The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research.

The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.

Always code as if the person who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.

Torture your data long enough and it will confess to anything.

High thoughts must have a high language.

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

... being a Linux user is sort of like living in a house inhabited by a large family of carpenters and architects. Every morning when you wake up, the house is a little different. Maybe there is a new turret, or some walls have moved. Or perhaps someone has temporarily removed the floor under your bed.

Geeks aren't interested in politics because government doesn't double its efficiency and speed once every 18 months.

Regarding security, Windows 2K Server is an OS with a "Kick me" sign stuck on it's back.

Real programmers don't comment their code. It was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.

Microsoft Works

The 2 most widely held axioms of a sysadmin:
1. Always apply the latest software updates
2. If it ain't broke, Don't fix it.

You know you're a geek when... You try to shoo a fly away from the monitor with your cursor.

It's a lot easier to fake good management than to fake good code.

A programmer is someone who solves a problem you didn't know you had in a way you don't understand

Programmer n. - an organism that turns coffee into software

There is an old saying that if a million monkeys typed on a million keyboards for a million years, eventually all the works of Shakespeare would be produced. Now, thanks to Usenet, we know this is not true.

Unix is user-friendly ..... it's just picky about who its friends are.

There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those that understand binary and those that don't.

In most Microsoft EULAs, it states you can't give the software to nations or individuals involved in making atomic, bacteriological, or chemical weapons.

Do they mean *besides* the US?

I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

Considering the current sad state of our computer programs, software development is clearly still a black art, and cannot yet be called an engineering discipline.

In a room full of top software designers, if any two of them agree, that's a majority.

A great lathe operator commands several times the wage of an average lathe operator, but a great writer of software code is worth 10,000 times the price of an average software writer.

There are only two kinds of programming languages: those people always bitch about and those nobody uses

Come to think of it, there are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is nothing like Shakespeare!

Reusing pieces of code is liked picking off sentences from other people's stories and trying to make a magazine article.

Pessimists, we're told, look at a glass containing 50% air and 50% water and see it as half empty. Optimists, in contrast, see it as half full. Engineers, of course, understand the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming.

Well, let's just say, 'if your VCR is still blinking 12:00, you don't want Linux'

If users wanted a graphical interface, wouldn't the Macintosh dominate the market?

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.

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

At the end of the day, the GPL is not about making software free; it's about destroying value.

Syngin Comment: And people actually wonder why this guy is the most despised player in the IT game these days?
Article Link

The silent majority is behind SCO, and they're hoping that SCO prevails in the end...

UNIVAC: a device, which contained 20,000 vacuum tubes, occupied 1,500 square feet and weighed 40 tons; there was also a laptop version weighing 27 tons.

The dullest man in the world is charming beyond belief when he's pouring gold coins from one hand to the other.

I had to make some optimistic assumptions to meet the revenue target. In week three, we're visited by an alien named D'utox Inag who offers to share his advanced technology.

There's a fine line between marketing and grand theft.

Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level then beat you with experience.

As you gain experience, you'll realise that all logical questions are considered insubordination.

Doing it right is no excuse for not meeting the schedule.

The Intelligence Quotient of any meeting can be determined by starting with 100 and subtracting 5 points for each participant.

Home computers are being called upon to perform many new functions, including the consumption of homework formerly eaten by the dog.

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

First we thought the PC was a calculator. Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII — and we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics, and we thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we've realized it's a brochure."

Technical skill is mastery of complexity, while creativity is mastery of simplicity.

Any code of your own that you haven't looked at for six or more months, might as well have been written by someone else. (Eagleson is an optimist, the real number is more like three weeks.)

Any code of your own that you haven't looked at for six or more months, might as well have been written by someone else.

All that we see of seem, is but a dream within a dream.

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.

The programmer, who needs clarity, who must talk all day to a machine that demands declarations, hunkers down into a low-grade annoyance. It is here that the stereotype of the programmer, sitting in a dim room, growling from behind Coke cans, has its origins. The disorder of the desk, the floor; the yellow Post-It notes everywhere; the whiteboards covered with scrawl: all this is the outward manifestation of the messiness of human thought. The messiness cannot go into the program; it piles up around the programmer.

The greater difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests.

I am grinning a grin that should frighten the thieves and liars at SCO out of a week's sleep.

Microsoft's biggest and most dangerous contribution to the software industry may be the degree to which it has lowered user expectations.

Form follows function - that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.

Never tangle with a geek when source code is on the line.

If one character, one pause, of the incantation is not strictly in proper form, the magic doesn't work. Human beings are not accustomed to being perfect, and few areas of human activity demand it. Adjustment to the requirement for perfection is, I think, the most difficult part of learning to program.

Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

What we do is never understood, but only praised and blamed.

Intelligent. Scruffy. Intense. Abstracted. Surprisingly for a sedentary profession, more hackers run to skinny than fat; both extremes are more common than elsewhere. Tans are rare.

No one ever says “It’s only a game” when their team is winning.

As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available.

Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.

The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.

Men have become the tools of their tools.

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey orders given to it by a human being except where such orders would conflict with the first law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second law.

Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky, seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone, nine for Mortal Men doomed to die, one for the Dark Lord on his dark throne in the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

One Ring to rule them all, one Ring to find them, one Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them in the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

Not all who wander are lost.

Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.

Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle.

There never was a chip, it is said, that Bill Gates couldn't slow down with a new batch of features.

There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence.

The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a mouse. There is no evidence that people want to use these things.

There is a difference between eating a varied diet and chowing down on a cup of lard and sugar once a day. Programmers know this instinctively: they balance their daily menu among the four major food groups: caffeine, sugar, grease, and salt.

Q: How many Bill Gates does it take to change a lightbulb ?
A: None, he just defines Darkness™ as the new industry standard..."

A computer is like an Old Testament god, with a lot of rules and no mercy.

The computer programmer is a creator of universes for which he alone is responsible. Universes of virtually unlimited complexity can be created in the form of computer programs.

Voodoo Programming: Things programmers do that they know shouldn't work but they try anyway, and which sometimes actually work, such as recompiling everything.

Optimism is an occupational hazard of programming: feedback is the treatment.

Definition:
Architect: Someone who knows the difference between that which could be done and that which should be done.

The three chief virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience and Hubris.

For an evolutionary system, continuing development is needed just in order to maintain its fitness relative to the system it is co-evolving with.

Microsoft isn't evil, they just make really crappy operating systems.

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 100 mph. They'd be a lot more careful about what they say if they had.

Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect.

Quite frankly, I found it mostly interesting in a Jerry Springer kind of way. White trash battling it out in public, throwing chairs at each other. SCO crying about IBM's other women. ...
Fairly entertaining,

The memory management on the PowerPC can be used to frighten small children.

Hello everybody out there using minix - I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones.

Linux: Choice of a GNU Generation

Large increases in cost with questionable increases in performance can be tolerated only in race horses and women.

Looking at the proliferation of personal web pages on the net, it looks like very soon everyone on earth will have 15 Megabytes of fame.

You start coding. I'll go find out what they want.

Applicants must also have extensive knowledge of UNIX, although they should have sufficiently good programming taste to not consider this an achievement.

The computer allows you to make mistakes faster than any other invention, with the possible exception of handguns and tequila.

Software is a gas; it expands to fill its container.

It does the sheep no good to preach the goodness of a diet of grass, if the wolves are of a different mind.

DOS computers manufactured by companies such as IBM, Compaq, Tandy, and millions of others are by far the most popular, with about 70 million machines in use worldwide. Macintosh fans, on the other hand, may note that cockroaches are far more numerous than humans, and that numbers alone do not denote a higher life form.

A hacker on a roll may be able to produce, in a period of a few months, something that a small development group (say, 7-8 people) would have a hard time getting together over a year. IBM used to report that certain programmers might be as much as 100 times as productive as other workers, or more.

Everything that I've learned about computers at MIT I have boiled down into three principles:

Unix: You think it won't work, but if you find the right wizard, he can make it work.

Macintosh: You think it will work, but it won't.

PC/Windows: You think it won't work, and it won't.

Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equpped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vaccuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons.

99 little bugs in the code,
99 bugs in the code,
Fix one bug, compile it again,
100 little bugs in the code.
(go to start if bugs>0)

How long is this Beta guy going to keep testing our stuff?

Twice and twice shall he be marked, twice to live and twice to die. Once the heron to set his path. Twice the heron to name him true. Once the dragon, for remembrance lost. Twice the dragon, for the price he must pay.

Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.

I'm not good in groups. It's difficult to work in a group when you're omnipotent.

Endless Loop: n., see Loop, Endless.
Loop, Endless: n., see Endless Loop.

We're called rebels because we're easily manipulated into doing stupid things.

1. In programming, those institutions at which programming may be used in the same sentence as FORTRAN, COBOL, RPG, IBM, etc. 2. To programmers, the location of non-programmers and activities not related to programming. 3. A universe in which the standard dress is shirt and tie and in which a person's working hours are defined as 9 to 5. 4. The location of the status quo. 5. Anywhere outside a university. "Poor fellow, he's left MIT and gone into the real world." Used pejoratively by those not in residence there. In conversation, talking of someone who has entered the real world is not unlike talking about a deceased person.

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.

Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.

If the automobile had followed the same development as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year killing everyone inside.

And the shadow fell upon the Land, and the World was riven stone from stone. The oceans fled, and the mountains were swallowed up, and the nations were scattered to the eight corners of the world. The moon was as blood, and the sun was as ashes. The seas boiled, and the living envied the dead.

If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside.

Some say Google is God. Others say Google is Satan. But if they think Google is too powerful, remember that with search engines unlike other companies, all it takes is a single click to go to another search engine.

Anti-glare screens to prevent eye strain ??? In my day, you didn't need an anti-glare screen. With the power they consumed, when you turned your computer on, the whole building darkened!

Is it just me? Or does SCO seem to be more and more like the black knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail?
IBM: You fought well sir knight, but the battle is mine.
SCO: Tis but a scratch!
IBM: A scratch?! I just took your arm off!
SCO: It's just a flesh wound!

I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image.

You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new.

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.

Physics is the universe's operating system.

Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?

If Google made $1 everytime someone used them to find an answer to a Windows tech support question, they would own Microsoft.

Error, no keyboard detected — press F1 to continue

Daddy, what does FORMATTING DRIVE C mean ?

I've always been of the opinion that, to move toward a more truthful IT industry, the most widesweeping change would be to replace 'warranty' with 'disclaimer' in every computer, component or software documentation.

At a place like IBM, there's an infinite world of products that you can create. But, too often, management would say, "Great, you big-idea guys, go go go." But then they give all the money to the people who control the revenue streams, the people with the overhead projectors and PowerPoint slides.

Wizard's Second Rule: The greatest harm can result from the best intentions.

Wizard's Third Rule: Passion rules reason.

Wizard's Fifth Rule: Mind what people do, not only what they say, for deeds will betray a lie.

Wizard's Sixth Rule: The only sovereign you can allow to rule you is reason.

Wizard's Seventh Rule: Life is the future, not the past.

Rincewind had been generally reckoned by his tutors to be a natural wizard in the same way that fish are natural mountaineers.

One of the universal rules of happiness is: always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual.

He was the sort of person who stood on mountaintops during thunderstorms in wet copper armour shouting "All the Gods are bastards."

I think I would like to go into modelling. Of course, I don't know how to do it, and wouldn't be any good at it if I did, so I'm going to employ someone to walk the catwalks on my behalf. It would still be me, of course...

Enthusiasm

Disillusionment

Panic

Search for the Guilty

Punishment of the Innocent

Praise for non-participants

Anyone who puts a small gloss on a fundamental technology, calls it proprietary, and then tries to keep others from building on it, is a thief.

Any good programmer who's awake at 7 AM hasn't been to bed yet.

Familiarity, the first myth of reality: What you know the best, you observe the least.

Devotion, the second myth of reality: The faithful are most hurt by the objects of their faith.

Conviction, the third myth of reality: Only those who seek the truth can be deceived.

Fellowship, the fourth myth of reality: As the tides of war shift, so do loyalties.

Trust, the fifth myth of reality: Every truth holds the seed of betrayal.

computer science n. A study akin to numerology and astrology, but lacking the precision of the former and the success of the latter.

The only thing more dangerous than a hardware guy with a code patch is a programmer with a soldering iron.

If you give someone a program, you will frustrate them for a day; if you teach them how to program, you will frustrate them for a lifetime.

There comes a time in the history of any project when it becomes necessary to shoot the engineers and begin production.

It's easier to ask forgiveness than to get permission.

Slovotsky's Laws #19: When telling a story, effect trumps truth.

When the Black Camel comes for me, I'm not going to go kicking and screaming -- I am, however, going to try to talk him out of it, "No, no, you want the other Walter Slovotsky."

When it comes to dealing with the law of averages, it's best to be a habitual offender.

When the student outsmarts the teacher, it speaks well for the student -- and probably better for the teacher.

Miscellaneous is always the largest category.

Nothing is more annoying than someone who has a keen eye for the obvious.

I always have a fallback position whenever I take a risk. If all else fails, I'll die horribly, at great length, and in great pain. Mind you, it's not a good fallback position...

I'm a simple man. All I want is enough sleep for two normal men, enough whiskey for three, and enough women for four.

If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.

... it would appear that SCO has about the same grasp of reality as did the infamous Iraqi information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, in the closing days of the war in Iraq. Indeed, pity SCO's PR boss who has to explain why that code distributed by SCO under the GPL licence contained code that SCO has the rights to, and they'd like it back now, please.

Wizard's First Rule: People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anyting. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true. People's heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool