Signature Quotes: Computers & Networking, Part 2

These are part of my collection of sig quotes, collected from years of crawling about the Internet. Share and Enjoy...


Back to Page 1
PRESIDENT.SYS Corrupted: Re-boot Washington D.C. (Y/n)?
Does fuzzy logic tickle?
A computer's attention span is as long as its power cord.
11th commandment: Covet not thy neighbor's Pentium.
Disinformation is not as good as datinformation.
Windows: Just another pane in the glass.
SENILE.COM found... Out Of Memory...
Who's General Failure and why is he reading my disk?
Ultimate office automation: Networked coffee.
RAM disk is NOT an installation procedure.
Shell to DOS...Come in DOS, do you copy? Shell to DOS...
All computers wait at the same speed.
Computer: A device designed to speed and automate errors.
Go ahead, make my data!
Smash forehead on keyboard to continue...
Enter any 11-digit prime number to continue...
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI!
E-mail returned to sender: Insufficient voltage.
Help! I'm modeming... and I can't hang up!!!
All wiyht. Rho sritched mg kegtops awound?
Error! Keyboard not attached. Press F1 to continue.
DOS Tip #1701: Add DEVICE=FNGRCROS.SYS to CONFIG.SYS
Hidden DOS secret: Add BUGS=OFF to your CONFIG.SYS
Press any key to continue or any other key to quit...
"Death is an experience best avoided, as it makes reliable internet access difficult to obtain." -- Xaonon, in alt.atheism
"Of course, if you're writing the code to control a cruise missile, you may not actually need an explicit loop exit. The loop will be terminated automatically at the appropriate moment." -- Programming Perl, 3rd Ed.
"You are in a maze of twisty little Unixes, all slightly different"
"The most important thing in the programming language is the name. A language will not succeed without a good name. I have recently invented a very good name and now I am looking for a suitable language." -- D. E. Knuth, 1967
Fundamental Axiom of Technology: The impact of learning about a technology must be minimal, and must not stand in the way of applying the the technology.
Understanding SNMP MIBs - David Perkins and Evan McGinnis, Prentice Hall, 1997
Objects on screen may be more hostile than they appear.
Computers are like the Old Testament God - Lots of rules and no mercy.
"After all, how do you give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt when you know that if you throw it into a room with truth, you'd risk a matter/anti-matter explosion." -- N. Petreley
"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." -- Rich Cook
"If I have pinged farther than others, it is because I routed upon the T3s of giants." -- Greg Adams
"I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them." -- Isaac Asimov
Godwin's Law proverb [Usenet] "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups. However there is also a widely- recognized codicil that any intentional triggering of Godwin's Law in order to invoke its thread-ending effects will be unsuccessful. -- The on-line Hacker Jargon File, version 4.3.1
".NET is basically bill gates' snake-oil solution to all those registry/DLL hell problems. Bill Gates is a true genius. He's made installing and maintaining windows apps so ridiculously difficult and expensive that businesses and consumers will actually buy into the idea of having their applications on someone else's server." -- Ukab the Great
"Our main computer has been taken to the shop. It refuses to believe in the C drive, so the Inquisition is going to have a few words with that atheistic box!" -- Doug Berry
"Face it -- Bill Gates is a white Persian cat and a monocle away from being a Bond villain." -- Dennis Miller
"Never, ever expect hackers to be able to read closed proprietary document formats like Microsoft Word. Most hackers react to these about as well as you would to having a pile of steaming pig manure dumped on your doorstep." -- ICQ-UIN 95492828
"When putting someone into a killfile, one should do it without hesitation, and without bringing attention to the fact. Killfiling someone and telling them beforehand is on par with running around with your fingers in your ears while screaming." -- Poindexter Fortran
"I sat around during the design phase going `this is going to suck so badly that we're going to have to hold onto desks to stop us from being drawn into the vortex." -- Chris Saunderson
"I have very little faith in humanity. I've worked at a help desk." -- danib@sympatico.ca.invalid 21 Aug 2001
"Knowledge has become the most important factor in economic life. It is the chief ingredient of what we buy and sell, and the raw material with which we work. Intellectual capital --not natural resources, machinery, or even financial capital--has become the one indispensable asset of corporations." Thomas A. Stewart from his book, Intellectual Capital
"Randy was forever telling people, without rancor, that they here full of shit. That was the only way to get anything done in hacking. No one took it personally." -- Cryptonomicon
It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one.
Mouse Potato: The on-line, wired generation's to the couch potato.
Percussive Maintenance: The fine art of whacking the heck out of an electronic device to get it to work again.
Remember, you're dealing with developers. If they knew what they were doing, they wouldn't be doing it.
Managing sysadmins is like leading a neighborhood gang of neurotic pumas on jet-powered hoverbikes with nasty smack habits and opposable thumbs. -- monkeybagel.com
"My whole point is that a mathematical approach is mostly the wrong approach anyway." -- Some guy who claims to have a CS degree.
"Folks who do not trim quotes properly will be first against the wall when the revolution comes." -- Robert Uhl
"Abandon hope, all ye who press 'Enter' here..."
"In the UNIX world, being dependent on a GUI is the same thing as not being a sysadmin." -- BigZaphod
"Sheesh, I cannot believe I'm defending someone I've killfiled." -- Robert Uhl
"By god, I wish these calculations had been executed by steam." -- Charles Babbage, 1821
"vi has two modes: Beep mode, where every keypress simply makes it beep at you, except the one that gets you into insert mode, where every keypress makes a subtle, invisible change to your file until you hit the one that gets you back into beep mode"
"Though a program be but three lines long,
someday it will have to be maintained." -- The Tao of Programming
Today is a good day for information-gathering. Read someone else's mail file.
progress (n): the process through which Usenet has evolved from smart people in front of dumb terminals to dumb people in front of smart terminals -- obs at burnout.demon.co.uk
"Human beings are human beings." They say what they want, don't they? They used to say it across the fence while they were hanging wash. Now they just say it on the Internet." -- Dennis Miller
"A computer terminal is not some clunky old television with a typewriter in front of it. It is an interface where the mind and body can connect with the universe and move bits of it about." -- Douglas Adams
"If cars were like computers, you'd be able to buy a car for $1000 that gets 500 miles to the gallon and goes 300 miles per hour. Of course this car would occasionally explode for no reason, killing all the occupants."
"UNIX is hot. It's more than hot. It's steaming. It's quicksilver lightning with a laserbeam kicker." -- Michael Jay Tucker
Does a good farmer neglect a crop he has planted?
Does a good teacher overlook even the most humble student?
Does a good father allow a single child to starve?
Does a good programmer refuse to maintain his code?
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
Thus spake the master programmer:
"Let the programmers be many and the managers few -- then all will be productive."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
bug, n:
"An elusive creature living in a program that makes it incorrect. The activity of "debugging", or removing bugs from a program, ends when people get tired of doing it, not when the bugs are removed." -- "Datamation", January 15, 1984
Creating computer software is always a demanding and painstaking process -- an exercise in logic, clear expression, and almost fanatical attention to detail. It requires intelligence, dedication, and an enormous amount of hard work. But, a certain amount of unpredictable and often unrepeatable inspiration is what usually makes the difference between adequacy and excellence.
Software, n.:
Formal evening attire for female computer analysts.
The wise programmer is told about the Tao and follows it. The average programmer is told about the Tao and searches for it. The foolish programmer is told about the Tao and laughs at it. If it were not for laughter, there would be no Tao.
The highest sounds are the hardest to hear. Going forward is a way to retreat. Greater talent shows itself late in life. Even a perfect program still has bugs.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
"To say that UNIX is doomed is pretty rabid, OS/2 will certainly play a role, but you don't build a hundred million instructions per second multiprocessor micro and then try to run it on OS/2. I mean, get serious." -- William Zachmann, International Data Corp
"(The Chief Programmer) personally defines the functional and performance specifications, designs the program, codes it, tests it, and writes its documentation... He needs great talent, ten years experience and considerable systems and applications knowledge, whether in applied mathematics, business data handling, or whatever." -- Fred P. Brooks, _The Mythical Man Month_
Your file was so big.
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.
The Web site you seek
Cannot be located,
but Countless more exist.
Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.
Program aborting:
Close all that you have worked on.
You ask far too much.
Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.
Yesterday it worked.
Today it is not working.
Windows is like that.
First snow, then silence.
This thousand-dollar screen dies
So beautifully.
With searching comes loss
And the presence of absence:
"My Novel" not found.
The Tao that is seen
Is not the true Tao-
until You bring fresh toner.
Stay the patient course.
Of little worth is your ire.
The network is down.
A crash reduces
Your expensive computer
To a simple stone.
Three things are certain:
Death, taxes and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.
You step in the stream,
But the water has moved on.
This page is not here.
Having been erased,
The document you're seeking
Must now be retyped.
Serious error.
All shortcuts have disappeared.
Screen. Mind. Both are blank.
Share and enjoy! imp.
1. Commonly found at the end of software release announcements and README files, this phrase indicates allegiance to the hacker ethic of free information sharing (see hacker ethic, sense 1). 2. The motto of the complaints division of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation (the ultimate gaggle of incompetent suits) in Douglas Adams's "Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy". The irony of using this as a cultural recognition signal appeals to hackers.
"Corporate networks are becoming increasingly clogged by e- mail pitches for pornography, money-making schemes and health products, and there's little relief on the horizon. Once a mild annoyance, unsolicited bulk e-mail also known as spam - could make up the majority of message traffic on the Internet by the end of 2002, according to data from three e-mail service providers. Businesses 'are seeing an enormous increase in spam,' said Enrique Salem, CEO of anti-spam service provider Brightmail. 'It's become a huge problem.' "
RFC 882 put the dot in .com.
> While I disagree with what you say, I will defend to the death your
> right to... Ah, what the hell. *plonk*
It's painfully obvious Voltaire never posted on Usenet. --Thayne Forbes and Toni Lassila
"An article just this morning talks about how IT work sucks the soul right out of a person. At the end of a day digging ditches, you feel good. Tired, yes, but you have the whole endorphin rush thing from the exercise, as well as a real feeling of accomplishment. The ditch is dug. You can see it is dug. Nobody is going to come along later and ask can you also make it an email sending ditch with instant messaging. It's a ditch. You know where you stand." -- Some Guy Named Chris
How many hardware guys does it take to change a light bulb?
"Well the diagnostics say it's fine buddy, so it's a software problem."
"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, designer of EDSAC, on programming, 1949
"Don't forget: on the cubicle farm, they're squeezing money out your brain. What happens if they squeeze too hard? Burnout, over-work." -- Four of Cubicles, Silicon Valley Tarot
rm -rF /usr/bin/Laden
Garbage in, Gospel out.
"Unfortunately, most programmers like to play with new toys. I have many friends who, immediately upon buying a snakebite kit, would be tempted to throw the first person they see to the ground, tie the tourniquet on him, slash him with the knife, and apply suction to the wound." -- Jon Bentley
A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a strings of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little nor too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity.
A program should follow the 'Law of Least Astonishment'. What is this law? It is simply that the program should always respond to the user in the way that astonishes him least.
A program, no matter how complex, should act as a single unit. The program should be directed by the logic within rather than by outward appearances.
If the program fails in these requirements, it will be in a state of disorder and confusion. The only way to correct this is to rewrite the program.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
"Now this is a totally brain damaged algorithm. Gag me with a smurfette." -- P. Buhr, Computer Science 354
"Don't get suckered in by the comments -- they can be terribly misleading. Debug only code." -- Dave Storer
The programmers of old were mysterious and profound.
We cannot fathom their thoughts, so all we do is describe their appearance.
Aware, like a fox crossing the water. Alert, like a general on the battlefield. Kind, like a hostess greeting her guests. Simple, like uncarved blocks of wood. Opaque, like black pools in darkened caves.
Who can tell the secrets of their hearts and minds?
The answer exists only in the Tao.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
"I need drivespace for my watch - 24 hours in a day isn't enough..." -- Jeff Zeitlin
"The flow chart is a most thoroughly oversold piece of program documentation." -- Frederick Brooks, The Mythical Man Month
The Seventh Commandments for Technicians:
Work thou not on energized equipment, for if thou dost, thy fellow workers will surely buy beers for thy widow and console her in other ways.
Real programmers don't draw flowcharts. Flowcharts are, after all, the illiterate's form of documentation. Cavemen drew flowcharts; look how much good it did them.
"Every group has a couple of experts. And every group has at least one idiot. Thus are balance and harmony (and discord) maintained. It's sometimes hard to remember this in the bulk of the flamewars that all of the hassle and pain is generally caused by one or two highly-motivated, caustic twits." -- Chuq Von Rospach, about Usenet
A novice of the temple once approached the Chief Priest with a question.
"Master, does Emacs have the Buddha nature?" the novice asked.
The Chief Priest had been in the temple for many years and could be relied upon to know these things. He thought for several minutes before replying.
"I don't see why not. It's got bloody well everything else."
With that, the Chief Priest went to lunch. The novice suddenly achieved enlightenment, several years later.
"Each team building another component has been using the most recent tested version of the integrated system as a test bed for debugging its piece. Their work will be set back by having that test bed change under them. Of course it must. But the changes need to be quantized. Then each user has periods of productive stability, interrupted by bursts of test-bed change. This seems to be much less disruptive than a constant rippling and trembling." -- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
"That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers." -- Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in "Oath of Fealty"
"Never ask a man what sort of computer he drives. If it's a Mac, he'll tell you. If not, why embarrass him?" - Tom Clancy
`Umm... Excuse me. I think the network's down?'
`A communications disruption can only mean one thing...invasion.' -- Lee Maguire, teaching us how to make people go away
"I perpetually run into people who tell me "Yeah, well, all you have to do is write a simple Java app and . . . " as if it were as simple as setting the gap in a distribitor." -- Loren Wiseman
"Anybody who really thinks /bin/true should report a version number and a help string (or even a copyright notice) needs to get his head examined." -- Linus Torvalds
"Contrary to popular opinion there often is a right answer." -- Carter & Sanger, Thinking about Programming
"IMHO WinTelnet is one of those situations in which both fish and firearm are firmly bracketed to the barrel itself, in perfect alignment, and actually walking up and pulling the trigger starts to fall into the 'Why Bother?' category." -- A deB
"The Internet is totally out of control, impossible to map accurately, and being used far beyond its original intentions. So far, so good." -- Dr. Dobb's Journal, May 1993
"I don't see what C++ has to do with keeping people from shooting themselves in the foot. C++ will happily load the gun, offer you a drink to steady your nerves, and help you aim." -- Peter da Silva
The problem is...the nasty thing about information technology is that it cuts way too much in the direction of freedom, because information flow only works when unconstrained.
(This has to be a chapter title for a story-"Internet Porn Will Free The World!") -- Jon Souza
"You're insulating the CPUs with breakfast cereal and cooling them with beer."
"PH34R MY M4D MOD'N S|MegaTokyo
hm. I've lost a machine.. literally lost. it responds to ping, it works completely, I just can't figure out where in my apartment it is.
"It messes up the natural order for reading stuff."
"What's so bad about top-posting?"
"Bandwidth may be infinite, but you still have to pay for it." - Muriel Medard Assoc. Prof. MIT Lab for Information & Decision Systems
"They have the internet on computers now." - Homer Simpson
With sensors, the network (internet) stretches to the far vaster field of global activity. This means such networks can cover every single thing that moves, grows, makes noise, or heats up. Potentially, much of the world will be bugged. Moreover, those bugs will be doing most of the work.
"Most of the data traffic won't be between human beings this time around but between these silicon cockroaches," -- Bob Metcalf
Lord, grant me the serenity to ignore the trolls, the courage to debate with honest opponents, and the wisdom to know the difference. -- from Little Green Footballs blog
Linux. The choice of a GNU generation.
"The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense." -- E. W. Dijkstra
"If you sat a monkey down in front of a keyboard, the first thing typed would be a UNIX command." -- Bill Lye
"Properly done science is a sort of masochistic game where one beats one's head against a wall until it falls down, and then goes in search of another wall." -- Steven Vogel
"...the ability to define your own operator functions means that a simple statement such as x=a+b; in an inner loop might involve the sending of e-mail to Afghanistan." -- Guy L. Steele Jr, Embedded Systems Programming, July 1993
The worst thing ever to happen to the Internet was people finding out about it
"I've been fragged more lately than modem user." -- Mr Cynical
USER ERROR: Replace user and press any key to continue.
In a perfect world... spammers would get caught, go to jail, and share a cell with many men who have enlarged their penisses, taken Viagra and are looking for a new relationship.
Office XP is less compatible with Office 2000 than Star Office is.
"I refuse to use any computer language in which the proponents shove snippets of code under each other's nose saying 'I bet you can't guess what this does!'" -- D'Arcy J.M. Cain, in comp.lang.ada on APL
"Unix is the worst operating system; except for all others." -- Berry Kercheva
Top posting is the work of the Devil.
"Why is it drug addicts and computer afficionados are both called users?" -- Clifford Stoll
"Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest." -- Isaac Asimov
"Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining." -- Jef Raskin
"The most overlooked advantage to owning a computer is that if they foul up there's no law against wacking them around a little." -- Joe Martin
"Artificial Intelligence usually beats real stupidity."
"... it is important to realize that any lock can be picked with a big enough hammer." -- Sun System & Network Admin manual
"A good programmer is someone who looks both ways before crossing a one-way street." -- Doug Linder
"Deleted code has fewer bugs." -- Xibo
"Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and when it is bad, it is better than nothing." -- Dick Brandon
"If you can't communicate clearly in writing, perhaps the Internet is not the best place for you, eh?" -- Barb MacRae
"In My Egotistical Opinion, most people's C programs should be indented six feet downward and covered with dirt." -- Blair P. Houghton
"Memory is like an orgasm. It's a lot better if you don't have to fake it." -- Seymour Cray (on virtual memory)
"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." -- John Gilmore
"The Web is bang equal to the Internet." "Bang equal?" "Yeah, if you claim the two are the same we'll shoot you." -- Doug Sheppard
"The basic notion underlying USENET is the flame." -- Chuq Von Rospach
Life's not fair, but the root password helps.
"We're getting our ass kicked by companies with Vaporware!"
The street finds its own uses for technology; the net finds its own uses for garbage.
"... I've seen Sun monitors on fire off the side of the multimedia lab. I've seen NTU lights glitter in the dark near the Mail Gate. All these things will be lost in time, like the root partition last week. Time to die..." -- Peter Gutmann in the scary devil monastery
"Blessed is the end-user who expects nothing, for he will not be disappointed."
"Those who do not learn from Dilbert are doomed to repeat it." -- Bob Dowling
"Kill -9 them all. Let init sort them out."
"I said it was an upgrade. I didn't say it was better."
"To the systems programmer, users and applications serve only to provide a test load."
"I wanted to be a fascist dictator, but it's hard getting an interview without the experience. I thought network management would be a good stepping stone." -- Robert Franklin
Linux is like a teepee. No Windows, no Gates, and Apache inside.
"This code is gross!" meaning "This code has over 144 compilation errors."
I don't eat soup with a fork; why should I use a web browser for email?
"Usenet is the modern version of the street corner or the soapbox. If someone quotes you, the only grounds you have for being surprised are that anyone cared enough to bother." -- brandon s. allbery
"Programming is the process of converting caffeine into error messages"
mainframe n. An obsolete device still used by thousands of obsolete companies serving billions of obsolete customers and making huge obsolete profits for their obsolete shareholders. And this year's run twice as fast as last year's.
Management dictated that no bugs should ever make it to production. We no longer put code in production.
"A computer programmer is a device for turning requirements into undocumented features. It runs on cola, pizza and Dilbert cartoons." - Bram Moolenaar
"A program should follow the 'Law of Least Astonishment'. What is this law? It is simply that the program should always respond to the user in the way that astonishes him least." -- The Tao of Programming.
"Pre-Assembled boxes are and abomination! They are an affront to all that is l33t!! A box must be hand crafted to fit the needs of the individual! Parts must be carefully selected, lovingly assembled, and tuned with the utmost skill! Only then will your box be a device worthy of being an extension of your physical self!" -- Great Teacher Largo
Q: What goes "Pieces of Seven, Pieces of Seven"?
A: A Parrotty Error
Calm down, it's only ones and zeroes.
"Then I banned his IP, and he folded like a lawn chair. Geez, troll, can't you even walk down the hall and borrow someone else's computer? I hate a weak-ass troll with no game." -- Steve H.
UNIX Sex
{
look; find; talk; grep; touch; finger; find; flex; unzip; mount; workbone; fsck; yes; gasp; fsck; yes; eject; umount; makeclean; zip; split; done; exit
}
Computers are high-speed idiots, programmed by low-speed idiots
"The Internet is how grownups pass notes in class"
Code so clean you could eat off it.
Q. What is the difference between Microsoft and "Jurassic Park"?
A. One is an antiquated high-tech theme park based on prehistoric concepts and populated mostly by dinosaurs -- and the other is a movie by Steven Spielberg.
"Wonkette is the Paris Hilton of blogging. Paris has gotten very far on publicity. Beats me what else there is to her." -- Fausta Wertz, The Bad Hair Day Blog
"never underestimate the bandwidth of a station-wagon."
On to Page 3
Main Sig Quote Page