I don't see what C++ has to do with keeping people from shooting themselves
in the foot.  C++ will happily load the gun, offer you a drink to steady
your nerves, and help you aim.
          -- Peter da Silva
%
How about an Australian-language version? 'Your program just attempted an 
illegal instruction.  No worries, mate.'
          -- Paul Tomblin
%
This was, apparently, beyond her ken.  So far beyond her ken that she was
well into barbie territory.
          -- J. D. Baldwin
%
I picked up a Magic 8-Ball the other day and it said 'Outlook not so good.'
I said 'Sure, but Microsoft still ships it.'
          -- Anonymous
%
Wife: Would you like to (perform household chore)?
Me:   No.
At least, I'm bloody well tempted to reply with that, although it's been
proven over time to be a Relationship Reboot Sequence.
          -- dpm
%
"I told $VERY_BIG_CLIENT that sure, we can do $THING_THAT_VIOLATES_CAUSALITY
 -- by Tuesday.  You can do that, right?"
          -- Things that a sysadmin dreads hearing, #235
%
It seems that we were audited recently, and the auditors found a certain
'f' word in the comments of a configuration file, and deemed that this
is a 'security risk'.
          -- Paul Fenwick
%
It's not hard, it's just asking for a visit by the fuckup fairy.
          -- Peter da Silva
%
I hate mornings.  I know they hate me back, too.
          -- Joel Gluth
%
The Write Many, Read Never drive.  For those people that don't know
their system has a /dev/null already.
          -- Rik Steenwinkel, singing the praises of 8mm Exabytes
%
I'm not sure if this is a good or a bad thing.
Probably a bad thing; most things are bad things.
          -- Nile Evil Bastard
%
Revenge is an integral part of forgiving and forgetting.
          -- The BOFH
%
Almost any animal is capable of learning a stimulus/response
  association, given enough repetition.  -- Lionel Lauer
Experimental observation suggests that this isn't true if
  double-clicking is involved.           -- Malcolm Ray
%
I once successfully declined a departmental retreat, saying that on 
that day I planned instead to advance.
          -- Alan J. Rosenthal
%
Either way, it'll remind the clued that there's only one letter 
difference between 'turkey' and 'turnkey'.
          -- Mike Andrews
%
Crowds want to beat, journalists deserve to be beaten.  Where lies 
the problem?
          -- Lars Syrstad
%
The pluses in my current job include laughing in the face of Nobel
laureates who have just lost the only copy of their data.  (Hey,
I'm still a BOFH).
          -- Bob Dowling
%
Better to teach a man to fish than to give him a fish.  And if he can't
be bothered to learn to fish and starves to death, that's a good enough
outcome for me.
          -- Steve VanDevender
%
> Aqua Regis is HCl+H2SO4, and attacks gold.
While applying it to a luser, remember to sing "What a Friend We Have
In Regis".
          -- Patrick Wade
%
Compared to system administration, being cursed forever is a step up.
          -- Paul Tomko
%
We're the technical experts.  We were hired so that management could 
ignore our recommendations and tell us how to do our jobs.
          -- Mike Andrews
%
I didn't need to sabotage anything.  Not being around to say "No that
won't work" or "you can't do it that way" is more than enough damage.
(Ego problem?  It's not a problem.)
          -- Graham Reed, on job endings
%
One of us has our mind in the gutter.  I suspect it's me, but I'm
not entirely sure.
          -- Mike Sphar
%
Stress, n. The mental confusion and physiological upset resulting from
a mental/physical conflict, such as when the body wants to kick the
living shit out of some luser who richly deserves it, and the brain
veto-ing the proposition.
          -- Dan Holdsworth 
%
They got rid of it because they judged it more trouble than it was
worth.  (And considering they'd gone to great lengths to minimize
its worth, I suppose they were right.)
          -- J. D. Baldwin
%
One of my colleages will say "Oh, I just thought of a problem with 
$FOO, what if the $FLUB $FROBS the $THINGO?"  To which I say: "It'll be 
covered by the $FLEEN that I insisted on in the meeting before last,
which is why I insisted on it."
          -- Lionel Lauer
%
Any research done on how to efficiently use computers has been long lost
in the mad rush to upgrade systems to do things that aren't needed by
people who don't understand what they are really supposed to do with
them.
          -- Graham Reed
%
If nothing else, I can watch my cow-orkers dodge clues in a manner
vaguely reminescent of Keanu Reeves from The Matrix
          -- Justin Chandler
The lusers I've had to work with in the past would never need to dodge;
they've been armored in triple-plated apathy for so long you can almost
hear the clues ricochet off of them with an audible "pting".
          -- dpm
%
Don't even get me started on the MCSEs I know.  It's a miracle of
modern technology that some of these fsckwits still draw breath,
much less a paycheck.
          -- Marc Bowden
%
...every kitten will be allocated an unique IP-address at birth, so 
you'll be able to do a quick traceroute to find where your cat has 
got to... and "finger my pussy" will have an entirely different
meaning... 
          -- Tanuki
%
Surely the 98% of DNA we share with monkeys must be enough to stop 
people from sinking this low.
          -- Frossie
%
There are mushrooms that can survive weeks, months without air or food.
They just dry out and when water comes back, they wake up again.  And
call the helldesk about their password expiring.
          -- after Jens Benecke and Tanuki in a.s.r.
%
Not that I'm annoyed at this particular bit of recto-plasmic sputum
which has crawled up from the depths of product mis-management to 
haunt me.  Not at all.
          -- Simon Burr
%
I have a feeling the auditors haven't looked at crontab yet,
but I'm curious to see if they deem a reference to "yogurt
sucking maggots" a security risk as well.
          -- Paul Fenwick
%
"A" is for Arrogance, properly done.
"B" is for Bastard, the New Zealand one.
"C" is for Cynic, jaded and tired;
    it's also for Caffeine, which keeps us all wired.
          -- float@dayspring.firedrake.org
%
"D" for Delete, we'll do it to you;
"E" for 31337, the skr1pt-k1ddie's due.
"F" is for Format(1M), we use it on disks,
"G" is the middle name of the guy who does RISKS.
          -- float@dayspring.firedrake.org
%
"H" for the Hubris that makes lusers luse;
"I"'m the Important one, the person who su(8)'s.
"J" is for Jaded, see "C" above;
"K" is for Kill(1), a command we all love.
          -- float@dayspring.firedrake.org
%
"L" is for Luser, the sysadmin's bane,
"M" with a "4" keeps the mail gurus sane.
"N" is for No, whatever the question,
"O" is for Octal, the way of permissions.
          -- float@dayspring.firedrake.org
%
"P" is for Password, have you changed yours lately?
"Q" is for Quotas, which simplify greatly.
"R" is for Random, a most useful quality,
"S" I can't tell you, it's against policy.
          -- float@dayspring.firedrake.org
%
"T" is for TECO, a very old editor,
"U" is for Unix, which has no competitor.
"V" is the System whose Release 4 we wrestle with,
"W" is for W(1), to see who(1) we nestle with.
          -- float@dayspring.firedrake.org
%
"X" is the windowing system from Hell,
"Y" do we use it?  The rest suck as well!
"Z" is for Zero, indicating success
It terminates programs -- and alphabets, yes.
          -- float@dayspring.firedrake.org
%
I got told by a friend's ex-girlfriend that she could tell I was
a Linux geek from the way I *walked*.
            -- Skud
%
I don't have a sense of humour, merely an over-exaggerated sense
of revenge.
            -- Stephen Harris
%
I think it's a beautiful day to go to the zoo and feed the ducks.
To the lions.
            -- Brian Kantor
%
Frankly, your argument wouldn't float were the sea composed of
mercury.
            -- Biff
%
Progress (n.): The process through which Usenet has evolved from
smart people in front of dumb terminals to dumb people in front
of smart terminals.
            -- obs@burnout.demon.co.uk
%
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; give him a freshly-
charged Electric Eel and chances are he won't bother you for anything
ever again.
            -- Tanuki
%
When C++ is your hammer, everything looks like a thumb.
            -- Steven M. Haflich
%
IMHO WinTelnet is one of those situations in which both fish and
firearm are firmly bracketed to the barrel itself, in perfect 
alignment, and actually walking up and pulling the trigger starts
to fall into the "Why Bother?" category.
            -- Anthony deBoer
%
Anyone want to help write _Survival for Dummies_? -- pretty short:
"Don't" in large, friendly letters.
            -- Joe Moore
%
I was absolutely horrified to see a book entitled 'C++ for dummies'.
What is the potential market for this book?  What programmer considers
themself to be a dummy?  Who wants to run code written by a dummy?
And perhaps more importantly, someone who *considers themselves* to
be a dummy?
            -- Matthew Wilcox
%
"WARNING: This book is crammed with loads of deliberate misinformation
 designed for the sole purpose of helping lusers darwinate in spectacular
 ways for the amusement of those more intelligent"
            -- henke
%
The only thing I'd use on guinea-fowl is a shredder.  Same with peacocks.
The sound of peacocks being shredded can't possibly be any worse than
the sound of peacocks not being shredded.
            -- Tanuki
%
I think I'd like to see a Simpsons episode starting up with Bart Simpson
writing 'I will not attempt to undermine the Usenet Cabal'. 
            -- J. D. Falk 
%
For their next act, they'll no doubt be buying a firewall running under NT,
which makes about as much sense as building a prison out of meringue. 
            -- Tanuki
%
You can lead an idiot to knowledge but you cannot make him think.  You can,
however, rectally insert the information, printed on stone tablets, using a
sharpened poker. 
            -- Nicolai
%
Usenet should require licenses; licenses that can be revoked. 
            -- Abigail
%
It's possible there had been armed autonomous droids at some point in
the past, and one can almost imagine past issues of that galaxy's Risks
Digest. 
            -- Anthony DeBoer, on SW: TPM
%
 A *huge* proportion of people cannot make *correct and accurate*
 generalisations of principles. They have to learn everything as if
 it's an unrelated piece of crap, BECAUSE THEY ARE STUPID! PEOPLE
 ARE STUPID! 
            -- Thorfinn
%
 Don't use this code for realtime control, for weapons systems, or for
 anything else that may put life or limb at hazard. It isn't man-rated,
 it isn't really thing-rated, and we don't claim that it's worth a good
 G*dDamn for anything at all, at all. 
            -- Mike Andrews, on Java compilers
%
 The consquences of any action will never be fully understood until after
 it's too late to do anything about it. 
            -- Schwartz's Second Law
%
 Never meddle in the affairs of NT. It is slow to boot and quick to crash. 
            -- Stephen Harris
%
 I love the way Microsoft follows standards. In much the same manner that
 fish follow migrating caribou. 
            -- Paul Tomblin
%
 Windows gives you a nice view of clouds so you can't see any potentially
 useful boot time messages. 
            -- Bill Hay
%
 When you need a helpline for breakfast cereals, it's about time to think
 about tearing down civilisation and giving the ants a go. 
            -- Chris King
%
 People who are willing to rely on the government to keep them safe are
 pretty much standing on Darwin's mat, pounding on the door, screaming, 
 'Take me, take me!' 
            -- Carl Jacobs
%
 I'm an apatheist. The question is no longer interesting, and the answer
 no longer matters. 
            -- petro
%
 If men are from Mars and women are from Venus, there's going to be one
 big-ass fight over where to set the thermostat. 
            -- Jim Rosenberg
%
 I never really understood how there could be things that would drive you
 insane just because you knew them until I ran into Windows. 
            -- Peter da Silva
%
 ...and the French an excuse to use their traditional battle cry. 
            -- Firebeard
 We surrender, here, have my daughter? 
            -- Paul Tomblin
%
 If I had encountered Bill Gates today, I would have shaken his hand,
 said hello, and stopped kicking as soon as there was nothing left but
 a bloody stain on the floor. 
            -- Shag
%
 ...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. 
            -- Nick Petreley
%
 You mean you cut your pizzas using multiple *helices*?? 
 I cut them horizontally, stitch the sheets together, and use them as
 drapes.  I've seen people wearing them as ties too. 
            -- Tanuki and Peter Gutmann
%
 Networks are like sewers  ...  My job is to make sure your data goes
 away when you flush, and to stop the rats climbing into your toilet
 through the pipes. 
            -- Network administration, as told by Tanuki
%
 I find that anthropomorphism really doesn't help me deal with hardware
 all that much, because it lends a certain attitude of disdain to what
 would otherwise be a mere malfunction. 
            -- Carl Jacobs
%
 Some drink from the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle. 
            -- Dave Aronson
 And some pee in it. 
            -- moc.oohay
%
 Sanity is like money; you should just have enough to get by.  Any
 more and you turn into a freak. 
            -- rone
%
 I don't suffer from insanity; I enjoy every minute of it. 
            -- Lieven Marchand
%
 Failure is not an option. It comes bundled with your Microsoft product. 
            -- Ferenc Mantfeld
%
 ALL programs are poems, it's just that not all programmers are poets. 
            -- Jonathan Guthrie
%
 Windows is the answer, but only if the question was 'what is the
 intellectual equivalent of being a galley slave?' 
            -- Larry Smith, in comp.os.linux.misc
%
 We are not gentle tolerant people. We like drastically effective
 solutions. 
            -- Steve VanDevender
%
 They're only floundering and helpless when trying to get you to do stuff
 for them. It's an act. Actually they are scheming little fsckers, and
 nothing fascinates them as much as some person playing with them by 
 giving them clues and mocking them. 
            -- Chris Johnson
%
Re: Writing Solid Code 
 I still think buying a book of that title from Microsoft Press would
 be like buying a handbook for humanitarians from Pol Pot. 
            -- Paul Tomblin
%
 Is it just me, or does anyone else here find it vaguely unsettling
 that you get your theology from Star Trek? 
            -- Anthony DeBoer
 Yeah, he should get it from B5 like us normal people.   
            -- Paul Tomblin
%
 The way NT mounts filesystems is something I'd expect to find in a
 barnyard or on a stock-breeding farm. 
            -- Mike Andrews
%
 I work for an investment bank. I have dealt with code written by stock 
 exchanges. I have seen how the computer systems that store your money
 are run.  If I ever make a fortune, I will store it in gold bullion
 under my bed.  
            -- Matthew Crosby
%
 The world is *not* a place where equality reigns, or where all people
 are wonderful creatures. As it happens, we happen to hold a particular
 worldview that there *is* a techno-elite (yes, that's a trite and
 overused term), and we are part of it. 
            -- Thorfinn
%
 In a country where it is considered a normal, sane and fun recreational
 activity to strap two greased sticks to your feet and throw yourself down
 the side of a friggin' mountain, nobody has the right to call *my* minor
 peccidillos 'unsafe.' 
            -- Nathan Mehl
%
 My group's mission statement - 'You want *what* ? By *WHEN* ?'  
            -- Simon Burr
%
 An Emacs reference mug is what I want. It would hold ten gallons of
 coffee. 
            -- Steve VanDevender
%
 I admit that X is the second worst windowing system in the world,
 but all the others I've used are tied for first. 
            -- Paul Tomblin
%
 'Includes Adobe PageMaker. Now you can create layouts that look like you
 paid a professional!' No, now you can create layouts that look like you
 used a tool that a professional might have used, had you had the sense
 to pay him. 
            -- Christopher R. Maden
%
 A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction
 into a battle of wills and add drama to an otherwise dull day.  
            -- Calvin discovers Usenet
%
 The only sensible way to estimate the stability of a Windows server
 is to power it down and try it out as a step ladder. 
            -- Robert Crawford
%
 People who love sausages, respect the law, and work with IT standards
 shouldn't watch any of them being made. 
            -- Peter Gutmann
%
 First time I've gotten a programming job that required a drug test.
 I was worried they were going to say 'you don't have enough LSD in
 your system to do Unix programming'. 
            -- Paul Tomblin
%
 Simulated editor war, conducted by seasoned professionals in a controlled
 environment. Don't try this at home. 
            -- Christian Bauernfeind
%
 I must admit that Micro$oft does seem to bear an awful resemblence to the
 Sirius Cybernetic Corporation. Considering that my attempts at using Word
 always resulted in something almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a
 document. 
            -- Rich Kaszeta
%
 Violence, rude language, excessive drinking, paganism. It's hard to
 find children's books like that these days.  
            -- Stig Morten Valstad
%
 It's not 'I don't do Windows', it's 'I know nothing about Windows,
 and it generally explodes when I get near it'. 
            -- Matt McLeod
%
 Graffiti has merely machine-gunned the surviving handwriting ability
 clinging to the upturned lifeboats of the good ship 'Cursive'. 
            -- Saundo, on Palm Pilots
%
 Goodness, no, they should not be allowed to die on the streets. We have 
 alleys for that. 
            -- Carl Jacobs, on unadaptable people
%
 Microsoft has decided to rename 'Windows 98' to 'Windows Diana',
 because it is superficially atttractive, impossible to live with,
 consumes masses of resources, then it crashes. 
            -- related by Zombie in #aix
%
 The little pad of semi-sticky paper is the single largest security breach 
 in the entire computer industry, bar none.  
            -- some guy named 'gram' in c.s.u 
%
 He's called Stuart the Nice because when he eats babies he makes sure
 he does it in private.  If he grilled and ate them in the middle of
 the street he'd be Stuart the Not-so-nice. 
            -- Peter Gutman
%
 You don't eat children.  You sell them into slavery, then use the money
 to buy endangered species and eat those. 
            -- Stuart the Nice
%
 ...life suddenly made much more sense, the day I fully grokked that people
 are stupid. 
            -- Frank Sweetser
%
 The bottom line is that under 1 percent of this world has what it really
 takes to make computers do the Right Thing.  No matter how used the shaved
 apes are to buttons, dials and screens, they're still doing voodoo.      
            -- The Cosmic Tomato
%
 I tried staying in during a fire alarm some years ago.  Unfortunately the
 fire warden wouldn't accept 'A real hacker goes down with his newsfeed'
 as an excuse. 
            -- Peter Gutman
%
 We don't need a fountain of youth.  We need a fountain of smart. 
            -- Bill Mattocks's .sig
%
 Maybe the rest of the computer world will have a chance at innovation with 
 Gates and company preoccupied with a federal antitrust suit. I seldom 
 cheer at others' misfortune, but I make a huge, happy exception in this
 case. 
            -- James Bell
%
 It might not be practical, it might not be a good idea, but it could
 work.  Sort of like Windows.
            -- berry
%
 My Win98 installation has been doing that for months.. German, English, 
 and Dutch, all intermingled. What's so frightening about that? 
            -- Jasper Janssen 
 You mean seeing 'Reboot Macht Frei' on your screen?  
            -- Greg Andrews 
%
 I've gone through over-stressed to physical exhaustion -- what's next?  
            -- Simon Burr
 Tuesday. 
            -- Kyle Hearn
%
 Microsoft: bringing the world to your desktop -- and your desktop to
 the world. 
            -- Peter Gutmann
%
 What's that word, it means you feel small and red, starts with an M? 
            -- Peter da Silva 
 Management.  
            -- Simon Fraser 
%
 It seems that there are two different sorts of people: People who care
 about the important stuff -- like if a job gets done, and if it gets done
 well -- and clueless fucking morons who wouldn't know a job well done if
 it bit them on the ass, and so think that 'professionalism' is a better
 indicator of the quality of work.  
            -- Dave Brown 
%
 I personally don't mind giving up a portion of my earnings to try to keep
 said unadaptable people from starving in the street.  -- Mike Sphar 
 Goodness, no, they should not be allowed to die on the streets. We have
 alleys for that.  
            -- Carl Jacobs 
%
 A communications disruption can only mean one thing... Invasion.  
            -- Lee Maguire, teaching us how to make people go away. 
%
 The only way to convince some people that HTML is about content, not
 style is with a  2x4 <PLANK>.  
            -- Geoff. Lane 
%
If infinite rednecks fired infinite shotguns at an infinite number of road
signs, they'd eventually create all the great literary works of the world in
braille.
           -- Discordian Quote File
%
An author once told me I must find my muse before I could write.  When I
finally found her, she was wearing a rubber helmet, a latex catsuit, a very
tight corset, an armbinder, and ballet-toe boots with seven inch heels.  I
suspect I am not meant to be a writer.
           -- Unknown
%
Bullshit makes the flowers grow and that's Beautiful.
           -- Unknown, Principia Discordia
%
... our elderly citizens walk down the darkest of alleyways!... and 
the weak and nerdy are admired for their computer programming 
abilities!...
           -- Homer Simpson
%
... industry giant Microsoft Corporation... a company that has become
successful without resorting to software testing...
           -- Unknown, rec.humor.funny
%
I just woke up, I'm 40 miles from my car and I can't remember where 
I left my trousers. I think I'm going to be a little late.
           -- Someone's employee, rec.humor.funny
%
"MSDOS has to be one of the suckiest OSes ever."
"Umm... a small technical point. Messy-Dross is _not_ a true operating
 system. It's a program loader with a hardon and delusions of grandeur."
           -- Gary Barnes, Valdis Kletnieks, in a.s.r.
%
Historical Landmark #9678023
 Windows 95: Five years ago, corporate software giant, Microsoft, spent
 millions of dollars, and put a team of hundreds of highly specialized
 programmers on an extensive and highly ambitious project to find another
 name for the Apple Menu.
           -- Avi Selk, in comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc
%
No, the best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great
programs that other people have written.  In my case, I went to the garbage
cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their
operating system.
           -- Bill Gates
%
In any business, the customer is always right, except when he calls
technical support.
%
As a computing professional, I believe it would be unethical for me to
advise, recommend, or support the use (save possibly for personal 
amusement) of any product that is or depends on any Microsoft product.
           -- David H. Wolfskill, in the Monastery
%
Can I LART an aol'r for attempting to subscribe to a majordomo list 
with their street address, or should I wait for a second offence?
           -- Allan Stojanovic, in the Monastery
%
You don't change the way people think by changing what they say. You
change the way people think with HEADLESS CHARRED BODIES FLYING THROUGH
THE AIR. BLOOD! FLAMES! HELLFIRE AND DAMNATION!
           -- Alastair J. R. Young
%
Actually, an oxymoron is more along the lines of a moron with an OH+
radical attached.  Since both morons and free radicals tend to bind
strongly to the first interesting thing that comes along, this is a
match made in heaven.
           -- The Internet Oracle
%
Conspiracies abound:  If everyone's against you, the reason can't
 _possibly_ be that you're a fuckhead.
           -- The Usenet Guide to Power Posting
%
Home pages are the pet rock of the 90s. They all have them, they all think
they're very cute. But in a few years they're going to look back and be
pretty embarrassed.
           -- Kim Alm
%
New York City: No matter how many times I visit this great city I'm
always struck by the same thing: a yellow taxi cab.
           -- Scott Adams, DNRC Newsletter 12.0
%
While the Big "M" folks in Redmond maintain the products are vastly
different, critics allege Workstation can be switched into the Server
version with a few easy tweaks. An official Microsoft marketer suggests
that's like arguing the only difference between men and women is a Y
chromosome. We think it's more akin to discovering your date is in drag.
           -- Unknown, on the differences between Microsoft NT
               Workstation 4.0 and Server 4.0
%
Yes means no and no means yes.  Delete all your files? [y/n]
           -- Paul Tomblin, in the Monastery
%
The POP3 server service depends on the SMTP server service, which
failed to initialize because of the following error:
 The operation completed successfully.
           -- Windows NT Server v3.51
%
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
%