, they invariably choose the wrong one and immediately get
condemned to nonfunctionality for heresy.
		-- Anthony DeBoer 
%
In fact, I think "Hello Kitty, Destroyer of Worlds" would be a very
appropriate name for a cruise missile.
		-- Collin Forbes
%
"If there's anything more important than my ego around here, I want it
caught and shot!"
		-- Zaphod Beeblebrox
%
"Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory is too
good."  
		-- Friedrich Nietzsche
%
"I like the whooshing sound [deadlines] make as they fly by." 
		       -- Douglas Adams
%
My philosophy: find what it is you want to say, walk in the room, say it,
and get the hell out. (Second philosophy behind that one: when in doubt,
roll in a grenade and come in firing.)
                        - J. Michael Straczynski
%
"History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme a lot."
  - Mark Twain
%
"The deadliest bullshit is odorless and transparent."
  - William Gibson
%
"Open-minded people look at the world around them and try to find the
lessons there that apply to their own lives, while narrow-minded people
look at the lessons their own life has brought them and try to apply
these to the world at large."
  - M. Elizabeth Hunter <hunter@apocalypse.org>, 6 Jul 1995
%
"Humans are incapable of securely storing high-quality cryptographic
keys, and they have unacceptable speed and accuracy when performing
cryptographic operations. (They are also large, expensive to maintain,
difficult to manage, and they pollute the environment.  It is
astonishing that these devices continue to be manufactured and
deployed.  But they are sufficiently pervasive that we must design our
protocols around their limitations.)
  - Charlie Kaufman, Radia Perlman, & Mike Speciner, _Network_Security:_
    _PRIVATE_Communication_in_a_PUBLIC_World_, 1995.
%
Of course, as a physics teacher I tell my students that faster-than-light
travel is impossible, but that's just to crush their spirits.
		-- LaNelle Ohlhausen
%
I'm sure that we can probably come up with something else to do,
but shooting things is pretty fun.
		-- John Romero, creator of Wolf3D, Doom, and Quake
%
"I live in my own place
have never copied nobody even half,
and at any master who lacks the grace
to laugh at himself -- I laugh."
	        -- Inscribed over the door to Friedrich Nietzsche's house
%
The great sin is boring people... I don't want to do anything that you see
and then right away say, 'Wanna have a pizza?'...
	        -- Gary Sinise
%
I'm not one of those who think Bill Gates is the devil. I simply suspect
that if Microsoft ever met up with the devil, it wouldn't need an
interpreter.
		-- Nicholas Petrelev, InfoWorld
%
A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a
fool trusts either of them.
		   -- P.J. O'Rourke
%
Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men.
		   -- Kin Hubbard
%
"Absence diminishes commonplace passions and increases great ones, as
 the wind extinguishes candles and kindles fire."
	      -- La Rochefoucauld
%
Two valuable social skills are knowing when to enter a room, and when to
leave a room.  At some point, you have to get out or become something you
don't want to become.
	      -- J. Michael Straczynski
%
58. How do I protect my sighting of Elvis?
    Copyright law does not protect sightings. However, copyright law will
protect your photo (or other depiction) of your sighting of Elvis. Just
send it to us with a form VA application and the $20 filing fee. No one can
lawfully use your photo of your sighting, although someone else may file
his own photo of his sighting.
	       -- US Copyright Office's FAQ
%
35. You find yourself alone and unarmed in a cave with 100 hungry carnivorous
apes. What is your next move?
 a. Hide.
 b. Hide.
 c. Hide.
 d. Fight!!!!
%
30. In matters of life and death, you should:
 a. choose life.
 b. avoid death.
 c. dress warmly.
 d. Loot and kill and pillage and burn!!!!
%
There's a new dictionary for masochists. It has all the words but they're
not in alphabetical order.
		-- Frank Tyger
%
"Life is like a landscape. You live in the midst of it, but can describe
 it only from the vantage point of distance."
	        -- Charles A. Lindbergh
%
Consistently separating words by spaces became a general custom about the
tenth century A.D., and lasted until about 1957, when FORTRAN abandoned the
practice.
	        -- Sun FORTRAN Reference Manual
%
Sometimes you have to look reality in the eye, and deny it.   
		-- Garrison Keillor
%
I have a pet hen whose name is Probable.
She lays eggs in concept, being a sophist-bird.
But not in reality at all;
those would be inferior eggs;
for thought is superior to reality.
	        --Frederick Winsor, in "The Space Child's Mother Goose"
%
But then again, I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?
		-- The Man Who Rules the Universe,
		   The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
%
"We used to think that if we knew one we knew two because one and one are
two.  But we are learning we need to know a lot more about 'and'."
	  -- Sir Arthur Eddington
%
Getting a SCSI chain working is perfectly simple if you remember that there
must be exactly three terminations: one on one end of the cable, one on the
far end, and the goat, terminated over the SCSI chain with a silver-handled
knife whilst burning *black* candles.
	        -- Anthony DeBoer
%
From a Sun Microsystems bug report:
"Workaround: don't pound on the mouse like a wild monkey."
%
Hockey is a lot like chess on ice.  Or it would be, if the excitement of chess
was based on when the guy with the white pieces shoves his bishop up the other
guy's ass and breaks his neck with a big wooden stick.
	        -- Stewart King
%
        Mary had a little lamb;
        the doctors were surprised.
        But when Old MacDonald had a farm,
        they couldn't believe their eyes!
%
Why is it that if someone tells you that there are 1 billion stars in the
universe you will believe them, but if they tell you a wall has wet paint
you will have to touch it to be sure?
%
If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, doesn't it follow that
electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted, cowboys deranged,
models deposed, tree surgeons debarked and dry cleaners depressed?
%
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some
blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you
can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it well and serenely.
	        -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%
Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall,
	   Aleph-null bottles of beer,
You take one down, and pass it around, 
           Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall.
%
Can I be grapes?  I certainly don't want to be a roast cow...
                -- Anna Hess
%
Q:  How many mathematicians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A:  One.  He gives it to six Californians, thereby reducing the
    problem to the earlier joke.
%
God has a hex editor and rwx on /dev/universe.
	        -- Chris Adams, in alt.sysadmin.recovery
%
"Those who do not understand UNIX are condemned to reinvent it -- badly."
	        -- Henry Spencer
%
If you took all the students that felt asleep in class and laid them
end to end, they'd be a lot more comfortable.
                -- "Graffiti in the Big Ten"
%
Geez, I love how the trolls assume that we haven't already *found* God.
		-- katew @ enteract.com
Yeh. He was hiding in the closet the whole time. Okay this time
I'll hide and he can find me.
		-- sjcaldwell @ odyssey.on.ca
%
"I never travel without my diary. One should always have something
sensational to read on the train."
		-- Oscar Wilde 
%
"Lined up on one side we have naively scientific, unimaginative dogmatists
fenced in by their unexamined bias that truth and reality exist untouched
by the society that describes them. On the other, we have enigmatic writers
and irrelevant nihilists so enamored of their intellectual dithering that
they no longer even know that jumping out of a tall building will cause
them to fall."
		-- Kristina Zarlengo
%
C Code. C code run. Run, code, run... PLEASE!!!
		-- Barbara Tongue
%
WORD OF THE DAY: 
	thamniscophysaladophagy - "eating the little knobs from the ends of
				   branches"
%
"Mary had a little key,
 She kept it in escrow
 And everything that Mary sent
 The Feds were sure to know." 
		-- Sam Simpson on sci.crypt
%
"You did this to people because they stole your _hat_? What do you do
if they spit in your eye, blow up the country?"
		-- Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent
%
One never goes so far as when one doesn't know where one is going.
		-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
%
"That's our advantage at Microsoft; we set the standards and we can
change them."
		 -- Karen Hargrove, Microsoft 
		    (quoted in the Feb 1993 Unix Review editorial)
%
"Which sure beats Cron's disease.  Symptoms include an obsessive-compulsive
behaviour at regular intervals throughout the day, week, or month."
		-- Clinton A. Pierce, alt.sysadmin.recovery
%
"If you rush a Miracle Man, you get rotten miracles"
		-- Miracle Max, The Princess Bride
%
Don't anthropomorphize computers. They don't like it.
		-- Stefan Chakerian
%
Presumably you need the sharp teeth so that you can grab the artichoke
by the neck to keep it from escaping and the claws so that you can defend
yourself against the rampaging hoards of iceberg lettuce.
		-- Alan Morgan, in talk.origins
%
"Life is short, and we're all going to die really soon. It's true, you
know."
		-- Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple) in Fortune Magazine
%
"Internet Time is absolute time for everybody. Now is now and the same time
for all people and places. Later is the same subsequent period for
everybody. The numbers are the same for all."
		-- Nicholas Negroponte
%
Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders
What the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of
		-- They Might Be Giants
%
There are two basic traits of a good system administrator:
1) infallibility   2) the ability to learn from one's mistakes.
%
"Natives who beat drums to ward off evil spirits are objects of scorn to
smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams."
		-- Mary Ellen Kelly
%
Webmaster alias cannot answer questions that should be addressed to any of
the above links. However, we do encourage you to e-mail us on site issues,
including:
*       broken links
*       slow service
*       poorly presented information
*       suggestions for site improvement
*       applause for a job well done. (our fan sent us one of these just
        last year!)
		-- webmaster@microsoft.com autoresponder
%
"According to the study, for the first time in history, the rich array of
consumer products available in malls and supermarkets surpasses the number
of living species populating the planet.
"Last year's introduction of Dentyne Ice Cinnamint gum, right on the heels
of the extinction of the Carolina tufted hen, put product diversity on top
for the first time," study chair Donald Hargrove said. "Today, the Procter
& Gamble subphylum alone outnumbers insects two to one."
	-- from http://www.theonion.com/onion3412/productdiversity.html
%
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
%
Perhaps it is like naming a new software cluster, but I refuse to name my
kittens software-1 software-2 software-3....If I did that and somebody came
up and whacked me over the head with a Wyl E Coyote size mallet, I'd have
to consider it justified punishment.
		-- Jake Manalan
%
"I propose a toast, to my self control /
	you see it crawling, helpless on the floor "
		-- "Cure for Pain", Morphine
%
Libra (September 22 - October 22)
  You will discover a new "5th law" of Thermodynamics.  The first
  law says "you can't win".  The second law says "you can't break
  even".  The 5th law, however, says "never draw to an inside
  straight".
%
Cancer (June 21 - July 22)
  In a savage reaction against what you view as New Age Wooly-Mindedness,
  you will write a best-selling book titled "I'm Ok, You're A Twerp".
  Later, people will often regard you as having "defined" the late 90's.
%
Leo (July 23 - August 22)
  It's ok to whistle while you work.  Your co-workers will draw
  the line at yodelling while you work, however.  They're probably
  just jealous.
%
"I'd love go out with you, but I'm converting my calendar watch from Julian
to Gregorian."  
%
If anybody wants a sheep, that is a proof that he exists.
		-- Antoine de Saint Exupery, "The Little Prince"
%
We pull stupid stunts so that you don't have to.
		-- Ben Barden
%
And, of course, one reason for saying "bar" rather than "measure"  is
so  you  can make jokes about 32-bar reels.  "You'd be reeling to, if
you'd just done 32 bars."
		-- John Chambers, on the "Strathspey" Scottish Dance list
%
 "listen: there's a hell of a good universe next door; let's go"
		-- e.e.cummings
%
One of these days, I'm going to get a dark suit and go round ringing on
people's doors during prime dinner time, and when they open the door, I'm
going to ask: "Have you ever thought about Emacs?", and press "free" copies
of the elisp reference manual on them, and then ask for a donation, "Just to
cover the printing cost."
		-- Leif Nixon 
%
Over the router and through the bridge, to grandmother's page we go!
%
I was walking down the street minding my own business when BAM!  All of a
sudden this idea hit me. And you know how some ideas are like moray eels,
they bite you and hold on for that pound of flesh? Well, this wasn't that
kind. I forgot it right away. So I was thinking, how do you entice a moray
eel from its lair? Act edible. I wanted to remember that idea, it wasn't the
colorless green kind, but what do ideas hunger for? Immortality? The 1920's?
Boysenberry cheesecake?
		-- Jay J. P. Scott
%
"Only a mediocre writer is always at his best."
		-- W. Somerset Maugham
%
"Never argue with a fool - people might not know the difference"
        -- Mark Twain
%
With all due apology to the NRA, the Internet doesn't _have_ a dark
side. PEOPLE have dark sides, and the Internet is the finest tool ever
invented for creating, facilitating, and maintaining relationships and
communication between and among people.  It makes everything easier -- the
evil that men do, and the good that they also do.  It is fundamentally
impossible to obstruct the use of the internet for evil purposes without
obstructing its use for good purposes also.  To even try is foolishness on a
scale usually only observed when watching governments in action.
		-- Daniel J. Boone
%
In almost every social situation, if one person has all the available
information, and their objective is possible (ie does not depend on the
willing aid of someone who is so opposed as to be non-convertable) then they
can acheive that goal fairly simply.  Thus, if you are talking with someone,
and realize that their goals are the same as yours, tell them everything you
know, and let them do it.
		-- Ben Barden
%
USER, n.:
        The word computer professionals use when they mean "idiot."
                -- Dave Barry, "Claw Your Way to the Top"
%
I'm sure this goes back further than computer networks.  From the earliest
days of ham radio, there were lusers amongst the ranks(known as 'lids'), and
LARTs had to be developed to deal with them(a.k.a.  the "Wouf Hong" and the
"Rettysnitch").  No doubt the smoke signal cognoscenti dreaded the approach
of certain braves bearing innumerable questions.
		-- Ben Coleman
%
Noah: "Tell them to line up alphabetically ... food-chain order might lead 
to problems."
		-- Bob Thaves (Frank & Ernest)
%
Mankind in general occupies the position between the angels and the French.  
		-- Mark Twain
%
To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing.  
		-- Eva Young
%
-export-a-crypto-system-sig -RSA-3-lines-PERL
#!/bin/perl -sp0777i<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<j]dsj
$/=unpack('H*',$_);$_=`echo 16dio\U$k"SK$/SM$n\EsN0p[lN*1
lK[d2%Sa2/d0$^Ixp"|dc`;s/\W//g;$_=pack('H*',/((..)*)$/)
%
The reason why so few people are agreable in conversation is that each
is thinking more about what he intends to say than about what others are
saying...
                                -- La Rochefoucauld (1665)
%
Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers.  My
opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.  There's many a bestseller
that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
                -- Flannery O'Connor
%
"I think I can feel a Famous Last Stand coming on."
		-- Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent
%
'I am afraid that I'm becoming a network nerd.  How can I tell for sure?'
'How many syllables do you think there are in the word "coax"?'
    -- Dr. Internet
%
    "Only a NAZI would try to invoke Godwin's [law] deliberately"
        - Jeff Gostin in a.s.r
%
You're just jealous because the voices talk to *me.*
%
"Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still."
		-- Chinese Proverb
%
Black holes are where God divided by zero.
%
The seven phases of a project:
	1. Exultation
	2. Confusion
	3. Disenchantment
	4. Search for the guilty
	5. Punishment of the innocent
	6. Distinction for the uninvolved
	7. Burying the bodies and scattering the ashes
			-- From Gregory Benford, "Timescape"
%
Police obtain verbal confession.
		-- bjork @ aol.com (Bjork) wrote:
That's the only kind there is. Confessions made by means of interpretive
dance, or through sculpture or instrumental music, are not admissible in
court.
		-- brownsta @ concentric.net (Stan Brown), noting the 
		   opposite of "written" is "oral", not "verbal"
%
C: God's programming language.
C++: The object-oriented programming language of a pagan deity.
                                       -- OpenGL Programming Guide
%
"It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling
exception, is composed of others."
		-- John Andrew Holmes
%
"You want Door Number Three, Microsoft Bob?  Okay!  Let's take a look
what's behind Door Number Three!  Iiiiit's... the United States
Department of Justice!  You're BUSTED!"
		-- Dave Aronson
%
This is USENET.  A properly announced change of hairstyle can start a
six month flamewar.  I wouldn't judge anything's importance solely
from traffic volume.
		-- Elayne Wechsler-Chaput
%
"Apparently giving caffeine to spiders makes them spin really bad webs,
 whereas giving them LSD makes them more uniform and better. Imagine what
 the WWW would have been like if it had been invented in the 60's"
		 -- Richard Letts
%
G-d dammit! Are we going to have to require that all chickens be prime
multiples of the Godel number for Fermat's last theorem or something??
		-- Caton Little, in alt.sysadmin.recovery
%
"It has frequently been said that the Princess Diana phenomenon
 revealed the existence of a spiritual hunger, in search of an object
 on which to glut itself, but the bleaker truth may be that what people
 want is an alternative to the spiritual.  After all, when people binge
 on burgers at McDonald's, we don't say that they are really hungry for
 bran and fresh fruit."
		-- Richard Jenkyns, New York Review of Books (May 28, 1998)
%
"Oh, and remember that every cynic was once a romantic who got burned; in
love you risk even the stakes you didn't put on the table."
		-- Grant Gould
%
"Hi, I'm wrapped in cat5, sitting in front of an Xterm, using vi, and I want
you to call right now.  I'll share all of my intimate thoughts about
sendmail.cf files...
		-- Derick Siddoway, alt.sysadmin.recovery
%
The avalanche has already started; it is too late for the pebbles to vote.
		-- Babylon 5
%
Don't be silly. There's only a Statute of Limitations in New York.  She
stands proudly in New York Harbor, holding up her torch, with a line on her
that says "You must be THIS TALL to enter this country."
		-- Nat Gertler, in misc.writing.screenplays
%
If the law is the source code to the United States, then good lawyers are
the kind of maladjusted hackers who figure out how to fit a boot sector
virus into your clock chip's NVRAM
		-- Peter da Silva, in alt.sysadmin.recovery
%
"Everyone is a philosopher.  Not everyone is good at it."
		-- Alfred North Whitehead
%
"No, ma'am, we at the FBI do not have a sense of humor that we are aware of."
		-- Men In Black
%
Cats are rather delicate creatures and they are subject to a good many
ailments, but I never heard of one who suffered from insomnia.
        -- Joseph Wood Krutch
%
Cats are smarter than dogs.  You can't get eight cats to pull a sled
through snow.
        -- Jeff Valdez
%
After this, since we were having to shuffle the cats about so frequenty, we
decided the array was silly and attempted to move to a doubly-linked-list of
cats.  Let me tell you, cats don't *like* being in a linked-list (single
links are a bit less onerous, but of course it's easier to lose the
references).  Then you end up with random unlinked cats everywhere, just
waiting to be caught by the garbage collector.
Let this be a lesson to you.
		-- Adam J. Thornton, it alt.sysadmin.recovery
%
POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS  POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS  POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS
%
The man who sets out to carry a cat by its tail learns something that will
always be useful and which never will grow dim or doubtful.
		-- Mark Twain
%
"The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, it's
 just sort of a tired feeling."
		-- Paula Poundstone
%
Okay, "splurk" isn't exactly unpronouncable, but it IS short and
pretentious, and suffers delusions of looking good in purple...
		-- Peter Morrison, in alt.sysadmin.recovery
%
Yea, tho I walk thru the valley of the shadow of clues, I shall fear no
luser, for Thou lart with me, Thy chicken and Thy manual, they comfort me.
		-- Dave Aronson, in alt.sysadmin.recovery
%
One of the more unusual robot prototypes on display last week at the National
Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Madison, Wisc., was a two-foot
aluminum robotic plant, attached to a PC, that slowly blooms, droops and makes
little alien noises depending on a text analysis of the owner's incoming e-mail
messages. The robot plant, whose official name is Office Plant No. 1, the Kind
With Leaves and Roots, was developed by Marc Boehlen and Michael Mateas,
graduate students at Carnegie Mellon University.
		-- The New York Times, 8/6/98
%
"I have seen men hazard their fortunes, go on long journeys halfway around
the world, forge friendships, even lie, cheat and steal, all for the gain of
a book."
		-- A.S.W. Rosenbach
%
"I'm told that the church is to launch new low-calorie communion-wafers and
wine, under the brandname "I can't believe it's not Jesus"..."
		-- Tanuki, in alt.sysadmin.recovery
%
"We're standing there pounding a dead parrot on the counter, and
the management response is to frantically swap in new counters to
see if that fixes the problem."
		-- Peter Gutmann, in alt.sysadmin.recovery
%
I'm an anti-solopsist.  You all exist... but I don't.
		-- Dave Aronson
%
Citronella candles may not be used in rituals. I cannot stress this
enough. Pastel colored candles in the shape of cute animals are like
direct sunlight to the Powers of Darkness.
%
For those situations where a fresh, living, sacrifice is not available,
the lower ranks of demons can be fooled by microwaving a previously frozen
chunk of ex-victim and cleverly jiggling it. However, a mock victim
sculpted from SPAM is unacceptable.
%
"One World. One Web. One Program."
      -Microsoft promotional advertisement
"Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer!"
      -Adolf Hitler
%
There was this guy travelling from town to town, a spam salesperson, as it
said on his business card, when the train crashed in the woods. The question
is, did the falling spam make a noise if there was no bear there to hear it
because it was playing checkers with Dostoyevski's ghost on a convenient
virtual medium.
		-- Phil Innes, in rec.games.chess.misc
%
Write it in c -- program at the speed of light.
%
Pointers to pointers to printf()-like functions;
Unary minus and nested conjunctions;
Integers, booleans, characters, strings;
These are a few of my favourite things.
		-- Fred Curtis
%
Superpolylogarithmic subexponential functions!
Faster than a polylog but slower than exponential.
Even though they're hard to say, they're truly quintessential.
Superpolylogarithmic subexponential functions!
		-- Alan Sherman
%
So kiss me and smile for me,
Call my folks in Tripoli,
Tell them that Khadafi made me go.
I'm a Libyan on a jet plane,
I don't know if I'll be back again.
Muammar, I hate to go.
		-- "Libyan On A Jet Plane" by Pinkard & Bowden
%
Those silly RFCs are all that separate us from the animals!
		-- Kevin Rodgers in alt.religion.emacs
%
Be humble, for the worst thing in the world is of the same stuff as you; 
Be confident, for the stars are of the same stuff as you.
		--Nicholai Velimirovic
%
"Writing a book is an adventure.  To begin with, it is a toy and an
 amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master,
 and then a tyrant.  The last phase is that just as you are about to be
 reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out
 to the public."
		-- Winston Churchill
%
"An appointment is an engagement to see someone, while a morningstar is a
large lump of metal used for viciously crushing skulls.  It is important not
to confuse the two, isn't it, Mr. --?" 
		-- Terry Pratchett
%
So much for taking the world by storm. I guess I'll have to take it by
siege.
		-- Jay J. P. Scott
%
Justice Department officials have obtained internal Microsoft documents that
would support a new antitrust case.  "Man, I hope the federal government
wins. I like to root for the little guy."
		-- Dennis Miller
%
"If you have three nihilists breaking into your apartment trying to
 terrorize you, how are they going to do it?  The obvious answer seemed
 to be to throw a marmot in the tub."
		-- Ethan Coen, producer of the film "The Big Lebowsky"
%
"As they say in my country, the only thing that separates us from the  
 animals are mindless superstition and pointless ritual."
		-- Latka Gravas, on "Taxi"
%
"My favorite conspiracy theory I saw in a cartoon the other day ...  it
 was called 'Oliver Stone's Titanic' and it showed a second iceberg."
		-- James Cameron
%
PSA was following United, taxiing out for departure.  PSA called the tower
and said "Tower, this is United 586.  We've got a little problem, so go
ahead and let PSA go first."  The tower promptly cleared PSA for takeoff
before United had a chance to object to the impersonation.  
%
A DC-10 had an exceedingly long landing rollout after landing with his
approach speed just a little to high... San Jose Tower: "American 751 Heavy,
turn right at the end if able.  If not able, take the Guadalupe exit off of
Highway 101 back to the airport.
%
O'Hare Approach Control: "United 329, traffic is a Fokker, one o'clock, 3
miles, eastbound." United 329: "Approach, I've always wanted to say
this... I've got that Fokker in sight."
%
"Confronted with hundreds of thousands of references, [the pupil] has
 little guidance as to the nature and the quality of the sites on offer.
 Even with the help of electronic browsers, the choice remains
 bewildering.  Libraries can be bewildering places, too, but at least
 you don't have to search the garbage cans before getting to the books."
	-- Hailz-Emily Osborne, an English teacher at Bradfield College
%
Through the darkness of future past
The magician longs to see
One chance out between two worlds
Fire, walk with me.
		-- "Twin Peaks"
%
Sternwood: So, Agent Cooper, how are you finding our little corner of
	   the world?
Cooper:    It's heaven, sir.
Sternwood: Well, this week heaven includes arson, multiple homicide, and an
	   attempt on the life of a Federal agent.
Cooper:    Heaven is a large and interesting place, sir.
		-- Twin Peaks
%
Diane, I dreamed I was eating a large tasteless gumdrop. I awoke to realize
I was aggressively munching on one of my air pillow silicone earplugs. Hence
the tastelessness. Perhaps I should keep a closer eye on my after dinner
coffee consumption.
		-- FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper, "Twin Peaks"
%
"I still put my panties on one leg at a time, if you know what I mean."
		-- Special Agent Dennis "Denise" Bryson
"Not really."
		-- Special Agent Dale Cooper
%
"All larger organisms, including ourselves, are living testimonies to
 the fact that destructive practices do not work in the long run.  In
 the end, the aggressors always destroy themselves, making way for
 others who know how to cooperate and get along.  Life is much less a
 competitive struggle for survival than a triumph of cooperation and
 creativity."	  		  
		-- Fritjof Capra, "The Web Of Life"
%
"Odd.  At birth we are bald, feeble, and toothless; and we spend the
 rest of our lives to return to such a state, the defining distinction
 being that as babies we are hailed as 'cute' and at our deaths we are
 are labeled 'pitiful.'  Odd, that."
		-- Ryan Christopher, Memoirs, 1973.
%
"...it is in these little acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy
 are for ever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard faces
 at the devastation their waste has made, and say, the earth bears no
 harvest of sweetness - calling their denial knowledge."
		-- George Eliot
%
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you.  If you
 really make them think, they'll hate you."
		-- D. R. P. Marquis (1878-1937)
%
"So, in addition to being a greedy, satanic terrorist, I am also
 destroying the morals of a generation of school children.  In
 cartooning terms, that's called a home run.  It will be hard to improve
 on that next month."
		-- "Dilbert" cartoonist Scott Adams
%
"We rest here while we can, but we hear the ocean calling in our dreams,
 And we know by the morning, the wind will fill our sails to test the seams,
 The calm is on the water and part of us would linger by the shore,
 For ships are safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for."
		-- from _Ships_ by Tom Kimmel & Michael Lille
%
"Error is the stuff of which the web of life is woven; and he who lives
 longest and wisest is only able to wear out the more of it."
		-- Thomas Jefferson
%
All very complicated.  I wish they'd manufacture a kiddie version of my life
with all the problems dumbed down. 			    -- Mary McMenomy
%
Contrary to popular opinion, facts are not established by popular opinion.
		-- Don Watson, ISPE
%
 "In cyberspace, everyone is an author, which means that no
 one is an author: the distinction upon which its rest, the
 author distinct from the reader, disappears.  Exit author..."
		-- "Virtual Worlds - A journey in hype and hyperreality" by
		    Benjamin Woolley (1992).
%
"The Internet was designed to survive a nuclear war.  But can it survive
 capitalism?"
		-- Charles Petrie "IEEE Internet Computing" Mar/Apr 1997
%
"It takes real courage to be a Macintosh user; it takes real conviction;
 not unlike being a Christian in the days of the Romans."
 - Guy Kawasaki, Chief Evangelist for Apple Computer - from "Hotseat"
   interview with John McChesney (3/28/97)
%
"We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that
 is in it, and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a
 hot stove-lid.  She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again, and
 that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore."
		-- Mark Twain
%
"Insomnia opens the door to previously untraced memories, makes a
 mockery of the good sense that possesses us at high noon, and any
 effort we make to channel our thoughts twists the energy, rebukes us
 with half-finished faces, sexless bodies; we learn again that our minds
 are full of snares, knots, goblins, the backward march of the dead, the
 bridges that end halfway and still hang in the air, those failed to
 love us, those who irreparably harmed us, intentionally or not, even
 those we hurt badly and live on incapsulated in our regret.  The past
 thrives on a sleepless night, reduces it to the awesome, distorted
 essence of all we have met."
		-- From the book _Sundog_, by Jim Harrison
%
"Solving problems of sexual discrimination by proscriptively tinkering
 with language is only slightly more relevant than rearranging
 deckchairs on the Titanic."
		-- Dr. Patrick Juola, Oxford University
%
"The development of computers has been almost entirely an American
 affair. The biggest setback to English as a global language, it has
 been said with more than a little irony, would be if Bill Gates had
 grown up speaking Chinese."
		-- David Crystal, "The Guardian", 22nd February 1997
%
"What we find out in philosophy is trivial; it does not teach us new
 facts, only science does that.  But the proper synopsis of these
 trivialities is enormously difficult, and has immense importance.
 Philosophy is in fact the synopsis of trivialities."
		-- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
%
"Still, there are some things a big company can do that a small band of
 programmers could never hope to accomplish.  This was best shown to me
 this week by reader Brian P. McLean, who points out that according to
 his Microsoft Outlook 97 scheduling/datebook application, Thanksgiving
 falls this year on Wednesday, November 26.
"Thanksgiving has always fallen on Thursday before.  Wednesday may be an
 improvement.  I don't know."
		-- Robert X. Cringely, 
		   from his "I, Cringely" column (November 7, 1997)
%
"If we could read the secret history of our enemies,
 we should find in each person's life,
 sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility".
		-- Longfellow
%
"We are the music-makers
  And we are the dreamers of dreams,
 Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
  And sitting by desolate streams;
 World-losers and world-forsakers,
  On whom the pale moon gleams:
 Yet we are the movers and shakers
  Of the world forever it seems."      -- Arthur O'Shaughnessy in _Ode_
%
"Guess kids these days just can't tell their gravity from their rotating
frame of reference." 		    
		-- Iain M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas"
%
Taunt not the sysadmin, for he can become you and make your life interesting.
%
"The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is probably the day they
start making vacuum cleaners" 				  
		-- Ernst Jan Plugge
%
perl -wle 'print "Prime" if (1 x shift) !~ /^1?$|^(11+?)\1+$/' 
%
"It's like being involved in a wall of mating squid."
		-- Chuck Groom, on compiler writing
%
   Queen of Gor : What have you done to the prisoner?!
   Tom Servo : We cancelled it; it was too obscure.
		-- MST3K
%
       Everyone has the right to be uninterested.
       Everyone has the right not to understand.
       Everyone has the right to be uninformed.
       Everyone has the right to make a mistake.
       Everyone has the right to change his/her mind.
       Everyone has the right to disagree.
       Everyone has the right to his/her own opinion.
%
Rimmer:  "How come he never ever knows anything?  He's supposed to
         have an IQ of 6000!"
Holly:   "6000's not that much.  's only the same IQ as 12000 car
         park attendants."
%
   "Think positively, act positively, and never leave fingerprints."
                             -- Robert Sneddon
%
Security-wise, NT is a server with a "Kick me" sign taped to it. 
		-- Peter Gutmann
%
"The plural of anecdote is not data."
		-- Roger Brinner
%
"What's the good of having mastery over cosmic balance and knowing the
secrets of fate if you can't blow something up?"
		-- Terry Pratchett, "Reaper Man"
%
Capricorn (December 22 - January 20)

  A good time to learn to laugh at yourself.  Or, develop multiple
  personalities!  That way you won't be laughing at you, you'll
  be laughing with you.
%
"He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like
a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without
one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the
country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at
a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it."
		-- Joseph Romm, Washington,
		   the Bulwer-Lytton competition
%
A [golf] ball hitting a tree shall be deemed not to have hit the tree.
Hitting a tree is simply bad luck and has no place in a scientific
game.  The player should estimate the distance the ball would have
traveled if it had not hit the tree and play the ball from there,
preferably atop a nice firm tuft of grass.
                -- Donald A. Metz
%
A child can go only so far in life without potty training.  It is not
mere coincidence that six of the last seven presidents were potty
trained, not to mention nearly half of the nation's state legislators.
                -- Dave Barry
%
355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible
simulation!
%
Cancer (June 21 - July 22)

  Nobody knows the trouble you've seen.  Let's just hope you
  can somehow keep it that way!
%
Virgo (August 23 - September 22)

  It will occur to you to wonder, what if Jesus had actually
  said "The geek shall inherit the earth", but was just misquoted?
  Then you'll think of Bill Gates.  Then you'll start to worry.
%
"I've done something with my life; I've made kids happy around the world."
		-- Walter E. Diemer (1905-1998), inventor of bubble gum
%
The universe does not have laws -- it has habits, and habits can be broken.
%
"You can't weld all of the ports shot on a PC and call it a thin client.
It's a fat client in a corest with the strings pulled real tight and a red
face."
		-- Scott McNealy, CEO, Sun Microsystems
%
"No ray of sunshine is ever lost, but the green which it awakens into
existence needs time to sprout, and it is not always granted for the sower
to see the harvest.  All work that is worth anything is done in faith."
		-- Albert Schweitzer
%
My favorite was a professor at a University I Used To Be Associated With
who claimed that our requirement of a non-alphabetic character in our
passwords was an abridgement of his freedom of speech.
		-- Jacob Haller
%
"Of course the Universe hates you. You're working to reduce chaos by
expending a lot of energy to do your job. Thus, you're contributing to the
eventual heat death of the universe, and it's just protecting itself from
you."               
		-- John Batzel
%
Anyone who thinks people lack originality should watch them folding 
roadmaps.		                      -- Franklin P. Jones
%
Dr. Lizardo: Where are we going?
Aliens: Planet 10!
Dr. Lizardo: When?
Aliens: Real soon!
	-- The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
%
SWF seeks .signature. Must be witty, and four lines long or less.
%
"...let the rest of the galaxy burn. I don't care any more."
        --Londo Mollari
%
I live in Emacs. Why would I need sex?
		-- Leif Nixon
To seduce others into using Emacs.
		-- Alan Shutko, in alt.religion.emacs
%
Oh for Pete's sake, use a real filter. ;-)
		-- Tom Christiansen
Look, I refuse to install any filter which looks like it's more highly
evolved than homo sapiens, it will just get embarassing when it starts
critiquing the literrary style of my friends mail to me.
		-- Richard Caley, in comp.lang.perl.misc
%
"I had a linguistics professor who said that it's man's ability to use
language that makes him the dominant species on the planet.  That may
be. But I think there's one other thing that separates us from animals.
We aren't afraid of vacuum cleaners."
     --Jeff Stilson
%
"I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up
something else."
     --Lily Tomlin
%
Just remember, the first webmaster was female...  her first home page
said "Some Pig" and was regularly updated....
		-- Paul Sawyer
%
cat /dev/coffee | /dev/cup | /dev/mouth | /dev/nose > /dev/keyboard 
%
"But these [serious NT security flaws] are not inherent flaws in the operating
system -- they don't happen by accident. They are the result of deliberate and
well-thought-out efforts." 
		--Mike Nash, Microsoft. The _flaws_ are deliberate?
%
"I think that's how Chicago got started.  A bunch of people in New York
said, 'Gee, I'm enjoying the crime and the poverty, but it just isn't
cold enough. Let's go west.' "
     --Richard Jeni
%
The secret of success is sincerity.  Once you can fake that, you've got
it made.
%
The one day you'd sell your birthright for something, birthrights are
a glut.
%
The New York Times, among other papers, recently published a new
Hubble photograph of distant galaxies colliding.
Of course, astronomers have had pictures of colliding galaxies for
quite some time now, but with the vastly improved resolution provided
by the Hubble Space Telescope, you can actually see the lawyers
rushing to the scene...
%
Lucy:   "You are the tiniest speck in an enormous universe."
Snoopy: "Then I might as well go back to sleep."
%
"Winston Churchill was once at the urinals in the House of Commons when the
Labour prime minister, Clement Attlee, walked in.  Churchill turned his back
on him.  'Feeling stand-offish, today, Winston?' asked Attlee.  'No,'
replied Churchill, 'scared.  Every time you see something big you want to
nationalize it.'"
		--The Economist, 12/20/97
%
"The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the
 sleeping world."
		-- Leonard Cohen, The Favourite Game
%
"Accurately delivered, a cream pie is an uncannily precise barometer of human
nature."
		-- Noel Godin, pie-throwing anarchist
%
And the Beast shall raise its ugly head and shall roar, and the people
of the world will run to prep.ai.mit.edu for shelter from the
onslaught and havoc it does with its commercial compilers.  But lo and
behold, all of the anonymous ftp ports to salvation will be busy.
		-- Bill Gribble, in gnu.misc.discuss
%
"The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour
 to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly
 ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second-rate
 technology, led them into it in the first place."
		-- writer Douglas Adams, on Windows 95
%
From too much love of living, / From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving / Whatever gods may be
That no life lives forever; / That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river / Winds somewhere safe to sea.
		-- Algernon Charles Swinburne
%
If a `religion' is defined to be a system of ideas that contains unprovable 
statements, then Godel taught us that mathematics is not only a religion, 
it is the only religion that can prove itself to be one. 
		-- John Barrow
%
"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, 'What!  
You too?  I thought I was the only one!'"
		-- C.S. Lewis
%
Did it ever occur to you that maybe the reason that nobody ever published in
hot pink text on lime green paper before WiReD wasn't *just* because the ink
was expensive, or wasn't *just* because LSD hadn't been invented yet?
		-- Amil Patel, in comp.emacs.xemacs
%
Die with your books out!
		-- Grafitti in McCabe Library, Swarthmore College
%
PURPOSE OF YOUR CAREER
Astronaut:  Advancing scientific knowledge for the good of humanity.
Fireman:    Saving lives and property.
Sysadmin:   Assuring uninterrupted access to alt.binaries.erotica.sheep.
		-- The Usenet oracle
%
Q.  Does Usenet help stamp out ignorance?
A.  That depends on whether by "stamp out" you mean "eliminate" or
    "reproduce rapidly in great quantity."
		-- From the Usenet FAQ
%
One way to get high blood pressure is to go mountain climbing over molehills.
		-- Earl Wilson
%
"It is inhumane, in my opinion, to force people who have a genuine
 medical need for coffee to wait in line behind people who apparently
 view it as some kind of recreational activity."
		-- Dave Barry
%
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
		-- Philip K. Dick, "How to Build a Universe"
%
F0 0F C7 C8 - The Four Bytes Of The Apocalypse. 
		-- Mel Harper
%
"USENET is not a right." "USENET is a right, a left, a jab, and a 
sharp uppercut to the jaw. The postman hits!  You have new mail." 
		-- Ed Vielmetti & Chip Salzenberg
%
Of course, another way of looking at this is to change your frame of
reference.  You're sitting still, and the universe is rushing past
far too fast.  It's hardly *your* fault if the universe won't look
where it's going and has inadequate brakes, is it?
		-- Malcom Ray
%
Insanity takes many forms, but amongst the voices, the visions and the software
development, I have yet to hear of one documented case where it has been 
manifested by ferrous testicles.
		-- Sean O'Kelly
%
IME, the most philosophical drivers are London cabbies.  Every journey
provides new insights into language and meaning.  "'Ere, I 'ad that
Wittgenstein in the back of the cab once.  I said to 'im, I sez, picturing
relations my arse, you wouldn't try that with my relations mate..."
		-- Malcom Ray
%
OK, I'm weird, but I'm saving up to be eccentric. 
%
Q: Speaking of administration scandals, if President Clinton actually winds up
in court over this Paula Jones thing, what steps will be taken to prevent the
trial from turning into a grotesque and demeaning pubic spectacle?
A: Mr. Clinton's face will be covered at all times by an electronically
superimposed dark blob, underneath which will be an electronic label 
identifying him only as "A United States President."
		-- Jacob Giles
%
                /* And you'll never guess what the dog had */
                /*   in its mouth... */
        --Larry Wall in stab.c from the perl source code
%
Down that path lies madness.  On the other hand, the road to hell is
paved with melting snowballs. 
		--Larry Wall in <1992Jul2.222039.26476@netlabs.com>
%
"I find this a nice feature but it is not according to the documentation.
   Or is it a BUG?"
"Let's call it an accidental feature. :-)" 
		-- Larry Wall in <6909@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
%
If you consistently take an antagonistic approach, however, people are
going to start thinking you're from New York.   :-)
        --Larry Wall to Dan Bernstein in <10187@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
%
    I think it's a new feature.  Don't tell anyone it was an accident.  :-)
            --Larry Wall on s/foo/bar/eieio in <10911@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
%
    :  I've heard that there is a shell (bourne or csh)  to perl filter, does
    :  anyone know of this or where I can get it?
    Yeah, you filter it through Tom Christiansen.  :-)  --Larry Wall
%
    Let's say the docs present a simplified view of reality...    :-)
            --Larry Wall in  <6940@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
%
    Perl programming is an *empirical* science!
            --Larry Wall in <10226@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
%
Tactical?  TACTICAL!?!?  Hey, buddy, we went from kilotons to megatons
several minutes ago.  We don't need no stinkin' tactical nukes.
(By the way, do you have change for 10 million people?) 
		-- Larry Wall
%
There ain't nothin' in this world that's worth being a snot over.
            --Larry Wall in <1992Aug19.041614.6963@netlabs.com>
%
    "We all agree on the necessity of compromise.  We just can't agree on
     when it's necessary to compromise."
                --Larry Wall in  <1991Nov13.194420.28091@netlabs.com>
%
    "What is the sound of Perl?  Is it not the sound of a wall that
     people have stopped banging their heads against?"
                --Larry Wall in <1992Aug26.184221.29627@netlabs.com>
%
Well, enough clowning around.  Perl is, in intent, a cleaned up and
summarized version of that wonderful semi-natural language known as
"Unix".
                -- Larry Wall in <1994Apr6.184419.3687@netlabs.com>
%
My favourite quote about APL - "I refuse to use any computer language
in which the proponents shove snippets of code under each other's
nose saying 'I bet you can't guess what this does!'"
		-- D'Arcy J.M. Cain, in comp.lang.ada
%
"If the one who is to act wants to judge himself by the result, he will
never begin."	 	     
		-- Soren Kierkegaard, "Fear and Trembling"
%
"Faith is precisely the paradox that the single individual as the single
individual is higher than the universal, is justified before it, not as
inferior to it but as superior -- yet in such a way, please note, that it is
the single individual who, after being subordinate as the single individual
to the universal, now by means of the universal becomes the single
individual who as the single individual is superior, that the single
individual as the single individual stands in absolute relation to the
absolute."
		-- Soren Kierkegaard, "Fear and Trembling"
%
"In the old days, people said: It is too bad that things do not go in the
world as the preacher preaches.  Maybe the time will come, especially with
the aid of philosophy, when they can say:  Fortunately things do not go as
the preacher preaches, for there is still some meaning in life, but there is
none in his sermons."
		-- Soren Kierkegaard, "Fear and Trembling"
%
Pisces (February 19 - March 20)
  Beware!  The Celestial Jade Emperor may banish you to the Big Grumpy
  Place if you don't start paying more attention to the four Winds.
  Obviously, this is a metaphor, somehow involving Cleveland.
%
Oh wow!  Everything seems so cosmic!  Your spider-sense is tingling...
		-- Nethack 3.1.3
%
Overall, there is a smell of fried onions.
		-- Nethack 3.1.3
%
"In my day, we didn't have virtual reality. If a one-eyed razorback
barbarian warrior was chasing you with an ax, you just had to hope you could
outrun him."
		-- Sarah M. Wolford, Hanover
%
"In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take."
		-- Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)
%
"I'd bite your ear, but you'd take it the wrong way."
		-- Anna Hess
%
Q: Who has the right of way when four cars approach a four-way
   stop at the same time?
A: The pick up truck with the gun rack and the bumper sticker
   saying, "Guns don't kill people. I do."
%
"Time is too slow for those who wait; too swift for those who fear;
 too long for those who grieve; too short for those who rejoice.
 But for those who love, time is eternity."
		-- Lady Jane Fellowes
%
I personally like to drink a quart of malt liquor, stick the Maxell labels
all over my naked body, go down to the supermarket, and try to get
arrested...  (This is _not_, however, for everyone.)
		-- Kirsten Chevalier, in alt.music.bootlegs
%
Aquarius (January 21 - February 18)
  Remember:  Unexpressed feelings don't die.  They are buried alive
  and emerge later as Border Collies.  So don't hold anything back!
  Tell everyone what you REALLY think of them!  You may lose your
  job, family and friends, but you won't have a crazed, hyperactive
  animal hounding your every step.
%
No, an Emacs reference mug would not just hold 10 gallons, not even just
brew the coffee for you, it would grind it, roast it and grow it (not
necessarily in that order). It would also sing the national anthem
(which one? All of them - but it would check where it was first), play
bagpipes and do the dishes.
		-- Chris Rovers
%
"A reporter asked me not long ago whether I had ever expected a
 commercial internet to operate. 'Yes,' I answered, 'that didn't
 surprise me.  Finding URLs in lipstick advertisements really threw me
 though.'"
		-- Fred Baker, IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) Chair
%
...And then visiting our room will be more exciting b/c of the everpresent
danger of having utah fall on your head
		-- Chaos Golubitsky, '00
%
"We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the
Complete Works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is
not true."
 		-- Robert Wilensky, University of California
Of course, we still haven't proved that the average internet user has
anywhere close to the intellect of a monkey...
		-- Karl Larson
%
"No American experience is complete without a row of PortaPotty's."
                -- Jeff Allen
%
"Run naked through the machine room randomly pulling SCSI cables."
		-- item on the Synopsys Inc. quarterly downtime task list
%
For every locomotive they built,
I shall paint another angel.
                        -- Edward Burne-Jones
%
Oh, I long for those wild frontier days, when thundering herds of IIIsi's,
4Mpluses, and elderly-yet-still-hazardous Laserjet 1's crossed the open
Serengeti plain on their yearly migration...
		-- Joel Herda
%
the sand remembers
once there was beach and sunshine
but chip is warm too
		-- Damon A. Koronakos and Brian Roberts; "High-tech Haikus"
%
I'm out of bed and dressed, What more do you want?
%
I like you, but I wouldn't want to see you working with sub-atomic particles.
%
As you reach for the web, a venomous spider appears.  Unable to pull your
hand away in time, the spider promptly, but politely, bites you.  The venom
takes affect quickly causing your lips to turn plaid along with your
complexion.  You become dazed, and in your stupor you fall from the limbs of
the tree.  Snap!  Your head falls off and rolls all over the ground.  The
instant before you croak, you hear the whoosh of a vacuum being filled by
the air surrounding your head.  Worse yet, the spider is suing you for
damages.
		-- from the original Adventure game
%
   This space intentionally has nothing but text explaining why this
   space has nothing but text explaining that this space would otherwise
   have been left blank, and would otherwise have been left blank.
%
Tobacco stocks have taken a big tumble," says Jay Leno. "Phillip Morris fell 
6 points.  They lost so much money they may have to lay off two senators."
%
pha.rol.o.gy n. [Gr. a lighthouse + -logy.] The art or science which treats
   of lighthouses and signal lights. [Gr. an egg + -logy.] their coloring,
   size, shape, and number. 
%
floccinaucinihilipilification humorous. [f. L.  flocci, nauci, nihili, pili
   words signifying `at a small price' or `at nothing' enumerated in a
   well-known rule of the Eton Latin Grammar + -fication] The action or habit
   of estimating as worthless. 
%
honorificabilitudinity Obs. rare - 0. [ad.  med.L.  honorificabilitudinitas
   (Mussatus c 1300 in Du Cange), a grandiose extension of honorificabilitudo
   honourableness
%
The Net says yes, and no, and maybe, to all questions.  Think of it as a
form of the I Ching. Choose the answer that helps you grow.
		-- spectrum @ magenta.com
%
We'll have fun fun fun 'till my daddy takes the T1 away
		-- nby @ idea-inc.com
%
It is odd, but on the infrequent occasions when I have been called upon
in a formal place to play the bongo drums, the introducer never seems to
find it necessary to mention that I also do theoretical physics.
		-- Richard Feynman
%
Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the
back of his head, behind Christopher Robin.  It is, as far as he knows,
the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there
really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and
think of it.
		-- A.A. Milne, Winnie-The-Pooh
%
If you understand what you're doing, you're not learning anything.
                -- Abraham Lincoln
%
    The Washington Bullets are changing their name.  The owners no
    longer want their team's name to be associated with crime.  So from
    now on the team will be known as The Bullets.
		-- Argus Hamilton
%
Sounds like the sex-life of a sysadmin.
		-- MAIN Super-User
If O'Reilly doesn't write a book about it, we don't have it!
		-- Dave Cantrell
Before anyone starts referring to this as the 'Sheep Book'...
		-- Alistair J. R. Young
%
"Of course, this is not a very secure program...  But, we weren't trying
to write a security system, just an example for page 9 in this book."
		-- Randal L. Schwartz, "Learning Perl" p. 9
%
There is no mechanical problem so difficult that it cannot be solved by
brute strength and ignorance.                          
		-- William's Law 
%
This universe is packed by weight, not by volume.  Some expansion of the
contents may have occurred during shipping.
%
It's possible to do that.  If you've got a basket with 3 oranges in it and
you take 5 out, then you have to put 2 oranges in again in order for it to
be empty.						-- Peter Gutmann
%
"When these quakes hit, everybody is told to do two things. Get under the
nearest door, and make sure the door is in Cleveland."
		-- Hamilton, on California earthquakes
%
However, it is an acronym for: "Yes, My Aardvark Tries To Inseminate
Ocelots, Owls, Tortoises, Whales, Chimpanzees, Elephants, Iguanas, Okapi And
Rabid Polecats.", but I'm not sure that that phrase comes up in conversation
very often.
%
How can you expect a computer to act sanely when you give it such
conflicting orders?  You want it to work, and you want it to run Win95....
		-- Alan Shutko
%
"Freedom of speech in Usenet means that when you shout 'Fire!' in a crowded
theatre, half the crowd stands up and shouts, 'Wrong theatre!'"
%
"If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The 
 literature was full of examples that said you can't do this." 
		-- Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique 
   		   adhesives for 3-M "Post-It" Notepads
%
Favorite unused computer book title: The Idiots Guide to the Zen
of Dummies in a Nutshell in Seven Days, Unleashed
		-- Scott Hess's .sig file, in comp.os.linux.apps
%
"... I've seen Sun monitors on fire off the side of the multimedia lab.
 I've seen NTU lights glitter in the dark near the Mail Gate.
 All these things will be lost in time, like the root partition last
 week.  Time to die...". 			      
		-- Peter Gutmann
%
"Anyone who considers arithmatical methods of producing random digits is,
of course, in a state of sin."
               -- John Von Neumann
%
I don't always know what I'm talking about, but I'm always pretty much
convinced that I'm right.
		-- musician Mojo Nixon
%
A computer without Microsoft and IBM is like chocolate cake without ketchup
and mustard. 	 
		-- Jonathan Nicholson, in comp.os.linux.development.system
%
"I'll think of it all tomorrow, at Tara. I can stand it then. Tomorrow, I'll
think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day."
		-- Scarlett O'Hara
%
When I die, I want go out just like my grandfather, in his sleep, peaceful
and quiet...not kicking and screaming like the other guys in his car
%
Today at work an ethernet switch decided to take the 'N' out of NVRAM
		-- Richard Letts
%
Actually, I have a theory.  Notice how many clueful people there are in
California these days?  I'm thinking that there is some kind of karmic thing
going on wherein everybody with a clue is being pushed by unknown forces to
move out here so that there can be this big earthquake and we all die & get
elevated to some higher plane of existance.
		-- J. D. Falk
%
HELO my name is sendmail.cf. You SIGKILLed my shell. Prepare to vi.
%
Remember this, foolish mortals, when ye stare headlong into the
mind-paralyzing void, the inky black nothingness of existence, the hellish
yawning maw of the abyss -- it's pretty damn dark, so give it a few minutes
for your eyes to adjust.
		-- Frank M. Carrano
%
Scientists decode the first message from an alien civilization!
	SIMPLY SEND 6 TIMES 10 TO THE 50 ATOMS OF HYDROGEN TO THE STAR
	SYSTEM AT THE TOP OF THE LIST, CROSS OFF THAT STAR SYSTEM, THEN
	PUT YOUR STAR SYSTEM AT THE BOTTOM OF THE LIST AND SEND IT TO
	100 OTHER STAR SYSTEMS.  WITHIN ONE TENTH GALACTIC ROTATION YOU
	WILL RECEIVE ENOUGH HYDROGREN TO POWER YOUR CIVILIZATION UNTIL
	ENTROPY REACHES ITS MAXIMUM!  IT REALLY WORKS!
%
I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations
beautiful from minds profound; if I can remember any of the damn things.
		--Dorothy Parker
%
"That proves you are unusual," returned the Scarecrow; "and I am convinced
the only people worthy of consideration in this world are the unusual ones.
For the common folks are like the leaves of a tree, and live and die
unnoticed."
		-- L. Frank Baum, The Land of Oz
%
"Please remain calm...I may be mad, but I am a professional." 
		-- Mad Scientist
%
Though in my opinion, Emacs just goes a teeny bit too far when it includes a
web browser, directory editor, e-mail reader and news reader, and a version
of othello! It ain't an editor it is a bloody kitchen sink.
		-- Nathan Hand, in comp.os.linux.development.apps
%
Some of them even think they're living a full and productive life instead of
the shallow and meaningless charade that they are actually living.
		-- David Parson, in comp.os.linux.development.apps, 
		   speaking on 'vi' vs. 'emacs'
%
"If only he used his talent for niceness, instead of evil"
                                                    - Get Smart
%
I think we, as students, should be generally more appreciative of the
lengths this school goes to to protect us from barbarian invasion.
		-- Dave Mimno '99, on _swat.talk
%
"Whap!  Whap!  Work you damn program!  Whap!  Oh, look, salad!"
		-- Otavia Propper, in response to the question of what
		   would happen if one tried to fix a program using a
		   cucumber.
%
The default arguments to sendmail (which you can change) are:
     -oi     Do NOT treat a single "." on a line as a message terminator.
             As in, "-oi vey, it truncated my message... why?!"
                -- from the MIME::Lite Perl Module documentation
%
  * MIME::Lite alone cannot help you lose weight. You must supplement
  your use of MIME::Lite with a healthy diet and exercise.
                -- MIME-Lite Perl module documentation
%
Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart;
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness.
                        -- London, 1802
%
"It was on one of my journeys between the EDSAC room and the punching
 equipment that `hesitating at the angles of stairs' the realization
 came over me with full force that a good part of the remainder of my
 life was going to be spent in finding errors in my own programs."
-- Maurice Wilkes, programmer for the first stored-program computer, the
   EDSAC (first operational in 1949), from Computer: A History of the
   Information Machine
%
"CompuServe recently banned the use of Welsh on its server as it
 would not be able to monitor the traffic.  Encryption whether it be
 into PGP, or Welsh is in itself a challenge to authority."
		-- "Communication (3) Language"
		   The Raven, Anarchist Quarterly, Spring 1997.
%
"Mistakes are the price we pay for a full life."
		-- Sophia Loren
%
"You are so part of the world that your slightest action contributes to its
reality.  Your breath changes the atmosphere.  Your encounters with others
alter the fabrics of their lives, and the lives of those who come in contact
with them."
		-- Jane Roberts
%
Bioethics and You...: The cloned sheep has raised an ethical debate: "New
York has introduced a bill to ban cloning of humans," reports the Daily
Scoop.  "And there are bills pending in the other 49 states to ban cloning
of New Yorkers."
%
  Time to stop beating around the bush.  Beat the bush _itself_.
  Give it a good thrashing, and say "bad bush!" in a loud stern tone.
		-- Fred Barling, Humorscope
%
The Number 1 Sign You Have Nothing to Do at Work...
   The 4th Division of Paperclips has overrun the Pushpin Infantry
   and General White-Out has called for a new skirmish.
%
For every romance that begins with a Mickey Rourke type slamming a Kim
Basinger type up against an alley wall in the rain, there are a thousand,
I suppose, that begin when your cat throws up a fur ball in the lap of
the woman you're trying to impress.
		-- film critic Roger Ebert
%
"Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work, driving
 through traffic in a car that you are still paying for, in order to get
 to a job that you need so you can pay for the clothes, car and the house
 that you leave empty all day in order to afford to live in it."
		-- Ellen Goodman
%
"Source code gets compiled and libraries get loaded (insert silly drinking
reference here)."
		-- Dave Mark, "Learn C on the Macintosh"
%
If you still want to do this in light of the above disadvantages, the method
is left as an exercise to the reader.  It'll void your Apache warrenty,
though, and you'll lose all accumulated UNIX guru points.
		-- FAQ for apache, a public-domain web server
%
"O'er the net we go
	Caching all the way;
		Oh what fun it is to surf
			Giving my password away!"
		-- FAQ for the apache web server
%
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth."
		-- George Orwell, 1984
%
"Attention to Detail: noticing that the clock on one of your systems is
using Aleutian time, and changing all the others to match."
		-- Aeleen Frisch, on sysadmin virtues
		   "Essential System Administration"
%
"System V accounting is much more elaborate than under BSD.  It is a complex
system of commands, and shell scripts and C programs, called by one another
in long sequences, all purported to be totally automated and requiring little
or no intervention.  In reality, it is a design only a fervent partisan
could love.  The manual pages alternate between assuring the reader that the
system is robust, reliable, and trouble-free and describing convoluted
procedures for patching corrupted accounting data files.  Be forewarned."
		-- Aeleen Frisch, "Essential System Administration"
%
"Of course, on the system *I* administrate, vi is symlinked to ed.
Emacs has been replaced by a shell script which 1) Generates a syslog
message at level LOG_EMERG; 2) reduces the user's disk quota by 100K;
and 3) RUNS ED!!!!!!"    
		-- Patrick J. LoPresti
%
Webster's Dictionary (7th edition) says that
  OBJECT is derived from the Latin neuter of "obicere", meaning to
throw in the way, to hinder.
  ORIENT is derived from the Latin "oriri", to rise, thus [archaic]
LUSTROUS, SPARKLING
  Thus, OBJECT-ORIENTED must mean "A glitzy thing that hinders and gets
in the way".
 		-- Andrew Appel
%
"Okay.  I thought perhaps you needed to build a coconut bomb to get me out,
but had packed your only coconut..."  
		-- Kira Goetschius
%
A closet is a place for hanging things after you run out of doorknobs.
		-- Doug Larson
%
You people are still using *computers*?  I just whistle into my phone
at 56Kbps, doing the compression, decoding the images, and running the
Java programs all in my head.
PGP encryption does slow me down a bit though...
		-- Guy Macon, in alt.shenanigans
%
So far, no one has opted to publish my sequel to "the Book of Mormon,": 
"The Book of Mormon 2 (this time its PERSONAL).  This one is set in the
roaring twenties, with the lord JC as a smooth-talkin' private eye, livin
on the mean streets of Chicago.  Basically, he spends the book battling
the Mob, which really sucks for the Mob, let me tell you.  He's got tha
phat "gonnections"
		-- Greg Ingber '99, on _swat.talk
%
Reality is a complex, non-linear system. 		 
		-- John Peterson
%
Please help me. When you download files on hacking and the file extension
is "c" how do you use it?
		-- antons @ iafrica.com, in alt.hackers.malicious
%
An optimist is someone who believes Schroedinger's cat is half alive.
%
"If mathematicians wanted to write lots of things down, they'd be english
majors."
		-- Prof. Janet Talvacchia
%
machinename$ rm files*
                                 Delete files ? y
                      Really delete the files ? y
             Don't you want to keep the files ? n
                    So I'll delete them, then ? y
             And you don't want them retained ? y
              Do you want to change your mind ? n
Are you sure I can't change your mind for you ? n
					      	        -- Simon Slavin
%
Why can they never grasp the obvious?  Why do they have to generate
bizarre failure-conspiracy-theories involving the Illuminati, the cheese
sandwich they had for lunch last week and the phase of the moon?
		-- Chris Richardson
%
Like frozen sentries of the serengeti, the century-old termite mounds had
withstood all tests of time and foe - all tests, that is, except the one
involving drunken aardvarks and a stolen wrecking ball."
		-- Gary Larson
%
"Sects, sects, sects!  That's all you religion majors ever think about."
		-- Garth Snyder
%
"If I work incessantly to the last, nature owes me another form of
 existence when the present one collapses."
		-- Goethe, 1829
%
One reason the Services have trouble operating jointly is that they don't
speak the same language.
	o For example, if you told Navy personnel to "secure a building,"
they would turn off the lights and lock the doors.  
	o Army personnel would occupy the building so no one could enter.  
	o Marines would assault the building, capture it, and defend it with
suppressive fire and close combat.
	o The Air Force, on the other hand, would take out a three-year
lease with an option to buy.
%
In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal
that our Universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to
time.
		-- Edward P. Tryon
%
"The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the
universe is that it has never tried to contact us."
                -- Bill Watterson in "Calvin and Hobbes"
%
"Actually this is a common misconception...I do *not* in fact have a lot
of time on my hands at all! I just have a very very very very bad sense
of priorities."       			      	      
		-- Dean Engelhardt
%
Don't get mad;  get congruent to zero mod two.
		-- Tom Hunter, Swarthmore math professor
%
Did you ever walk into a room and forget why you walked in?  I think
that's how dogs spend their lives.
		-- Sue Murphy
%
A lady came up to me on the street and pointed to my suede jacket.  "You
know a cow was murdered for that jacket?"  she sneered.  I replied in a
psychotic tone, "I didn't know there were any witnesses.  Now I'll have
to kill you too."
		-- Jake Johansen
%
"Drag me, drop me, treat me like an object"
	-- Melbourne PC '96 exhibition T-shirt
%
I like to sing to the songs on the radio in my car.  When you go into a
tunnel, it's hard to come out on the right note.  Actually, the news is
more difficult.
		-- Mark Pitta
%
'The file you requested is currently unavailable. Please try again at
a later time. Thank you for using Colorado.Edu computer systems.
This message brought to you by Major Domo and his group of singing
and dancing polar bears. Contact postmaster@yourdomain for booking
info.'			       -- Perry Rovers
%
A computer scientist is someone who, when told to "Go to Hell," sees
the "go to," rather than the destination, as harmful.
		-- Dr. Roger M. Firestone
%
There was a young bard of Japan
Whose limericks never would scan
When they said it was so,
He replied, "Yes, I know,
But I always try to fit as many syllables into the last line as I possibly can." 
		-- Anonymous
%
There was a Soviet captain named XXXXXXXXXX
Who was a XXXXXXX technician in XXXXXXXXX.
He was XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
For failure to clear
Limericks with his superiors. 
		-- Elliott Moreton
%
A lady whose name was McCord
Once over this limerick pored
To find the evil design
Hidden in the last line
But alas, she could not see the . 
		-- Elliott Moreton
%
A cardiac patient named Fred
Made a limerick up in his head.
But before he had time
To write down the last line 
		-- Elliott Moreton
%
A newspaper poet for Hearst
Deprived of his reason
By uncontrolled sneezing
Was by phantasmal demons coerced
To write all of his limericks reversed. 
		-- Elliott Moreton
%
This poem is copyright (c)
By the author, 1983.
Prior written consent
Is required to present
It on radio, film, or TV. 
		-- Elliott Moreton
%
There once was a fellow from Xiangling
Whose greatest delight was in mangling
Poems. He would drop
Words between lines and lop
Their ends off, and leave readers dang 
		-- Elliott Moreton
%
My father used to tell me that between them, he and his father knew
everything. "All right," I finally challenged him, "what's the meaning of
life?" He replied, "That's one of the things my father knows."
		-- Jed Hartman
%
"It's like those cartoons of the roadrunner and me.  They get shown time
and time again, and the same thing happens every time the cartoon gets
shown.  It doesn't ever change, no matter how many times you show the
cartoon.  The roadrunner always gets away.  You know what?  I wouldn't
have it any other way.  I just love that cartoon even though I know I am
going to get blown to bits, flattened, made a fool of every time."  
		-- Webster Kitchell, "God's Dog: Conversations with Coyote"
%
Ski!:
     A shout to alert people ahead that a loose ski is coming down the
     hill.  Another warning skiers should be familiar with is "Avalanche!"
     (which tells everyone that a hill is coming down the hill).
		-- from "The Skier's Dictionary"
%
Traverse:
     To ski across a slope at an angle; one of two quick and simple
     methods of reducing speed.
Tree:
     The other method.
		-- from "The Skier's Dictionary"
%
	A mosquito cried out in pain:
	"A chemist has poisoned my brain!"
	The cause of his sorrow
	was para-dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane
		-- Adam Bernard
%
Oh freddled gruntbuggly thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lugrid bee.
Groop I implore thee my froonting turlingdromes
And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles
Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon,
See if I don't!				
		-- Vogon Poetry, by Douglas Adams
%
Blackadder: Right, Baldrick, let's try again, shall we?  This is called
adding.  If I have two beans, and then I add two beans, what do I have?
Baldrick: Some beans.
BA: Yes...and no.  Let's try again, shall we?  I have two beans, then I
add two more beans.  What does that make.
B: A very small casserole.
BA: Baldrick, the ape creatures of the Indus have mastered this.  Now try
again.  One, two, three, four.  So how many are there?
B: THree.
BA: What?
B: And that one.
BA: Three...and that one.  So if I add that one to the three, what will I
have?
B: Some beans.
BA: Yes.  To you, Baldrick, the Renaissance was soemthing that just
happened to other people, wasn't it?
%
a dozen dogs bark
outside m[y] jail window
they love to irritate
let us in gruff bang
lo nice quie[t] reappears
once i have my ax
	-- a Scrabble poem, using all the tiles, http://www.cheapass.com/
%
"It's over, and can't be helped, and that's one consolation, as they
  always say in Turkey, when they cut the wrong man's head off"
		-- Charles Dickens, "The Pickwick Papers"
%
You'd have difficulty screwing in a lamp too.  Try doing it in a bed instead.
		-- Anthony DeBoer
%
I wouldn't touch ActiveX with a 10-foot polecat.
I might, however, let one loose on the developers.
                               --cddukes @ eos.ncsu.edu
%
"Forget the wineglass! My ambition as a bass:  To sing a note so low,
and loud, that I could get a job with a demolition crew to help topple
buildings."
                -- steve @ minerva.cis.yale.edu
%
  "When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute.
   But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute, and it's longer than any hour.
   That's relativity."   
		-- Albert Einstein
%
"I always wanted to be a Secret Service agent," he confessed.  "Because you
are the only person in the world that can knock down the president and get
away with it."
		-- Neil Stephenson, "Zodiac"
%
"Try moving off NT easily. You can move from Solaris to HP/UX to AIX or DEC
 easily relative to moving off of NT, which is like a Roach Motel. Once you
 check in, you never check out."
		-- Scott McNealy, Sun Microsystems
%
The wonder of the Internet is that it brings someone like you closer to
me. That's why I don't like the Internet.
		-- Dogbert, in Dogbert's Oracle
%
Hmm.. I'm a "Computing Officer". Unfortunately, I don't have any
"Computing Other Ranks" to shout at yet, which is what I thought being
an officer was about..
		-- Chris King
%
Usenet subject line of the week [from news.admin.censorship]:
	Virtual Sex Available in alt.fan.michael-bolton Was: There are no
	moderated newsgroups
%
"The November snow was thin and slushy - almost as if the angels in
Heaven were brushing their teeth and dribbling toothpaste over the
earth."                                          - Mary Catherine Weir
                             _Son of "It Was a Dark and Stormy Night"_
%
Administrator's Dictionary:  
    Supercomputer n. 1 A computer that anticipates commands. 2 A computer
    that can finish an infinite loop in under 2 seconds.
%
"I'm not crazy, I've just been in a very bad mood for 40 years."  
		-- Steel Magnolias
%
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.    
		-- Oscar Wilde
%
"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 way
is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The
first method is far more difficult" 
		-- C.A.R. Hoare
%
Just for once, i'd like to take the square root of a negative number and
have it turn out to be okay.
		-- Chaos Golubitsky
%
# wall "Mwuahahahaha!!!"; newfs /dev/userdisk
%
Life is easier to take than you'd think:  all that is necessary is to accept
the impossible, do without the indispensable, and bear the intolerable. 
		-- Kathleen Norris
%
"NIS+, aka 'NIS on Steriods whose Face Nobody is Ever Going to Kick Sand in
Again,' is designed to correct the deficiencies of NIS and introduce
deficiencies of its own. ...It's a distributed database _and_ a dessert
topping; it sings, it dances, it leaps capital T in a single bound."
		-- "UNIX System Administration Handbook, 2nd ed."
%
BTW, this is *Thursday*.  One uses *odd* numbered sendmails on Thursday.
		-- Malcolm Ray
%
The windmills are winning.
%
"Something is about to happen.  Something peculiar is about to happen any
moment."
		-- "James and the Giant Peach"
%
A Windows partition, if left unattended for even as much as a few months,
can attain something akin to sentience and become bent on destroying your
drive.  Real OS's, which have never had to deal with an attack of this
nature, are powerless and fall back in disarray.
		-- Peter Dalgaard
%
"The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements: Energy,
Matter, and Enlightened Self-Interest."
		-- J. Michael Straczynski, "Babylon 5"
%
UNIX is not some crystalline bon-bon for computer scientists to smack
their lips over. It's all a big hack! Get over it! Go back to your
syntax-directed Scheme editor and your pen-and-paper philosophizing!
Leave the rest of us to our Perl hacking and .Xdefaults files.
		-- Garth Snyder, on big-staff at cs.swarthmore.edu
%
"Of course!  Abednigo just cries 'Blue frog!  Blue frog!'"
		-- Joe Robins
%
Aquarius (January 21 - February 18)
  You'll have a bad day today, but no matter.  You can always return it.
%
On Bureaucracy....
        The Pythagorean theorem contains 24 words. Archimedes' Principle,
67.  The Ten Commandments, 179. The American Declaration of Independence,
300. And recent legislation in Europe concerning when and where to smoke,
23,942.			                 
		-- The European, June 23-29, 1995
%
First, there were the Welsh, who prayed on their knees, and on their
neighbours.  Then there were the Scots, who kept the Sabbath, and anything
else they could get their hands on.  Then there were the Irish, who were
never quite sure what it was they were fighting for, but were always ready
to fight for it anyway.  And finally, there were the English, who
considered themselves a self-made nation, thus relieving the Almighty of a
terrible responsibility.
%
They have recently announced an atomical sized abacus, made with Bucky Balls
. . . Certainly not useful information, since one could not possibly use 
this device without the aid of a computer.
		-- Erik Van Riper
%
"Words have meaning and names have power . . . The universe began with a
word . . . How can you have language without thought, and how can you
conceive a thought without language?"
		-- Lorien to Captain Sheriden, Babylon 5
%
I usually find "alt" + "ctrl" + "clawhammer" to work in those situations.  I
hope to buy an abacus soon, though.
		-- Panther Wyvern
%
"Sentiment without action is the anathama of the soul"      
		-- Edward Abbey
%
When you say "I wrote a program that crashed Windows", people just stare at
you blankly and say "Hey, I got those with the system, *for free*"
        --Linus Torvalds  
%
"Why are we hiding from the police dad?"
"They use EMACS son.  We use vi".
 		-- Peter Gutmann
%
"They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me."
   -- Nathaniel Lee on being consigned to a mental institution, circa 17th c.
%
Get with the program, jeffrey. No one is "wrong" on Usenet. They are
either 100% totally correct, or they are "a lying, scum sucking weasel."
There is no in between.	       
		-- Garrett Johnson, in talk.politics.misc
%
 This is a test of the emergency signature system.  Were this an actual
 signature, you would see amusing mottos, disclaimers, a zillion net
 addresses, or edifying philisophical statements.  This is only a test.
%
"Only wimps use tape backup: _real_ men just upload their important stuff on
ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it." 
		--Linus Torvalds
%
"The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make a
 nuisance of himself to other people."     
		-- John Stuart Mill, _On Liberty_
%
Secondly, Latin is a so-called "dead language."  It takes a lot to kill a 
language.  There are countries the size of my kitchen that have their own 
healthy languages.  Clearly, if Latin was useful in its normal form, it 
would be alive today.  Therefore the language must be defective.  I don't 
see much risk in changing it.  What's the worst thing that could happen 
-- Latin will become unpopular?
		-- from the DNRC Newsletter, by Scott Adams
%
For example, let's say you wake up in the morning and you're still tired. 
That's a sure sign of something terribly wrong with your body.  Run to 
the store and buy a Dilbert book, then drink some coffee and take a nap.  
You'll be feeling better in no time.  I guarantee it.
		-- from the DNRC Newsletter, by Scott Adams
%
     Far be it from us to TELL you when you should become a parent,
     but we WILL be so bold as to offer you some guidelines.
		-- "DNS and BIND", page 184
%
Matthew 5:37: Just say `Yes' or `No' -- anything else you say comes from  
the Evil One. 		       
		-- the Bible, discussing binary computers
%
If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, it's just
possible you haven't grasped the situation. 		     
		-- Jean Kerr
%
Just when I found out the meaning of life, they changed it. 
		-- George Carlin
%
Really?  He might do it just for fun.  I know I would.  If I were God, I'd
get together with all my other God friends and have a big party.  We'd all
get drunk and create unliftable rocks, then try to lift them.  It would be
loads of fun!  Then I'd probably just destroy the rocks with a lightning
bolt.  Then I'd probably pass out.  :^)
		-- toMM, in rec.puzzles
%
"Pro-wrestling slips by me, Dr. Seuss slips by me... Must be the hoe-down
I'm listening to."					     
		-- Fred Bush
%
     ... or, here's a thought, why don't we talk about SF for a while?
          -- Simon van Dongen, in rec.arts.sf.written
%
We are sorry, but the number you have dialed is imaginary. 
Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again. 
		-- David Grabiner 
%
"GUIs normally make it simple to accomplish simple actions and impossible to
 accomplish complex actions."  
		-- Doug Gwyn, 22/Jun/91 in comp.unix.wizards
%
"I ought not to let my mind wander as it's too small to be out on its own."
		-- Danilo Thann
%
"Of course, if you let them run procmail they can do arbitrarily stupid
things anyway."  
		-- Dan Eisenbud
%
"My enthusiam for this meal can't even be described by a scalar."
		-- Dan Eisenbud
%
"Some people have told me they don't think a fat penguin really embodies the
grace of Linux, which just tells me they have never seen a angry penguin
charging at them in excess of 100mph.  They'd be a lot more careful about
what they say if they had."
		-- Linus Torvalds
%
"If I had one of these, I could reboot it on a regular basis."
		-- Aaron Marsh
%
"Hey... I like being spawned."
		-- Aaron Marsh
%
"I refuse to engage in structural engineering discussion of a banana over
breakfast."
		-- Aaron Marsh
%
"Actually, I want to run RCS on myself."
		-- Aaron Marsh
%
"The SGI drool box. It's big. It's purple. It's modular."
		-- Aaron Marsh
%
"This is where the future is: 19" PC rack mounts. I've decided everything
I buy from now on will be rack mount. Rack mount PC. Rack mount monitor.
Rack mount cuisinart. Rack mount toaster."
		-- Aaron Marsh
%
"Now all we need is 13 gallons of stick-tack. And a blender."
		-- Erik Rosolowsky
%
"Look at the fingers of your hands if you want to know how things that are 
different can be the same."				  
		-- Mikhail Naimy
%
It is by Caffeine alone I set my mind in motion,
It is by the Beans of Java my thoughts acquire speed
The hands acquire shakes, the shakes become a warning,
It is by Caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.
%
"If you are not certain of any fact, you cannot be certain of the meaning
of your words either." 		     
		-- Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty
%
One cannot guess how a word functions. One has to look at its use and learn
from that. But the difficulty is to remove the prejudice which stands in the
way of doing this. It is not a stupid prejudice. 
		-- Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
%
"... for I know that queer things happen in this world. It's one of the few
things I've really learnt in my life."
	   -- Wittgenstein, from a letter sent to G. E. Moore, October 1946
%
USENET haiku:   Take it somewhere else
		This thread does not belong here
		Death to crossposters
%
"The POP3 server service depends on the SMTP server service, which 
failed to start because of the following error:
The operation completed successfully."  
		-- Windows NT Server v3.51
%
"We're in the middle of a flame war because he refuses to acknowledge my
technical superiority and his simian ancestry"		      
		-- Dilbert
%
"Never try to outstubborn a cat." 	
		-- Lazarus Long
%
  This morning at breakfast, I noticed that Kellogg's have put a 
helpline number on their cornflake packets ?
  WHY ???!!!!!
  When you need a helpline for breakfast cereals, it's time to start
thinking about tearing down civilisation and giving the ants a go.
		-- Chris King
%
"You know the size of your computer at home?  That supports one user,
namely you.  To support the two hundred and fifty billion people on the
Internet, we had to buy an island in the Caribbean and convert it into
a super computer.  Therefore, we can't show you that computer, much as
we'd like to."			
		-- Art Taylor
%
Get all the techs with vibrating pagers in the conference room, prop
one end of the table up, place the pagers on the elevated end, and
have everyone call themselves at the same time.  Voila - Pager races!
		-- Bruce Hawick
%
Could you imagine Neuromancer written by a sysadmin:
     Inside the NIS master of the large sun cluster, Case looked around.
   It was an old, poorly administered SunOS box.  He checked the 
   permissions on /usr/openwin/bin/loadmodule.   Bingo, 4755.
		-- Mark Haselden
%
You can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
		-- The President, "Dr. Strangelove"
%
Guano: Okay. I'm gonna get your money for ya. But if you don't get the 
	President of the United States on that phone, you know what's 
	gonna happen to you?
Mandrake: What?!
Guano: You're gonna have to answer to the Coca Cola company.
		-- "Dr. Strangelove"
%
I don't know what's scarier - losing nuclear weapons or that it happens 
so often that we have a name for it.
		-- Giles Prentice, in "Broken Arrow"
%
Trying to get rid of something by sleeping is just as useless as trying to
obtain something by sleeping.
		-- Soren Kierkegaard, "Philosophical Fragments"
%
You DON'T want to get into a misery poker match with faculty, 'cause we'll
whup any of you six ways to Sunday.  Academic whining is like the monster
truck rally of whining; Swat student whining is like a go-kart race in
comparison."					
		-- Timothy Burke,  16/4/96
%
It's been my experience that most manuals -- for anything -- are best
viewed as existensial works of science fiction/fantasy writing. 
		-- Tom Harrington
%
Using the conferencing feature of your office phone, dial one
 Induhvidual, then while it's ringing dial another and conference them
 together.  Put your own phone on mute and listen to see how long they'll
 make small talk before figuring out that neither one placed the call.
		-- Scott Adams, Practical Jokes for the Office
%
Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.  The
courage to change the things I can.  And the wisdom to hide the bodies of
the people I had to kill because they pissed me off.  	 
		-- J. G. Bullers
%
"It's not to control, but to protect the citizens of Singapore.  In our
society, you can state your views, but they have to be correct."
		-- Ernie Hai, co-ordinator of the Singapore Government
		   Internet Project
%
"I went to the airport, with my ticket to Los Angeles. I brought
three bags and told the Skycap, "I want this on to go to Seattle,
this one to St. Louis and this one to Chicago."
He said, "I'm sorry sir, but we can't do that."
I said, "Why not? You did it last time."	
		-- Henny Youngman
%
"Granny never got lost. She always knew where she was.  The problem was, 
the rest of the world didn't."         
		-- Terry Pratchett, "Equal Rites"
%
Libra (September 22 - October 22)
  Excellent day to be absurdly courteous.  Rush to open doors for everyone,
  for example, and beam foolishly at them.  There's nothing more entertaining
  than making everyone wonder what in tarnation you're up to...
%
The answer, I think, lies in explosives. It's been said that there is no
problem that cannot be solved by a suitable application of high explosives.
Now if I can only figure out how to send them via e-mail ...
		-- Vince Sabio, HumourNet Moderator
%
Tender though the love he bore,
You had loved a little more....
Lady, go and curse your star,
Thus Love is, and thus you are.	
		-- Dorothy Parker, "To a Much Too Unfortunate Lady"
%
"I used to wish the universe were fair.  Then one day it hit me:  What if
the universe were fair?  Then all the awful things that happen to us in
life, would happen because we deserved them.  So now I take great pleasure
in the general hostility and unfairness of things."
		-- Marcus, on Babylon 5
%
Things we wish we could say in real life:
        "Something dreadful is happening!  Taking emergency exit!"
                -- error message from elm (UNIX mailer)
%
Q: "How does one measure the height of a building using a barometer?"
A: Drop the barometer off the building onto someones head, killing them
outright.  Wait for the next day's papers and read the part where is says
"A man (39)  was killed yesterday when a scientist (26) dropped a
barometer from the top of an [x] foot building".
		-- Dr N.C. Eastmond, in sci.physics
%
Use the force -- change the source
%
The less-versed dismiss hoagies as "subs" that happen to be made in
Philadelphia. There is a distinction--our hoagie guys don't wash their
hands.
		-- Tom Baldwin, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Oct.6, 1993
%
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds,
and the pessimist fears that this is true."
		-- James Branch Cabell 1879-1958
%
Dating: when aiming for the common denominator, be prepared for the
occasional division by zero.
%
        When you're swimmin' in the creek
        And an eel bites your cheek
        That's a moray!
	                -- Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers
%
        Q: How many surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
        A: Two.  One to hold the giraffe and the other to fill the bathtub
           with brightly colored machine tools.
%
This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly.  It should be thrown with 
great force.					        
		-- Dorothy Parker
%
... 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
%
"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build
bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce
bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning."
		-- Rich Cook
%
I saw a subliminal advertising executive, but only for a second.
		-- Stephen Wright
%
It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it.
		-- Stephen Wright
%
The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to 
choose from.                                 
		-- Andrew S. Tanenbaum
%
18.12:  Why don't C comments nest?  How am I supposed to comment out
        code containing comments?  Are comments legal inside quoted
        strings?
A:      We believe it has something to do with captivity; C comments in
        the wild mate and nest normally.  The San Diego Zoo believes it
        has managed to convince some C comments to nest, but it's hard
        to tell how much of that is really in the preprocessor, and how
        much of it is just bovine fecal matter.
		-- from the FAQ for comp.lang.c
%
    "Why's it so important that you want to contact the governments
     of our Earth?"  
    "Because all you of Earth are idiots!" 
		-- Plan 9 from Outer Space
%
I should be allowed to blurt the merest idea
if by random whim one occurs to me
 but sadly, this can never be --
I am not allowed to think.
		--They Might Be Giants
%
> "We have two ears and one mouth, so we may listen twice as much as we
> speak" Epictetus
Aha! This obviously explains many people's attitude to Usenet: "We have
ten fingers and two eyes, so we may type five times as much drivel as
we actually bother to read."		
		-- Arthur Chance
%
 > Can you see evidence of aliens on the moon as well ???
You can see evidence of aliens in your oatmeal, if you look with the
right mindset and expectations.
		-- Jeramie Hicks, in sci.space.policy
%
"True Terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school 
class is running the country."    			 
		-- Kurt Vonnegut
%
People always say you should be yourself, like yourself is this definite
thing, like a toaster, or something.  Like you can know what it is, even.
But every so often, I'll have like -- a moment, where being myself, and my
life right where I am is, like, enough.
		-- Angela Chase, "My So-Called Life"
%
I referred the problems to my customer service organization but they just
continued to lay in sun spots on my rug and lick their fur. 
		-- Scott Adams, author of "Dilbert"
%
Phil was created the first year of the strip. Originally he was conceived as
Satan, but my editor thought that might cause problems with readers. So
instead of the Lord of Darkness I ended up rewriting the character to be
Phil from Heck, the Prince of Insufficient Light. It seemed right that he
should have a big spoon instead of a scary pitchfork. 
		-- Scott Adams, author of "Dilbert"
%
If the sales person at your local software store gives you a blank stare or
says they don't carry it, I recommend scrunching your face up and saying
something incredibly condescending like "It runs under Windows -- maybe
you've heard of THAT."  (Macintosh users adjust accordingly. If you have any
trouble sounding condescending, find a Unix user to show you how it's done.) 
		-- Scott Adams, author of "Dilbert"
%
Q. What is the difference between a cat toy and a scratching post?
A. Anything nailed down is a scratching post, everything else is a cat toy.
%
Spaniard Alberto Porta has declared himself a country.  Porta, who now goes
by the name Zush, says he got the idea from a schizophrenic he met in a
mental hospital in 1968. "Evrugo Mental State" consists of one inhabitant --
himself -- and he has issued himself a passport so he can move around. Zush
has grudgingly adopted a state flag. "I don't need flags and hymns," he
says, "but the only way people accept that you have your own state is by
using symbols of state. It's purely for diplomatic reasons."
		-- From Reuter's news service, 28 April 1996
%
This life has been a test.  If had been an actual life, you would have
received instructions on where to go, and what to do.
                -- Angela Chase, "My So-Called Life"
%
"I have a photograph.
Preserve your memories,
They're all that's left you."		
		-- "Bookends", Simon and Garfunkel
%
"Cats were put into the world to disprove the dogma that all things were
created to serve man." 					    
		-- Paul Gray
%
"There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is having lots to
do and not doing it."					
		-- John W. Raper
%
"The Internet, of course, is more than just a place to find pictures of
people having sex with dogs."	   	  
		-- Time Magazine, 3 July 1995
%
When one burns one's bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.
		-- Dylan Thomas
%
Theodore Sturgeon's Law: when told that most SF was pretty bad, he responded
"Sure 90% of SF is crap, but 90% of _everything_ is crap."
%
People throwing themselves at people is the basis of civilization.
		-- Rayanne Graff, My So-Called Life
%
It just seems like, you agree to have a certain personality or something.
For no reason.  Just to make things easier for everyone.  But when you think
about it, I mean, how do you know it's even you? 
                -- Angela Chase, My So-Called Life
%
I cannot bring myself to eat a well-balanced meal in front of my mother.  It
just means too much to her.                 -Angela Chase, My So-Called Life
%
 (3) With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not
necessarily a good idea. It is hard to be sure where they are going to land,
and it could be dangerous sitting under them as they fly overhead.
		-- RFC 1925 - Fundamental truths of networking
%
But then you could make ANY word derogatory by INTENDING it to be.
(Say the word "cabbage" and it stirs no emotion:glare at somebody
and throw in an expletive or two  and it's bound to offend people.)
		-- from alt.appalachian
%
Prank on Windows Users
----------------------
Find a screenshot utility (software) and take a nice screen shot of the
computer's desktop.  Convert it to Windows wallpaper.  Now delete all
icons off of your desktop.  When an Induhvidual tries to use the computer
none of the icons will work.  Hilarity ensues.
		-- from the Dogbert's New Ruling Class newsletter
%
A lot of academics are academics because we were the kind of poor
souls who actually liked going to school; we liked it so much that we
never left. So we're often socially maladjusted creatures. Do not feed
the professor; it may bite.	    
		-- Tim Burke, Swarthmore professor
%
"vi is my shepherd; i shall not font. in the name of the edlin, and the ex,
and the holy post. :wq"			 
		-- sig of lilith @ the.satanic.org
%
Some go for the carrot approach, others the stick, others both.  If you
favour the carrot, try offering memory upgrades or faster processors.
For sticks, try bullwhips.  Many computers are easily fooled, so placing
a picture of yourself in front of a computer will often cause it to think
you are watching and it will be too scared to misbehave.
		-- from the FAQ for alt.sysadmin.recovery
%
Go ahead and fail. But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with style. 
A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success. Embrace    
failure! Seek it out. Learn to love it. That may be the only way any of 
us will ever be free.     
		-- Tom Robbins, "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues"
%
If someone offers you the world on a silver platter, take the platter.
                -- The Wall Street Journal
%
"Everybody wonders which Canadian province will be the first to apply for
membership in the US; nobody bothers to speculate on which state will
first be asked to _leave_ the Union.  California has my vote."
                -- Trevor Fiatal
%
I subscribe to the theory that you if don't do something a little off the 
wall & crazy you'll go nuts...				 
%
"The difference between scientists and engineers is that when engineers screw
up, people die."					
		-- Professor Orthlieb
%
Last week's _Chronicle_ erroneously reported that Eric Mitchell [member of 
the Austin City Council] had shouted "Up yours" to residents of the Swede 
Hill neighborhood at a Housing Subcommittee meeting last year.  In fact, 
Mitchell leveled a "Screw You!" to the residents.  The _Chronicle_ regrets 
the error.    -- From the January 19, 1996 issue of the Austin _Chronicle_
%
Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others 
that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been 
would have appeared to them to be otherwise.           
		-- The Duchess in Alice
%
Conductor, when you receive a fare,
Punch in the presence of the passenjare!
	A blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare,
	A buff trip slip for a six-cent fare,
	A pink trip slip for a three-cent fare,
Punch in the presence of the passenjare!
	Punch brothers! Punch with care!
	Punch in the presence of the passenjare.
		-- quoted in Twain's "A Literary Nightmare"
%
"I have been listening," said Arthur, "but I'm not sure it's helped."
 Ford grasped him by the lapels of his dressing gown and spoke to him 
 as slowly and distinctly and patiently as if he were somebody from a 
 telephone company accounts department. 	     
		-- Douglas Adams
%
One's never alone with a rubber duck.		
		-- Douglas Adams
%
Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, "Where have I gone wrong?" Then
a voice says to me, "This is going to take more than one night." 
	         -- Charlie Brown, "Peanuts"
%
The most important thing in the programming language is the name. A
language will not succeed without a good name. I have recently invented a
very good name and now I am looking for a suitable language. 
	         -- D. E. Knuth, 1967
%
I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but
they've always worked for me. 		          
		-- Hunter S. Thompson
%
My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
	         -- Ashleigh Brilliant
%
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a
mistake when you make it again.		         
		--