You can fit the end of a wire coathanger into an electrical outlet, 
but that doesn't mean it's a good idea.
     -- Fluffy, news.admin.net-abuse.usenet
%
Reality is the ultimate rorschach.
     -- Principia Discordia
%
Usenet isn't groupware. Groupware isn't Usenet. Strawman knocked down  
and trampled.
     -- Timothy Miller, news.admin.net-abuse.usenet
%
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but usually consumes the
bandwidth of more than two thousand.
     -- Gym Quirk, news.groups
%
If you think [The Other Sister] was made to demonstrate that the
mentally handicapped can love just like the rest of us, it's time to
stop pouring NyQuil over your morning corn flakes.
     -- Mr. Cranky 
%
Here's an idea: tell [James Bond] he's got three minutes [to escape]
and actually give him three seconds and blow his martini-drinking ass
into a million pieces.
     -- Mr. Cranky, reviewing 'Goldeneye'
%
Once you have tasted flight, you will walk this earth with your eyes
turned skyward. For there you have been, and there you long to
return.
     -- Leonardo da Vinci
%
Pay no attention to the man brushing the ethical questions present
under the curtain.
     -- Liam Stitt
%
There certainly isn't a goony 'Touched by a Muslim' show on CBS prime
time, with Cat Stevens traveling the country doing good deeds while
paying lip service to the virtues of his religion.
     -- placidden@aol.com, alt.tv.er, on the insecurities of
        Christians 
%
DAMN WHO MESSED WITH MY CAPSLOCK KEY that's better.
     -- geoff lane, <e886430646@swirld.mcc.ac.uk>, asr
%
People openely advertising on Usenet the availability of child porn
are either law enforcement agents or possessed of the approximate IQ
of an avocado.
     -- Russ Allbery, news.groups
%
Hi, I'm Marc Andreesen, and after a hard day working on our piss-poor
browser, I need to relax with a piss-poor beer!
     -- Malcolm Ray, on Marc's Miller Lite beer ads, asr
%
Tree stuck in cat; firefighters baffled.
     -- Simcity 3000
%
Good will triumph over evil because evil can't aim.
     -- Skye Allen
%
Nikos Drakos. The only guy I know who tries to write LISP code 
in Perl.
     -- Stephen Harris, asr, on the author of latex2html
%
We in medicine, and in emergency medicine in particular, have come to
accept death as a passive experience. We like our patients to die 
when we're not at the bedside, when we're not doing anything, and when
we haven't done anything lately.
     -- Ron Walls, MD, FACEP 
%
Duuuh....George...why have you not used system(), George?
     -- Liam Stitt
%
Usually when people get fucked this hard they use KY Jelly as a
lubricant. It sounds like you're asking for them to mix metal 
shavings with it.
     -- Ellis Vener, photo.net (in a deleted thread, sadly)
%
HAPPY99.EXE proved there were a lot of stupid people on the
net. [W97M_Melissa] proves that not only are they stupid, they won't 
learn.
     -- Jay Denebeim, news.groups
%
Bayliss:   What, you don't trust me to drive my own car?
Pembleton: No, I don't. You might get tailgated, and end up shooting
           at a school bus."
     -- Tim Bayliss and Frank Pembleton, "Happy to be Here"
%
What do you expect? The man is on the mean streets of Baltimore, 
stalking the big game, which is Dinty Moore in a can.. of course 
he's going to be armed. 		
     -- Det. John Munch
%
Do be a milk drinker; don't be a crack addict.
     -- Det. Kay Howard
%
I spent years in front of that frickin' tube, and she never once 
saw *Beau* in the magic mirror. That bitch.
     -- Det. Beau Felton, complaining about 'Romper Room'
%
The POP3 server depends on the SMTP server service, which failed to
start because of the following error: The operation completed
successfully.
     -- Windowns NT Server v3.51
%
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.
     -- RFC1925
%
I don't eat soup with a fork, so why should I e-mail with a Web browser?
     -- Patrix Radman
%
If anoyne in the plot had even the slightest intelligence, the story
would implode.
     -- Roger Ebert, reviewing 'Jawbreaker'
%
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million
typewriters will eventually reproduce the works of shakespeare. Now,
thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.
     -- ? 
%
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, asr
%
The biggest problem with driving in Houston is the fact that people
seem predisposed to leave their old matresses and couches lying around
in the middle of the road. Bad drivers are less of a hazard than the
furniture.
     -- ?
%
The fact that there are a million cockroaches per human being on the
earth does not necessarily mean they are a superior form of life.
     -- Tracy Reed, providing perspective on an advocacy war
%
Sarah [McLachlan], of course, still has the most discrete way of 
describing the pleasure of submission in sex: 'And that line in
Possession -- 'hold you down, kiss you so hard' -- could be nasty,
could be nice.'
     -- Jennifer H. Davidow
%
If Unix is the revenge of the nerds, then the rest of the industry is
the football team and the cheerleading squad trying to produce a
science project, and expecting an 'A' because they're the football
team and the cheerleading squad.
     -- ? 
%
'Since spammers are using Usenet, they are Usenet users.'
'Since robbers visit convenience stores, they are 7-11 customers. 
 And since they get their money there, 7-11 is a bank.'
     -- Dave Hayes and Rick Buchannan, news.admin.net-abuse.usenet
%
I hate to be the one to point this out to you, but THEY LIVE HERE
TOO, AND THEY'RE LOTS SMARTER THAN YOU ARE, WHICH IS WHY THEY'RE REAL
ROCKET SCIENTISTS
     -- Gharlane of Eddor, rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated, on the 
        non-dangers of Cassini and other nuclear-powered spacecraft
%
Running Windows NT as a server because it's easy to use is like
hiring Miss America to run your payroll because she's cute.
     -- Peter da Silva 
%
Remember, there's no problem so complex it can't be solved by killing
everyone even remotely associated with it.
     -- ljd, Scorched Earth Party
%
Anyone who says 'disk is cheap' deserves to be shot.
     -- Linus Torvalds
%
It's, well, a big dumb hippo that eats people that whack it on the
head too many times. Don't get me wrong: i love the Hippo, but it
really has no concept of who or why it's being whacked on the head,
just that it has happened a lot.
     -- Brian Moore, news.admin.net-abuse.usenet, on Spamhippo 
%
It's about damn time that all of us who actually give a damn about
Usenet stand up and tell the people who don't to fuck off and die.
     -- Russ Allbery 
%
.. and by *GOD* I know what this network is for, and you can't have
it.
     -- Russ Allbery
%
We aren't heroes from any one call that we go on. We're heroes
because we keep going back at it day after day.
     -- Jeff Vaughn, misc.emerg-services 
%
What are all these things that just spew out of your head? Could you
at least use your brain as a filter?!
     -- Ally McBeal
%
Love, couplehood, partnership: I think I need to believe that it
works -- the idea that when two people come together, they stay
together. I have to take that with me when I go to bed at night, even
if I am going to bed alone.
     -- Ally McBeal 
%
I think that the indefinable space between happy and sad is the most
moving and compelling place for an artist to be. If there's anything I 
consistently strive for, it's a melancholy limbo. That's my favorite 
state. 					
     -- Shawn Colvin
%
Relationships on the net are different from relationships in the real
world. On the net, you're only as far away as the longest router hop.
     -- Megan P. Jamieson
%
Physical and emotional distance between two people is not the same
thing; the people I am emotionally close to are usually the ones who
are the furthest away from me.
     -- Megan P. Jamieson
%
Too much research is wasted because the people who did it looked at
their results, got scared, and dumped their data. Half of progress is
getting over your fear of what might be on the other side.
     -- Megan P. Jamieson 
%
Visual languages -- bah. Giving a student a visual language to learn
in is like giving a kid velcro sneakers: he can put his shoes on, but
he still doesn't know how to tie them up. None of these introductory
languages -- including Java -- provide any mechanics for learning
knots, which are useful for more things than just putting on shoes.
     -- Megan P. Jamieson 
%
I know who you are. I saw what you did. I've got the root password.
     -- Megan P. Jamieson, trying out her BOFH license
%
All I know is that I once felt something meaningful about my work,
and suddenly that feeling wasn't there anymore. Outside of a few
visionaries, computer science has been woefully deficient at providing
something useful for humanity. Most computer science students would do
better to take up bartending or drug dealing for what good it will do
them and the world.
     -- Megan P. Jamieson
%
We may eventually dream our way out of this darkness, but the dreams
that lift us will not come from the places we traditionally associate
with dreaming. Like love, that dream will come from a most unexpected
direction. They will not come from the universities, because students
there have been conditioned to think in a particular way which I find
inhibits dreams. It will instead be some kid, somewhere in the world,
with a radical idea or message.. and that kid will change everything.
     -- Megan P. Jamieson
%
'I will accept you for all that you are, and all that you might
become. I will stand by you in good times and in bad; I will be with
you when you need me, and I will go away when you want to be alone. I
will believe in you with my heart and soul. I will keep and cherish
your heart with all that I am and all that I am capable of, and there
will never be a moment when you will be far from my mind. That is my
promise to you, my love, my darling, my angel of happiness. I love
you beyond any words that I could say.' Wow. *That* is a declaration
of love.
     -- Megan P. Jamieson      
%
Can I make an observation? Take the wrapper off whatever it is you're
smoking.
     -- Megan P. Jamieson
%
If it's more than 400 feet from the car, it's not photogenic.
     -- Edward Weston?
%
Little Miss Muffet
Sat on her tuffet
Eating her curds and Whey
She anaphylaxed
Turned red and collapsed
And the ambulance whisked her away.
     -- Little Miss Milk Allergy
%
Given a choice of the negative or positive aspects of any symbol --
sea as life-giving mother, sea as what your ship goes down in; tree as
symbol of growth, tree as what falls on your head -- Canadians show a
marked preference for the negative.
     -- Margaret Atwood, "Survival"
%
A novel about unalloyed happiness would have to be either very short
or very boring: 'Once upon a time John and Mary lived happily ever
after, the end.'
     -- Margaret Atwood, "Survival"
%
Again and again we find [Susanna Moodie] gazing at the sublime
natural goings-on in the misty distance.. only to be brought up short
by disagreeable things in her immediate foreground, such as bugs,
swamps, tree roots, and other immigrants.
     -- Margaret Atwood, "Survival"
%
According to Hollywood logic, none of the actual Titanic passengers
was interesting enough, so the writer-director had to invent a Romeo
and Juliet-style fictional couple to heat up the catastrophe. This
seems a tiny bit like giving Anne Frank a wacky best friend, to perk
up that attic.
     -- Libby Gelman-Waxner, Premier magazine
%
I have no interest in seeing Doug [Ross] torn apart in post after
post, mostly by men viewers who are jealous of George [Clooney]'s
looks, talent, and success.
     -- errossfan@aol.com, alt.tv.er, trying out for the "Usenet
        Idiot Child" poster contest
%
It's nice to see that Benton has a heart. I assumed the guy ran on
batteries.
     -- chrisnospam@ultralink.com, alt.tv.er
%
Bitch! Bitch, bitch, bitch. Bitchy, bitch, bitch. Idiot bitch. You
know, I really hadn't taken a personal grudge against Judith
Fitzgerald.. I thought that was pretty clear.
     -- Sarah Andrews Cook, sf-fumblers
%
I've never understood why women douse themselves with things that 
are alleged to smell of roses/tulips/freesias. What exactly are they 
trying to attract? Bees?
     -- Tanuki the Racoon-Dog, asr
%
Both Doug and myself have been here long, long before you were. It's
*you* who are invading our turf, not the other way around. Now go hump 
your poodle.
     -- Jay Denebeim, news.groups
%
In Kruskal-Szekeres coordinates, [twit] is motionless and the
black hole is an event in his future.. which runs up and eats him
(taking an alarmingly finite time to do so).
     -- Alex Elliott, adfp
%
Get it straight: a police detective, a man who gets paid government
money to put you in prison, is explaining your absolute right to shut
up before you say something stupid.
     -- David Simon, "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets"
%
It's one thing to be a murdering little asshole from southeast
Baltimore, and it's another to be stupid about it, and with five
little words you have just elevated yourself to the ranks of the truly
witless."
     -- David Simon, "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets"
%
How many system administrators does it take to change a light bulb?
None. Just remove the rights of everybody allowed to go into the
room.
     -- Ross Clement
%
ftping from a filesystem you can mount is like having phone sex with
a girl you're in bed with." 
     -- Nate 
%
You are in a twisty maze of Motif Widget resources, all inconsistent.
     -- Paul Tomblin 
%
A retrospective of the 'good 'ole days' of the Net when men were real
men, all computers ran Unix, and the Web seemed like a good idea.
     -- third in a list of ideas for articles about the history of
        the Net by Paul Stephanouk
%
What is a 'broken killfile'? One that only wounds messages rather than
killing them?
     -- Craig Dickson
%
Unfortunately, the crud passed off as 'operating systems' for 90of
the desktop market (including W95) basically spread their legs and
scream 'infect me! crash me! corrupt me!'
     -- Walt Buehring
%
I haven't lost my mind, it's backed up on tape somewhere.
     -- Hemant Shah
%
The Internet is a powerful example of free speech and the free market
in action; it is curious that the net has alarmed the lawmakers of a
nation founded on those principles.
     -- Denise Caruso
%
People who think chess is a wimpy sport have never been hit over
the head with a solid marble chessboard.
     -- Thomas Boutel
%
Geeky F mathematician with lots of bell curves seeks M, standard
deviant, for statistically significant activities. Your Laplace or
mine.
     -- Ilana Stern, "Poissonal Ads"
%
Whatever our positions lost in logic might be recovered with
invective. If you never quit an argument, presumably you never lost.
     -- Patrick Buchanan, displaying the wisdom of a grizzled
        Usenet Warrior
%
When in doubt, use brute force.
     -- attributed to Ken Thompson
%
Everybody knows that it's still September '93 on the net.. and that 
means I don't have to meet these deadlines for *years*.
     -- Alan Bostick
%
If you get mail from someone called MAILER-DAEMON, please do not send 
mail back to it. The mailer-daemon is a program and gets cranky when
people mail it.
     -- MOTD from Stony Brook's Instructional Computing Network
%
The Pope is the Ed Wood of theology.
     -- Robert Anton Wilson
%
Remember kiddies, rocks have more clues than lusers. i.e. they don't
phone you up. Ever. Unless you've been smoking crack.
     -- John Vaughan 
%
The world is complex. sendmail.cf reflects this...
     -- Robbie Honerkamp
%
The command line is not a bug.
     -- John Flinchbaugh, alt.unix.wizards
%
In Murray Hill did Dennis Khan the might Unix code decree
where Ken and Russ and Brian ran it on a pee dee pee..
     -- Peter da Silva
%
You need the computing power of a P5, 16 MB RAM and 1 GB harddisk to
run Win95. It took the computing power of approx 3 Commodor 64 to fly
to the moon. Something is wrong here, and it wasn't the Apollo.
     -- Deon Ramsey
%
Life's not fair, but the root password helps.
     -- BOFH
%
<bgsound> is one [tag] I'm considering for the 'user we hate you'
build option.
     -- Alan Cox 
%
It's aetually pretty de1ightfu1 if y0u have ever rcad the
doeumentatjon of 0rigin's U1tima 1-V1 Enc0re Co11ection CD.
     -- Linards Ticmanis, commenting on OCR software
%
Lately I've been saying, 'have you got there yet?'
     -- Mike Stella, taunting Windows users
%
I don't *care* if there's been a nuclear holocaust -- Usenet news
hasn't been received for 36 hours and i'm moving to another ISP.
     -- Joe Chew
%
Immediate opening for window manager. The successful applicant will
be able to handle several hundred clients. BS/X11 required. Own
colormap a plus. Send cover letter & resume to...
     -- Andrew Carey
%
Next week: tactile load monitoring! Start up emacs and crush your 
sysadmin!
     -- Wim Lewis
%
But the second or third time I read news on Panix Jim mentioned
to me that rn had been installed since I'd last looked.  He
noticed I was 'more'ing the news spool.
     -- Mara Chibnik 
%
Give a man a piece of working code and you solve his problem. Teach a 
man to write code and you give him a lifetime of new problems.
     -- Timothy J. Luoma 
%
Get either a killfiler or a gun (God's own retroactive moderator...) 
and a shitload of ammunition.
     -- Keith M. Lucas 
%
If the NSA has time to read my e-mail, I wish they'd send me a bloody
monthly summary!
     -- Jef Bryant
%
Any member of the public who trusts Usenet is at best gullible.
     -- Seth Breidbart
%
People who read 'Wired' are *exactly* everything that's wrong with
the net.
     -- Thor Lancelot Simon
%
I kinda like the paper stock. 'Wired' is one of the few magazines
where the ink *doesn't* bleed through to the opposite side. And
given the amount of ink they put on their average page, this is a
good thing.
     -- Daniel Rosenbaum
%
X.400 was designed by people who really didn't want to communicate
with each other in the first place.
     -- Michael J. O'Connor
%
Remember, SCSI is not black magic. There are fundamental technical
reasons why it is necessary to sacrifice a goat at midnight in order
to get a SCSI device working properly.
     -- Arnoud Engelfriet 
%
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 
%
I think I'd like to see a Simpsons episode start up with Bart
Simpson writing 'I will not attempt to undermine the Usenet Cabal.'
     -- J.D. Falk, asr
%
A gangrenous limb is still full of life. I wouldn't call it
thriving.
     -- Peter da Silva, discussing the state of alt.sex.*
%
S'nice to find somebody who speaks fuckin' English out here onna
Innernet. Not like dem goddam fancy pants talkers from fuckin'
England or someplace.
     -- tariat@aol.com
%
If it's not real, why does it take up disk space?
     -- Wednesday
%
Wow! 'Wired' has text? I think 'wired' is the anti-'Playboy': I only
read it for the graphics.
     -- Ron Echeverri
%
An hour into flight, I discover the computer is on and the battery is
80used. This is irritating (!) and perhaps dangerous, although none
of my flights has crashed.
     -- Edward Holden, comp.risks, on in-flight use of electronic
       devices 
%
Some day the US is going to face an enemy who *didn't* put their
armed forces together the way PHBs put together computer systems, by
looking in catalogs and listening to salesmen and going 'I want that'
without listening to the technical guys going 'but that won't work
with the stuff we already have.'
     -- Paul Tomblin, asr
%
When flying, you will generally be the one to kill yourself. When
driving, there's a much better chance that someone else will kill
you.
     -- Kyler Laird, rec.aviation.misc, explaining accident
        statistics 
%
Ever poke a dog in the eyes?  You *really* should try it sometime.
You will *not* get a Three Stooges reaction.
     -- Kyler Laird, rec.aviation.piloting
%
If 'Casablanca' was made in today's climate, Rick and Ilsa would
escape on the plane after avoiding a hail of gunfire (Rick would
probably be doing the two-fisted gun thing that John Woo loves).
     -- James Berardinelli
%
This is a standoff with federal officers! A peaceful settlement is,
'Put your guns down, you're under arrest!'
     -- Josh Lyman, "The West Wing"
%
Attila is less hated than Hitler, better known than Franco, and lacks
Mussolini's comic charm.
     -- Bill Cole, asr, on why Attila gets picked on
%
You'd have to say 'hey, remove my stuff, or I'll whack your server in
the knee with a metal pipe!'
     -- Sean Yamamoto, on the photo.net copyright infringement goon
        squad  
%
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 (seen in a .sig)
%
Samantha once asked me which experience I thought would be scarier:
seeing a ghost or being abducted by aliens. Here's my answer:
Neither. Nothing could ever be as terrifying as finding myself at the
same party as Mitchell and his new girlfriend. Since that happened
last night, I guess I can live the rest of my life without fear.
     -- Anita Liberty, How to Heal the Hurt by Hating
%
Mitchell broke my heart. So I broke his marble coffee table.
     -- Anita Liberty, How to Heal the Hurt by Hating
%
Never went outside today. Didn't clean my apartment. Didn't
shower. Didn't write. Didn't watch television. The phone didn't
ring. Not once. I didn't get any mail. Oh. That's not true. I got 
a Chinese menu. Someone was thinking about me.
     -- Anita Liberty, How to Heal the Hurt by Hating
%
Slipping slowly, deeply, down the drain of my life. Consumed by the
darkness of my unfulfilled dreams. Black heat surrounds my lonely --
oh, desperately lonely -- body. My existence has become a blur of
dissatisfaction and I feel nothing but what I don't have and that is
everything. Don't feel bad -- I mean, it's not like it's your fault or
anything. Oh yeah, actually, it is.
     -- Anita Liberty, How to Heal the Hurt by Hating
%
When your self-esteem is low, do not call someone who has rejected
you in the past. The chance that that person will say something that
will make you feel worse is great. The chance that that person will
say exactly what it is that you need to hear is slim.
     -- Anita Liberty, How to Heal the Hurt by Hating
%
You're a bad habit. I want to kick you. Hard.
     -- Anita Liberty, How to Heal the Hurt by Hating
%
I wish we were back together... for just one night... so I could... 
push you out of my loftbed while you were sleeping.
     -- Anita Liberty, How to Heal the Hurt by Hating
%
Now that you're gone and never coming back I feel that I can be
honest about the fact that you were never very good in bed.
     -- Anita Liberty, How to Heal the Hurt by Hating
%
If you're over thirty, you don't *have* to take your parents'
advice. You can. Of course. If you want to. And if taking it doesn't
make you feel like you're still a child. And if somehow you are able
to convince yourself that their advice is solid and grounded and takes
into account how well they know you and how right they've been in the
past. If you can take their advice under those conditions, well, lucky
you.
     -- Anita Liberty, How to Heal the Hurt by Hating
%
Compromise: Lowering my standards so you can meet them.
     -- Anita Liberty, How to Heal the Hurt by Hating
%
If you run into someone who's broken your heart, act like you don't
know him. Act like you've drawn a blank. Act life you've never seen
him before, even if you really want to whack his fucking black
baseball cap off his ugly head and kick his ass when he bends down to
pick it up.
     -- Anita Liberty, How to Heal the Hurt by Hating
%
I know what people say about me. 'Anita Liberty's so angry.' 
'Anita Libery's so angry at men.' 'Anita Liberty just needs 
to get laid.' And I'm like, you know.. duh!
     -- Anita Liberty, How to Heal the Hurt by Hating
%
Never call a first date a date. That way, if it doesn't work out, you
haven't had a bad *date*, you've just met someone with whom you don't
intend to waste any more of your time. If it does work out, then you
can call it a date after the fact. Fail-safe.
     -- Anita Liberty, How to Heal the Hurt by Hating
%
Don't trust anyone who, after knowing you for all of four hours,
tells you that they've never felt so connected to, so moved by, so
comfortable with, someone as he/she feels with you. It's just not
true. Well, he/she may think it's true. And you are pretty great, but
he'she's just looking for something that he/she will find out you
can't deliver and then he/she will discover that you're just a normal
person. A really sexy, cool, well-adjusted normal person, but a normal
person all the same. And he/she will realize this and stop
calling. Just stop calling. And his/her desperation to see you again
and desire to spend every minute with you will fade away and be
replaced with a palpable ambivalence. And then you're the one who ends
up getting disappointed. Avoid that.
     -- Anita Liberty, How to Heal the Hurt by Hating
%
I used to have dreams that Mitchell came back to me. I still do. But
now I call them nightmares.
     -- Anita Liberty, How to Heal the Hurt by Hating
%
Our strategy in dealing with CTOs was to ridicule them in front of
their bosses. `You're not sure if Unix is the right operating system?
What is next on the meeting agenda, are we doing to talk about the
color of the power cord used to plug the server in?'
     -- Philip Greenspun
%
Let's get real. Poverty sucks. If you claim to be an expert on modern
information systems and you aren't rich then most people will infer
that you are stupid.
     -- Philip Greenspun
%
Progress in computer science is made with the distribution of
revolutionary software systems and the publication of revolutionary
books. We don't need a fancy information system to alert us to these
grand events; they will hit us in the face. Another good excuse for
ignoring the literature is that, since everyone has strong beliefs
about fundamentals but can't support those beliefs rationally or
consistently convince non-believers, computer science is actually a
religion.
     -- Philip Greenspun
%
Computers are the tools of the devil. There is no monotheism strong
enough that it cannot be shaken by Unix or any Microsoft product. The
devil is real. He lives inside C programs.
     -- Philip Greenspun
%
The companies making Unix machines were accustomed to building
proprietary systems and hence they couldn't resist introducing
annoying incompatibilities among their versions of Unix.
     -- Philip Greenspun
%
Digital, HP, and IBM sold big systems to big customers and laughed at
Sun. The people at Sun became so depressed that they decided to put
all the other Unix vendors out of business.
     -- Philip Greenspun
%
I told all of my friends how they were losers for running Unix. They
should switch to NT. It was the future. That was more or less my
constant refrain until one pivotal event changed my life: I actually
tried to use NT.
     -- Philip Greenspun
%
You might think that the user interface of Unix sucks. But, thanks to
X, it doesn't get any worse if you stay in your comfortable office or
cozy house and drive your web server remotely.
     -- Philip Greenspun
%
By contrast, anyone who has learned to install Microsoft Word on a
Windows NT machine is suddenly a $150/hour consultant. Now that all
the nerdy high school kids have all gone over to Linux, there is no
pool of cheap expertise for NT.
     -- Philip Greenspun
%
A true Windows NT expert is making $175,000 a year rebooting a
financial firm's e-mail servers; he isn't going to want to bother with 
your personal web server.
     -- Philip Greenspun
%
When you have 11 million users, life begins at 50 million
hits/day/service, and you don't have too much patience for bogus
'scalable application server' products.
     -- Philip Greenspun
%
Until Microsoft is able to get Windows NT to work at its own sites
(e.g., hotmail.com), it is probably safest to rely on a Unix server.
     -- Philip Greenspun
%
Armies of hardware engineers will work anonymously in cubicles like
slaves for 30 years so that the powerful computers used by pioneers in
the 1960s will be affortable to everyone. Then in the 1990s rich
people and companies will use their PR staffs to take credit for the
innovations of the pioneers in the 1960s, without even having the
grace to thank the hardware geeks who made it possible for them to
steal credit in the first place.
     -- Philip Greenspun
%
Conventional wisdom in Italy has it that 'there are three ways to
make money. You can inherit it. You can marry it. You can steal it.'
Based on my survey of the computer industry, the third strategy seems
to be the most successful.
     -- Philip Greenspun
%
You are a Web publisher. On the cutting edge. You need the latest and 
greatest in computer technology. That's why you use, uh, Unix. Yeah.
     -- Philip Greenspun
%
So you've gotten your pathetic Web site up and are proud of yourself
for your wimpy little SELECTs. You had planned to live on the
advertising revenue from your site, but find that $1.37 a month
doesn't go very far in Manhattan.
     -- Philip Greenspun
%
I didn't want to write a dead trees book but I figured that ordering
lobster was my only chance of getting anything out of Ziff-Davis,
which had been copying my images off my Web site and running them
without credit or payment in its magazines.
     -- Philip Greenspun
%
Some people like a one-truth world. If you have a huge advertising
and PR budget then you can control your public image very effectively
in a literate world. Ford Motor Company has enough money to remind you
2,000 times a year that 'Quality is Job One;' unless you lost a friend
in a Pinto gas tank explosion, you probably will eventually come to
agree. Microsoft via the genius of Bill Gates invented the
mouse-windows user interface, reliable operating systems, affordable
computing, and the Internet; if you don't think all of that is true,
ask someone who has never used a computer and whose only exposure to
the industry is through mass media.
     -- Philip Greenspun
%
Since publishers don't pay real money for computer books, the only
people who are attracted to work as authors are the clueless and
unemployed. If I actually know something about Web publishing, why
should I write a book instead of consulting for $1,000/day? But if
I've never typed a line of SQL in my life, that makes me the perfect
candidate to write a book about databases. Yes the publisher is only
going to pay me $10,000 but it works out because I get an excuse to
learn a bunch of new things. Maybe I can get a job as a junior
database programmer when I'm done.
     -- Philip Greenspun
%
My principle home computer is a Windows NT 4.0 box that I don't
understand. I once tried to buy a book on NT that explained something
about the philosophical underpinnings so that I'd be better prepared
to use the on-line help. But all the NT books at my local Micro Center
were 1200 pages long. I don't have time to read a 1200 page book. I am
afraid to even let one in my house.
     -- Philip Greenspun
%
Suppose that you are up all night tearing your hair out because
something has gone wrong with your RDBMS. You turn to your technical
bookshelf and thumb through all the dbadmin guides. Perhaps you do
find some useful information but you become enraged by the cheerful
tone of the book. You are in this mess because the RDBMS vendor
skimped on the design and implementation of a critical system
component. This skimping may well have been documented somewhere, but
you didn't see the relevant caveats before the skimping brought down
your service. Partly this is because tech books don't have sections
like 'design idiocies that are likely to fuck you over.'
     -- Philip Greenspun
%
Amazon had apparently expected to get real writers but most of the
authors who'd stumbled upon the form as of May 1997 were hack writers
of tech books. You'd think that lying on their college applications
would have prepared these people to answer this question with
something like 'Every summer I sit on the beach and re-read Proust. It
recharges my creative batteries.' But apparently they'd lost all the
skills they'd had at age 17.
     -- Philip Greenspun
%
The book the Ziff folks sent me as an example of their art was 'Late
Night VRML 2.0 with Java,' 700 pages + CD-ROM, published February
1997. I was personally acquainted with more movie stars than people
who might conceivably have wanted to buy this book or any book like
it.
     -- Philip Greenspun
%
Another good thing about Morgan Kaufmann is that I will be their
stupidest and most commerical writer. Seemingly everyone else who
writes for them has a Ph.D. and a professorship. They don't have a
'DOS for Dorks' series with potential to sell 200,000 copies/year. So
when they do get their appointment with the buyer for Barnes & Noble,
my book will be the one that gets pushed rather than 'Atomic
Transactions: In Concurrent and Distributed Systems'.
     -- Philip Greenspun
%
Fuji has done great things to promote this format. They make 645
lenses that are just as good as Hasselblad's 6x6 lenses. They charge
less than half the price. Then they throw in a perfectly good body
behind the lens for free! Sometimes Fuji puts a meter in the body,
something that apparently costs 'Blad about $5,000 extra.
     -- Philip Greenspun
%
At noon, an ugly mob of users assembles outside your office, angered
by your introduction of frames and failure to include WIDTH and HEIGHT
tags on IMGs. You send one of your graphic designers out to explain
how `cool' it all looked when run off a local disk in a demo to the
vice president. The mob stones him to death and then burns your server
farm to the ground.
     -- Philip Greenspun, describing what should happen to all
        bad Web designers
%
It's bad form to arrive at a scene [of a fire] with sparks and smoke
already INSIDE the cab of the truck.
     -- Jason Low
%
So our first-ever WRC (Water Rescue Call) alarm after buying and
training with our rescue raft 2 years ago came today, as mutual aid to
another local department, and we got cancelled halfway to the scene
because the patient had sunk. Nobody really wanted to try to grab hold
of a 400 lb baby COW anyway...
     -- Jason Low
%
This looks like a hardware issue with the monitor.  Physical
intimidation of your computer, while sometimes satisfying, should not
be necessary.
     -- Michael Riley, AST Technical Support
%
I managed to get [a netscape session] to crack the 100M mark once.  I
don't know how. I think it was just hungry.
     -- Justin Sheehy, fumbling-towards-ecstasy
%
Heck, that's nothing. I remember a while back jwz posted about how
proud he was when Netscape passed XEmacs in resident footprint.
     -- Justin Sheehy, fumbling-towards-ecstasy
%
It's that [netscape has] taken on Gates' philosophy toward resources:
If your machine has more resources, they must be for me to use, so I
will.
     -- Justin Sheehy, fumbling-towards-ecstasy
%
They've dealt with it in every revision. Each major new version of a
M$ OS has improved upon the Microsoft inevitable-crash(tm) feature. It
becomes more reliable with every revision.
     -- Justin Sheehy, fumbling-towards-ecstasy
%
Emacs, the right tool for the right job... no matter what the job!
     -- Justin Lloyd, fumbling-towards-ecstasy
%
Don't you mean the new "Inevitable-crash(tm) Wizard"? Improve your
productivity - use new M$ Overbloated Product(tm) - does all those 
jobs you'd never wish to do with as much enthusiasm as you'd have too!
Eats your resources! Upgrade your machine now and all that spare time 
you'll gain from Overbloated Product(tm) can be used to reboot. Many
times.
     -- Darrell Ottery, fumbling-towards-ecstasy
%
Is this such unusual behaviour in any other field? I think not. No,
it's down to the fact that computers are deemed 'hard' and 'difficult
to use' when the truth of the matter is that they are no harder to
operate effectively that a car is. You don't *have* t understand how a
4-stroke IC engine works to drive a car, you just need to know how to
drive. It's no different in any other field. Justs seems to me that
people aren't willing to make any effort these days. Feh.
     -- Darrell Ottery, fumbling-towards-ecstasy
%
If you wear a bulletproof vest, you should by that logic have no
complaint if people shoot you every day.
     -- Ron Schwarz, news.admin.net-abuse.usenet
%
There are pictures. There are pictures telling me that it's dialing,
connecting, checking a password, etc. Every fucking thing has an
icon. In theory, this is not necessarily a bad thing, but I feel
utterly condescended to.
     -- Jennifer H. Davidow, griping about AOL
%
They also had a UNIX option for 2 cents a day for 1 mb, so I caved.
I can't deal with the idea of NOT having a system that I barely know
yet somehow use religiously.
     -- Jennifer H. Davidow
%
Life wouldn't be life for you if I didn't come in every now and then
and give you advice that could potentially make you sleep in your
office again.
     -- Jennifer H. Davidow
%
I have said on not too few occasions that I remember when I used to be
smart. For 12 years of my life I was officially labeled 'gifted AND 
talented.' Now I'm lucky if I can get myself to school without getting 
lost.
     -- Jennifer H. Davidow
%
I think there needs to be more of me in your quotes file.
     -- Jennifer H. Davidow
%
Predictability comes by habit; stability comes by choice.
     -- Jennifer H. Davidow
%
I realized I have SUCH a perfect relationship bed and nobody to have
a relationship in it with.
     -- Jennifer H. Davidow (hopelessly out of context)
%
I should be reading property AND keeping my phone line open, which
explains why I'm online.
     -- Jennifer H. Davidow
%
I'm exhausted and stinky.
     -- Jennifer H. Davidow (still hopelessly out of context)
%
But I like [the sigquote] so much I had to quote it back. I'm famous.  
Should I look at your .plan again?
     -- Jennifer H. Davidow
%
Let's throw some chlorine in the gene pool.
     -- Jennifer's friend Nicole Brodie
%
Trent Reznor uses shock to increase the effect of his music; Marilyn
Manson uses music to increase the effect of his shock.
     -- Jennifer H. Davidow (I mangled the quote; sorry)
%
There was nothing good about the Challenger disaster, but it did
happen on the day that L. Ron Hubbard died and it blew that useless,
evil, rat bastard's obituary off the front page and that, at least,
wasn't bad.
     -- Penn Jillette
%
DVD has two sides, and I don't just mean the discs: it's an
entertainment medium like video tape, and it's a computer medium 
like CD-ROM. So people are going to have DVDs in their computers, and
with the buzzword 'convergence,' they're going to want to use those
drives to read movies and audio DVDs. This raises a security problem, 
because as everyone knows, the Internet is full of evil hackers who
will infringe upon copyright owners' God-given rights just for the
sheer hell of it.
     -- Matthew Skala, "DVD Crypto Considered Harmful?"
%
Bandwidth is highly asymmetrical and if you run a server that pumps
out anything like as much output as it takes input, then you'll
saturate the upward pipe and your wanker neighbours who only want to
look at, um, 'content,' on commercial servers, won't be able to
transmit their HTTP requests.
     -- Matthew Skala
%
Just _how_ many signs of the apocalypse does this cover at once?
     -- Liam Stitt
%
Some vices miss what is right because they are deficient, others
because they are excessive, in feeling or in actions... while 
virtue finds and chooses the mean.
     -- Aristotle
%
Usenet is essentially a HUGE group of people passing notes in class.
     -- R. Kadel
%
To err is human; to really fuck things up requires the root password. 
     -- someone in the sdm
%
Sarah McLachlan's more of a 'this is a dark place.' Tori Amos is a
little 'is it dark? I think so,' and Trent Reznor's the guy who kicked
the lightbulb out in the first place.
     -- John Shephard, fumbling-towards-ecstasy
%
What's worse than a broken version of sendmail? An *antique* broken
version of sendmail that's giving an error that isn't in the Fruitbat 
Book. And doesn't understand the -d switch. Whoever ported IBM's
version of sendmail to OS/2 should be shot. Anyone out there using
AIX, is your sendmail this bad?
     -- someone on alt.sysadmin.recovery
%
If you do not have a defragmenting tool for Windows NT, you can
defragment the disk or volume by backing up to tape, reformatting the
volume, and restoring from tape.
     -- Windows NT 4.0 on-line help, demonstrating what Microsoft
        thinks is a good idea
%
Emergency medicine demands the most intense involvement personally
and intellectually. Every area of clinical medicine is practiced,
every emotion is taxed. The challenge is in managing an unlimited
variety of disease or trauma at a level of immediacy that is rarely
approached in any other specialty.
     -- ? (Peter Rosen?)
%
Love is not a potato. You can't throw it out the window.
     -- old Russian proverb
%
Incidentally, the Muppet Show is being revived and one of the
recurring bits on the new show will be a 'barnyard medical drama'
called (I swear I'm not making this up) `E-I-E-I-O/R.'
     -- someone on alt.tv.er
%
Freedom means letting other people do things you don't like.
     -- Mark Stern
%
An' then Chicken@little.com, he come scramblin outta the terminal
room screaming `The system's crashing! The system's crashing!'
     -- Uncle RAMus, 'Tales for Cyberpsychotic Children'
%
Don't assume that Windoze'95 suffers from extreme bloat because it
_tried_ to implement these features... it suffers extreme bloat
because of 15+ years of band-aid solutions on top of QDOS.
     -- someone on comp.os.os2.advocacy
%
By the time you learn vi, you have to be a psychologist,
neurosurgeon, and voodoo priest as well as a crack programmer.
     -- Mark Morely
%
To the engineer, all matter in the universe can be placed into one of
two categories: (1) things that need to be fixed, and (2) things that
will need to be fixed after you've had a few minutes to play with
them. Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems
handily available, they will create their own problems. Normal people
don't understand this concept; they believe that if if it ain't broke,
don't fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain't broke, it doesn't
have enough features yet.
     -- Scott Adams
%
If not for the compulsions of engineers, mankind would never have
seen the wheel, settling instead for the trapezoid because some
Neanderthal in Marketing convinced everybody it had great braking
ability.
     -- Scott Adams
%
Here's a hint - if it starts to explode, you've gone too far.
     -- Derran, to me, during a Robotech campaign
%
If only to maintain our faith in ourselves and our families, we are
honor bound to believe each tearful young mother, to pray for the
dog-and-helicopter searches and to wear psychological, if not literal,
yellow ribbons. But even as we do so, again and again, we are coming
to realize that the climax of such searches is seldom a tearful
reunion or even an apprehended bad guy. Far more often, it is a
recanting, a tormented regression from 'she was stolen' to 'she fell'
to 'I may have dropped her' to 'I hit her with a big rock.'"
     -- David Van Biema
%
Look on the bright side - if all he can complain about in your essay
is the font size used on the paper, then you're in pretty good shape.
     -- Emily Shoichet
%
Tom the cat is chasing Jerry the mouse across a table surface 1.5m
high. Jerry steps out of the way at the last second, and Tom slides
off the edge of the table at a speed of 5 m/s. Where will Tom strike
the floor and what velocity components will he have just before he
hits?
     -- C.D. Scarfe, phys102
%
Social psychology is in danger of becoming The Study Of The Things
People Do When They Think They're Doing Something Else.
     -- Dr. Janet Bavelas, psyc201
%
I hate it when the people who correct me have no clue what they're
talking about.
     -- Andrew Toppan, sci.military.naval

Well, we know about this trend, and it's something we all feel.. but
because of the limited data collection capabilities we have, we can't
*prove* it.
     -- Norma Jones, RN, illustrating why statistics are important
%
You didn't let her down. 99of what they teach you in med school is
bullshit, yet they don't find time to teach the three fundamental
tenets of medicine, the ultimate reason we are who we are, our
responsibilities above all else: to cure sometimes, to relieve often,
and to comfort always. If you forget everything you've been taught in
the last three years, remember this, live by it, and you will never,
ever go wrong.
     -- Dr. Eric Leggat, ucalgary oncology, circa 1992
%
If I got shot, and someone was going to dig a bullet out of my leg, I
would hope to God that they'd give me something for the pain. 
'Cause.. it hurts.
     -- Dr. Steve Larson, upenn emergency medicine, circa 1995
%
That's not right. You give a guy analgesia if you're going to do
that. I mean, this isn't the Civil War or anything - we don't tell
people to gnaw on a piece of wood.
     -- Dr. Steve Larson, upenn emergency medicine, circa 1995
%
Do you have any recommendation to make regarding the management of
any patient that does *not* include the words 'Prozac,' 'thorazine,'
or 'refer to Dr. Kevorkian'?
     -- Dr. Neil Anderson, on a bad day
%
Fuck OJ.
     -- Xochitl Ruiz, summing that affair up quite nicely
%
Contrary to popular belief, Unix is user friendly. It just happens to
be very selective about who its friends are.
     -- Kyle Hearn
%
Unix is not an 'A-ha' experience, it is more of a 'holy-shit'
experience.
     -- Colin McFadyen, asr
%
A Unix system will not understand you if you shout at it.
     -- Don Stokes
%
If addiction is judged by how long a dumb animal will sit pressing a
lever to get a 'fix' of something, to its own detriment, then I would
conclude that netnews is far more addictive than cocaine.
     -- MAP@lcs.mit.edu
%
DO NOT DISRUPT MY CAREFULLY CONTROLLED PATTERN OF HYPE, OR YOU WILL
BE PUT INTO A BOX WITH BILL GATES AND SHAKEN!!!
     -- Leader Kibo
%
The new Canon EOS-1V is taller than the EOS-1N.. the extra height
also signifies the strength of the latest professional EOS camera. If
you look at it more closely, you will agree that its contours, from
the pentaprism and both sides of the top plates, are shaped like
the neck and shoulder areas of a muscular man.
     -- Canon promotional material (I'm unsure who their target
       demographic is for this camera)
%
When a Windows machine got into trouble, the old command-line
interface would fall down over the GUI like an asbestos fire 
curtain sealing off the proscenium of a burning opera. When a
Macintosh got into trouble it presented you with a cartoon of a bomb,
which was funny the first time you saw it.
     -- Neal Stephenson
%
Applications create possibilities for millions of credulous users,
whereas OSes impose limitations on thousands of grumpy coders, and so
OS-makers will forever be on the shit-list of anyone who counts for
anything in the high-tech world. Applications get used by people whose
big problem is understanding all of their features, whereas OSes get
hacked by coders who are annoyed by their limitations.
     -- Neal Stephenson
%
Windows 95 and MacOS are products, contrived by engineers in the
service of specific companies. Unix, by contrast, is not so much a
product as it is a painstakingly compiled oral history of the hacker
subculture.
     -- Neal Stephenson
%
In hard contact wounds, the immediate edges of the entrance are
seared by the hot gases of combustion and blackened by the soot. This
soot is embedded in the seared skin and cannot be completely removed
either by washing or by vigorous scrubbing of the wound.
     -- Vincent J.M. DiMaio, "Gunshot Wounds: Practical Applications of
        Firearms, Ballistics, and Forensic Techniques"
%
In firearm deaths, the individual may attempt to make the suicide
appear to be an accident. This generally takes two forms. The first of
these is the `gun cleaning accident.' The individual is found dead of
a gunshot wound with gun cleaning equipment neatly laid out beside
them. The proof that one is dealing with a suicide and not an accident
is usually the nature of the wound -- contact. An individual does not
place a gun against the head or chest and then pull the trigger in an
attempt to clean the weapon.
     -- Vincent J.M. DiMaio, "Gunshot Wounds: Practical Applications of
        Firearms, Ballistics, and Forensic Techniques"

Occasionally an individual will use two totally different methods in
an attempt to commit suicide. Thus, one finds individuals dead of a
gunshot wound with potentially lethal levels of drugs. Apparently the
drugs do not work fast enough, and the individual decides to shoot
himself.
     -- Vincent J.M. DiMaio, "Gunshot Wounds: Practical Applications of
        Firearms, Ballistics, and Forensic Techniques"

The fact that an individual can be mortally wounded, yet still be
capable of aggressive actions and a threat, sometimes for a prolonged
amount of time, is not appreciated by the public whose concepts of
shootings is derived from television and the movies. This is
periodically manifest by outcries from the public and the news media
against the police when an officer shoots a perpetrator multiple
times.
     -- Vincent J.M. DiMaio, "Gunshot Wounds: Practical Applications of
        Firearms, Ballistics, and Forensic Techniques"

We discriminate upon intelligence because it is the one metric which
truly matters. In a blind discussion of this nature, all you bring is
your mind, and all we have to evaluate you on is what and how you
display it.
     -- Liam Stitt
%
I don't myself believe in astrology. However, I think that's because
I'm a Libra and Libras are always skeptical.
     -- Philip Greenspun
%
HTML and GUI browsers are doing the very same thing for Internet
communications that Citizen's Band has done for two-way radio
communications. Specifically, to aid morons to pack rainbows up each
other's ass.
     -- Charles Miller
%
There is one sector of e-commerce that is pretty much guaranteed
profitability: pornography.
     -- Sean Yamamoto
%
CAUTION: This device contains an explosive charge and disperses
approximately 180 3/8" pellets in a 360-degree area. Proper eye and
ear protection is recommended. For outdoor use only.
     -- literature for Def-Tec Stinger crowd control device 
%
The vulnerability exists because it is possible, under very specific
conditions, to violate IE's cross-domain security model in order to
allow a web site to read data that it should be prevented from
reading.
     -- Microsoft, on an Internet Explorer bug
Huh?
     -- Megan P. Jamieson, reacting to Microsoft's reaction
It's still broken, and they're not going to fix it.
     -- someone trying to clear up Megan's confusion
%
You may have seen reports in the media claiming that Windows 2000
contains over 63,000 defects. I'd like to assure our customers that
these reports are inaccurate. Microsoft is committed to delivering
high quality products, and we believe Windows 2000 is the most
reliable operating system Microsoft has ever shipped.
     -- Microsoft Vice President Jim Allchin, in recognition of
       Overwhelming Irony Month
%
People say they are religious, of course, in the same way they say
they don't masturbate.
     -- Bill Maher
%
At the Republican debate last night, all the presidential candidates
said Elian Gonzalez should not be returned to Cuba. Gary Bauer said
Republicans believe very strongly in the family unit, but when Daddy's
a commie, that changes the whole equation.
     -- Bill Maher
%
The fact is that we don't need a bunch of Spicolies who can't go to
register to vote on their own when they can't even find the next place
to pierce or tattoo.
     -- Debbie Schlussel
%
Who cares who votes? Everybody's always whining about `Oh, we've got
38-- ' yeah, you know, you can't get three out of ten people to agree
on pizza toppings, much less the leader of the country.
     -- Dennis Miller
%
Who needs dynamite when we've got IPOs?
     -- NetSlaves Combat Manual
%
No, no, no -- that's right. That's right. I'm 99sure you're a
wacko, but I'm not positive. I could have that 1%, can't I?
     -- Penn Jillette on certainty
%
Who needs script kiddies when you've got backhoes?
     -- Dan Hollis, on nanog
%
I think I'm going to start an e-commerce company and make pillows.
     -- Sarah McLachlan, on what she's doing on her vacation from music
%
You are in a maze of twisted packages, all dependent.
     -- advent RedHat-style, Peter Dalgaard, sdm
%
> Sadly, the web has turned into an area where lusers roam freely.
Um, `turned'? Has it ever been anything *but*?
     -- Abigail and Stewart Stremler, sdm
%
Linux is probably one of the most Posix-compliant OS's out there
(except in those instances where Linus considers Posix to be
broken)...
     -- Anthony W. Youngman, comp.unix.admin
%
I remarked to Dennis [Ritchie] that easily half the code I was
writing in Multics was error recovery code. He said, `We left all that
stuff out. If there's an error, we have this routine called panic, and
when it is called, the machine crashes, and you holler down the hall,
`Hey! Reboot it!''
     -- Tom Van Vleck
%
Favorite Irish stereotype: 
 a) Drunken brawlers. 
 b) Devout morons. 
 c) Knack for explosives.
     -- abc.go.com/pi/poll/index.html
%
Darva [Conger] is now going to strip -- no, she's going to be naked
in `Playboy.' And I'm sure after the shoot, she'll be sobbing, saying,
`I didn't know there was film in the camera!'
     -- Super Dave Osborne, PI 03/15/00
%
[George] Bush is not stupid. But if he needed a kidney transplant, he
could call Quayle and not even do a blood test.
     -- Super Dave Osborne, PI 03/15/00
%
I hope that someday someone annihilates something you truly
care for out of ennui.  Just so you can share in this feeling too.
What can I say, I'm a sharing kinda guy.
     -- John Dillick
%
Rotate all alphabet characters by 13. Crude form of encryption to
prevent excess hostility from easily offended control freaks who
believe in Truth, God, and Censorship.
     -- Tom Dell, waffle BBS source 
%
Excessive use of this function will result in diminished memory,
Alzheimers, or worse. Is there another name for this?
     -- Tom Dell, waffle BBS source
%
Your modem must disconnect the line when DTR is dropped. Some modems
require a &Dx or &Cx sequence; others will require flipping a small
DIP switch inside or at the back of the modem. If neither of these is
the case, throw your modem from a tall building (we recommend the
Oakland Hyatt Regency).
     -- Tom Dell, waffle BBS documentation
%
Error message format, displayed in response to an unrecognized
command. By default, this is something to the effect of `Monkey +
Keyboard = %i.%|' Sick people who want to play reverse psychology can
throw a %Z in there: make error, get cookie. Yum.
     -- Tom Dell, waffle BBS documentation
%
Now, why would you want to do this? You're wondering where all your
disk storage went, and want to find those UUENCODED GIFs someone
posted so you can delete them. Some people like to look for larger
articles that may be of substance, such as FAQs and other interesting
texts. Surprisingly, this is a quick way to find lots of cool things.
     -- Tom Dell, waffle BBS documentation, on statistics
%
The infinite wisdom of Microsoft, Inc. has given us the horrible
^Z-as-EOF character in MS DOS. There is no rhyme or reason to
this. Note, I did not want to have this misfeature, however numerous
complaints and confusion have made it necessary. The ^Z in MSDOS is a
bug in MSDOS. Appending a ^Z by any editor is a bug in that editor.
     -- Tom Dell, waffle BBS source
%
Management is not responsible for lost luggage, minds, virginity...
     -- Tom Dell
%
Be safe or die.
     -- MIT PSFC, Office of Environment, Safety and Health
%
Okay, the celibacy is over. Now I want you to squat on my
lalijamba. That is right. And while you're at it, put your fist in my
gingee-gingee.
     -- Dana Carvey, on swamis and gurus, PI 03/23/00
       (read in bad East Indian accent for big laughs)
%
But we should congratulate the really big winner, which was `American
Beauty.' That won all the awards. Best picture. I don't know if you
saw it, but it's a terrific movie. It harkens back to a simpler time,
when high school kids' parents were shooting each other.
     -- Bill Maher
%
The man has been in the closet so long he has a pet bat.
     -- Joan Rivers, PI 03/27/00
%
I'm upset by all the angel pictures, because none of them know that
angels don't have bodies. Denzel Washington comes back and says, `Boy,
I haven't had a pizza in 30 years.' I'm thinking, if you are an angel,
you've *never* had a pizza.
     -- Roger Ebert
%
Why *wouldn't* God drink beer?
     -- Roger Ebert
%
For years, I thought God was Tab Hunter. But that was just me... that
was my own vision. God was a great big blond gorgeous guy with a
surfboard.
     -- Bruce Vilanch
%
What it means is that two people -- usually young people, high
school, college -- who are not seeing anyone romantically, but who
want to have sex, they just make a sort of quasi-business arrangement
that `Look, we're not romantically involved with anybody else, but we
need to have sex, let's just be buddies of a certain order.' Where was
this when *I* was in high school is what I want to know.
     -- Bill Maher
%
As you can see, you are NOT dead!
     -- Half Life: Opposing Force
%
Mexican restaurants are the only place you can drink abusively with
your meal and not look like a lush.
     -- Anne Merkel, Why I Hate Saturn
%
You can tell a place is really cool if they don't give the
address. After all, their address is common knowledge among the truly
hip. Why are these places paying to advertise to people who are
already customers? Do they think poserus don't own phone books?
     -- Anne Merkel, Why I Hate Saturn
%
You know you're in trouble when you start trying to predict what the
next drink will do to you. I need a wider variety of drugs. God, I
miss college.
     -- Anne Merkel, Why I Hate Saturn
%
Why the hell did you drink a whole bottle of scotch anyway? Oh,
right, you already told me. A writer.
     -- Why I Hate Saturn
%
Why do vegetarians spend so much time trying to make vegetables taste
like meat? Do monks buy a lot of inflatable sex dolls?
     -- Anne Merkel, Why I Hate Saturn
%
There's a bar that Ricky and I refer to as the `Crap Bar', which must
be one of the seediest dives in town. Located in a basement, it's got
poor ventilation, exposed plumbing, which bursts regularly, and
everything is sticky. Naturally, it's one of the more exclusive bars
downtown.
     -- Anne Merkel, Why I Hate Saturn
%
I wonder if they sell pitchers of scotch.
     -- Anne Merkel, Why I Hate Saturn
%
"Why is it that when we see something beautiful, we want to possess
it? We end up killing it, destroying the beauty that made us want it
in the first place."
"You fool! That's the whole *point* of relationships!"
     -- Why I Hate Saturn
%
You ain't seen ugly until you've seen a goth cross-dresser.
     -- Joey Lindstrom
%
I arrived in Venice in January with a slight cold. Water fell on me
from the sky and rose up from the sea to cover my shoes. Then it
started to snow. After a few days of this, I was giving demonstrations
of my maladies in Venetian pharmacies. I ended up taking four
different Italian drugs that I couldn't pronounce, much less read the
lengthy instructions. I sent email to my friends telling them that `I
either have AIDS or am Jewish.'
     -- Philip Greenspun
%
Eventually the key broke in half and I learned a whole new set of
Italian words (none of which one could learn at Berlitz) while
watching the local mechanics spend an hour drilling the lock out.
     -- Philip Greenspun
%
This underlines one of the more depressing things that have happened
to Usenet since we started letting morons on.
     -- Liam Stitt
%
I have a better idea: Winter Daylight Losing Time. Late March, we set
the clocks *back* one hour. Advantages are that you get to sleep an
hour later than sun time (or be woken an hour early an hour later),
you have less daylight to contend with in the evening (vitamin D is a
Communist plot, right up there with fluoride), nightclubbers have a
much better chance of going home at dawn, and if you need to blame
your bad mood or random acts of senseless violence on something
there's always seasonal affective disorder.
     -- Red Drag Diva, sdm
%
DEAR MR. WEB DEZINUR:
PLZ WUD YOU UPLOD RAZL SO I KIN LOOK AT BEAVR. THANKU.
     -- Wednesday, afw
%
Gore versus Bush: Isn't this how they decide whether a movie gets an
R or an NC-17?
     -- Denis Miller
%
I pick a president the way I pick a driver to get me to the airport:
Which one will cost me the least and not get me killed.
     -- Denis Miller
%
Deployment of critical software under NT experiences continuing
troubles; film at 11 unless the player BSODs.
     -- Liam Stitt
%
Share the screwdriver. Lift with your legs. 256 MB DIMMs are
pricey...
     -- james@arsdigita.com, on hardware maintenance
%
In his acceptance speech, Bush made a clumsy attempt at pandering
without seeming to pander. `The polls say tax relief is not popular,'
he said. `I'm not proposing tax relief because it's the popular thing
to do. I'm proposing tax relief because it's the right thing to do.'
Of course. It's *courageous* to tell voters you're going to give them
money.
     -- Dan Kennedy, Boston Phoenix, 10 March 2000
%
It seems you just can't call people Christ-bashing sexual deviants
anymore without them getting all upset about it.
     -- Dan Kennedy, Boston Phoenix, 20 August 1999
%
I upbraided myself for not having a gun. (Sorry, NRA. I'm still here,
obviously, and I'm still not getting one.)
     -- Dan Kennedy, Boston Phoenix, 13 August 1999
%
On several occasions when I've been driving and had a brainstorm or
heard some useful bit of information on the radio, I've whipped [my
Palm Pilot] out in the middle of traffic to jot down a few words,
rather than try to make a mental note that will be forgotten as soon
as I've made it through the next red light. Yes, this is dangerous,
but there's a simple solution: if you see a blue 1989 Toyota Tercel
weaving back and forth, assume it's me, and stay the hell out of the
way.
     -- Dan Kennedy, Boston Phoenix, 23 July 1999
%
No doubt Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris would never have embarked on
their murderous rampage if the principal had been allowed to post THOU
SHALT NOT KILL next to the football schedule.
     -- Dan Kennedy, Boston Phoenix, 2 July 1999
%
Of course, in the world of local school-board politics, the right of
86 people to keep their children enveloped in a haze of unreality (a
haze that in all likelihood exists only in the parents' minds)
supersedes the right of the majority to have their children
introduced, in school, to important, difficult literature.
     -- Dan Kennedy, Boston Phoenix, 2 July 1999
%
Cable sucks. Certainly cable TV has done a good job of accomplishing
its basic mission, which is to drain $30 to $100 from you every month
for something that used to be free.
     -- Dan Kennedy, Boston Phoenix, 14 May 1999
%
Math IS hard, as Barbie noted.
     -- Philip Greenspun
%
It is apparently not OK to remove A-bombs from Los Alamos
property. Nor are we allowed to gamble or use drugs here. Nor can one
use a fire extinguished unless one has been trained with a `real dummy
fire extinguisher' and `real dummy fires.' Then we were shown a
10-minute video on how to use the fire extinguishers we weren't
allowed to use. At the end I raised my hand and asked `since we aren't
allowed to gamble, are we going to get a video on how to card count in
six-deck blackjack also?'
     -- Philip Greenspun, "Footsteps"
%
Those of you who've seen me cry like a baby and run to Mommy Maple
for even the simplest calculus problems will be shocked to learn that
I was the nerdiest person hired [at Los Alamos National Laboratories]
that week.
     -- Philip Greenspun, "Footsteps"
%
The overhead at [LANL] isn't very different from what it is at MIT,
which is remarkable when you consider that MIT doesn't have to
maintain hundreds of miles of barbed-wire fence and enough guards and
heavy guns to repel the entire PLO.
     -- Philip Greenspun, "Footsteps"
%
Major road hazards specific to the Netherland Antilles and Aruba are
hidden and poorly maintained street signs, disoriented drivers not
familiar with where they are going, and goats wandering onto
roadways.
     -- United States Department of State Consular information sheet
The State Department has evidently never been to Massachussets.
     -- Megan P. Jamieson
%
One fact, two sharp edges. You're going to need an extra-large box of
Band-Aids.
     -- Adam Schiff, "Law & Order"
%
Peering is a poker game. The more of it you can get, the more people
will want to use your services, and the more networks will want to
peer with you to reach those customers. As you go along you add bigger
peers and drop the smaller ones. Lather, rinse, repeat, until your
network IS the Internet because you've got everyone else's customers
and they all want to peer with you to get them back.
     -- Martin Cooper, NANOG
%
If I were a cop and I had seen both `Scream' and [`I Know What You
Did Last Summer'], I'd be at writer Kevin Williamson's house searching
it for drugs. If I didn't find something, I'd plant a kilo of heroin
in his ass for writing this piece of crap.
     -- Mr. Cranky reviews "I Know What You Did Last Summer"
%
Any film that inspired Dan Aykroyd to lose weight is okay with me. I
mean, we're talking about a guy who was getting so fat that people
were starting to wonder not whether he was still married to Donna
Dixon, but whether he had eaten her.
     -- Mr. Cranky reviews "Blues Brothers 2000"
%
Since both [Michael] Bay and [Jerry] Bruckheimer appear to have
degrees in auditory desensitization, you can be damn sure that when the
movie calls for science and logic, science and logic go right out the
window in favor of `bitchin' tunes.'
     -- Mr. Cranky reviews "Armageddon"
%
Is Jennifer Love Hewitt's career goal to be an actress or to test the
elastic limits of the Wonderbra? Hey, don't get me wrong; I'm all for
skin on screen, but Hewitt's breasts are pushed so far up into her
face that her chin looks like the head pin in some sort of peculiar
game of dual flesh bowling -- a definite strike against this movie.
     -- Mr. Cranky reviews "Can't Hardly Wait"
%
[Director David] Koepp has obviously been in Los Angeles too long
because when his power goes out, he apparently runs down the street
picking off neighbors with an Uzi.
     -- Mr. Cranky reviews "The Trigger Effect"
%
Basically, the film is banking on me being spookified by its
X-Files-like weirdness. Unfortunately, I don't find it weird at all. I
find it stupid. Mr. Cranky doesn't believe in ghosts. What Mr. Cranky
does believe is that those who buy such supernatural nonsense tend to
run around spouting witticisms they picked up from astrology columns
and passing that off as `knowledge.' If being trapped in a room with
200 such yammering nimrods is your idea of an ideal evening, then by
all means go see `The Sixth Sense.'
     -- Mr. Cranky reviews "The Sixth Sense"
%
`Jackie! Those Mounties took my beaver pelts and cursed at me in
French. Get them!' Since Jackie was already in Vancouver in the first
place, why not have him beat up Canadians? He would have garnered a
much bigger box-office take since Americans take great joy in watching
people of other nationalities beat the crap out of each other. Jackie
could have destroyed socialized health care while he was at it and
elicited enthusiastic cheers from millions of Americans, who, as a
general rule, resent any country where poor people actually have
access to health care.
     -- Mr. Cranky reviews "Rumble in Vancouver^Wthe Bronx"
%
Hey! A lot of theories don't work out! The lone gunman.. communism.. 
geometry..
     -- Joey Tribiani, "Friends"
%
I don't like the looks of this doctor. I bet I've lost more patients
than he's treated.
     -- Zoidberg, "Futurama"
%
Please don't hit me! I'm brittle!
     -- Zoidberg, "Futurama"
%
Hint to Ferrari engineers: I heard that this `knob' idea is going to
catch on.
     -- Philip Greenspun
%
I felt a hurricane blast of cold wind in my face. The joy of
open-window motoring? No. The result of leeting a Samoyed adjust the
ventilation controls with his paws.
     -- Philip Greenspun
%
Not using M$ products is a moral choice. Don't blame me if you don't
have the guts.
     -- petro, sdm
%
The day that any real sysadmin, especially one who works with or
around Exchange servers, needs a *newsgroup* to tell them about a
massive virus outbreak is the day that sysadmin needs to go back to
Burger King.
     -- Mike Sphar, sdm
%
I'm glad you are committed to your philosophy of doing what Jesus
would do.  I assume that includes writing insulting letters to
cartoonists on company time.
     -- Dogbert
%
Apparently Microsoft couldn't quite figure out how to make an
application written for Solaris 2.5 or 2.6 work on 2.7.  And you'd
think they'd be able to, as masters of the ever-changing API.  But I
guess they can't do that trick if it's not _their_ API.
     -- Steve VanDevender, sdm, on IE 5 for Solaris
%
"You can't *own* property, man!"
"I can! That's because I'm not a penniless hippie!"
     -- hippie and Farnsworth, "Futurama"
%
"You shouldn't eat things that can feel pain." *BONK!* "Ow!"
"Okay, we won't eat you!"
     -- hippie and Bender, "Futurama"
%
If I speak at one constant volume, at one constant pitch, at one
constant rhythm, right into your ear, you still won't hear; you still
won't hear.
     -- Faith No More, "A Small Victory," perhaps describing Usenet
%
A lot of people in this forum are saying they are willing to take `a
little' risk of data loss in exchange for speed. I promise you, you
will stop saying that after a data loss happens.
     -- Tim Keating
%
If you're simply backing up the files, and the database engine is in
the midst of updating a series of tables that reference each other,
you'll end up with inconsistent data. The filesystem backup program
has no knowledge of either implicit or explicit write locks on the
tables being changed. If you can't see how that will frequently lead
to inconsistent backups, I don't really care.
     -- Don Baccus
%
When I read the words `you will quickly find that transactions can be
easily reproduced via code,' I get a full-body shiver.
     -- Jay R. Ashworth
%
This comment is idiotic: `MySQL has carved out a very interesting
niche: raw speed and simple to setup/use/maintain database backend for
online applications.' I'll tell you what, if I was able to strip out
30% of the functionality of enterprise-level RDBMS, they would be
pretty damned fast too.
     -- Matt Warden
%
Which again proves that NT swervers are the most secure, since
they're down so much. Can't hack a down server.
     -- Philip Newton, sdm
%
>he knows how to turn the PC on - still doesn't understand the
>difference between netscape and IE.
That's ok; it often seems that the people at netscape have forgotten
too.
     -- Alan J. Rosenthal, sdm
%
I'm not an alcoholic. I'm a drunk. Alcoholics go to meetings.
     -- Sarah Keating, MD (not out of context, sadly)
%
Oh, great. Now we have to pee in the boat.
     -- Ron Walls, MD, FACEP (hopelessly out of context)
%
You can tell by the way I use my walk / I'm a Linux geek, no time to
talk / Ah ah ah ah coding in perl, coding in perl...
     -- Paul Tomblin, sdm, making fun of "Stayin' Alive"
%
Modifying the GNU C Library to work with other `make' programs
would be so hard that we recommend you port GNU `make' instead.
*Really.*
     -- glibc-2.1.2 INSTALL
%
One alternative is to regard unwrapped lines, HTML, 20 line sigs,
and ms-tref as scoring; they help you evaluate the poster, as
well as her/his post.
     -- David Lesher, NANOG
%
Hey. We don't take no shit from a machine.
     -- Information Society, "Mirrorshades"
%
You can thank me later for that unhelpful bit of advice when it
ultimately proves useless.
     -- Luke Carson
%
I wish I had the kind of power that ER's music person or persons
have. Just plug a song into a scene on ER, and the Internet will be
swarming with people who *must* know it. `Baaa! Baaa! Must find song
title and buy CD! Baaa!'
     -- Philip D. Fitzgerald
%
Position for an 'Internet Test Engineer.'
'Try it now!'
*revrevrev* `Nope, still busted.'"
     -- Wednesday, afw
%
Nude scenes should be inspired by the libido, not the box
office. That's why I object to the phrase `gratuitous nudity.' In a
movie like this, the only nudity worth having is gratuitous. If it's
there for reasons thare clankingly commercial, you feel sorry for the
actresses, which is not the point.
     -- Roger Ebert reviews "Road Trip"
%
Together we figured out what had happened, which was useful, but not
the sort of conversation you should be having. When a movie doesn't
have a brain in its head, it's kind of unfair to require thought on
the part of the audience.
     -- Roger Ebert reviews "Road Trip," take 2
%
Films are supposed to be made because somebody wants to tell a story,
not because somebody wants to try out a new computer technique.
     -- Mr. Cranky reviews "Dinosaur"
%
One successful robbery, at knife point again but in Bali this time,
in which we both left happy, me with a rapidly beating heart but
otherwise OK and my new friend with exactly ten of my dollars. Hell, I
would have paid double that for my life.
     -- Richard Johnstone, photo.net
%
"Please buy a gun for me so I can start shooting people."
"HEY. WAIT. You live in the gun-happy country, not me."
     -- Phyl Behrer and me
%
I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated
it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of
it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the
implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be
entertained by it.
     -- Roger Ebert reviews "North"
%
We are giving you the root password, a pat on the back, and a goodbye
kiss.
     -- ArsDigita
%
And God looked down upon the masses and said, `Let there be Large
Format.'
     -- Daniel Taylor, photo.net
%
I'm too damn sober.
     -- Det. John Munch 
%
This AI Olympics thing, it's all about getting to know each other,
no? Can you think of a better way to do that than rubbing up against
each other? That krazy `UniHoc' was fun. And now you can do it again,
to the beat of the world's most generic music! (Plus, you get to
participate in flooding a Boston club with 80 CS people.)
     -- MIT AI Olympics '99
%
I'm not going to be a place that allows viruses to go unpunished. 
Anything virus-ridden gets cleaned, anything that can't gets deleted. 
Period. Fuck anyone who doesn't take heed. This is my network.
     -- ben@lspace.org, sdm
%
Yġu may now return to bashing UNIX and its smug complacent users. We
in return will return to our smug complacency -- after all, we don't
have any machines to disinfect this weekend.
     -- Jim Hill
%
Love means never having to say, `Does that twenty include the
spanking?'
     -- ?
%
We pointed the error out to the cashier, who was probably barely old
enough to be legally employed, and her response, if she speaks for her
generation, was ominous, even terrifying: `It does that because
... because it's a computer.' An entire generation is growing up
believing that the current sorry state of affairs in information
technology could ever be accepted as _normal_!
     -- Zygo Blaxell, RISKS-20.89
%
Physics is hard. MIT freshman physics is where I learned that I was
stupid.
     -- Philip Greenspun
%
The Internet is not an attention charity.  Go away.
     -- Liam Stitt, answering my e-mail
%
You can't beat mass destruction as a way of entertaining everyone.
     -- Rick Farmer