Quotes: t

But in some ways, a general ignorance of Unix seems to help drive a certain romantic ideal – an ideal that keeps the word “Unix” in very active circulation even outside of geek circles. To the typical Mac end-user, Unix is mysterious, and ancient, and strong. It’s made of cast iron and the bones of heroic programmers of old. Unix is like a brawny Soviet on a Constructivist poster, swinging his hammer for his comrades. We don’t know why it’s good, but damn if our hearts aren’t stirred by the weighty, solidly angular goodness of it all.

Haven’t you heard our motto - ‘United we sort of come apart at the seams, but Welded we stick together pretty well’ ?

Read. Learn. Evolve.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that an old wizard in possession of a big secret must be in danger of his life.

To really understand programmers you must understand artists. Artists are almost always “wack jobs” (or at least, that’s how the outside world perceives them). After all, what kind of wacko spends a week carrying an 80-pound bag of camera gear through the high Sierra? Ansel Adams.

eleet3speAk 1s uh s1gn 0f uh j0ke d0ude. N0w shuDDup bef0re I br3ak 0ut ]-[P/J3td1recht sNmP sPl0itz aND shUt d0wn y0 f4t m0mz d0ubl3s1de d00plex0r.

I admire your courage to bring us this news…. But as with all bearers of such news… such blasphemy to the existence of the Jihad of DOOM, we will have to cause you severe pain and dump multiple cores into your site through electronic mail…. Such is our anger…. Hard drives in your campus will spin faster than their allowable rate, burning out gigabytes of your precious memory, plastic will burn, metal shall melt…. Such is our woe….. The equipment in your very lab shall be disassmebled, as will all those who are in the lab. No one shall escape the wrath of the humble followers of Doom….. Such is to come…..

The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from. Furthermore, if you do not like any of them, you can just wait for next year’s model.

Here’s an SAT math question: Ralph Nader is older than John McCain. McCain says he is older than dirt. What is Ralph Nader’s relationship with dirt?

This [approach] would violate special relativity, so we decided not to try to implement it.

there’s a thin line between a bohemian schedule and unemployment

So we returned to finish the job tonight, and we did; but not because there wasn’t a wedding this time. There was. But just as a sailor acquires sea legs and a San Franciscan acquires earthquake legs, a film crew acquires wedding legs.

Pop quiz, hot shot: You’re going to award ceremonies all year long, you keep losing to Forrest Gump; it’s really annoying the hell out of you. What do you do? You go to the MTV awards!

Have car, will travel.

No no no. Its only “THE” road trip vehicle if *I*‘m in it. That’s not just me being conceited. I improve gas milage and trip time.

To some degree all movies are pretentious; the very idea that the events in our lives have pronounced trajectories is pivotal to the story-telling process while having very little to do with reality. It’s also no leap to suggest that the impetus for creating art is ego-based. Things have definitely gotten out of hand, though, when characters start pointlessly gasping out loud at the writer/director’s enormous willie.

An interface is not a rave.

How long have you been wanting me to talking like a bot?

Ninety percent of good programming is resisting the temptation to be a dumb-ass.

You can do this in a number of ways. IBM chose to do all of them. Why do you find that funny?

The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they’re going to have some pretty annoying virtues.

Never write it in C if you can do it in 'awk’; Never do it in ‘awk’ if ‘sed’ can handle it; Never use ‘sed’ when ‘tr’ can do the job; Never invoke ‘tr’ when ‘cat’ is sufficient; Avoid using ‘cat’ whenever possible

The rest of the world views the USA the way Silicon Valley views Microsoft. Except with tanks.

Yeah… you think it’s bad being gay? Try being bi and so drunk you’re not sure *what* you’re cruising.

I also find that a well-timed, properly expressed and inflected simple taunt like, oh, “Canadian” covers a lot of ground and saves valuable time one could better spend surfing the Net.

I have noticed that cats are little impressed by religion.

In the Norse mythology Loki originally was on the side of the rest of the gods, helping them once or twice using a particularly nast forms of trickery. He was a cunning negotiator with a talent for technicalities. He was sort of the Norse equivalent of a lawyer, no doubt the reason they tied him down in a pit dripping acidic venom on him.

Someone please help me, I’m confused: Was that a tit or a tat?

The world is full of buttheads, you learn to live with them, except in California where they tend to shoot each other on the highways…

We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.

Thaumaturgix was founded in New York City in 1994 by Peter Dolch, Moses Merchant, and Yogen Sanghani; seasoned technology consultants all, with a broad range of talents and skills. It was the first technology consulting to bring a U.S. stock exhange onto the World Wide Web. The partner’s first dictum, “don’t pour coffee into the computer,” still echoes in our offices today.

Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.

There is no such thing as political murder, political bombing or political violence. There is only criminal murder, criminal bombing and criminal violence. We will not compromise on this.

I never thought of sushi as a layer 2 option. Is that as oppsed to “IP over carrier pigeon” or “IP over barbed wire” or “IP over debt” (only offered by Exodus)?

Death is harsh and cruel… not some cute chick.

That’s not David vs. Goliath. This isn’t even the NBA champions versus a rec league team.That’s more like an ant vs. my shoe.

I can’t eat the baby, Larry, my helmet is on.

We can’t be held liable if you follow our instructions, expecting to create a Rails application, and you end up with a strangely shaped farm implement instead.

There is nothing at all wrong with the English language, so far as I can see, but that may only be because I cannot see ahead.

History is not a self-help book. It’s more like an index of alternative futures.

As your attorney I advise you to tell me where you put the goddamn mescaline.

I always drive properly. A bit fast, perhaps, but always with consummate skill and a natural feel for the road that even cops recognize. No cop was ever born who isn’t a sucker for a finely-executed hi-speed Controlled Drift all the way around one of those cloverleaf freeway interchanges.

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.

The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.

We are, after all, professionals.

I know nothing.

If you have been to Moscow during Soviet times, you will probably remember paying almost nothing to be ignored by a waiter in a restaurant. Now you pay a fortune to be ignored by ten waiters.

Just think – IBM and DEC in the same room – and we did it. Makes you feel warm inside.

Maybe I should have screwed up.

SCCS is the source-code motel – your code checks in but it never checks out.

When in doubt, use brute force

Andrew is the operating system of the future and always will be.

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.

Men have become the tool of their tools.

Now. Or never.

The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?

Such… accidents… are very common in our family.

Isn’t it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists?

There is no such thing as a functional illiterate.

The strong do what they will and the weak do what they must.

“I don’t understand,” said the scientist, “why you lemmings all rush down to the sea and drown yourselves.” “How curious,” said the lemming. “The one thing I don’t understand is why you human beings don’t.”

I loathe the expression ‘What makes him tick.’ It is the American mind, looking for simple and singular solution, that uses the foolish expression. A person not only ticks, he also chimes and strikes the hour, falls and breaks and has to be put together again, and sometimes stops like an electric clock in a thunderstorm.

BOZO + PhD = GOD

Sorry for the disaster. And thanks for your patience!

Must…defy…laws…of…physics…

You wanna live? Get in the car. You wanna die? Get in the car.

My marriage had recently fallen apart, and I was lonely and felt sorry for myself. “What better time,” I reasoned, “to get addicted to online games that provide an infinite series of stupid, just-in-reach goals in a well-reasoned, non-derivative setting of dark elves and dwarves?”

Unfortunately, because PinealWeb is written in trinary (for performance reasons), it can only be transmitted using ExtraSensory Transport Protocol. If your browser supports this, you’re in luck, and we’ll download PinealWeb directly to your brain. If not, please be patient, a NetBSD port is coming soon.

It’s funny, I ran for twelve seasons in high school and part of one in college (dislocated collarbone, kthxbye), I’m a biological researcher and for some reason I still thought that muscle fatigue comes from muscles using up their oxygen and switching to an anaerobic process that builds up lactic acid. It was pretty much accepted knowledge in the early 90’s as far as I can remember. It turns out that we were completely wrong. Also about Kris Kross, but we don’t need to go starting any lists.

You people can stop nominating Jesus Christ Superstar any time now. Andrew Lloyd Weber will outclass the Rolling Stones the week after Cleveland wins the World Series. And by Cleveland I mean the Browns.

A bazooka is the skeleton key of the impatient.

I’m afraid someone will shoot Barney on stage. I’m really afraid someone will beat me to it.

The opposite of love is indifference. The opposite of sour taste is blandness. There is no opposite of spam and I think I’m glad.

What could be better than caffeine and sugar combined in a hot liquid package? A package of caffeine, sugar, salt and grease that’s what. But until I can find a chocolate-bacon-burger mocha, I’ll just have to get my salt and grease elsewhere.

Arisitotle claimed that beyond the society of Man exists only Beasts and Gods. Which do you choose to be?

They’re my friends, they’re my toys, and they have OFF switches. All these things are good.

An old expression suggests that when you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Excel, of course, is not a hammer. It is a Swiss Army knife. Unfortunately, all the blades except one are broken.

I must first reveal my personal bias in this discussion, since I worship at the First Church of PDF Really Sucks.

Regardless of the source of the problem, you can detect its presence by the two great engineering lies: 1. Your design cannot be implemented using the current technology. 2. Your design can be implemented, and it will be in the very next release. (The third great engineering lie is, of course, I promise to debug the code before I check it in. Engineers lead dull lives.)

You do not understand, Grasshopper. The purpose of the icons, the purpose of the entire OS X look and feel, is to keep the customer happy during that critical period between the time of sale and the time the check clears.

It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations if you live near him.

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.

The problem with the rat race is even if you win you’re still a rat.

Standin’ on the corner, in a white godfather hat. He drives a long, black, gangster Cadillac. He can steal a broad’s mind, man, in three or four minutes. It’s not how long you talk, brother, it’s what you put in it.

I am aware that it is considered fashionable for boys of your age to wear their trousers so loosely that they appear to be falling off their hips. Please don’t take this as an insult, but you and all of your friends are complete idiots. Still, I want to be fair and open minded about this issue, so I propose this compromise: You may come to the door with your underwear showing and your pants ten sizes too big, and I will not object. However, In order to assure that your clothes do not, in fact, come off during the course of your date with my daughter, I will take my electric staple gun and fasten your trousers securely in place around your waist.

I’m sure you’ve been told that in today’s world, sex without utilizing a “barrier method” of some kind can kill you. Let me elaborate: when it comes to sex, I am the barrier, and I WILL kill you.

In order for us to get to know each other, we should talk about sports, politics, and other issues of the day. Please do not do this. The only information I require from you is an indication of when you expect to have my daughter safely back at my house, and the only word I need from you on this subject is “early.”

My daughter claims it embarrasses her to come downstairs and find me attempting to get her date to recite these eight simple rules from memory. I’d be embarrassed too–there are only eight of them, for crying out loud! And, for the record, I did NOT suggest to one of these cretins that I’d have these rules tattooed on his arm if he couldn’t remember them. (I checked into it and the cost is prohibitive.) I merely told him that I thought writing the rules on his arm with a ball point might be inadequate–ink washes off–and that my wood burning set was probably a better alternative.

If Bush wins, we will have a Commander-in-Thief.

I am Pentium of Borg. Arithmetic is irrelevant. Prepare to be approximated.

One of the main advantages of Unix over, say, MVS, is the tremendous number of features Unix lacks.

if the network is the computer, then the computer SUCKS.

if you buy one iBook you’ve got two weeks to get another or get a divorce

They want to play with the big kids, but they just don’t have the motor skills.

All the technology that people were so hot on started in basements and garages. There still will be crazy people in their basements trying to change the world, and some of them will even do it.

Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow

I think my “plan” says something like “World domination. Fast.” But we’ll see.

“If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants”. One of the greatest scientists of our time, having done more for modern technology (and thus, btw, for the modern economy) that Microsoft will ever do, acknowledged the fact that he did so by being able to use the knowledge (what we now call “intellectual property”) gathered by others. Mundie throws all that away, because he wants Microsoft to own it all, and make tons of money on it. I’d rather listen to Newton than to Mundie. He may have been dead for almost three hundred years, but despite that he stinks up the room less.

If you want an application to be portable, you don’t necessarily create an abstraction layer like a microkernel so much as you program intelligently.

If you want to travel around the world and be invited to speak at a lot of different places, just write a Unix operating system.

No, you’ve been brainwashed by CS people who thought that Niklaus Wirth actually knew what he was talking about. He didn’t. He doesn’t have a frigging clue.

Technical people are better off not looking at patents. If you don’t know what they cover and where they are, you won’t be knowingly infringing on them. If somebody sues you, you change the algorithm or you just hire a hit-man to whack the stupid git.

The more I see of it, the more I get the feeling that I’d have multiple ulcers within minutes of getting involved in the business side. It’s kind of like watching giraffes making love on the Discovery Channel. You definitely don’t want to get involved, but it’s kind of fascinating to follow.

The only way tcsh “rocks” is when the rocks are attached to it’s feet in the deepest part of a very deep lake.

Too bad if 90 percent of it is stupid. That’s how creativity works.

World domination. Fast… and scantily clad females, of course. Who cares if it’s below zero outside.

As a composer i take my hat off to you. As a man i put on ten.

I kissed my first girl and smoked my first cigarette on the same day. I haven’t had time for tobacco since.

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money

Phoebe Sengers is either the most wickedly skilled baiter of OpBB/Discussion readers I’ve ever seen, or a complete fruitcake. I can’t figure out which.

… so, given that the brain is built out of really crummy hardware, I mean, worse than the stuff you buy at Radio Shack …

Unix encourages, by egregious example, the most irresponsible programming style imaginable. No error checking. No error messages. No conscience. If a student here turned in code like that, I’d flunk his ass.

I started to see people as little lonesome, water based, pink meat, life forms pushing air through themselves and making noises that the other little pieces of meat seemed to understand…I don’t think I was ‘mad’, I was just confused.

I don’t read novels. I prefer good literary criticism. That way you get both the novelists’ ideas as well as the critics’ thinking. With fiction I can never forget that none of it really happened, that it’s all just made up by the author.

But you may find that blood is not enough.

Janning, to be sure, is a tragic figure. We believe he loathed the evil he did. But compassion for the present torture of his soul must not beget forgetfulness of the torture and death of millions by the government of which he was a part. Janning’s record and his fate illuminate the most shattering truth that has emerged from this trial. If he and the other defendants were all depraved perverts - if the leaders of the Third Reich were sadistic monsters and maniacs - these events would have no more moral significance than an earthquake or other natural catastrophes. But this trial has shown that under the stress of a national crisis, men - even able and extraordinary men - can delude themselves into the commission of crimes and atrocities so vast and heinous as to stagger the imagination. No one who has sat through this trial can ever forget. The sterilization of men because of their political beliefs… The murder of children… How easily that can happen. There are those in our country today, too, who speak of the protection of the country. Of survival. The answer to that is: survival as what? A country isn’t a rock. And it isn’t an extension of one’s self. It’s what it stands for, when standing for something is the most difficult. Before the people of the world - let it now be noted in our decision here that this is what we stand for: justice, truth… and the value of a single human being.

The danger in so doing is to lull us into complacency - to make us think it could never happen again. It also creates a permanent wall between the Nazis and the rest of humanity, particularly “us”. As if to say, we are incapable of perpretating unspeakable horrors. But the Nazis were people like us. They had the same genetic makeup, the same biology, and similar culture, religion, and values. Goebbels sounds just like us. And if the Nazis were capable of doing the unthinkable, so are we.

As you cruise the information highway, do not be afraid of the strange men you see walking on the shoulders, muttering to themselves. They work for us.

nothing but angry, angsty industrial music…“rrraarrr!”…GEETARS…“unnggghh!”…DISTORTED VOCALS….“ich ich ich”..LYRICS IN GERMAN

Think of all the things you wish you could be doing. Make a list of the reasons why you’re not doing them. Cross off all the reasons that are really just excuses. Now ask yourself what’s really stopping you…

Well, after our 1-week hiatus, we’re back tonight with our usual mix of cutting-edge elctro music and wonky suburban restaurant decor.

While I can now say that it is true that you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar (actually didn’t catch any with vinegar, but I only decided at the last minute to try it), I am here to tell you that you can catch a lot of flies, very quickly, with a high-powered vacuum cleaner.

Just to show you how serious I am about this, I’m going to bring in the Greek letters.

…the detailed discussions American presidential candidates engage in about programs are virtually meaningless. Partly because of the separation of powers, the new President almost never signs into law the progams he promised. When you look at it that way, the only really important thing about George W. Bush’s Social Security plan was that he didn’t seem to understand it.

Is that so? Well let me tell you what I believe: I believe that if you don’t get off the keyboard and start using the mouse, you’ll always play like a little girl!

“Neo, this isn’t going to work. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” “No, Trinity. Guns don’t kill people, I kill people.”

Live long and prosper. If anything goes wrong, nuke the whole site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.

Wow. I think reading unhinged is more educational than going to class.

There is a limit to the practical application of democratic methods. You can inquire of all the passengers as to what type of car they like to ride in, but it is impossible to question them as to whether to apply the brakes when the train is at full speed and accident threatens.

You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.

Is an existentialist something to eat?

Mt. Dew good, yellow snow bad!

Well adjusted: being able to make the same mistake over and over and over and over without getting upset.

… an OS originally designed for a microprocessor that modern kitchen appliances would sneer at….

Are the vowels missing on your keyboard? No, it seems your code snippet contains vowels. Is that txt msg speak?

If you can’t convince them, confuse them.

The Reform Party now includes a Klansman, Mr. Duke, a neo-Nazi, Mr. Buchanan, and a communist, Ms. Fulani. This is not company I wish to keep.

You can tell it isn’t engineering because they start talking about UML as if it’s enough. They think normalization is a sexual practice.

Handing C++ to the average programmer seems roughly comparable to handing a loaded .45 to a chimpanzee.“

If all you have is a Bloom filter, everything looks like a set whose membership you wish to test with a possibility of false positives.

Hey so I just woke up from my afternoon nap and WOW, oh wow — Stuff just got real. And as everyone with an Internet connection knows, when real stuff happens, funny stuff happens and when funny stuff happens someone eventually gets around to making a Downfall spoof about it.

no one can accept without question the philosophical positions of anyone (no matter how dear otherwise) who has fed you stained creamed beets from a jar of Gerbers, and expected you to like it.

Faith is Hope given too much credit.

Therein we find what may be the six most frightening words in the English language: "In this one-hour comedy, Tony Danza …”

A friend is someone who knows everything about you and likes you in spite of it.

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.

Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.

Better to let people think you a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is the mastery of fear.

Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.

During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after doing its duty in but a lazy and indolent way for 800 years, gathered up its halters, thumbscrews, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood. Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry.

Each place has its own advantages - Heaven for the climate and Hell for society.

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please

Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.

Honest poverty is a gem that even a king might feel proud to call his own, but I wish to sell out. I have sported that kind of jewelry long enough.

How come we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

I can speak French but I cannot understand it.

I don’t give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.

I never let my schooling get in the way of my education.

I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.

If you always tell the truth, you never have to remember what you said.

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. That is the principal difference between a dog and a man.

It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.

In the first place, God made idiots; this was for practice; then he made school boards.

Keep away from small people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

Man was made at the end of the week’s work when God was tired.

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

Profanity often lends itself to contentment not found even at prayer.

Reader, imagine you were an idiot. And imagine you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.

The citizen who sees his society’s democratic clothes being worn out and does not cry out is not a patriot but a traitor.

The man who does not read books has no advantage over the man that can not read them.

The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn’t.

Truth is the most valuable thing we have – so let us economize it.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.

You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

The date specified (01-01-1900) is impossible. If you have forced this error condition, you may be in violation of state, federal, and/or civil laws. Those outside the United States should check with their respective governments concerning their country’s extradition treaty. Dissemination of this error is also strictly prohibited.

You should understand the difference between a null pointer and a pointer to an empty string; the first points nowhere, and the second points to a string of length zero. If this still confuses you, consider the difference between having an empty stomach, and having no stomach at all.

I have been waiting for the ability to manipulate technology by pressing dynamic symbols for basically ever. If you find such things unpleasant, then I suggest you develop a taste for forced labor because by the year twenty-twenty all that sneer is going to get you is a slot in the underclass boiling corpses.

If a man claims to be Jesus Christ, you can bet I’ll check the wrists.

The woman of my dreams knows how to break into systems.

We know when you are sleeping / We know when you’re awake / We know if you’ve been good or bad / So be good, or we’ll forge your tax returns and get you in trouble with the IRS.

When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.