Favorite Quotes
Robert Sheckley
And, Of course, I must give you the standard warning about metaphoric
deformations.'
`All right,' Marvin said. `I'd like to hear about it.'
`I just gave it,' Blanders said. `But I will give it again. Watch out
for metaphoric deformations.'
-- Robert Sheckley, MINDSWAP.
`... Why is it called "Panzaism"?'
`The concept is self explanatory,' Blanders said. `Don Quijote
thinks the windmill is a giant, whereas Panza thinks the giant is a
windmill. Quijotism may be defined as the perception of of
everyday things as rare entities. The reverse is Panzaism, which is the
perception of rare entities as everyday things.'
-- Robert Sheckley, MINDSWAP.
Computers
Linux is like a Wig-Wam: No Gates, No Windows, Apache inside.
There are only 10 types of people in the world; those who can
understand binary, and those who can't.
The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to
choose from.
-- Andrew S. Tanenbaum
The primary purpose of the DATA statement is to give names to
constants; instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every
appearance, the variable PI can be given that value with a DATA
statement and used instead of the longer form of the constant.
This also simplifies modifying the program, should the value of pi
change.
-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers
David Weinberger takes righteous offense at the preceding for good
reason:
First, "shifting" does not necessarily
include copying. Second--and
this is what makes my blood boil--he's granting us permission to shift
"our content" where "our" refers to the entertainment company? It's
not their content. When I buy a DVD, the DVD is mine, and I can use it
any way I want so long as I'm not reselling it or broadcasting it. The
disk is mine. I can make a copy for my upstairs TV. I can mold it into
a pretty little ashtray. I can roll it in a tube and sell it to Peter
Chernin as a home colonoscopy kit.
Keep your hands of my property, you goddamn burglar!
This kind of behavior seems to be almost universal among people
interested in the C++ language: one moment they're saying that the
language has enough stuff in it already and the next moment they're
proposing a new feature.
I don't mean to single out Ron here -- he just happened to provide a
convenient example. As far as I can tell, almost EVERYONE does
this. For example, when Bjarne sent in his paper to the "History of
Programming Languages" conference, he told me that essentially every
reviewer told him that his paper was too long and then gave him a list
of things to add.
-- Andrew Koenig
Life would be so much simpler if I could just look at the source code.
I've been dreaming this dream for years. At my conference on
peer-to-peer networking, web services, and distributed computation
back in 2001, Clay Shirky,
reflecting on "Lessons
from Napster",
retold the old story about Thomas J. Watson, founder of the modern IBM.
"I see no reason for more than five of these machines in the world,"
Watson is reputed to have said. "We now know that he was wrong," Clay
went on. The audience laughed knowingly, thinking of the hundreds of
millions, if not billions, of computers deployed worldwide. But then
Clay delivered his punch line: "We now know that he overstated the
number by four."
--Tim O'Reilly
I've read that Java has just overtaken Cobol as the most popular
language. As a standard, you couldn't wish for more. But as a
medium of expression, you could do a lot better. Of all the great
programmers I can think of, I know of only one who would voluntarily
program in Java. And of all the great programmers I can think of
who don't work for Sun, on Java, I know of zero.
-- Paul Graham
Science
Few debates in the history of science have been conducted with such
stupidity as the one about intelligence.
-- Matt Ridley, GENOME
The Feynman problem solving Algorithm
1) Write down the problem
2) Think real hard
3) Write down the answer
-- Murray Gell-mann in the NY Times
Entropy isn't what it used to be.
When there's an emergency how come we never hear anyone shout "Let me
through, I'm an aromatherapist!"
-- Robert Todd Carroll, The skeptic Refuge
If you're a mad scientist, you can use GPLv2'd software for your evil
plans to take over the world ("Sharks with lasers on their heads!!"),
and the GPLv2 just says that you have to give source code back. And
that's OK by me. I like sharks with lasers. I just want the mad
scientists of the world to pay me back in kind. I made source code
available to them, they have to make their changes to it available to
me. After that, they can fry me with their shark-mounted lasers all
they want.
-- Linus Torvalds, Interview
in Forbes
Miscellaneous
Like the ski resort of girls looking for husbands and husbands looking
for girls, the situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem.
-- Alan McKay
Nobody can be exactly like me. Even I have trouble doing it.
-- Tallulah Bankhead
This is Henman's 8th Wimbledon, and he's only lost 7 matches.
-- BBC, 2/Jul/01
I
had some fun with a Russian coach who asked me if my mustache slowed me
down. I said, No, as a matter of fact, it deflects water away from my
mouth, allows my rear end to rise and make me bullet shaped in the
water, and that's what had allowed me to swim so great. He's
translating as fast as he can to the other coaches, and the following
year every Russian male swimmer had a mustache.
-- Mark Spitz
He
hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there
was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an
afterlife.
-- Douglas Adams
Why should I worry about dying? It's not going to happen in
my
lifetime!
-- Raymond Smullyan
Anonymous
Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when
you criticize him, you're a mile away and you have his shoes.
Political
Ashcroft went on to say that our way of
life is being threatened by a group of radical religious fanatics who
are armed
and dangerous. And then he called for prayers in the schools and an end
to gun
control.
—Jay Leno
