You are in a twisty little passage of standards, all conflicting.
        -- Michael Meissner, meissner@osf.org
%
The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them.
 If you don't like one, just wait for next years model.
        -- Andrew Tanenbaum, "Computer Networks", 
            somewhere in the Data Layer chapter
%
The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them 
to choose from.
        -- Grace Murray Hopper, as quoted in the Unix Haters Handbook, p.10
%
Ah yes.  Technology is introduced, utilized, depended upon, obsolete,
standardized, and understood, in that order.  (To paraphrase someone I
can't remember.)
        -- Martin Fouts, fouts@hpl.hp.com
%
There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.
        -- Ken Olson, President of DEC, 
            World Future Society Convention, 1977
%
I consider it quite possible that physics cannot be based on the
field concept, i. e., on continuous structures. In that case
*nothing* remains of my entire castle in the air gravitation
theory included, [and of] the rest of modern physics.
        -- Einstein in a 1954 letter to Besso, quoted from:
                   "Subtle is the Lord", Abraham Pais, page 467.
%
Then again, e=mc^2 may only be a local phenomenon.
        -- Einstein
%
In My Egotistical Opinion, most people's C programs should be 
indented six feet downward and covered with dirt.
        -- Blair P. Houghton
%
My employer doesn't even agree with me about C indentation style.
        -- Used as a disclaimer
%
A formal parsing algorithm should not always be used.
        -- D. Gries
%
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming 
is not worth knowing.
        -- Anonymous
%
Pointers are like jumps, leading wildly from one part of the data structure
to another. Their introduction into high-level languages has been a step
backwards from which we may never recover.
        -- C. A. R. Hoare, "Hints on Programming Language Design", 1973
%
German programmers tend to take it as a personal insult when a
fault is detected in code that they have written. 
        -- Debora Weber-Wulff  weberwu@tfh-berlin.de [comp.risks 16.94]
%
The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience,
and Hubris.
        -- Larry Wall 
%
A successful tool is one that was used to do something undreamed of by
its author.
        -- S. C. Johnson
%
As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it
wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought.  Debugging had
to be discovered.  I can remember the exact instant when I realized
that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in
finding mistakes in my own programs.
        -- Maurice Wilkes discovers debugging, 1949
%
At Group L, Stoffel oversees six first-rate programmers, a managerial
challenge roughly comparable to herding cats.
        -- The Washington Post Magazine, June 9, 1985
%
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, 
not tried it.
        -- Donald Knuth, in a memo to Peter Van Emde Boas titled
	   "Notes on the van Emde Boas construction of priority deques: 
	    An instructive use of recursion"
%
But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the
system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed,
analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses.
        -- Bruce Leverett, "Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers"
%
In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
        -- Alan Perlis
%
It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than 
vice versa.
        -- Anonymous
%
Q:  What is IBM's definition of a man year?
A:  720 programmers trying to finish the job before lunch.
%
But I have a slowly coagulating theory that the size of a project is
directly proportional to the possibility that significant bugs will crop
up. Exponentiate for each additional programmer involved.
        -- Steven K. Halliburton
%
FORTRAN's DO statement is far scarier than GOTO ever was - nothing can 
match the sheer gibbering horror of the `come from' loop if the 
programmer didn't document it well...
        -- Mark Hughes
%
Stroustroup writes in the ARM: C programmers think that memory
allocation is too important to be left to the computer, Lisp
programmers think that memory allocation is too important to be left
to the programmer.
%
Another of Fortran's breakthroughs was the GOTO statement, which was 
a uniquely simple and understandable means of structuring and
modularizing programs.
        -- From the May/June'94 IEEE Institute
%
The first time I encountered setjmp() was in an Amiga program ported
from Unix.  "Hmm, what's setjmp()?" I said, pulling up the man page.
I read the man page. "*GASP* GLARGGGPPPHHTT!!! ARGHJKLKJ#@%!^^U!" I
exclaimed, and rolled my chair over backwards as I fainted.
        -- From: ogre@netcom.com
%
As practiced by computer science, the study of programming is an 
unholy mixture of mathematics, literary criticism, and folklore.
        -- B. A. Sheil, 1981
%
No one who has been a programmer can escape the conclusion that 
computers highlight our inability to communicate.
        -- Mike Walsh (Infosystems, Nov 87 P. 43 
            ["Where the Rubber Meets the Road"])
%
First learn computer science and all the theory.  Next develop a 
programming style.  Then forget all that and just hack.
        -- George Carrette
%
I believe it was Andrew Koenig who commented that purists who accept
no compromises in programming languages use either machine code or
lambda calculus :-)
        -- Kevlin A P Henney (kevlin@wslint.demon.co.uk)
%
A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program
in than some that do.
        -- Dennis M. Ritchie
%
A Law of Computer Programming:
  Make it possible for programmers to write in English and you
  will find the programmers cannot write in English.
%
For every complex question, there is a simple answer -- and it's wrong.
        -- H.L. Mencken
%
Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that 
corporations and other organizations habitually engage in only 
because they cannot actually masturbate.
        -- Dave Barry
%
What I look forward to is continued immaturity followed by death.
        -- Dave Barry
%
The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.
        -- Oscar Wilde
%
As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination.
When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
        -- Oscar Wilde
%
Men represent the triumph of mind over morals,
whereas women represent the triumph of matter over mind.
        -- from "Dorian Gray"
%
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
        -- Oscar Wilde
%
Life is too short to be taken seriously.
        -- Oscar Wilde
%
...Then anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise
anyone who receives it, in the belief that such writing will be clear
and certain, must be exceedingly simple-minded...
        -- Plato, _Phaedrus_
%
St. Augustine tells the story of a pirate captured by Alexander the
Great who asked him "how he dares molest the sea." "How dare you
molest the whole world?" the pirate replied: "because I do it with a
little ship only, I am called a thief; you, doing it with a great
navy, are called an Emperor."
         -- Noam Chomsky, Pirates and Emperors.
%
I have been Foolish and Deluded,
and I am a Bear of No Brain at All.
         -- Pooh
%
A system admin's life is a sorry one.  The only advantage he has over
Emergency Room doctors is that malpractice suits are rare.  On the other
hand, ER doctors never have to deal with patients installing new 
versions of their own innards!
         -- Michael O'Brien
%
A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.
         -- Martin H. Fischer
%
Collaboration, n.:
   A literary partnership based on the false assumption that the
   other fellow can spell.
%
Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.
%
Real Time, adj.:
   Here and now, as opposed to fake time, which only occurs there
   and then.
%
SCCS, the source motel!  Programs check in and never check out!
         -- Ken Thompson
%
The fact that it works is immaterial.
         -- L. Ogborn
%
There is no such thing as a machine-independent optimization.
	 -- (William Wulf ?)
%
Die Mathematiker sind eine Art Franzosen:  Redet man zu ihnen, so
uebersetzen sie es in ihre Sprache, und dann ist es alsobald ganz
etwas anderes. 
         -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
%
What's taking so long?  It's only typing!
         -- a marketing manager posing as a software manager
%
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity,
and I'm not sure about the former. 
         -- Albert Einstein
%
If you lie to the compiler, it will get its revenge.
         -- Henry Spencer
%
Maybe we can eventually make language a
complete impediment to understanding.
%
Stoning non conformists is part of science.  Stoning conformists is
also part of science.  Only those theories that can stand up to a
merciless barrage of stones deserve consideration.  It is the
creationist habit of throwing marshmallows that we find annoying.
         --  Dr. Pepper
%
I have the terrible feeling that, because I have a white beard and am 
sitting in the back of the theater, you expect me to tell you the 
truth about something.  These are the cheap seats, not Mount Sinai.
         -- Orson Welles, "Someone to Love."
%
The scientific name for an animal that doesn't either run from
or fight its enemies is lunch.
         -- Michael Friedman
%
All the questions had received excellently drafted answers, and the 
answers were not open to doubt because they were not the work of 
human thought, always liable to error, but were all the work of 
bureaucratic officialdom.
         -- Leo Tolstoi
%
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
         -- Olivier
%
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a 
mistake when you make it again.
         -- F. P. Jones
%
Experience is the worst teacher.  It always gives the test first and
the instruction afterward.
%
Experience is what causes a person to make new mistakes instead of old
ones.
%
Experience is what you get when you were expecting something else.
%
Experience varies directly with equipment ruined.
%
Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn at no other.
 -- Poor Richard's Almanac
%
Nothing ever becomes real until it is experienced.
 -- John Keats
%
Experience is the worst teacher.  It always gives the test first and
the instruction afterward.
%
Ken Thompson has an automobile which he helped design.  Unlike most
automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gage, nor any of the
numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver.  Rather, if the
driver makes any mistake, a giant "?" lights up in the center of the
dashboard.  "The experienced driver", he says, "will usually know
what's wrong."
         -- Anonymous
%
We didn't send you to Washington to make intelligent decisions.  
We sent you to represent us."  
         -- Kent York, Baptist minister to US Rep. Bill Sarpalius
%
Implementation is the sincerest form of flattery.
         -- L. Peter Deutsch
%
Who?  Me?  Grow up?  Duh, I mean I'm way too old to grow up.
         -- Kelly Scott (being silly)
%
Speaking as a recovering physics grad student, I think the situation
might best be best summed up by Feynmann's own description of Dirac's
book on Quantum Mechanics:
   "We all quote this book, but none of us have read shit."
%
As far as I know we never had an undetected error.
         -- Anonymous
%
So mutable is really the prophecised anti-Const, yes?
         -- Doug Schmidt
%
Never express yourself more clearly than you think.
         -- Niels Bohr
%
Maybe if you could comprehend how most people can be unconcerned about
the loss of hundreds of millions of animal lives for greed you would be
able to understand why some Nazis were unconcerned about the lives lost
in the holocaust.	
         -- barry@garion.it.com.au (Barry O'Grady)
%
The question is not, can they reason? Nor, can they talk? 
But, can they suffer?
%
there are many things worth living for
there are a few things worth dying for
there are no things worth killing for
%
Remember, high-tech means 'breaks down next week', while cutting edge 
means 'breaks down this afternoon'.
         -- Bruce Sterling
%
A "quantum gravity expert" is presumably someone well acquainted with
the details of our immense ignorance of the subject.  I suppose I count.
         -- baez@guitar.ucr.edu (john baez)
%
Why can't life be menu driven or at least have an 'undo' feature?
	 -- David M. DeFelice - NASA Lewis Research Center - 
             Community Relations Office
%
I have a flawless philosophical and scientific model of reality. 
Unfortunately, it's actual size.  We must never be dogmatic.  
Anyone who says otherwise is wrong.  Will betray country for food.
         -- .sig of mathew@mantis (moderator of alt.atheism.moderated)
%
You are writing real-time code when you have to fight for 
10 instructions.
         -- Raul Izahi Lopez Hernandez, C-Cube Microsystems
%
There are few situations in life that cannot be resolved promptly, and to 
the satisfaction of all concerned, by either suicide, a bag of gold, or 
thrusting a despised antagonist over a precipice on a dark night.
         -- Ernest Bramah (Kai Lung stories)
%
Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
         -- (Macbeth, Act V)
%
Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea -- massive,
difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of 
mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it.
         -- Gene Spafford, 1992
%
Do not use procedures; they are expensive.
         -- from IBM's PL/I (F) documentation, circa 1966
%
He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned 
my contempt.  He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for 
him the spinal cord would fully suffice.
         -- Albert Einstein
%
Software is like Entropy: it's hard to grasp, weighs nothing and
obeys the Second Law of Thermodynamics, i.e. it always increases.
         -- Norman Augustine
%
I view the landslide of C use in education as something of a calamity.
         -- N. Wirth, 1993
%
...it doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter
how smart you are -- if it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.
         -- Richard P. Feynman
%
It doesn't matter how beautiful your experiment is, it doesn't matter 
how carefully you collect your data -- if it is based upon a faulty
understanding of what is being tested, it's most likely useless.
         -- L.D. Hosford
%
To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous
as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin.
         -- Cardinal Bellarmine 1615, during the trial of Galileo
%
The only person who believes a new theory is the theorist who
invented it, while the only person who questions the results
of an experiment is the person who performed it.
%
REPORTER: Mr. Gandhi, what do you think about Western Civilization?
GANDHI:   I think it would be a good idea.
%
Fowler contends that "a dozen sentences are spoilt by ill-advised 
avoidance of repetition for every one that is spoilt by ill-advised 
repetition.
%
The number of UNIX installations has grown to 10, with more expected.
         -- UNIX Prg Man, 2nd ed, June 1972
%
Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
         -- Lily Tomlin
%
...all life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which
there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those
born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the
other.
         -- HPL, from The Silver Key
%
I'm sorry, if you were right, I'd agree with you.
         -- Robin Williams in "Awakenings"
%
An expert is a man who never makes small mistakes.
         -- Tom Phipps
%
Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time 
he will pick himself up and continue.
         -- Winston Churchill
%
Atilla The Hun's Maxim: If you're going to rape, pillage and burn,
be sure to do things in that order.
         -- P. J. Plauger, Programming On Purpose, p147
%
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure
and the intelligent are full of doubt.
         -- Bertrand Russell
%
B can be thought of as C without types; more accurately, it is BCPL
squeezed into 8K bytes of memory and filtered through Thompson's brain.
         -- Dennis Ritchie
%
C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success.
         -- Dennis M. Ritchie.
%
A sucker is born every minute.
         -- Phineas T. Barnum
%
I believe it was Heinlein who pointed out that science fiction is about
things for which there is some scientific evidence, such as ghosts; while
fantasy is about things for which there is no scientific evidence, such as
faster than light travel.
         -- Dan Goodman dsg@maroon.tc.umn.edu
%
The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, 
be regarded as a criminal offence.
         -- E.W.Dijkstra, 18th June 1975.
%
For I do not believe that the stars are spread over a
 spherical surface at equal distances from one center;
 I suppose their distances from us to vary so much that
 some are 2 or 3 times as remote as others.
         -- Galileo
%
[another poster] cultivates an admirable elegance of expression that 
I'm sure will take him far on the Net.  (To put it more precisely, 
his postings sound like my postings.)
         -- Bill Higgins, HIGGINS@FNAL.FNAL.GOV
%
Ah, Benson, you are so mercifully free of the ravages of intelligence!
         -- TimeBandits
%
We don't have a patent on irony and satire; those tools are available
for you to use in your own work.
         -- Guerrilla Girls (a New York City performance group)
%
Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and instead of 
bleeding he sings."  
         -- Ed Gardner
%
Unix has been feverishly evolving for over 20 years, sort of like
bacteria in a cesspool, only less attractive.
         -- Unix for Dummies
%
It is possible to pay another man's debts on his behalf, but it is not
possible to make a guilty man innocent by suffering in his place.
         -- Carl Lofmark, _What is the Bible?_
%
Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near 
the earth's surface relatively to other matter; second, telling other 
people to do so.  The first kind is unpleasant and ill-paid, the second 
is pleasant and highly paid.
         -- Bertrand Russell
%
Many things do not happen as they ought. Most things do not happen at 
all.  It is for the conscientious historian to correct these defects.
         -- Herodotus
%
"Deep" is a word like "theory" or "semantic" -- it implies all
sorts of marvelous things.  It's one thing to be able to say "I've got
a theory", quite another to say "I've got a semantic theory", but, ah,
those who can claim "I've got a deep semantic theory", they are truly
blessed.
         -- Randy Davis
%
Reisner's Rule of Conceptual Inertia:
  If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
%
Verbing weirds language.
         -- Calvin (from "Calvin and Hobbes")
%
It's always easier to apologize than to ask permission.
         -- Grace Hopper
%
It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.
         -- (attributed to Arthur C. Clarke)
%
I'll need daily status reports on why you're so behind.
         -- Dilbert's boss
%
"Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of the pox !"
"That, my Lord, depends on whether I embrace your principles or
 your mistress."
         -- John Wilkes to The Earl of Sandwich, Parliament, November 1763
%
How do we persuade new users that spreading fonts across the page
like peanut butter across hot toast is not necessarily the route 
to typographic excellence?''
         -- Peter Flynn
%
When in doubt, use brute force.
         -- Ken Thompson
%
Indeed, "brute force" solutions are often characteristic of advanced
cultures, not primitive ones.  The Romans and their predecessors spent
a long time figuring out how to build arches... and virtually all our
buildings today use post-and-lintel construction, precisely what the
arch was devised to replace.  We have better materials and more money,
and given that, arches are usually not worth the extra complexity.
         -- Henry Spencer
%
The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.
         -- Douglas Adams
%
I have enough money to last me the rest of my life, unless I buy 
something.
         -- Jackie Mason
%
I know many people find the question utterly uninteresting.  I was 
struck, however, by a quotation from Herman Weyl: the belief in an 
infinite continuum of numbers "taxes the strength of our faith hardly 
less than the doctrines of the early Fathers of the Church or the 
Scholastic philosophers of the Middle Ages."
%
I am amazed at the things people try to connect with "if"s and "then"s.
         -- Ken Arromdee (email: arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu)
%
Not so, just scared.  Think of the poor lady who feared the metric 
system because she couldn't afford to have her gas tank removed from 
her car and replaced with one that holds liters instead of gallons.
         -- Kenneth S. Manning
%
Faith is believing what you know ain't so.
         -- Mark Twain
%
Faith means not _wanting_ to know the truth.
         -- Nietzsche
%
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
         -- Phillip K. Dick, 1928-1982
%
From a long view of the history of mankind - seen from, say, ten thousand
years from now, there can be little doubt that the most significant event
of the 19th century will be judged as Maxwell's discovery of the laws of
electrodynamics.  The American Civil War will pale into provincial
insignificance in comparison with this important scientific event of the
same decade.
         -- Richard P. Feynman, Lectures on Physics, Vol. II
%
The worst thing you can say to a true revolutionary is that his
 revolution is unnecessary, that the problems can be corrected without
 radical change. Telling people that paradise can be attained without
 revolution is treason of the vilest kind.
         -- H.S. 1993
%
There's nothing magic about rubber wheels rolling on a runway that's
gonna make it cheap to operate." 
         -- Mitchell Burnside Clapp.
%
I don't know why everyone thinks that The Last Action Hero was such a
flop.  We were Number One in Zaire.
         -- Arnold Schwarzenegger (on Letterman 7/20/94)
%
Dykstra once pointed out the *real* problem with lisp:
  It's too tempting to fiddle interactively until you've
  made a bad design work in an ugly way, rather than use
  your brain.
%
A Meltdown?  One of those annoying buzzwords.
We prefer to think of it as an unrequested fission surplus!
         -- Montague Burns, (The Simpsons)
%
This sort of reasoning is the long-delayed revenge of people who
could not go to Woodstock because they had too much trig homework.
         -- Stewart A. Baker, Chief Counsel for the NSA, 
             on crypto anarchy, Wired, June 1994
%
Chaos is but unperceived order.
         -- attributed to Fred Hoyle
%
I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't the
guts to bite people themselves.
         -- August Strindberg
%
It's truly a shame that Knuth never really got into Lisp.  His books
would be _more_ readable, and TeX might actually have been a decent
language.
         -- Henry Baker
%
'Ash nazg durbatuluk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg
 thrakatuluk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul!'
('One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
  One Ring to bring them all and in the Darkness bind them!')
         -- Tolkein
%
Dilbert: I created a computerized, interactive, multimedia
           training tool for the department.
Boss:    Wonderful. Make some photocopies and route them around.
%
Real punks help little old ladies across the street because it shocks 
more people than if they spit on the sidewalk
%
It had all the earmarks of a CIA operation; the bomb killed
everybody in the room except the intended target.
         -- William F. Buckley
%
The best way for civilians to understand military culture is to read
_Starship Troopers_, _The Forever War_, and _Bill the Galactic Hero_
all at one sitting.
%
Anyone who attempts to generate random numbers by deterministic 
means is, of course, living in a state of sin.
         -- John von Neumann
%
The Air Force is reacting to the EPA ban on CFC's by replacing them in 
the cooling systems of the intercontinental (ballistic) missiles with 
2 to 10 nuclear warheads on board.  If they are ever fired, it will be 
an environmentally friendly nuclear holocaust, not threatening the 
ozone layer.
         -- Access to Energy, July 1993
%
You know, of course, that the MIT SF society keeps a Bible in their
comprehensive collection, as an anthology filed (by editor's last name)
under "G".
         -- barring@cs.umass.edu (David Mix Barrington)
%
Dear Mrs., Mr., Miss, or Mr. and Mrs.: Words cannot express the deep
personal grief I experienced when your husband, son, father or brother 
was killed, wounded or reported missing in action.
         -- Joseph Heller, _Catch-22_ 
              Col. Cathcart to the doctor's "widow"
%
The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in
literature as in a perpetual orgy.
         -- Gustave Flaubert, 1858
%
It's not denial. I'm just very selective about what I accept as reality.
         -- Calvin ("Calvin and Hobbes")
%
It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
         -- Alfred Adler
%
Grammar is the logic of speech, even as logic is the grammar of reason.
         -- Richard Chevenix Trench (1807-86)
%
My ambition is handicapped by laziness.
         -- Bukowskis Alter Ego Henry Chinaski in "Factotum"
%
[analogy with cicero deleted: analogies are like instant coffee]
 -- Peter da Silva
%
Television is a medium because it is neither rare nor well done.
         -- Fred Friendly, former head of CBS News
%
That's what I love about GUIs:
They make simple tasks easier, and complex tasks impossible.
	-- John William Chambless
%
Power does not corrupt.  
Fear corrupts, perhaps the fear of a loss of power.
        -- John Steinbeck
%
Everything is easy as long as you are not the schmuck who has 
to implement it.
        -- Ronald F. Guilmette
%
Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States.
Ask any Indian.
        -- Robert Orben
%
Liberal Christian:
	One who likes Jesus' words and doesn't care who said them.
Conservative Christian:
	One who cares deeply who Jesus is and ignores his words.
%
Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists 
elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contect us.
        -- Calvin
%
Avoid overly pretentious job titles such as "Lord of the Realm, 
Defender of the Faith, Emporer of Siberia" or "Director of 
Corporate Planning".
        -- The Official MBA Handbook on business cards
%
There are three kinds of death in this world.  There's heart death, 
there's brain death, and there's being off the network.
        -- Guy Almes
%
The ultimate goal of mathematics is to eliminate all need for
intelligent thought.
        -- Graham, Knuth and Patashnik, "Concrete Mathematics", p. 56
%
Markus, are you *sure* you are not a crypto-conceptualist ready to
burst out of the closet? :-)
        -- Mike Arnautov
%
Television has changed the American child from in irresistable 
force into an immovable object.
        -- Laurence J. Peter
%
I just posted from babbage.museum.london.uk, and BOY ARE MY ARMS TIRED!!
        -- Rolf Wilson, in alt.folklore.computers
%
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes 
hurtling down the highway.
        -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum, _Computer_Networks_, 2nd edition, p. 57
%
Just as you should not underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon
traveling 65 mph filled with 8mm tapes, you should not overestimate
the bandwidth of FTP by mail.
        -- Mark Fisher
%
In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments --
there are consequences.
        -- Robert G. Ingersoll
%
MS-DOS is the worst text adventure game I have ever played: poor 
vocabulary, weak parser and a boring storyline.
        -- Ignatios Souvatzis
%
Beware of the panacea peddlers: just because you wind up naked 
doesn't make you an emperor.
        -- Michael A Padlipsky
%
Dave Cutler's comment on the WNT=VMS+1: 
"It took you this long to notice?"
        -- Peter da Silva
%
34% of those who voted Republican in the last election believe 
Forrest Gump is a documentary.  
        -- TV Nation Poll
%
I was told that the Chinese said that they would would bury me by the
Western lake and build a shrine to my memory. I have some slight regret
that this did not happen, as I might have become a god, which would have
been very _chic_ for an atheist.
        -- Bertrand Russell, Autobiography
%
Biblical foundation of TANSTAAFL: 2nd Thessalonians 3:10
("he who does not work shall not eat")
%
Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time --
I think I've forgotten this before.
        -- Stephen Wright
%
Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity.  It
eliminates dreams, goals, and ideals and lets us get straight to the
business of hate, debauchery, and self-annihilation.
        -- Johnny Hart
%
If you evaluate C++, you still get C, but C gets bigger
        -- Erik Naggum
%
Calvin: You can't just turn on creativity like a faucet.
        You have to be in the right mood.
Hobbs:  What mood is that?
Calvin: Last-minute panic.
%
It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it
is.  If you don't, it's its.  Then too, it's hers.  It isn't her's.  
It isn't our's either.  It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs.
        -- Oxford University Press, Edpress News
%
Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite 
at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.
        -- Ronald Reagan
%
Football players, like prostitutes, are in the business of ruining 
their bodies for the pleasure of strangers.
        -- Merle Kessler
%
Brilliance is typically the act of an individual, but incredible 
stupidity can usually be traced to an organization.
        -- Jon Bentley
%
How do you tell a Communist?  Well, it's someone who reads Marx and
Lenin.  And how do you tell an anti-Communist?  It's someone who
understands Marx and Lenin.
        -- Ronald Reagan, Arlington, Virginia, September 25, 1987
%
Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought 
half as good.  Luckily, this is not difficult.
        -- Charlotte Whitton
%
Publishers are so conservative, I'm surprised they don't still use
scribes writing on wet clay slabs.
        -- David Brin
%
Too much of a good thing is WONDERFUL.
        -- Mae West
%
I remember hearing precisely analogous complaint from the Oral 
Traditionalists when the Book People were trying to get their 
toe in the door.
        -- Philomath
%
The point of philosophy is to start with something so
simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with
something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.
        -- Bertrand Russell, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism
%
In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed.
        -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays
%
An assertion is Zen only when it is itself an act and does not 
refer to anything that is asserted in it.
        -- Bruce Lee, "The Tao of Jeet Kune Do"
%
Words are cheap and vitriol flows like water down the crumbling, mossy
mountainsides of prose.  Megabytes of gibberish grind forth like glaciers
from the keyboards of the thirty million guinea pigs participating in the
largest clinical trial ever: the testing of a new reality completely 
devoid of common sense." 	
        -- Charlie Stross, commenting on the Usenet
%
True.  When your hammer is C++, everything begins to look like a thumb.
        -- Steve Haflich, in comp.lang.c++
%
You are a true believer. Blessings of the State; blessings of the
 masses.  Thou art a subject of the Divine, created in the image of
 Man, by the masses, for the masses. Let us be thankful we have
 commerce. Buy more. Buy more now. Buy. And be happy.
        -- Confession booth blessing, _THX-1138_
%
$HOME is where your dotfiles are.
        -- Gym Quirk
%
One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary
to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything
beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary
tyranny.
        -- Bertrand Russell
%
.sigs are the bumper stickers of the information superhighway.
%
If it can't be understood, it's not finished yet.
        -- Paul Herbig
%
No, no, you're not thinking, you're just being logical.
        -- Niels Bohr
%
Mediocrity requires aloofness to preserve its dignity.
        -- Charles G. Dawes
%
As someone else said in the net, C++ has created a good market for 
*medical* books. (He was calling C++ an illness). In a matter of days 
you get more and more people  write *just another cure-book* about C++ 
with names like "Effective C++", "Practical C++", "Safe C++".
        -- Burak Bayramli
%
I have to post.  Buddha insists on a warm computer.
        -- Keith "Justified And Ancient" Cochran
%
What garlic is to food, insanity is to art.
        -- Anonymous
%
And, of course, the word "politics" is derived from "POLY", meaning
many, and "TICS", meaning small, blood sucking insects.
        -- Chris Clayton
%
Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add
but when there is nothing more to take out."
        -- Antoine St Exupery
%
There is no reason why getting published should be taken as an index
of anything.  Soon everyone will be able to publish anything he wants
and summon readers from the vasty deep.  But will they come when he
summons them?
        -- John McCarthy
%
You are caught in a maze of twisty little Sendmail rules, all obscure.
        -- _Sendmail: Theory and Practice_, Avolio and Vixie
%
Everybody raise your hand who thinks Usenet would benefit from a month 
or two in a padded room.
        -- Michael Handler
%
Q:	I think my PC is broken.
A:	Really? How can you tell?
%
Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better 
than we deserve.
        -- George Bernard Shaw
%
The ratio of literacy to illiteracy is constant, but nowadays the
illiterates can read and write.
        -- Alberto Moravia
%
Larry Wall should be shot.  Along with Bill Joy and Eric Allman.
        -- Daniel Finster, comp.lang.lisp
Why, just because you guys frittered away a 20-year headstart?
        -- Larry Wall, comp.lang.perl
%
The tarring of any engineering project with the epithet `simple' is more
often than not the result of the feeling of confidence that springs from
inadequate comprehension of the situation.
        -- SubG
%
There is a difference between eating a varied diet and chowing down on a
cup of lard and sugar once a day. Programmers know this instinctively: they
balance their daily menu among the four major food groups: caffeine, sugar,
grease, and salt.
        -- From John Walker's "The Hacker's Diet"
%
The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers. 
        -- Richard W. Hamming, 1962 
%
A Sept 13 1987 Boston Globe story indicated polls show almost half of 
Americans think the phrase 'From each according to his ability, to each 
according to his need' comes from the US Constitution.
%
And with so many pages sprouting every day, there is a desperate 
striving for uniqueness, which has resulted in some of the stupidest 
uses of cutting edge technology ever seen." 
        -- Ashley Dunn of the NY Times, writing about the Web
%
Sufficiently advanced political correctness is indistinguishable 
from sarcasm.
        -- Erik Naggum
%
I have been told that _Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology_ was 
required reading at the Xerox PARC lab where OOP was invented, but 
this may be merely an urban legend.
        -- Bryce Wilcox
%
We must wrestle with time for some seven decades, and he is a weak 
and puny antagonist in the first three bouts.
        -- "Carcassonne", Lord Dunsany
%
NETSCAPISM /net-'sca-,pi-z*m/ n (1995): habitual diversion of the mind to
    purely imaginative activity or entertainment as an escape from the
    realization that the Internet was built by and for someone else
        -- Erik Naggum
%
HTML has followed Nature's example... bright, sometimes flashing,
colors are a sign of indigestiblility.
        -- Rob Hartill
%
People can and will do things that no one could possibly believe anyone
would do. For examples look at most of human history or the alt.sex.*
hierarchy.
        -- Ken Boucher on human stupidity in sci.nanotech
%
If in the last few years you haven't discarded a major opinion
or acquired a new one, check your pulse.  You may be dead.
        -- Gelet Burgess
%
What matters to me is the -writing-, the act of manufacturing the novel,
because while I am doing it, I am in that world I'm writing about. It is
real to me, completely and utterly. Then, when I'm finished, and have to 
stop, withdraw from that world -forver-, that destroys me... Don't write
for a living; sell shoelaces. Don't let it happen to you.
        -- Philip K. Dick, from "Notes Made Late at Night by 
            a Weary SF Writer"
%
Sick cultures show a complex of symptoms ... but a *dying* culture
invariably exhibits personal rudeness.  Bad manners.  Loss of 
consideration for others in minor matters.  A loss of politeness, 
of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.
        -- Friday's boss
%
And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not
 warned from time to time that this people preserve the spirit of 
 resistance ?  Let them take arms ... The tree of liberty must be
 refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
        -- Thomas Jefferson (letter to William S. Smith, 1787, in
             Jefferson, On Democracy 20, S. Padover, ed., 1939).
%
I have a friend who says the militia have one black helicopter that they
fly their one black member around it, simultaneously scaring themselves 
and proving they aren't racist.
        -- Kaa Byington
%
What experience and history teach is this -- that people and government
never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced
from it.
        -- Hegel
%
Paradise is exactly like where you are right now...  Only much, much better.
        -- Laurie Anderson
%
My devil's dictionary definition for an Intelligent Agent is a query
program with a user interface that is so obscure that you must
anthropomorphize it in order to account for its behavior.
        -- Jaron Lanier, in "Karma Vertigo"
%
Every time i see the LaTeX message "Labels may have changed", i silently
complete it with "... but not the fact that I am right".
%
Someone once calculated that with all the addressing modes the longest
instruction was 104 words.
        -- Peter da Silva, on the TRON architecture
%
C++ is the only current language making COBOL look good.
        -- Bertrand Meyer
C++ is to C as Lung Cancer is to Lung
        -- .sig of Thomas Funke (thomas@gamelan.shnet.org)
%
What's in a name? That which we call a rose <br>
By any other name would smell as sweet.
        -- Juliet, from: Romeo and Juliet, act 2, scene 2
%
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with 
themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.  
        -- Susan Ertz
%
Treason doth never prosper, and what's the reason? For if it prosper 
none dare call it treason.
%
The Wittenberg church door was Usenet for Luther's community.
        -- Nick Arnett 
%
Contrary to popular belief, the world is not ASCII.
        -- from the xemacs 19.12 documentation on define-key
%
I always write them as well as I can. But sometimes I just don't have the
sacred fire to enflame my talent into, you know, a level of genius and
what I wind up is some turkey like _Zap Gun_ ... the first half is totally
unreadable, I don't know where or what ... I can hardly reconstruct the
thinking that underlay the first half of that book. Just totally
unintelligible.
        -- Philip K. Dick, April 1981
%
I did like seeing all the EDA vendors and customers there, but thought it
odd that at a conference which is 95% male, they had a band playing slow
dance music.  Then I remembered: "Oh, yea!  That's right.  We're in San
Francisco!"
        -- John Cooley (jcooley@world.std.com) about DAC'95
%
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.  Inside a dog, it's 
too dark to read.
        -- Groucho Marx
%
We are a nation of laws, poorly written and randomly enforced.
        -- Frank Zappa
%
For any twentieth-century American who'd been paying attention at all,
the phrase 'criminal justice system' should have been warning enough.
        -- L. Neil Smith (W.W. Curringer, in "Pallas")
%
All books can be indecent books, but recent books are bolder;
 For filth, I'm glad to say, is in the mind of the beholder.
 When correctly viewed, everything is lewd!
 I could tell you things about Peter Pan
 (and the Wizard of Oz, there's a dirty old man) ..."   
        -- Tom Lehrer, "Smut"
%
Putting smokers and non-smokers in the same room is like having a 
urinating and a non-urinating section in a swimming pool.
        -- Ross Parker
%
Documentation is like sex; when it's good, it's very, very good, 
and when it's bad, it's better than nothing.
        -- Dick Brandon
%
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained 
by stupidity.
%
No, I don't think smoking should be illegal. Smokers are already getting
the death penalty!
        -- from Stev0's "rant of the week" on smoking
%
Nothing like being in a position where missing a negation can make a 
train crash to teach you about the importance of the review process.
        -- Peter da Silva
%
The first alteration I would suggest is to change the spelling of 
netiquette because it is just too difficult.
        -- Stephen Boursy
%
To say that 1 gram of plutonium could kill everyone on the planet is like
saying one drop of sperm could impregnate all of the women in China.
        -- Tom Orth
%
_I_ think we have not had visitors from other planets because they have
tried to decode our character encoding, and concluded that it wouldn't 
be worth it.
        -- Erik Naggum
%
I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the 
dignity of history.  
        -- Lord Macaulay.
%
There is nothing that somebody, somewhere, will not consider immoral.
        -- Jan.Six@uku.fi
%
Well, both speed and reproducibility are important in a compiler, just 
like sexuality and reliability are both important in a spouse.  The 
speed of a compiler and the sexuality in a spouse get you interested, 
but the reproducibility and reliability are what convince you to keep them.
        -- Henry Baker, in an article in comp.compilers 
%
If we make peaceful revolution impossible, we make violent revolution
inevitiable.
        -- John F. Kennedy
%
If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intent of
doing you good, you should run for your life.
        -- Thoreau's Law
%
A witty saying proves nothing.
        -- Voltaire
%
I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs
treat us as equals.
        -- Winston Churchill
%
If man evolved from the ape, how come there are still apes around? 
Some of them were given choices.
        -- from Johnny Hart's comic strip "B.C."
%
The world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.
        -- Sean O'Casey
%
You should never bet against anything in science at odds of more than
about 10-12 to 1.
        -- Ernest Rutherford
%
Majority: That quality that distinguishes a crime from a law.
%
The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the
poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal
bread.
        -- Anatole France
%
You wake me up early in the morning to tell me I am right?  Please
wait until I am wrong.
        -- John von Neumann, on being phoned at 10 a.m.
%
Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand 
progress.
        -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
%
Rumor has it that when they closed down the 7094 at MIT in 1973, they
found a low-priority job that had been submitted in 1967 and had not
yet been run.
%
A free society is a place where it's safe to be unpopular.
        -- Adlai Stevenson
%
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a
rigged demo.
%
... if we wish to count lines of code, we should not regard them 
as "lines produced" but as "lines spent."
        -- Edsger Dijkstra
%
I love deadlines.  I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
        -- Douglas Adams
%
Where time or intelligence are lacking, a goto may do the job.
        -- M.E. Hopkins, "A Case for the GOTO," 1972
%
> Formal specifications yield correct programs.
No.  Formal specifications yield PhD theses.  They may also 
occasionally yield programs as by-products, but no useful ones.
        -- Ronald F. Guilmette
%
Marketing is the science of convincing us that What You Get Is What You
Want.
        -- John Carter