Alan's Quote Collection
It works, for suitably small values of ``works''.
— Pope Icky, paraphrasing the "suitably small" entry in The Jargon File.
As the surface of our bloated Sun cools, it will turn red, and its light will reveal to our distant descendants a Sun swollen into a red giant. Their view will be brief, however, because the expanding sun will engulf them and the Earth.
— Thomas T. Arny, Explorations: An Introduction to Astronomy
BEWARE: Despite our best and most strenuous intentions to the contrary, absolutely anything could be on the other end of this hyperlink, including -- quite possibly -- pornography, or even nudity. NCSA disclaims all responsibility regarding your emotional and mental health and specifically all responsibility for effects of viewing salacious material via Mosaic.
With that in mind, are you *sure* you want to follow this hyperlink???
I have not failed. I have discovered 1000 things that do not work.
— Thomas Alva Edison
It is a wonder that curiosity survives a formal education.
I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by.
Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.
The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
What was your user name again?
— The Bastard Operator From Hell
The proof is left as an excercise to the professor.
— Traditional
If brute force doesn't work, you ain't using enough!
— Unknown DESCHALL User.
I cannot be captain, for you see dear friends, I am unfit to lead other men into battle, into space, or in a line dance. I submit that if I picked my nose for an half an hour, my head would cave in. I'm nary to know the distinction betwixt shinola -- and that other stuff. I cannot lead because I cannot find my ass with both hands and a flashlight.
— Tom Servo, Mystery Science Theatre 3000
A computer scientist is someone who, when told to "Go to Hell," sees the "go to," rather than the destination, as harmful.
— Dr. Roger M. Firestone, citation unknown, probably Usenet
Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines.
— R. Buckminster Fuller
It's the story of Matt, Igor, Ken and Carson the Muskrat... They're trapped in a world they never made...but are nevertheless striving to create a realistic yet playable simulation thereof!
— John Kovalic, Dork Tower
Just because he made it up doesn't mean it isn't true.
— Jason, Plan 10 From Outer Space
There are many truths, Lucinda. Some are uplifting, others are not.
— Uncle Bob, Plan 10 From Outer Space
Love is a trick that nature plays to make us reproduce. I want no part of it.
— Callisto, Xena: Warrior Princess
I've only written four operating systems. Don't listen to me.
Bart's rule of brain cell usage: You only
have so many brain cells. You may choose to kill them by
thinking, or you may choose to kill them with beer.
Corollary: Minimize
the number of brain cells spent thinking.
why would you want to own /dev/null? "ooo! ooo! look! i stole nothing! i'm the theif of nihilism! i'm the new god of zen monks."
— Kevin Lyda, citation unknown, probably Usenet
I'd rather win than be ethical.
We hate people.
— Tori Anderson and Kara Schwartz
Riley Hale: "You're out of your mind."
Major Deakins: "Yeah, ain't it cool?"
Please don't shoot the thermonuclear device.
— Major Deakins, Broken Arrow
The more different shapes of dice you need, the better the game is.
— Christian Herro, personal email
On role-playing: "Before trying anything else, attempt physical violence. It may not work, but it'll be fun!"
— Christian Herro, personal email
"One hundred and six miles to Chicago; we got a full tank of gas, a half-pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses."
"Hit it."
This message brought to you by the language C and the number F.
— Traditional
What people don't understand, they fear. Explain and they'll get bored enough to find something else to irrationally panic about.
— "Oddjob", citation unknown, probably Usenet
Once an expression or program becomes undefined, *all* aspects of it become undefined.
— The comp.lang.c FAQ, Steve Summit
Thou shalt not screw around with things thou dost not understand.
— Apollonia, Overdrawn at the Memory Bank
Hackworth was a forger, DR. X was a honer. The distinction was at least as old as the digital computer. Forgers created a new technology and then forged on to the next project, having only explored the outlines of its potential. Honers got less respect because they appeared to sit still technologically, playing around with systems that were no longer new, hacking them for all they were worth, getting them to do things the forgers had never envisioned.
— Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age, or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
"Elegance?"
"Pardon me, Your Honor, the concept is not easy to explain--there is an ineffable quality to some technology, described by its creators as a concinnitous, or technically sweet, or a nice hack--signs that it was made with great care by one who was not merely motivated but inspired. It is the difference between an engineer and a hacker."
— Judge Fang and Miss Pao in Neal Stephenson's, The Diamond Age, or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
So Beck was the hacker and Oda was the backer. The oldest and most troublesome relationship in the technological world.
— Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age, or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
Put `em on and be yourself, mister alienated loner steppenwolf bemused distant meta-izing technocrat rationalist fucking shithead.
— Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age, or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
Langston Experiment for Chivalry
Come back
cried the anguished squirrel
as his two-striped woman keeled
out of their knot-hole home
What have I done to make you
angry with my soul?
the squirrel asked accordingly
You have taken all the acorns
and the past presence of chivalry
rest so still near the bottom of the knot-hole floor
His pain is great as his woman's
new lover leads her on
to new happiness
He soggies his grief
with sleep
and darkness
— Dan Hetzel, The Wayfarer, Volume VIII, Edgewood High School's yearly literary publication (1992 or 1993, uncertain)
Filtering out [potentially offensive online] material at the user end is a more practical, and far less objectionable, approach than limiting a nation of computer users to baby talk."
— New York Times editorial, July 28, 1995.
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.
— Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
God prevent we should ever be twenty years without a revolution.
— Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
First they came for the hackers. But I never did anything
illegal with my computer, so I didn't speak up.
Then they came for the pornographers. But I thought there was
too much smut on the Internet anyway, so I didn't speak up.
Then they came for the anonymous remailers. But a lot of nasty
stuff gets sent from anon.penet.fi, so I didn't speak up.
Then they came for the encryption users. But I could never
figure out how to work PGP anyway, so I didn't speak up.
Finally they came for me. And by that time there was no one left
to speak up.
— Alara Rogers, signature on Usenet.
In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. They they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.
— Martin Niemoeller, on the Nazi Holocaust, 1945 (Likely this is only an approximation of the original, there are many differing versions circulating.)
When they took the 4th Amendment, I was quiet because I didn't deal drugs. When they took the 6th Amendment, I was quiet because I am innocent. When they took the 2nd Amendment, I was quiet because I don't own a gun. Now they have taken the 1st Amendment, and I can only be quiet.
— Myhr Lyle, usenet signature, 1995
The Earth is degenerating these days. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching.
— Assyrian tablet, c.2800 BC
The Three Great Virtues of a Programmer
- Laziness
- The quality that makes you go to the great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful, and document what you wrote so you don't have to answer so many questions about it. Hence, the first great virtue of a programmer.
- Impatience
- The anger you feel when the computer is being lazy. This makes you write programs that don't just react to your needs, but actually anticipate them. Or at least pretend to. Hence, the second great virtue of a programmer.
- Hubris
- Excessive pride, the sort of thing Zues zaps you for. Also the quality that makes you write (and maintain) programs that other people won't want to say bad things about. Hence, the third great virute of a programmer.
— Larry Wall and Randal L. Schwartz, Programming perl (second edition)
Look for the ridiculous in everything and you will find it.
— Jules Renard
And don't tell me there isn't one bit of difference between null and space, because that's exactly how much difference there is. :-)
— Larry Wall, creater of Perl
This is all quite independent of the question of whether I'm mad. :-)
— Larry Wall, creater of Perl on Usenet
Be consistent.
— Larry Wall, creater of Perl, in the perl man page
break; /* don't do magic till later */
— Larry Wall, creater of Perl, in stab.c from the perl source code.
double value;
/* or your money back! */
short changed;
/* so triple your money back! */
— Larry Wall, creater of Perl, in cons.c from the perl source code
if (instr(buf,sys_errlist[errno])) /* you don't see this */
— Larry Wall, creater of Perl, in eval.c from the perl source code
if (rsfp = mypopen("/bin/mail root","w")) { /* heh, heh */
— Larry Wall, creater of Perl, in perl.c from the perl source code
If you want your program to be readable, consider supplying the argument.
— Larry Wall, creater of Perl, in the perl man page
It's all magic. :-)
— Larry Wall, creater of Perl
As a wise man once said, "Move out of your parent's basement."
— Buttery Wholesomeness, T. Shaughnessy, D. Thron, C. Elliot
The Lord forgives, my son. I do not.
— HõL: Human Occupied Landfill, T. Shaughnessy, D. Thron, C. Elliot
At Group L, Stoffel oversees six first-rate programmers, a managerial challenge roughly comparable to herding cats.
— The Washington Post, 9 June, 1985
The Internet Is Full.
Go Away.
— Traditional
UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things.
— Doug Gwyn
PROGRAM {PRO-gram} [n] A magic spell cast over a computer which allows it to turn one's input into error messages; [v] to engage in a pastime similar to banging one's head against a wall, but with fewer opportunities for reward.
— Traditional
The story you are about to see is a fib. But it's short.
— Mathnet
Somewhere there's danger. Somewhere there's injustice. Somewhere else, the tea's getting cold. Come on, Ace. We've got work to do.
— Doctor Who (Sylvestor McCoy)
We have them just where they want us.
— James Tiberius Kirk, Star Trek (The original series)
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
— Hunter S. Thompson, journalist
whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
— Johann Von Goethe
I think that when the aliens come they will look like us, talk like us and think like us. We'd better have some bloody big guns waiting for them.
— B. Liddicott, citation unknown, probably Usenet
If you add a teaspoon of wine to a barrel of sewage, you get sewage. If you add a teaspoon of sewage to a barrel of wine, you get sewage. This, my son, is entropy.
— Traditional
"Eat me."
— Lewis Carroll
I've gone to hundreds of fortune-tellers' parlors, and have been told thousands of things, but nobody ever told me I was a policewoman getting ready to arrest her.
— A New York City Detective
It's good to have double standards, in case one of them breaks.
— Thomas Kettenring
Come to think of it, there already are a million monkeys on a million typewriters...and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare...
— Blair Houghton, Usenet
Cthulhu '96! -- Why Vote for the Lesser Evil?
— Traditional
They're inhabitants of alt.tasteless . . . where they march to a decidedly different drummer, and, when they're done marching, usually shoot him.
— Dave Ratcliffe, usenet post
My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.
— Vladimir Nabokov
Love is like a snowmobile flying over the frozen tundra that suddenly flips, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.
— Matt Groening, the comic Life in Hell
"USENET is not a right."
— Ed Vielmetti
"USENET is a right, a left, a jab, and a sharp uppercut to the jaw. The postman hits! You have new mail."
— Chip Salzenberg
"This was a test of the tywong flaming system. This was only a test. Had this been a real flame, no lucid points would have been attempted."
— Jon Blow, citation unknown, probably Usenet
It doesn't TAKE all kinds; we just HAVE all kinds.
— Michael Kalen Smith, citation unknown, probably Usenet
How can you stand not to push your own head into the cereal bowl in the morning and spare yourself the misery and ignominy of a life as a pitiable circus clown?
— Felix Gallo, citation unknown, probably Usenet
Never let your friends drive you crazy; you know it's within walking distance.
— Traditional
We are sorry, but the number you have dialed is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again.
— David Grabiner, citation unknown
A Renaissance man diffuses to refine himself.
— Steve Hug, citation unknown
If you can't make someone happy, make them chocolate fudge cake.
— Duke Euphoria "Ian Crowther" De'Gryn, Trans-Galactic Megapope, citation unknown, probably Usenet
Talent develops in quiet places; character, in the full current of human life.
— Johann Von Goethe
So, let me get this straight. You're worried about this thing you call . . . copyright? What does this strange word mean?
— Joshua Babcock, citation unknown
I'm surrounded by idiots of my own design.
— Joel Hodgson, Mystery Science Theatre 3000
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from ref fiat.
— Metlay
Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics.
— David L. Goodstein, citation unknown
Money talks. Usually it says, 'Bend over.'
— Solomon Short, citation unknown
My name is Homer Montoya. You killed my father; prepare to--ooh, donuts!
— Keith Rupp, citation unknown, probably usenet
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
He who hesitates is not only lost, but miles from the next exit.
— Traditional
A Discordian is anyone willing to look at the windmills and concede that they might be giants.
— The Principia Discordia: or, How I Found the Goddess and What I Did To Her When I Found Her. By Malaclypse the Younger. Really.
The NSA is now funding research not only in cryptography, but in all areas of advanced mathematics. If you'd like a circular describing these new research opportunities, just pick up your phone, call your mother, and ask for one.
— Rogue Agent, citation unknown, probably usenet
What is a European? Someone with the industriousness of the British, the sobriety of the Irish, the sense of humour of the Germans, the generosity of the Dutch, the modesty of the French and the courage of the Italians. In other words, a Belgian.
— Traditional
On the other hand, if we have in view the comprehensibility of a whole of speculative knowledge, which, though wide-ranging, has the coherence that follows from unity of principle, we can say with equal justice that many a book would have been much clearer if it had not made such an effort to be clear.
— Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Norman Kemp Smith
Cyberpunk realized that the old SF stricture of "alter only one thing and see what happens" was hopelessly outdated, a doctrine rendered irrelevant by the furious pace of late 20th century technological change. The future isn't "just one damn thing after another," it's every damn thing all at the same time.
— Lawrence Person, "Notes Toward a Postcyberpunk Manifesto"
It's not good to forget who you are, but it's even worse to ignore who you're becoming
— SoulOSex, on IRC
A SERMON ON ETHICS AND LOVE
One day Mal-2 asked the messenger spirit Saint Gulik to approach the Goddess and request Her presence for some desperate advice. Shortly afterwards the radio came on by itself, and an ethereal female Voice said YES?
"O! Eris! Blessed Mother of Man! Queen of Chaos! Daughter of Discord! Concubine of Confusion! O! Exquisite Lady, I beseech You to lift a heavy burden from my heart!"
WHAT BOTHERS YOU, MAL? YOU DON'T SOUND WELL.
"I am filled with fear and tormented with terrible visions of pain. Everywhere people are hurting one another, the planet is rampant with injustices, whole societies plunder groups of their own people, mothers imprison sons, children perish while brothers war. O, woe."
WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH THAT, IF IT IS WHAT YOU WANT TO DO?
"But nobody Wants it! Everybody hates it."
OH. WELL, THEN STOP.
At which moment She turned herself into an aspirin commercial and left The Polyfather stranded alone with his species.
— The Principia Discordia: or, How I Found the Goddess and What I Did To Her When I Found Her. By Malaclypse the Younger. Really.
Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear -- kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor -- with the cry of grave national emergency... Always there has been some terrible evil to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant sums demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.
— General Douglas MacArthur, 1957
"What the hell are you getting so upset about? I thought you didn't believe in God."
"I don't," she sobbed, bursting violently into tears, "but the God I don't believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He's not the mean and stupid God you make Him out to be."
— Joseph Heller, Catch-22
"My country, right or wrong," is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, "My mother, drunk or sober."
— G. K. Chesterton
The following tale of alien encounters is true. And by true I mean false. It's all lies. But they're entertaining lies. And in the end, isn't that what's true?
The answer is no.
— Leonard Nimoy, The Simpsons
Be not deceived, girls are evil.
— Rick Shaw's friend
I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.
— Hunter S. Thompson
Well, I hadn't anticipated spending eternity with a woman.
— Alec, Compromising Positions
I have found little that is good about human beings. In my experience most of them are trash.
— Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
I don't really trust a sane person.
— Lyle Alzado, Professional Football Lineman
The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.
— Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.
— Kingslet Amis
Dear Contributor: Thank you for not sending us anything lately. It suits our present needs,
— Letter from publisher received by Snoopy in Peanuts by Charles Schulz
I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves.
— August Strindberg (1849-1912)
Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these.
— Ovid (43 B.C. - A.D. 18)
We are what we pretend to be.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
— Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters--yes, even his own life--he cannot be my disciple.
— Jesus Christ, Luke 14:26
Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't get eight cats to pull a sled through snow.
— Jeff Valdez
People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.
— Book review by Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
This isn't much of a quote book if I'm in it.
— Richard Dowd
You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
— Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Only dead fish swim with the stream.
— Unknown
Either I've been missing something or nothing has been going on.
— Karen Elizabeth Gordon
The world is a madhouse, so it's only right that it is patrolled by armed idiots.
— Brendan Behan
Never believe anything until it has been officially denied.
— Claud Cockburn (1904-1981)
The higher a monkey climbs, the more you see of its behind.
— General Joseph Stilwell (1883-1946)
Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
— T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
There are few problems in life that wouldn't be eased by the proper application of high explosives.
— Traditional
Reality is a collective hunch.
— Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner
Adults are obsolete children.
— Dr. Suess
There ain't no rules around here! We're trying to accomplish something!
— Thomas Edison (1847-1931)
I've been promoted to middle management. I never thought I'd sink so low.
— Tim Gould
When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.
— George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
You don't stop laughing because you grow old; you grow old because you stop laughing.
— Michael Pritchard
What I am forced to tell her is the web is still primarily a big circle jerk for graphics artists and designers who've suddenly discovered a new way to suck money out of anxiety ridden corporate greed-heads.
— A Unix programmer at Netscape Communications
Everything -- every trivial little thing -- matters. But in a real way, none of it does at all.
— Unknown
Love is like a vending machine...You insert a coin and press home the lever. There's some mechanical activity inside the bowels of the device. You receive a small sweet, frown at yourself in the mirror, adjust your hat, take a firm grip on your umbrella and walk away, trying to look as though nothing had happened...
— Nathaniel West, Day of the Locust
He had nothing to offer her, neither money nor looks, and she could only love a handsome man and would only let a wealthy man love her. Tod was a "good hearted man," and she liked "good hearted men," but only as friends.
— Nathaniel West
I would ask myself, too, the basic questions which a schoolboy, if he is properly trained, keeps in mind as he listens to his professors.
How does he know?
How can I be sure?
— Nicholas Freeling, The Cook Book
...a scientist must also be absolutely like a child. If he sees a thing, he must say that he sees it, whether it is what he thought he was going to see or not. See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that.
— Douglas Adams, So Long and Thanks For All the Fish
If knowing is half the battle, and knowledge is power, and power corrupts, is being corrupt half the battle?
The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds castles in the air, from air, creating by the exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures.
— Fred Brooks in The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
Should the committee decide that our existence is useful, we may continue to exist.
Sabrina: "Salem, guard my door..."
Salem the cat: (indignantly) "Dogs guard. Cats watch... (evil tone) and Judge."
Life is pain, your highness. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to sell you something.
— Westley, The Princess Bride
I wear my unprofessionalism as a badge of honor. Professionalism has no place in art, and hacking is art. Software Engineering might be science; but that's not what I do. I'm a hacker, not an engineer.
— Jamie Zawinski, Netscape Hacker
Information stolen is information improved.
— Jon Van Oast
'Information' is chaos; knowledge is the spontaneous ordering of that chaos; freedom is the surfing of the wave of that spontaneity.
— Hakim Bey
The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents.
— Nathaniel Borenstein
The reason I think my computer is sentient is that it obviously doesn't like me.
You are a wooden board. Intel is a threaded fastener. Microsoft is a tool that drives threaded fasteners into wooden boards. Are you getting the picture yet?
— Alice Hill and Bill O'Brien, "The Hard Edge", Computer Shopper, Sept. 98
There they sit, the preschooler class encircling their mentor, the substitute teacher.
"Now class, today we will talk about what you want to be when you grow up. Isn't that fun?" The teacher looks around and spots the child, silent, apart from the others and deep in thought. "Jonny, why don't you start?" she encourages him.
Jonny looks around, confused, his train of thought disrupted. He collects himself, and stares at the teacher with a steady eye. "I want to code demos," he says, his words becoming stronger and more confidant as he speaks. "I want to write something that will change people's perception of reality. I want them to walk away from the computer dazed, unsure of their footing and eyesight. I want to write something that will reach out of the screen and grab them, making heartbeats and breathing slow to almost a halt. I want to write something that, when it is finished, they are reluctant to leave, knowing that nothing they experience that day will be quite as real, as insightful, as good. I want to write demos."
Silence. The class and the teacher stare at Jonny, stunned. It is the teachers turn to be confused. Jonny blushes, feeling that something more is required. "Either that or I want to be a fireman."
— - Grant Smith, 14:32, 11/21/93
With government crippled and industry brain-dead to any conceivable moral appeal, the future of decentered, autonomous cultural networks looks very bright. There has never been an opportunity to spread new ideas and new techniques with the alacrity that they can spread now. Human energy must turn in some direction. People will run from frustration and toward any apparent source of daylight. As the planet's levees continue to break, people will run much faster and with considerably more conviction.
— The Manifesto of January 3, 2000, Bruce Sterling
After many years of cut-and-paste, appropriation, detournement and neo-retro ahistoricality, postmodernity is about to end. Immediately after the end of the fin de siecle, there will be a sudden and intense demand for genuine novelty.
— The Manifesto of January 3, 2000, Bruce Sterling
It is also palpably absurd to live in a society where capital can move faster and more easily than human beings. Capital exists for the sake and convenience of human beings.
— The Manifesto of January 3, 2000, Bruce Sterling
Is blue supposed to be soothing when I lose my data?
— Dave Demaagd
DISCLAIMER: The words 'he', 'him' and 'his' are used throughout this book as generic third-person singular pronouns. With this usage the author, a man of great gallantry, does not wish to imply that memebers of the fairer sex are any less likely to have astonishing adventures than their male counterparts despite their frailty, lack of education and great aptitude for giggling and fainting. He does not assume that flouncy crinolines and a decolletage like alabaster might make them any less able to engagee in espionage against the French while disguised as a haddock, or that their extensive skills in needlepoint and household management would be anything but an asset when seducing the Empress of Russia. In short, he believes that in many way women are just as brave, capable and interesting as men, and in occasional circumstances more so. Bless their little hearts.
— James Wallis, The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen: A Superlative Role-Playing Game in a New Style
A bug is something you fixed, and an enhancement request is a bug you don't want to fix.
Shipping is a feature.
— Chris Peters
The GM looks confused, we must be doing something right.
— Unknown
Michael Corleone: Soldiers are paid to fight; the rebels aren't.
Hyman Roth: What does that tell you?
Michael Corleone: It tells me the rebels could win.
There are two basic traits of a good system administrator:
1) infallibility
2) the ability to learn from one's mistakes.
— Unknown
Additionally, the intrinsic parallelism and free idea exchange in OSS has benefits that are not replicable with our current licensing model and therefore present a long term developer mindshare threat....
Recent case studies (the Internet) provide very dramatic evidence in customer's eyes that commercial quality can be achieved / exceeded by OSS projects....
Linux and other OSS advocates are making a progressively more credible argument that OSS software is at least as robust - if not more - than commercial alternatives. The Internet provides an ideal, high-visibility showcase for the OSS world.
In particular, larger, more savvy, organizations who rely on OSS for business operations (e.g. ISPs) are comforted by the fact that they can potentially fix a work-stopping bug independent of a commercial provider's schedule....
Linux can win as long as services / protocols are commodities...
OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized, simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS projects entry into the market....
The ability of the OSS process to collect and harness the collective IQ of thousands of individuals across the Internet is simply amazing. More importantly, OSS evangelization scales with the size of the Internet much faster than our own evangelization efforts appear to scale....
— Vinod Valloppillil in a confidential Microsoft document
"It's fairly mild, and I got the feeling that the person that wrote it actually liked Linux," said Linux creator Linus Torvalds. "But maybe I'm on drugs."
— Linus Torvalds, quoted in Wired News, regarding a Microsoft document discussing Linux
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
1. All information should be free.
2. Access to computers and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works-should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative!
3. Mistrust Authority - Promote Decentralization
4. Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not things such as age, race, sex, degrees or wealth.
5. You can create beauty and art on a computer.
6. Computers can change your life for the better.
— Hackers, by Steven Levy
I don't have a solution, but I admire your problem.
— Unknown
Eating kittens is just plain wrong, and no-one should do it, ever!
— The Tick
If your wit was any drier, you'd have to moisturize your mind.
— Jack Scheer
No man who uses EMACS is deserving of love.
— Tom Christiansen to co-author Nathan Torkington in The Perl Cookbook
...dealing with Microsoft Support is about as helpful as calling the Psychic Friends Network for help with your computer....
— Eric Lee Green, "FUD 101"
That can't be it. My co-worker across the hallway uses CDE and he has 3 spouses and a girlfriend...
Ok, I'm switching window managers...
Mimes do not make art. Mimes make filth.
A major vendor shipped it as a way to improve the user interface, so it must be useless.
These lines do not catch the IEEE notations of "Infinity" and "NaN", but unless you're worried that IEEE committee members will stop by your workplace and beat you over the head with copies of the relevant standard's documents, you can probably forget about these strange numbers.
— Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington, The Perl Cookbook
The software required 'Windows 95 or better', so I installed Linux.
— Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington, The Perl Cookbook
Twisted cleverness is my only skill as a programmer.
— Elizabeth Zwicky
Basically, avoid comments. If your code needs a comment to be understood, it would be better to rewrite it so it's easier to understand.
— Rob Pike
Comments on data are usually much more helpful than on algorithms.
— Rob Pike
Of course, we all know that the best ruling body is a Cabal.
PS: There is no cabal.
IP [Intellectual Property] has the shelf life of a banana. It just doesn't last, yet we're all worried about protecting it, hiding it, securing it, storing it in a vault.
— Scott McNealy, Do We Worry Too Much About Protecting IP
NT is simply not a multiuser OS in the sense that Unix, VMS, MVS, OS/400, RSTS/E, or most anything else written in the last two decades is.
— Mitch Blank
Besh? You hate life. Any answers?
— David Carley to Matt Beshta in an email to the UPL junkies mailing list
The only obvious different between that cover and last weeks' edition of the National Enquirer is that Newsweek uses slicker paper and takes better pictures.
— Jon Katz in an article on Slashdot
Pete, you may work for hell, but I've admin'd IRIX, HP-UX, and NT all in the same day.
There really isn't anything you can do that can scare me after that...
— Erik Paulson to Peter Keller by email
Hank: How `bout a beer?
Bill: Beer's a depressant, Hank.
Hank: Don't blame the beer.
This is a dorky way to do it.
— Mark De Smet on using two pointer indirections for two dimensional arrays in C++
Something big is bound to happen -- the director wouldn't have set us up like this for nothing. Unless this is "real life..."
— Aaron Hertzmann in email
[The] reusable SW components are in /bin
— "ThwartedEfforts" in a post on Slashdot
Hackers build things, crackers break them.
[To women, about female friends while starting a relationship.] You'll be depending on them to have someone to talk to, especially in the early stages of your conquest. You might have straight men friends with whom you want to share, but leave them out of the loop -- placid as they may be on the surface, chances are at least one of them will be struggling to make his peace with a crush on you, and confiding in him will hurt him.
— "For the Ladies", article on ChickMagnet.org
In the old days, we programmers were very rare.... It seemed appropriate for us, the blessed ones, to create programs out of nothingness and shower them on the world gratis. Did God bill us for six days' labor, F.O.B., 2/10 n/30?
— G. L. Sicherman
"But if we turn off telnet, how will we get into the machine?"
— Michelle Craft quoting an unknown person
Strangely noone asks that before installing NT.
— Mitchell Blank
A country where there are more lawyers than engineers (and perhaps relatedly, more prison inmates than students) cannot expect to have a technological future.
— Martin Vermeer, "Unix as an element of literacy"
Isn't it nice that some cat climbed up a teliphone poll and didn't want too come down untell the local fire department 'rescued' the cat?
— Tom Rutledge, in an email to the upl junkies mailing list
This is a time-honored manner of foreign policy. In World War II, we successfully forced a new constitution on Japan while providing aid. Like any good abusive parent, we can beat them within an inch of their lives and them buy their forgiveness with a few shipments of humanitarian relief.
One could even argue that the fact that these people are dieing isn't really important because it doesn't effect my life.
The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No first world country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity -- much less dissent.
— Gore Vidal
Some people believe in laissez faire economics, other believe in reincarnation. Some people even believe that COBOL is a real programming language.
Nobody is really smart enough to program computers.
— Steve McConnel, Code Complete
However, a programming language is really a very tiny part of the world, and as such, it ought not to be taken too seriously.
— Bjarne Stroustrup, The Design and Evolution of C++
"Isn't it [Windows] nagware already?"
"No... Windows doesn't have any nag screens."
"Then what are those blue and white screens I get every day?"
— Illiad, User Friendly, Jan 4, 1999
Patents are a pair of shackles that innovators wear around every limb they have.
— Tom Rutledge, in an email to the upl junkies mailing list
Consider this Fragboy, even though she is a real person, smelling good, and with all the right curvy parts that you only previously found on your Logitech MouseMan, is giving up what you love for Sex really worth it?
— Iambe
I would rather spend 10 hours reading someone else's source code than 10 minutes listing to Musak waiting for technical support which isn't
— Dr. Greg Wettstein, Roger Maris Cancer Center
Basically, the only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
— Bruce Ediger on comp.os.linux.misc on X interfaces. (Some information on this quote.)
...the linux philosophy is "laugh in the face of danger". Oops. wrong one. "Do it yourself.". That's it.
Microsoft is not the answer
Microsoft is the question
NO (or Linux) is the answer
— Unknown
In most countries selling harmful things like drugs is punishable. Then how come people can sell Microsoft software and go unpunished?
— Hasse Skrifvars
How should I know if it works? That's what beta testers are for. I only coded it.
— Linus Torvalds (uncertain)
After watching my newly-retired dad spend two weeks learning how to make a new folder, it became obvious that "intuitive" mostly means "what the writer or speaker of intuitive likes".
— Bruce Ediger in comp.os.linux.misc on the intuitiveness of the Mac interface.
>Linux is not user-friendly.
It _is_ user-friendly. It is not ignorant-friendly and idiot-friendly.
— Unknown
Some people have told me they don't think a fat penguin really embodies the grace of Linux, which just tells me they have never seen a angry penguin charging at them in excess of 100mph. They'd be a lot more careful about what they say if they had.
— Linus Torvalds, announcing Linux 2.0
C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success.
— Dennis M. Ritchie
First off, I'd suggest printing out a copy of the GNU coding standards, and NOT read it. Burn them, it's a great symbolic gesture.
— Linus Torvalds, in the Linux kernel coding style document
"Segmentation fault: core dumped" is just your computer's way of saying "I miss you. Play with me some more. I'm free for the next six hours, aren't you?"
— David C. Ross in a post on Slashdot
Methinks if you've got macro virus's running rampant in your machine, you've got bigger problems. Like Word for example.
As I tell anyone who asks, "why are you majoring in Computer Science?" - To make the porn go faster, and cheaper.
— Erik Paulson on the UPL Junkies mailing list
More good code has been written in languages denounced as "bad" than in languages proclaimed "wonderful" - much more.
— Bjarne Stroustrup, The Design and Evolution of C++
I shall stomp upon all who oppose me.
The stomping shall be swift.
The stomping shall be painful.
And I shall show no mercy
in all of my stomping.
Amen.
— Charlie Wiedman, Lunch Money, "Stomp" (Produced by Atlas Games, a generally cool company that unfortunately uses frames on their web site, so I can't give you a direct link to Lunch Money)
Boies: What non-Microsoft browsers were you concerned about in January of 1996?
Gates: I don't know what you mean 'concerned.'
Boies: What is it about the word 'concerned' that you don't understand?
Gates: I'm not sure what you mean by it.
Boies: Is the term 'concerned' a term you're familiar with in the English language?
Gates: Yes.
— David Boies and Bill Gates, testimony for Microsoft anti-trust case.
Copyright is designed to protect the intellectual property rights of the people who create something. Copyleft is designed to protect the rights of the users. The Berkeley license is copy central: Take this stuff down to the copier and make as many copies as you want, for whatever you want.
— Kirk McKusick
"Cryptography restrictions are the USA's Maginot Line. Big, expensive, ultimately routed around regardless, and once the war is over, difficult to get rid of."
— Russell Nelson
Men are icky and scary.
For more than twenty years now I've dreamed of living in a whole world of software that doesn't suck -- clean, powerful, reliable, well-built code that we techies can love and be proud of instead of cursing because it's all so flaky and broken and sad.
— Eric S. Raymond, "Understand My Job, Please!"
If we want the freedom to protect ourselves as we see fit and the freedom to take out a little 9mm insurance policy against the possibility that our government may get out of hand and need to be dealt with, then we have to put up with 17-year-olds learning how to make pipe bombs on the Internet and running around with shotguns and semi-automatic weapons.
— Scott D. Haring, "Second Sight: A Futile Search for Answers" in Pyramid Magazine.
"White suburban kids are assumed to have an individual psychic development that can be sidetracked into dysfunctional forms of expression, if there is some sufficiently powerful external stimulus -- a video game, a lurid Web site -- that can knock them off course." But when it comes to inner-city black kids, "the explanations are assumed to be socially determined from the get-go." By the media's lights, "Society explains their behavior in a way that strips them of their individuality and retains only their class and race attributes" -- which is why video games are never trotted out to explain homicide in inner-city schools.
— Mark Boal, "The Shooters and the Shrinks", Salon, quoting Andrew Ross, American studies department at NYU
Chairman: Item 6 on the Agenda, the Meaning of Life... Now Harry, you've had some thoughts on this...
Harry: That's right, yeah. I've had a team working on this over the past few weeks, and what we've come up with can be reduced to two fundamental concepts... One... people are not wearing enough hats. Two... matter is energy; in the Universe there are many energy fields which we cannot normally perceive. Some energies have a spiritual source which act upon a person's soul. However, this soul does not exist ab inito, as orthodox Christianity teaches; it has to be brought into existence by a process of guided self-observation. However, this is rarely achieved owing to man's unique ability to be distracted from spiritual matters by everyday trivia.
[Pause.]
Max: What was that about hats again?
Harry: Er... people aren't wearing enough.
— Monty Python's The Meaning of Life
As the digital revolution has resulted in the widespread use of computers by technical incompetents, most traditional software--application programs, operating systems, numerical control instructions, and so forth--is, for most of its users, firmware. It may be symbolic rather than electronic in its construction, but they couldn't change it even if they wanted to, which they often--impotently and resentfully--do.
— Eben Moglen, Anarchism Triumphant: Free Software and the Death of Copyright
So Moglen's Metaphorical Corollary to Faraday's Law says that if you wrap the Internet around every person on the planet and spin the planet, software flows in the network. It's an emergent property of connected human minds that they create things for one another's pleasure and to conquer their uneasy sense of being too alone. The only question to ask is, what's the resistance of the network? Moglen's Metaphorical Corollary to Ohm's Law states that the resistance of the network is directly proportional to the field strength of the ``intellectual property'' system.
— Eben Moglen, Anarchism Triumphant: Free Software and the Death of Copyright
You've got to understand their market has always been the Windows space, where you're actually doing people a favor by charging them money for things, because that's the only way to keep from confusing them. Linux users are smarter than this, of course
— Larry Wall, creater of Perl, in an interview in Linux Journal
Interviewer: How'd you come up with that name [Perl]?
Larry: I wanted a short name with positive connotations. (I would never name a language ``Scheme'' or ``Python'', for instance.)
— Larry Wall, creater of Perl, in an interview in Linux Journal
In fact, biologists are just now realizing that any organism which seems to be ``perfect'' for one environment is likely to be in danger of extinction as soon as the environment changes. Over-specialization is only as good as your ecological niche. We're not just talking about dinosaurs here, but also snail darters and cheetahs and a bazillion beetles in Brazil--not to mention Visual Basic.
— Larry Wall, creater of Perl, in an interview in Linux Journal
MCSEs (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineers) and CNEs (Certified Netware Engineers) don't have to go to college at all. They just have to pass the tests. This sounded great until I remembered my days 20 years ago investigating the Three Mile Island nuclear accident. One of the underlying reasons for that fiasco was that the reactor operators were trained not to run the reactor as much as to pass the test.
— Robert X. Cringley, I, Cringley for June 3, 1999
YOUR MONEY BACK IF NOT SATISFIED!
(however, we suspect that we will be quite satisfied with your money)
The straightforward and easy path was to join the proprietary software world, signing nondisclosure agreements and promising not to help my fellow hacker....I could have made money this way, and perhaps had fun programming (if I closed my eyes to how I was treating other people). But I knew that when my career was over, I would look back on years of building walls to divide people, and feel I had made the world ugly.
— Richard Stallman, "The GNU Operating System and the Free Software Movement", Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates
I'm not saying that they were knowingly dishonest, perhaps they were simply stupid.
— Linus Torvalds, commenting on those who really thought Microkernels were wise. (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
So right now the only vendor that does such a stupid thing is Microsoft.
— Linus Torvalds on bad file system interface design. (Open Sources , 1999 O'Reilly and Associates.)
I am not convinced that they can write solid stable software. Proprietary software is already hobbled by it's secretive cathedral nature, but Microsoft seems to have a corner on incompetent programming as well.
— Chris DiBona from the introduction, Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates
For something that does not exist, the Internet Engineering Task Force has has quite an impact.
— Scott Bradner, "the Internet Engineering Task Force", Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates
The basic publication series for the IETF is the RFC series. RFC once stood for "Request for Comments," but since documents published as RFCs have generally gone through an extensive review process before publication, RFC is now best understood to mean "RFC."
— Scott Bradner, "the Internet Engineering Task Force", Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates
The IETF motto is 'rough consesus and running code'
— Scott Bradner, "the Internet Engineering Task Force", Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates
We can debug relationships, but it's always good policy to consider the people themselves to be features. People get annoyed when you try to debug them.
— Larry Wall, creater of Perl, Second State of the Onion Address
Computers may be stupid, but they're always obedient. Well, almost always.
— Larry Wall, creater of Perl, Second State of the Onion Address
Of course, in Perl culture, almost nothing is prohibited. My feeling is that the rest of the world already has plenty of perfectly good prohibitions, so why invent more?
— Larry Wall, creater of Perl, Second State of the Onion Address
There are a billion people in China. And I want them to be able to pass notes to each other written in Perl. I want them to be able to write poetry in Perl.
That is my vision of the Future. My chosen perspective.
— Larry Wall, creater of Perl, (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
In a way they were right the basics of operating systems, and by extension the Linux kernel, were well understood by the early 70s; anything after that has been to some degree an exercise in self-gratification.
— Linus Torvalds (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
This is important, and a little hard to understand. English is useful because it's a mess. Since English is a mess, it maps well onto the problem space, which is also a mess, which we call reality. Similarly, Perl was designed to be a mess (though in the nicest of possible ways).
— Larry Wall, creater of Perl, Second State of the Onion Address
So I did some research. On the Web, of course. Big mistake...
— Larry Wall, creater of Perl, Second State of the Onion Address
You need people who are willing to be partisan on behalf of their chosen culture, while remaining sufficiently non-partisan to keep in touch with the rest of the world. It's no fun to create a new culture and then cut it off from the rest of humanity. No, the fun thing is to try to persuade others to share your opinions about what rules and what sucks. Nothing is more fun than evangelism.
— Larry Wall, creater of Perl, on synthetic cultures (specifically Open Source) in his LinuxWorld Speech
Upside: But you're not paid to do that. Most people would find it bizarre that you could have such a huge unpaid job ...
Torvalds: Even the people who can't imagine doing something just for the love of doing something--they're sad people, but there are probably people like that.
— Upside interview with Linus Torvalds
"...I came out of it dead broke, without a house, without anything except a girlfriend and a knowledge of UNIX."
"Well, that's something," Avi says, "Normally those two things are mutually exclusive."
— Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon
Data expands to fill the space available for storage.
— Parkinson's Law of Data
The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time.
— The Ninety-Ninety Rule (Tom Cargill, Bell Labs)
The time from now until the completion of the project tends to become constant.
— Douglas Hartree
After all, actually fixing the bugs would siphon off the resources needed to implement the next user-interface frill on marketing's wish list -- and besides, if they started fixing security bugs customers might begin to expect it and imagine that their warranties of merchantability gave them some sort of right to a system with fewer holes in it than a shotgunned Swiss cheese, and then where would we be?
— "Security through obscurity" entry in The Jargon File.
Intelligence has much less practical application than you'd think.
— Scott Adams, Dilbert
When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know," the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives
— Robert Heinlein, "If this goes on --"
The question is: What do you do with your life?
The wrong answer is: Be the richest guy in the graveyard.
— Larry Ellison, Billionaire and founder of Oracle
Restrictive tools designed to prevent the worst programmers from failing often prevent the best programmers from succeeding.
— Bjarne Stroustrup, "Talking in Code", Red Herring
Much of the relative simplicity of Java is - like for most new languages - partly an illusion and partly a function of its incompleteness.
— Bjarne Stroustrup, Stroustrup's FAQ
Lisp requires an unhealthy relationship with lambda calculus that leads to proposing the dog of food instead of feeding the dog.
— Alan G Carter and Colston Sanger, "The Programmer's Stone"
Do not abuse exceptions to create weird control flow in company time. In particular, do not hide longjump()s in macros or call them from handlers. If you with to experiment with the Powers of Darkness, do it at home.
— Alan G Carter and Colston Sanger, "The Programmer's Stone"
At this point we discover that instead of a computer that requires no skills because it pretends to be another piece of furniture such as a desktop, we have a computer that relevant computer skills don't work on, because after all, a desktop doesn't need to have its user accounts configured, so there are no such things as desktop user account configuration skills out there to be made use of. We eventually discover that even in domestic situations where all one might wish to do is pick a new IP without reloading the whole machine, shareware systems that admit that they are computers are more user friendly that the so called 'user friendly' stuff.
— Alan G Carter and Colston Sanger, "The Programmer's Stone"
THE POINT
you could spend an hour counting the petals in a flower
it might take you a year to count the veins in each petal
if you spent ten lifetimes, maybe you could count its cells
but you'd have completely missed the point
you fuckhead
— Bryan O'Sullivan, cDc #300
Start by putting yourself in your users' shoes. Why are they coming to your site? If you look at some Web sites, you'd presume that the answer is "User is extremely bored and wishes to stare at a blank screen for several minutes while a flashing icon loads, then stare at the flashing icon for a few more minutes."
— Philip Greenspun, Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing
When fascism comes to this country, it won't be wearing jackbooks; it'll be wearing sneakers with lights in them, and it'll have a smiley face and a Michael Jordan T-Shirt.
— George Carlin in and interview in the The Onion, November 11-17, 1999
Whatever happens, happens, and when it happens, we'll deal with it with guns.
— Erich Henniger in a Deadlands game.
When I wasn't playing rogue at university, I was hacking on code, for which I used a popular rogue-variant called vi.
— Tom Christiansen, Interface Zen
All we have left of a common culture is TV. The primary force that binds us as a nation, as a group, as a hurded flock is that shinie shinie box.
— Tom Rutledge, in an email to the UPL junkies mailing list
Do you realize that when Alexander the Great was 25, he was the ruler of Egypt, Turkey, Persia, and Greece? He had 1.5 million square miles under his control and millions of subjects. What do you have now that you are 25? I bet you have exactly the 12 square feet of your desk and some cute fuzzy stuffed animals on it under your absolute control. How far the ambition of mankind has fallen.
— Peter Keller's "Winter" email to the UPL junkies mailing list from December 1999
craft: I hate people sometimes.
gulfie: You should hate people all the times.
— Michelle Craft (craft) and Tom Rutledge (gulfie) by email on the UPL junkies mailing list
Zach is going to be driving Satan out, and Nick is gonna drive NT out, so you'll be sure and want to come.
— Erik Paulson's email announcement of a UPL Coordinators meeting.
I never really understood how there could be things that would drive you insane just because you knew them until I ran into Windows.
— Peter da Silva, alt.sysadmin.recovery
Windows gives you a nice view of clouds so you can't see any potentially useful boot time messages.
— Bill Hay, alt.sysadmin.recovery
IBM's vision is apparently to make IBM hardware "scream with Microsoft software"
I have visions of screaming with (at and about) Microsoft software, too.
— Joe Moore, alt.sysadmin.recovery
A *huge* proportion of people cannot make *correct and accurate* generalisations of principles. They have to learn everything as if it's an unrelated piece of crap, BECAUSE THEY ARE STUPID! PEOPLE ARE STUPID! YES, THAT'S RIGHT, I'M SHOUTING NOW! AIEEEE!! PEOPLE ARE STUPID!
— Thorfinn, alt.sysadmin.recovery
Hey, you're right. I don't want to call a destructor on my objects, I want to call a *destroyer*. Gozer has come for your memory, little PersistentNode!
— Joel Gluth, alt.sysadmin.recovery
Light a fire for a luser and he'll be warm for a night; set a luser on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
— fun, alt.sysadmin.recovery
PC's are designed by a committee of people who are in different companies in different countries and who never talk to each other.
— Derick Siddoway
And nobody speaks the same language and they hate each other...
— Chris Adams
But I do not particularly want to go where the money is - it usually does not smell nice there.
— A. Stepanov, interview
I am not the first to point out that capitalism, having defeated communism, now seems about to do the same to democracy. The market is doing splendidly, yet we are not.
— Ian Frazier, "On the Rez."
It is one thing to pray; it is another to pray to entities who might not only be listening, but who will search you out on the road and beat you across the head with sticks if you say something that offends them.
— Neil Gaiman, The Dream Hunters
If there is going to be a Big Brother in the United States, it is going to be us -- the FBI
— Paul George, Supervisory special agent for the Michigan bureau of the FBI, in remarks made at the Freedom and Privacy 2000 Conference.
Our code is proof positive that there is magic in the world.
Screw everyone. I didn't go into politics because I like the populace; I did it because they obviously can't be trusted to choose for themselves. Fuck them and their lowbrow entertainment.
— Gus Hartmann, on the UPL junkies mailing list, discussing movies.
Dungeons & Dragons is, at its heart, a game about kicking down doors, killing monsters, and taking their stuff.
— Keith Strohm of Wizards of the Coast, in a post to the 3rd Edition message board
History has shown that one of the best deterrents to pirated product is providing legitimate product at appropriate prices. In the music industry, we have already seen that people will gladly pay fair prices for legally-produced product even when it can be easily reproduced and unlawful copies can be easily acquired.
— Michael Eisner, Chairman and CEO of Disney, addressing the Senate's Joint Economic Committee
I consider the use of C++ iostreams to be a bug and will log it.
— Jeff Hostetler, AbiSource Code Guidelines.
...Then do not expect to learn all the mysteries of Perl in a moment, as though you were consuming a mere peanut, or an olive. Rather, think of it as though you were consuming, say, a banana. Consider how this works. You do not wait to enjoy the banana until after you have eaten the whole thing. No, of course not. You enjoy each bite as you take it. And the next bite motivates you to take the next bite, and the next....
— Larry Wall in the Foreward to Learning Perl
Mostly, when you see programmers, they aren't doing anything. One of the attractive things about programmers is that you cannot tell whether or not they are working simply by looking at them. Very often they're sitting there seemingly drinking coffee and gossiping, or just staring into space. What the programmer is trying to do is get a handle on all the individual and unrelated ideas that are scampering around in his head.
— Charles M. Strauss
We use Linux for all our mission-critical applications. Having the source code means that we are not held hostage by anyone's support department.
— Russell Nelson, President of Crynwr Software
For all those who doubted, here is evidence that I have a boyfriend...or at least a bunch of pictures of the same guy.
— Kathleen Leeds on a web page discussing my brother, Brian
Yeah! Let's rebuild Quohog! We can make the library, and the police station, and the bar, and two Denny's, so we can say "Let's not go to that one, let's go to the good one."
— Kris, The Family Guy television series
The wonderful thing about Tiggers is -
Tiggers are wonderful things.
Their tops are made of rubber.
Their tails are made of springs.
They're bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy.
Full of fun, fun, fun!
The most wonderful thing about Tiggers is-
I'm the only one!
— Tigger, from A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh
Knowledge is now the critical component to production, and access to it represents a key divide between rich and poor.
— OI ACC Planning Papers
If this is the future of the web, I better get a new eyeglass prescription.
— "Reality Master 101" in a post on Slashdot.
Computer security products, like software in general, have a very odd product quality model. It's unlike an automobile, a skyscraper, or a box of fried chicken. If you buy a product, and get harmed because of a manufacturer's defect, you can sue...and you'll win. Car-makers can't get away with building cars that explode on impact; chicken shops can't get away with selling buckets of fried chicken with the odd rat mixed in. It just wouldn't do for building contractors to say thing like, "Whoops. There goes another one. Sorry. But just wait for Skyscraper 1.1; it'll be 100% collapse-free!"
Software is different. It is sold without any claims whatsoever. Your accounts receivable database can crash, taking your company down with it, and you have no claim against the software company. Your word processor can accidentally corrupt your files and you have no recourse. Your firewall can turn out to be completely ineffectual -- hardly better than having nothing at all -- and yet it's your fault. Microsoft fielded Hotmail with a bug that allowed anyone to read the accounts of 40 or so million subscribers, password or no password, and never bothered to apologize.
— Bruce Schneier, Crypto-Gram Newsletter, May 15, 2000
There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!
— Mario Savio's speech before the FSM sit-in, Dec 3, 1964, Berkeley California
Thus it is clear that the human race has at best a very limited capacity for solving even straightforward social problems. How then is it going to solve the far more difficult and subtle problem of reconciling freedom with technology? Technology presents clear-cut material advantages, whereas freedom is an abstraction that means different things to different people, and its loss is easily obscured by propaganda and fancy talk.
— Ted Kaczynski, "Industrial Society and Its Future" (aka The Unabomber's Manifesto), paragraph 137
There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or a corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back, for their private benefit. That is all.
— Robert Heinlein, "Life-Line"
It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it; but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.
— Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Isaac McPherson, August 13, 1813
To think that anyone "owns" something as abstract as software is like saying that someone "owns" a cat.
— Peter Wayner's article "Plugging Holes in the GPL" on Slashdot
Love and stoplights can be cruel.
Capitalism means never having to say you're sorry.
— Unknown
Did you know they outed the Snuffelupagus because they felt teaching children that sometimes they are right when the whole world doubts them was dangerous?
— Unknown, regarding Sesame Street
HELP!! Come see the violence inherent in the sysadmin!
— Illiad, User Friendly, March 16, 1999
Men are from mars, women are evil.
Government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any individual citizen.
— Warren v. District of Columbia
We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.
After you burn the books you'll need to go back to the records and find out who read the banned books, then burn them as well.
— Tom Rutledge, in an email to the upl junkies mailing list
You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.
— Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems, January 26, 1999
"You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it." is the modern equivilant of "Let them eat cake."
— Tom Rutledge, in an email to the upl junkies mailing list
Adam was not alone in the Garden of Eden, however, and does not deserve all the credit; much is due to Eve, the first woman, and Satan, the first consultant.
— Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Some of us have a chance of seeing the end of the dark ages.
You can't take something off the Internet. That's like trying to take the pee out of a swimming pool.
— Joe, NewsRadio
Sanity is really a one trick pony, all you get is rational thinking, but with insanity the sky's the limit.
— The Tick
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.
Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive.
I wish I was something cool, like God's Wrath, but I'm not, I'm just some guy with a baseball bat.
The church is near but the road is icy, the bar is far away but I will walk carefully.
— Russian Proverb
My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was less competition there.
Then there's the Heisenberg Principle of Dating: It is uncertain whether or not a given woman has a boyfriend until you ask her out. At that point, it is guaranteed that she has a boyfriend.
— Unknown
I believe there is a limit beyond which free speech cannot go, but it's a limit that's very seldom mentioned. It's the point where free speech begins to collide with the right to privacy. I don't think there are any other conditions to free speech. I've got a right to say and believe anything I please, but I haven't got a right to press it on anybody else... Nobody's got a right to be a nuisance to his neighbors.
— H. L. Mencken
If Little Girls are Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice then, logically, Women must be Alcohol, Cinnamon and Chocolate/Caffeine. Wait. That sounds like Irish Coffee. Right, OK, Women are Irish Coffee
— E Teflon Piano
Yeah man, I tell ya what, man...That dang ol' Internet, man...You just go on there and point and click...Talk about W-W-dot-W-com...An' lotsa nekkid chicks on there, man... Click. Click. Click. Click. Click....It's real easy man.
— Boomhauer, King of the Hill
Law of Software Envelopment: "Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."
— Unknown
We all enter this world in the same way: naked; screaming; soaked in blood. But if you live your life right, that kind of thing doesn't have to stop there.
There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significant number of users want fixed.
— interview in Focus magazine, Oct 23, 1995 Bill Gates,
USER, n.: The word computer professionals use when they mean "idiot."
— Dave Barry, "Claw Your Way to the Top"
You know how dumb the average person is? Well, by definition, half of 'em are dumber than *that*.
Deciding to 'just be friends' is like shooting yourself in the foot and trying to walk it off.
If knowing is half the battle, and knowledge is power, and power corrupts, is being corrupt half the battle?
When, exactly, did the content industry ... start treating their consumers as "the other side," waging a continuous and pointless war? When did every consumer become a potential lawbreaker - to the point where those who respect copyright laws and artists' rights (definitely not the same thing) are subject to restrictions, limitations, and other such rot as to keep them from becoming the "pirates" the industry is convinced they will be (or have the potential to be)?
— "hiryuu" in a post on Slashdot
Take the United States, for example. It's, like, what, 300, 400 years old?
— Overheard by James Sehmer at The Town Pump, a bar in Verona, Wisconsin.
Home? I have no home. Hunted...despised...living like an animal! The jungle is my home. But I shall show the vorld that I can be its master! I shall create a new race of people - a race of atomic supermen that vill conquer the vorld!
— Bela Lugosi as Eric Vornoff in Bride of the Atom
you guys aren't my girlfriend! You're much hairier!
— Joe Rheaume, personal email
I was in the pub last night, and a guy asked me for a light for his cigarette. I suddenly realised that there was a demand here and money to be made, and so I agreed to light his cigarette for 10 pence, but I didn't actually give him a light, I sold him a license to burn his cigarette. My fire-license restricted him from giving the light to anybody else, after all, that fire was my property. He was drunk, and dismissing me as a loony, but accepted my fire (and by implication the licence which governed its use) anyway. Of course in a matter of minutes I noticed a friend of his asking him for a light and to my outrage he gave his cigarette to his friend and pirated my fire! I was furious, I started to make my way over to that side of the bar but to my added horror his friend then started to light other people's cigarettes left, right, and centre! Before long that whole side of the bar was enjoying MY fire without paying me anything. Enraged I went from person to person grabbing their cigarettes from their hands, throwing them to the ground, and stamping on them.
Strangely the door staff exhibited no respect for my property rights as they threw me out the door.
What lawyers call "intellectual property" is -- as every Latin student knows -- no more than theft from the public domain.
— Andy Mueller-Maguhn, after his election as European Director of ICANN.
I don't believe in sweeping social change being manifested by one person, unless he has an atomic weapon.
— Howard Chaykin
Lots of lefty-liberals tell me how proud they are to not have cable. Their refusal to watch the WWF and reruns of "The Beverly Hillbillies" is why the left will never attain true power in this country.
— Michael Moore, "Mike's Message" for 9/27/2000
I know it was weighing on your mind. You can now rest easy, I have taken care of it. The tuna melt I had in your proxy was very tasty. Smooth, warm and gooey. The resultant satisfaction should be reaching you shortly. If that wonderful feeling of gooey goodness does not reach you, please contact your network service provider, as you webtone link may be down. It is not a problem on this end.
— Jeff Obarski to Alan De Smet by email, after Alan's problems getting a tuna melt on Fridays.
Thank goodness...that they're making cracking illegal.
They made drugs illegal a few years back, and it's really helped! You never see drugs, or hear about drugs anymore
— "Hairy_Potter" in a post to Slashdot
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
— Benjamin Franklin, motto of his "Historical Review," 1759. (Common during United States' Revolutionary War. Occurs as early as Nov, 1755 in an answer by the Assembly of Pennsylvania to the Governor.)
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
— William Pitt to the House of Commons, 1783
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficient . . . the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.
— U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis.
The mushrooming of surveillance has been explained by the sense of panic and crisis felt throughout the government during this period of extremely vocal dissent, large demonstrations, political and campus violence, and what at the time seemed the inauguration of a period of wide- spread anarchy. While officials... suggested that these crises justified the surveillance, they failed to recognize that the rights guaranteed by the constitution are constant and unbending to the temper of the times...
— Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights, 1973
The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.
— Paul Valery, 1895
Accepting the injustice as a compromise, expediant, or 'realistic' is the gateway across the road to hell.
— Tom Rutledge, in an email to the upl junkies mailing list
George Bush [jr] said he didn't reveal the drunk driving charge because of what his daughters might think of him. He had preferred that they think of him as a man with numerous failed business ventures who now executes people.
— Saturday Night Live, December, 2000
I read /. for the same reason I go to the zoo.
— Unknown
So monkeys can throw feces at you?
— "Spud the Ninja" in a post on Slashdot
[Bill Gates] should be thanked...
— Unknown
And the mafia should be thanked for their contributions to local communities. No thanks.
— "dattaway" in a post on Slashdot.
having more cash makes the holidays merrier.
— MBNA in junkmail to their credit card holders.
That's the sort of thing that requires a lot of experience making mistakes.... So I guess you're best qualified.
— David Carley to Alan De Smet, discussing developing test suites.
The patent bar has been lowered so far you can trip over it if you're not watching.
— Perry Leopold, on earning $10,000 busting a bad patent
Gov'r. Thomas was so pleas'd with the construction of this stove, as described in it, that he offered to give me a patent for the sole vending of them for a term of years; but I declin'd it from a principle which has ever weighed with me on such occasions, viz., That, as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously.
— Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, chapter 10
Hey, some of us *specialize* in making stupidity a reality!
— Damian Conway, Perl hacker, on creating a Perl module to make Perl whitespace sensative like Python.
In a perfect world, we'd all lie blind and motionless in stacked coffins filled with pudding. It would be dark and warm and nobody would have to compete with anybody and also the government would pay for the pudding.
— Erik, "Black & White", 04/10/01, Old Man Murray
Monkeys aren't even worth the small amount of effort it takes to strap them to gurneys and test lip gloss on them by smearing it into their eyes.
— Marvin, "Why Scientists Are Stupid", 03/14/01, Old Man Murray
Several drinks, an apartment filled with Ikea furniture, a corporate job, and plans to obtain a "cookie-cutter Euro-copy" car have convinced me that I may well be my khakis after all. Fuck. At least I'm armed. And drunk.
— (Name removed) in an email to the UPL junkies mailing list
I got called by [the interviewer]. I told him that you'd fit in perfectly, because of your uncanny ability to waste time. I also told him that he'd find your fundamental hatred for authority a refreshing challenge after he hired you.
— Aaron Pavao, by email to Alan De Smet, describing a reference call.
I am so not the smartest tree in the ocean.
— Michael Zenke by email
If I were creating a world, I wouldn't mess about with butterflies and daffodils! I would've started with lasers, eight o'clock, day one!
— Evil, Time Bandits
There is a lot of controversy about how human-level machine intelligence will develop. Some scientists believe it will follow a path similar to the one followed in nature by evolution: there will be artificial one-celled animals, artificial insects, artificial lawyers, artificial monkeys, and so on up to artificial human-level machine minds.
— Douglas B. Lenat, "Hal's Legacy: 2001's Computer as Dream and Reality"
"[Tolkien's writing appeals] to those with the mental age of a child, computer programmers, hippies and most Americans."
— Unknown, 1992 edition of Private Eye, quoted in the article "Lord of the Geeks"
"But look," said Ponder, "the graveyards are full of people who rushed in bravely but unwisely."
"Ook."
"What'd he say?" said the Bursar, passing briefly though reality on his way somewhere else.
"I think he said, 'Sooner or later the graveyards are full of everybody,'" said Ponder. "Oh, blast. Come on."
— Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies
MP3s and porn are far and away the most popular uses for the Internet today, according to a study i just made up.
— Mike Schiraldi, a post to Slashdot
Of course everyone knows that vim is the best text editor in the world. Anyone who tells you differently is either wrong, lying, or criminally insane. (Or an emacs user, in which case they are wrong, lying _and_ criminally insane).
— CmdrTaco (Rob Malda) in the post "VIM 6.0 is Out" on Slashdot
Wisconsin beers are the best. You are not entitled to disagree.
— "Scrapdog" (a coworker from my days at Hypercosm) on his biography page.
Everyone is always trying to prove P=NP. If that turns out to be true then God comes down and gives you a dollar or something like that.
— Peter Keller in a post to the UPL junkies mailing list. (What is N and NP?)
Will the virus impact my Macintosh if I am using a non-Microsoft e-mail program, such as Eudora?
If you are using an Macintosh e-mail program that is not from Microsoft, we