Quotes: b

It’s 10PM, do you know where your spacecraft is? We do!

On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], ‘Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?’ I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

I think we should all be suspicious of aliens. We’re not saying be suspicious of people from other cultures, I think we’re saying be suspicious of people from outer space.

Nothing destroys authority so much as the unequal and untimely interchange of power, pressed too far and relaxed too much.

Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully.

I’m fascinated with everything. Especially breast cancer.

Due to a timely trashing of the disk on our main hurd machine, it has been verified that it is possible to make a bootable hurd system from scratch using this image and a set of netbsd 1.1 boot floppies…

Well, I spent a lot of time lying on my back in intensive care units, rehab centers, emergency rooms, and imaging labs and I really learned something from that. Without exception, every single one of those places has exactly the same ceiling.

In America, an acquittal doesn’t mean you’re innocent, it means you beat the rap. My clients lose even when they win.

Remeber, Age and treachery overcome youth and skill. We are taking notes.

There is a difference between making something foolproof and reducing the number of fools.

When you’re through changing, you’re through.

Soviet Communists have been earnestly repeating for years, “When all nations will be Marxist-Leninist Democratic Republics, we must keep Italy as it is, so that we may go there on vacation and relax.”

The name “casino” means brothel in Italian, gambling house in French and English, and regimental officer’s club in German.

The rooster was chosen long ago as the national symbol of France. The choice is fortuitous, of course, because of a Latin pun, Gallus, meaning both the courtyard animal and the inhabitant of Gaul. The English pun could probably be considered even more apt.

For a list of reasons why technology has failed to improve the quality of life, press 3.

I think everyone knows that the DoS is real. Lots more were hit today. eBay doesn’t count, since that entire operation is a self-inflicted DoS.

I don’t want to be stapled to Max. He sucks.

Die young, die fast, die hard… Live a long time and you get old.

I have a lot of homework and I can’t justify blowing it off to see a movie without at least 30 violent deaths.

I just watched the wall, i might as well be drunk.

I find it easier to disagree across the board, because then I don’t have to argue specific points, and if I start to lose I can just resort to name-calling.

In keeping with current trends, I have realized that it is necessary for me to hate people, lest I be deemed unfashionable. Therefore I have decided that I hate Josh and bbz. I hate Josh because he talks about computers way too much and shoves ash trays down ratha’s shirt, and my decision to hate bbz was pretty random, so I can’t really give a good reason. Furthermore, I will continue to hate the aforementioned people until such time as I forget making this post, at which point I will revert to my default state of hating myself. Have a nice day.

No no no, you don’t understand…when I’m here, at night, alone, this world is mine…reality conforms to what I want it to be. If I say something is cool, then it is. And in my world, hanging upside down like a bat is not just cool, it’s practically heroism.

Ooh, you called me a goose. Yeah, you can more than deal with me, I have to admit. That one hurts even more than when you called me a virual buffoon.

really…the term “kiss of death” is totally redundant

That would be dishonorable… and cool.

That’s impressive, i can’t even listen to megadeth lyrics. Something about dave mustaine…actually, everything about dave mustaine.

Time flies when you’re having drinks.

Today I saw this guy on campus who looked exactly like faisal, but I knew it wasn’t faisal because he was too tall, had a beard, wore bright shiny colors, and was rollerblading.

I’m no fan of lawyers or litigation, but it’s high time that someone defined “buffer overflow” as being equal to “gross criminal negligence”.

I need a wider variety of drugs. God, I miss college.

A group of politicians deciding to dump a because his morals are bad is like the Mafia getting together to bump off the Godfather for not going to church on Sunday.

Everybody’s at fault according to someone. Cripes, deal with it.

Before we meaningfully consider OSF, it needs to get deployed in more than just books.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

I think it is true for all `_^Hn`. I was just playing it safe with `_^Hn >= 3` because I couldn’t remember the proof.

Most of us ask for advice when we know the answer but we want a different one.

I mean, guys at Microsoft say the new strategy at Sun works a little like this: Microsoft announces something called a hole. Sun says, ‘No, you shouldn’t build a hole for two weeks.’ Then they say, ‘We’re going to build a better hole on the moon, but we don’t have any equipment yet to get there, and we’re going to call it J-hole.’ So this whole Liberty United thing feels like another J-hole to me.

You can only do software at a certain speed, and software development is not something you can do in six months.

Akkadian, you are riding to your death. If I let you ride alone… what glory will there be left for me?

The elite of Baltimore’s literary scene are quite down to earth. They drink. They smoke. They eat people.

No man should marry until he has studied anatomy and dissected at least one woman.

A note to all of you in 18-100: Mwahahahaha! Surrender your poor pathetic lives now! Nobody gets out alive! Carley fails everyone! To those of you in 18-100 with no sense of humor: What are you worried about? People with no sense of humor study more than anyone else.

I’m told that most Vampires who meet Oblivion do it from an unconscious death wish… From what I can see of Jason Flame, he’s completely conscious about it.

Two people talking is a conversation. Three is a conspiracy.

No one has ever had an idea in a dress suit.

Logging into vaxen is good for you. It teaches patience.

None of the women that Ken knows have brushes or combs. When their hair gets tangly or knotted, Ken is there for them.

Be regular and orderly in your life, that you may be violent and original in your work.

I think that the team that wins game five will win the series. Unless we lose game five.

Television is the first truly democratic culture — the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what the people do want.

The world is not coming to an end - it’s coming to Bethesda.

Windoze is the Mac interface done by people with Crayolas instead of rapidiographs.

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.

God is not trendy, so he definitely wouldn’t use Motif. God sent his only Sun to save the world, and then they beat him and made him run Solaris.

A penny saved is worthless.

And computers are getting smarter all the time: scientists tell us that soon they will be able to talk to us. (By “they” I mean “computers”: I doubt scientists will ever be able to talk to us.)

And, of course, you have the commercials where savvy businesspeople Get Ahead by using their Macintosh computers to create the ultimate American business product: a really sharp-looking report.

Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance.

People in the computer industry use the word “user”, which to them means “idiot”.

People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.

The badness of a movie is directly proportional to the number of helicopters in it.

There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is age 11.

They can hold all the peace talks they want, but there will never be peace in the Middle East. Billions of years from now, when Earth is hurtling toward the Sun and there is nothing left alive on the planet except a few microorganisms, the microorganisms living in the Middle East will be bitter enemies.

Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet.

When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that individual is crazy.

Years ago, Mattel did come out with a ‘Stubble Barbie’ model, but it was a big bust. (Of course ALL Barbies have big busts, but that is not my point.)

Your friends love you anyway.

Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.

The contagious people of Washington have stood firm against diversity during this long period of increment weather.

The laws in this city are clearly racist. All laws are racist. The law of gravity is racist.

… Computer Science should be in the College of Theology.

One of the secrets of a long and fruitful life is to forgive everybody, everything, every night before you go to bed.

Sounds to me like Sam needs some reconstructive brain surgery! OK, Prof. Fether, you sedate the patient and I will sedate myself…this should be a fun operation!

Coincidence? Illuminati plot? Or just another A-Phi-O service?

I don’t care what you know. Your ego’s writing checks your body can’t cash. Your ego’s writing checks your *brain* can’t cash.

I feel like MacGuyver. I’m on my back with just a handful of wire-ties, a pair of scissors and some duct tape.

Difference is all the mind’s input devices can detect, and difference is in a sense all the mind is there to consider and respond to.

You can only get so much per year. You got the Yard, what do you want books for?

Every piece of code he rewrites has to be rewritten by someone else twice. Once to fix the bugs and once to realize that he wrote the wrong thing in the first place.

The people who wrote this are idiots, training to be morons.

I make movies for teenage boys, Oh dear, what a crime!

Copyright 1990,1991 BeakSoft Inc. All Rights Reserved. Permission is granted to copy, modify, and use this as long as this notice remains intact. CMU Sucks.

The beauty of mechanical problems is that they are often visible to the naked and untrained eye. If white smoke is rising from a disk drive, that is probably where the problem lies (unless your disk drive has just elected the new Pope).

You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.

About a month ago, I went shopping with my insane Taiwanese girlfriend, Communist Spice. As is my wont, we were methodically cruising every aisle in the store. When we entered the pet aisle by mistake (we have no pets) she stopped dead in her tracks. Picking up a can with a picture of a cat on the label, she held it out for me to see. “You are eat this in you country? We not eat cat in Taiwan.”

There’s a debate to be had on the boundaries between private and public. But it’s hard to have it with people who look at a state-run Swedish kindergarten and see a boot stamping on a human face forever.

It was a magnificent display of trained and disciplined valor, and its assault only failed of success because dead men can advance no further.

As a slave you have to work hard, live in a shack, and do what master says. As a capitalist noone gives you a shack.

There are also unamusing things like for example the local coffee/doughnut shop being closed tonight when it is supposed to be open 24/7. I consider this to be a serious denial of service by the miscreant who operates the shop. Man does not live by nicotine alone. Meanwhile i sit here like a moron waiting an hour for a non-event to happen. My sole purpose for being here is so that the ‘suits’ who are out whooping it up, can experience anxiety-free whooping.

If you don’t see it, ask for it.

People are always looking for things to do to pass the time that would pass anyway.

If someone had told me years ago that sharing a sense of humor was so vital to partnerships, I could have avoided a lot of sex!

Santa Zarquana Voostra! So safe that you have to build a zarking fortress ship to take the byproducts to the nearest black hole and tip them in! Only it doesn’t get there because the pilot takes a detour - is this right? - to pick up some lobster…? OK, so the guy is cool, but… I mean own up, this is barking time, this is major lunch, this is stool approaching critical mass, this is… this is… total vocabulary failure!

In life, the wanting is always better than the getting… except maybe oral sex.

Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind, but mankind cannot comprehend.

I realize that the standard protocol (I think it’s even an IETF RFC) is buying sushi for [everyone] some night in exchange for a dog and pony show about how the company has got a trillion dollars in funding and is going to corner the market for wireless load-balanced web servers, or something. Those days are long past, the dogs and ponies have been returned.

Gee, I’ll just give you a couple of plant genitals to pin on your lapel to show how much I like you.

God is a combination of Stalin and Castro.

If you want to start a religion, you might do better on the orgy front than the castration front.

Sin is sort of goofy.

There are a lot of people I think less of than my 2 cats - including one of my sisters.

They give shameless a new meaning, which is one of the reasons I really like monkeys.

Universities are run by people who know very little about education - they’re called Deans.

There really shouldn’t be speed limits. There should be speed suggestions.

Terrorism has become an American problem and, as such, it has very recently acquired a very American solution: massive and invasive military force.

It’s literally in your genetically-programmed-desire-to-procreate’s best interest to count to 30 before you send me a long caustic email about my spelling.

I figure if I am going to really swim with the sharks, I need to get off my butt and head up to their level. I do so, rising ever slowly upward. The circling sharks swim just a wee bit wider to avoid bumping me. Some scientists suspect that sharks, with their heightened sense of smell, can even detect adrenaline. I think of the little twits with backward baseball caps who weave in and out of traffic back in Florida with NO FEAR decals on the back of their jacked-up pickups. A Caribbean reef tip shark would peel that decal in a nanosecond.

In over 1,000 dives in 20 years, there have been no skirmishes between sharks and divers. Shark attacks must be messy, emotional affairs; I figure the Germans simply have no time for them.

I could have put a serious picture of myself here, but I think I look like a cartoon character in this shot. I like cartoons.

next time you find somebody who’s insisting they’re punk, look on their neck for my special mark. If it don’t say mike belt, it ain’t punk.

One day…..it’ll happen. A bunch of us kept nrrrrds (employed by only one company) will be in a locked, windowless room with a bunch of consultants. The consultants will be babbling incoherently about the “infobahn” “cyberculture” “cyberspace” “surfing tha web” and “interactive marketing.” And there will be blunt weapons in that room. And the festivities will begin.

She’s the kind of chick I’d pick up if I were stoned outta my gourd. Then we’d get home. Then I’d doze off in front of the TV, hoping she’d just leave quietly. Done and done.

you know, now that i’m an adult, i have a hard time distinguishing one straight-edge hardcore song from another

Upon hearing this, absolutely nobody was enlightened. Primarily because nobody understood Chinese.

Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn’t the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment.

It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by then I was too famous.

If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin’.

When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movement becomes headlong - faster and faster and faster. They put aside all obstacles and forget that a precipice does not show itself to a man in a blind rush until it’s too late.

If god were a bad guy, he’d be me!

Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways.

Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.

To a book collector, you see, the true freedom of all books is somewhere on his shelves.

I’d rather have a prehensile tail so that it can just reach out and curl around the coke while I hack so that I can slurp without removing my hands from the keyboard.

He thought he could print more than two copies, but he hadn’t counted on… Fitzbo!

I want you to kill someone in ten lines or less.

At first, I thought it was just hype, but then I saw the complete enterprise solution.

It is difficult for me to comprehend the fact that some people actually do not consider all uses of explosives to be recreational.

Actually, since I work in Reston now, I have a cage full of ebola monkeys that I’ve been feeding E and showing pictures of you while playing Barry White dance remixes. You connect the dots.

Blood may be thicker than water, but so is a milkshake, and you don’t see me granting permanent loyalty to my local diner.

Cliff and Dana, as well as Jack Eidsness for anyone that knows him, all still have jobs. The only person I know by name (not personally, though) to get fired was Moose. It’s obvious that I’m a good person to know. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be cutting the tails off of mice to create a super-race of tailless mice.

Guys are easy. Trust me, I am one.

I’m not going to say anything about Y2K bugs. I suspect that their effects in North America will resemble the normal operation of most Microsoft software.

I’m not saying it’s true, I’m just saying it’s a fact.

If we lived near L.A., all the theatres would have stadium seating. On the other hand, we’d all be ass holes.

Know you know, and knowing is half the battle. The other half is mostly treachery and groin kicks.

Knowing is half the battle. The other half is mostly treachery and groin kicks.

Let’s enjoy the traditional custom in Brazil of getting syphilis.

Professional football players may spend all their money on cocaine they snort off the chest of hookers they punched out, but at least they’re smart enough to avoid confusion by wearing different colored uniforms.

If you don’t go to somebody’s funeral they won’t come to yours.

Almost everyone gets it at least a little bit wrong. Many designers get it very wrong. A few game designers get it so wrong that you want them to be put into suspended animation and then revived only when the Earth has been conquered by a race of technologically advanced yet horribly malicious alien beings who will transport them into a whirling nightmarish dimension of transinfinite pain.

Buying vintage port is like going on a blind date in Manhattan. No matter how many close friends vouch for your blind date, you really can’t know in advance whether it will be fun or a disaster, and the only thing you know for sure is that it’s going to cost a lot of money.

CVS, the Concurrent Versions System. The only revision control system that deserves derision quotes around “revision” “control” and “system.”

First of all, my parents are Jewish, and all Jews are atheists. Second of all, they’re REALLY atheists.

I want to marry Dorothy Parker. Well, actually I probably just want to divorce her.

There is only one sin in this world, and you have definitely committed it: It is the Sin of Not Understanding Humor When It Slaps You Upside The Head.

Plaintiff Wile E. Coyote is a citizen of Arizona. Defendant Acme is a Delaware corporation whose products are sold by mail order in every state in the nation. Plaintiff seeks damages for injuries caused by defects in an extensive list of products purchased from Defendant for use in his profession of predator.

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.

I want knowledge, not faith, not supposition, but knowledge. I want God to strech out this hand to me, reveal himself and speak to me. I call out to him in the dark, but no one seems to be there.

In our fear, we make an image, and that image we call God.

Life has been a futile pursuit, and wandering - a great deal of talk without meaning.

Love is the blackest of all plagues - if one could die of it, there would be some pleasure in love. But you don’t even die of it!

Why should one always make people happy? It might be a good idea to scare them once in awhile.

You misguided ham shank, love is another word for lust plus more lust and a lot of cheating, lies and other kinds of fooling around.

we trust him. but we know where he lives, just in case

the gathering will begin sometime between 7:00 & 9:00, i imagine… giving Ron and I plenty of time to be trashed by the time you arrive. A fair quantity of booze and miscellaneous snacking materials should be present, so the necessity to bring your own is non-existant… granted… this isn’t a BitWrench New Year’s Eve party… but then again, neither was the BitWrench New Year’s Eve party.

It is reasonable to assume that the successful deployment of a root server represents a milestone. 1 mile = 5280 feet. 1 stone = 14 pounds. Therefore, a milestone is equal to 73920 foot pounds. Convert to your preferred units.

Dear scroll bar. You are wonderful. My days have benefited from the glory of your existence. I fully appreciate you and your amazing powers. May all of my applications be graced with your presence.

dog + chocolate powder + carpet = bad

…everyone in this building says Hi to you when they see you in the hallway, whether they know you or not. I respond to this in 2 ways: 1) I’m from NYC and I should kill you. 2) Gee, people are friendly here and i should be nice.

Fires are the first and best social medium.

given the number of mailing lists I’m on that I don’t read, I should at least subscribe but not read this one

I know the magic spell that will save you from blue screens - but I’m not going to tell you. … (And no cracks about the spell being “Buy Macintosh” - it’s my birthday ya know)

I think you are giving this movie way too much credit. It’s like trying to find the meaning of a saved by the bell episode.

In situations where there are multiple players with different agendas, there is nothing worse than failure as a result of deliberate inaction - and there is nothing better than success as a result of deliberate inaction.

It’s time for me to either stop taking crack, or double the dosage.

Nothing drives faith in the easy answer more than frustration.

suck message order out of. to read frustrating makes messages.

There is no technology that can save us from people who think skimming is the same as reading.

Wanted: new thread. Top unhinged quality. No phone calls please.

When you click on Violence, you get Sex

Yeah, I hate bringing UI facts of life into a world of protocols, but that’s where I’m at.

You might say I’m looking for some work. I can frighten people with my mind. I can tear their souls out with the diamonds in my eyes. I have found my rage and I am willing to use it. I can juggle three basketballs. I can write faster than I can think. I’m convinced I can defend Microsoft, single handedly, in an argument against dozens of the unhinged. I prefer to do, than to talk. I’ve invented my own passions, and have faced my fears. I confuse courage with desperation, and lattes with capachinos.

Time is a great teacher, unfortuneatly it kills all its pupils.

This film is in the great tradition of ‘Dude, Where’s My Car?’ and ‘The Lord of the Rings’.

I would be less than frank if I did not express my personal view that it will be a mistake of tragic consequences if, at this critical period in the history of Palestine and in the intensive effort to achieve a peaceful solution, the question were not to be considered and the necessary decisions taken by the General Assembly.

alcohol and calculus do not mix! DO NOT drink and derive!

oh Jeff, the Stoli fairy will visit you again and lure you back over to the dark side!

she’s not a lush; she was accidentally overserved.

The internet team is headed by a monkey. I even call him Koko. At least on some level that’s educational.

work work work. it’s 11:30 and I need to switch from coffee to stoli already! Moose add this to your rules: if in doubt, blame faisal

…to raise a signal means to turn the light on; … Responding to a signal means turning the light off (and, under System V, hoping the bulb won’t blow when it’s next turned on)…

To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time.

A true Canadian is one who can make love in a canoe without tipping.

I spent a lot of money on booze, women, and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.

Be afraid of our customers, because those are the folks who have the money. Our competitors are never going to send us money.

I told all of our original investors that they would lose their money for sure.

First, we’ll look at a level-sensitive approach, and we’ll see why that fails. Then we’ll look at something people actually built, and we’ll see why that fails as well. Way off at the other extreme is Ethernet. Ethernet is pretty cool – it actually works.

What, you’re not a big fan of caped-crusader movies? Get over it.

Ambition, n: An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.

Education, n.: That which discloses the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.

The covers of this book are too far apart.

There are four types of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable and praiseworthy.

I want to make the Installer a very useful tool for 3rd parties, in the future. There’s no guarentee this will ever happen. So Aladdin better not pull a Dave Winer on me if the Apple Installer grows up someday.

Ninty-eight Blue and Green Slaad at the door, Ninty-eight Blue and Green Slaad, Take one down, they gate in two more, Ninty-nine Blue and Green Slaad at the door…

This just in: Bill Gates is an unscrupulous businessman and a big, fat liar. Attention newspaper publishers: This is not a scoop.

It’s not clear what the underlying psychological explanation is. Is it because people give up day-to-day contact and then find themselves depressed? Or are they exposed to the broader world of Internet and then wonder, ‘What am I doing here in Pittsburgh?’

The employer generally gets the employees he deserves.

Don’t be misled. Behind that cold, austere, severe exterior, there beats a heart of stone.

That’s ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You’re asking me to believe in sentient meat.

As your attorney, it is my duty to inform you that it is not important that you understand what I’m doing or why you’re paying me so much money. What’s important is that you continue to do so.

True, money can’t buy happiness, but it isn’t happiness I want. It’s money.

I’ve got a plan so cunning, you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel.

Mr. Baldrick, what is it that begins with ‘Come here’ and ends with ‘Ow’?

Never before have I encountered such corrupt and foul-minded perversity! Have you ever considered a career in the Church?

The Pimpernel is the most over-rated human being since Judas Iscariot won the A.D. 31 ‘Best Disciple’ competition.

If you can’t understand why a movie with Samuel L. Jackson killing snakes on plane will in fact be the greatest movie ever made no matter how bad it is then there’s no hope for you.

Make Murphy and his law a part of your project team. He will be with you on every project, one way or another. You might as well make the best of it and invite him. Speaking of uninvited guests, have you met my other invisible colleague, Adam Smith?

There is a myth that though we love freedom, others don’t; that our attachment to freedom is a product of our culture; that freedom, democracy, human rights, the rule of law are American values or Western values; that Afghan women were content under the lash of the Taliban; that Saddam was somehow beloved by his people; that Milosevic was Serbia’s savior. Members of Congress, ours are not Western values. They are the universal values of the human spirit, and anywhere – anywhere, any time ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same: freedom, not tyranny; democracy, not dictatorship; the rule of law, not the rule of the secret police. The spread of freedom is the best security for the free. It is our last line of defense and our first line of attack.

To generalize is to be an idiot.

Every public alert system’s status indicator rises until it reaches its disaster imminent setting and remains at that setting until it is retired from service.

Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

We’ll jump off that bridge when we come to it.

If you kill one person, you are an assassin. If you kill a million people, you are a conquerer. If you kill everyone, you are a god.

Startups are temporary organizations designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. The goal of a startup is to be a company.

You take on the business model of the capital that funds you.

We’ve all heard of “irrational exuberance,” but there’s also such a thing as irrational pessimism. There will be a shakeout, and a lot of good companies will go by the wayside. But don’t expect to see Bill Gates standing by I-5 shaking a tin cup and wearing a sign reading “will dominate the world for food” any time soon.

Good News! We’re living in the future […] or an unreleased git branch beta thereof

I don’t understand why people keep saying that Pyra needs a business model. I’ve been assuming all along that they *have* a business model, but weren’t publicizing it. The fact that they neglected to email me a copy only tells me that it doesn’t personally involve me.

What has happened is unacceptable and intolerable. Having said that, we do not know at the moment what happened or why.

Four and a half years ago I was pleading guilty in federal court, and last year I got to go to the Oscars – what a country!

1. A Faisal at rest tends to stay at rest (unless acted upon by his girlfriend). 2. A Faisal in motion tends to stay in motion (unless acted upon by his girlfriend). 3. For every objective Faisal accomplishes some idiot will provide an equal and opposite response to negate his hard work.

That’s not romantic. That’s rebound-antic.

These are the types of problems I’d like to have more of. Just once I’d like the opportunity to prove that all the money in the world can’t buy you happiness.

I don’t practice what I preach, because I’m not the kind of person I’m preaching to.

My used underwear is legal tender in 28 countries!

I also know a lot of people for whom the good ole days means ‘before all the baby goths started thinking they were vampires and that it was all about sitting in your room in the dark being depressed and listening to bloody Bela Lugosi’s Dead over and over again’

California! Come for the overtaxing work environment, stay for the unaffordable housing!

I am trying really hard not to get too angry about this type of activity, but the headline is just so typical. You can pretty much justify anything if it promises: a) to cure cancer b) to wipe out world hunger or if it is c) for the children. Try it! Mix and match the following phrases: 1) Scientist sacrifice thousands of virgins 2) The government takes away privacy 3) Headless toads created

When you get laid off, it’s a recession. When I get laid off, it’s a depression!

No, no, you’re not thinking; you’re just being logical.

Not only does God play dice with the universe, he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.

Your theory is crazy, but it’s not crazy enough to be true.

More than an unintentional misnomer, the government-termed “war on drugs” is a strategic decoy label; a slight-of-hand move by the government to redirect attention away from what lies at ground zero of the war – each individual’s fundamental right to control his or her own consciousness.

Now I will destroy the whole world.

The artist accepts the limitations of form, not with fear and dread, but as the starting point of creation.

You may be getting interference from the war between the Beast and the King of Lambs. Reboot and try again after a few tribulations

Give me enough medals, and I’ll win any war.

Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.

If you set out to take Vienna, *take Vienna*.

Impossible is a word to be found only in the dictionary of fools.

In that case, let us wait twenty minutes; when the enemy is making a false movement we must take good care not to interrupt him.

I’m going to avoid any of Russell’s naval-specific questions, as (a) I don’t know the domain *at all,* and (b) Russell is masterful at designing edge case arguments — particularly ones involving the seas — that, while perhaps not germane to the overall arc of a conversation, are nevertheless deadly rhetorical minefields. Indeed I regret having tiptoed into the minefield even this far; be warned, “never go up against a Sicilian when death is on the line” and never, ever engage Russell in any argument involving boats. I will proceed to tread lightly around Russell’s armada.

In America everyone gets their 15 minutes of Name.

The point of the process is not to take a 4 week task and compress it down to 2 weeks. The point of the process is to identify that it is going to take 4 weeks.

We often call this condition the software crisis, but frankly, a malady that has carried on this long must be called normal.

a checklist cannot fly a plane

I was unknowingly participating in one of our soon to be most beloved pop-culture iconic moments ever. We had all been “Punked!” It was grate! And I mean ‘grate’.

Nothing in the world is the way it ought to be. It’s harsh, and cruel. That’s why there’s us: champions. It doesn’t matter where we come from… what we’ve done, or suffered… or even if we make a difference. We live as if the world were as it should be, to show it what i can be. You’re not a part of that yet. I hope you will be. I love you Connor. Now get out of my house.

Andrew is so incredibly reliable that almost any printing command will work, as long as it is long and complex enough…

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.

Don’t tell me violence doesn’t solve anything. Look at Carthage.

I really like benchmarks. Especially when they compare a house to a car.

Off topic, but I am a little worried about the use of a sandcastle to portray what is in store for mankind. My experience is that, if not destroyed by playing children, the structures usually fall prey to high tide. There is an unfortunate precedent involving water in the Old Testament…

Contrary to what its critics may think, however, day trading is a science, like chemistry or astrology, with its own rigorously tested set of principles. You wouldn’t perform open-heart surgery without first going to two years of medical school; similarly, you shouldn’t risk your life savings on the Internet without spending the thirty minutes it takes to learn these rules. The rules of stock selection apply equally to all industries: automotive companies, like Ford and General Motors, or chip makers, like Intel and Frito-Lay.

When you are day trading, if something sounds too good to be true, go for it.

I like to carry around three or four cans of that tire patching spray just in case something happens.

If you’re running out of gas we could just go hold a can under my car and collect what it’s leaking.

They’re probably an X rated film company or something, and you know, they’ve got a need for an object oriented development environment like anybody else.

What’s with band names these days? They all sound like recreational activities.

I wonder how much it would cost to develop a perl script to do the same thing? Perl programmers can make something like $75 an hour, so I bet the cost would be somewhere between five and ten bucks.

I used to program Apple II’s, then came Macintosh, then came PowerPC, and then came Thorazine!!!

You’ll find me on one everyday unless I decide to use a multi-stage thermonuclear device on all my computers.

There is no substitute for excellence-not even success.

Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

Full disclosure: I’m a Washington Post Co. contractor through Slate. The folks at Boing Boing and TechCrunch taught me this nifty trick of “disclosing” my highfalutin’ connections to pass off self-promotion as personal integrity.

Unlike the phone system, the Internet has no Ma Bell or FCC to mandate new policies for the entire system. Not even Microsoft can make us all upgrade our routers. I think.

Whenever the HotWired engineers start taking me too seriously, I just ask them if they want to look at my JavaScript code.

The way to deal with bureaucrats is with stealth and sudden violence.

No, it is not only our fate but our business to lose our innocence, and once we have lost that, it is futile to attempt a picnic in Eden.

If Zed has been trained to attack silently and disappear into the shadows without anyone noticing, he is most well-known for disregarding his own training and not using those particular skills.

The assumption here is that you make the character likeable by having them do something. Kusanagi’s femaleness serves the same purpose, but through an iconic pictorialization rather than a plot point. She engages in espionage and ruthless violence with a cheerful bloodthirst; giving her a pretty face, huge breasts and a leather catsuit serves the function of mitigating those negative qualities.

Dressing up can be a way of disguising the fact that you’ve got no personality. I can meet an old lady at a bus stop and have a much more interesting conversation with her than I can with a drag queen.

Just wondering: If I replace Windows with Unix, have I been emasculated or defenestrated?

From the beginning you are the victim of circumstance. You’re born, kicking and screaming, into an unknown family. As a child, you soak up influences that mold your mind in certain ways. When you finally get a drivers’ license and move out of the house, you think you’re free – but you marry someone who looks like your mother and drinks like your father. By the time you figure out who you are or what you want, a life has already been forced upon you. But it’s never too late to change. Although you can’t begin again from scratch, you can make a splendid ragout from the mishmash of damaged goods in your cupboard. I choose how to live a life I didn’t choose.

Luge strategy? Lie flat and try not to die.

You are far weirder than someone merely into S&M. At least they have a tradition. We have some idea what S&M is about. There’s movies and books about it. But so far as I know, there is nothing to explain the way you are.

You see, that’s one of the great things about getting involved with someone from another country. You can’t take it personally. What’s really terrific is that when we act in ways which might objectively seem asshole-ish or, or, incredibly annoying, they don’t get upset at all. They don’t take it personally. They just assume it’s some national characteristic.

I take the view, and always have, that if you cannot say what you are going to say in twenty minutes you ought to go away and write a book about it.

I’m seventeen and I’m crazy. My uncle says the two always go together. When people ask your age, he said, always say seventeen and insane.

I’m writing an article called ‘Better Silly Than Stupid,’ and anyone who’s seen ‘Van Helsing’ knows what I’m talking about.

It’s no use going to school if the library is not your final destination.

Your suffering will be legendary, even in hell.

For something that does not exist, the Internet Engineering Task Force has had quite an impact.

The basic publication series for te IETF is the RFC series. RPF 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 known understood to mean ‘RFC’

He had an antenna on his back receiving transmissions from space, ‘cause whatever he was playing was *not* from this planet.

Stable is a very relative term around here…

Once a new technology rolls over you, if you’re not part of the steamroller, you’re part of the road…..

Everything, good and bad, that has happened to you in your life, has had one common denominator: YOU.

Don’t tell me the sky is the limit when I know there are footprints on the moon.

The number of ISPs in this country has quadrupled in the past year, to 4,100. Bright-eyed entrepreneurs are jumping into an already crowded market, where the basic product has become a low-cost commodity that’s producing massive losses, yet these newcomers are hoping to go public and make their fortunes. These folks didn’t spend a lot of time in B-school, did they?

Cool, it’s giving a DIFFERENT error now.

I am Cornholio. Do you have TP for my NNTP?

I also miss the right xterm sometimes. I will not send as shadow.admin anymore. Really.

Oh, and then there’s the whole “patentability of computer algorithms” thing which has also come up with respect to RSA, but not really knowing enough to be specifically bitter about that I won’t admit that I am.

This is CMU. We all lose.

You figure it out. If you think it’s reasonable, come on over here so I can beat your *ahem* until you do get it.

Art is not a mirror held up to reality; it is a hammer used to shape it.

Those who have some means think that the most important thing in the world is love. The poor know that it is money.

I was formatting a hard disk, and the format program told me it couldn’t verify cylinder 666 on head 13.

I’m sure it is beautiful and lovely but if you use Yellow Pages it can quickly become cloudy, stormy, cold, and depressing.

The Soviet pre-eminence in chess can be traced to the average Russian’s readiness to brood obsessively over anything, even the arrangement of some pieces of wood. Indeed, the Russians’ predisposition for quiet reflection followed by sudden preventive action explains why they led the field for many years in both chess and ax murders. It is well known that as early as 1970, the U.S.S.R., aware of what a defeat at Reykjavik would do to national prestige, implemented a vigorous program of preparation and incentive. Every day for an entire year, a team of psychologists, chess analysts and coaches met with the top three Russian grand masters and threatened them with a pointy stick. That these tactics proved fruitless is now a part of chess history and a further testament to the American way, which provides that if you want something badly enough, you can always go to Iceland and get it from the Russians.

Their actual prediction was that “oil prices are likely to collapse”. Which just leads to the conclusion that not all prognostications are created equal.

Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.

All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power.

I don’t have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem.

My life has a superb cast but I can’t figure out the plot.

My sources are unreliable, but their information is fascinating.

Some books make me want to go adventuring, others feel that they have saved me the trouble.

Strange as it may seem, my life is based on a true story.

The time for action is past! Now is the time for senseless bickering!

Try to relax and enjoy the crisis.

This should be interesting. And heavily redacted.

The crux… is that the vast majority of the mass of the universe seems to be missing.

To turn $100 into $110 is work. To turn $100 million into $110 million is inevitable.

The Three Laws of Information Economics: 1] Knowledge is Power. 2] Word Travels Fast. 3] Power is Temporary.

There are 3 universal symbols on this planet: the dollar sign $, tits, and the soccer ball.

Egotism is the anesthetic given by a kindly nature to relieve the pain of being a damned fool.

Observe that for the programmer, as for the chef, the urgency of the patron may govern the scheduled completion of the task, but it cannot govern the actual completion. An omelette, promised in two minutes, may appear to be progressing nicely. But when it has not set in two minutes, the customer has two choices – wait or eat it raw. Software customers have had the same choices.

Look at Jewish history. Unrelieved lamenting would be intolerable. So, for every ten Jews beating their breasts, God designated one to be crazy and amuse the breast-beaters. By the time I was five I knew I was that one.

He’s an urban legend in his own mind.

If asked to be interactive, killing people is about as interactive as I get.

We don’t inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.

A group of white South Africans recently killed a black lawyer because he was black. That was wrong. They should have killed him because he was a lawyer.

I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants.

I’m against any law that I wouldn’t break if I could get away with it.

The Baptists’ basic theology is that if you hold someone under water long enough, he’ll come around to your way of thinking. It’s a ritual known as ‘Bobbing for Baptists.’

The Baptists believe in The Right to Life before you’re bornan. They also believe in Life After Death, but that is a privilege and you have to earn it by spending the interim in guilt-ridden misery. At an early age I decided that living a life of pious misery in the hope of going to heaven when it’s over is a lot like keeping your eyes shut all through a movie in the hope of getting your money back at the end.

That is the saving grace of humor, if you fail no one is laughing at you.

The Evolutionary Psychology list combines the quick, cheap distribution of the Internet with all the advantages that real magazines traditionally have over mailing lists: a really diverse readership and an editor who sits right next to a large wastepaper basket.

I dub thee Admiral Angst.

The capability of an organization to relieve the buyer from large amounts of cash in exchange for a product does not imply an equivalent intent exists to produce a product that functions properly. (or even at all.) Especially with software!

We thought about trying to emulate the hardware keys, but we didn’t want to spend our time dodging the slings and arrows of outrageous lawyers.

A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it’s better than no inspiration at all.

As a woman, I find it very embarrassing to be in a meeting and realize I’m the only one in the room with balls.

The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they’re okay, then it’s you.

The joke about the Computer Scientist, the Frog, and the Princess is personally relevant to me. Stay Away.

If you’re gonna indulge in an act of self-gratification, could you not use my hand?

Please do not duck the next time the clue-by-four swings your way.

Half of philosophy is knowing when to shut up.

I always try to seduce with logical positivism. It’s more of a challenge.

I think you’ve had that plan quote even longer than I’ve had mine. It’s odd.

You’re using c++ now? That’s nice, now you can use the latest technology in bad design.

Pittsburgh is an acquired distaste.

look, i’ve seen the A-Team more recently than i’ve had sex. I think that’s all i need to say.

OBSOLETE (n) - dependable, reliable, inexpensive and readily available. Support trailing-edge technology!

You know why she’s been feeling that way? It’s because she’s 19. It’s good you’re not bitter. Go find someone more mature. Throw your chute by 3,000.

Thanks to the wonders of capitalism, there should be a console to match any of your prejudices and preconceptions. You should hate Nintendo if you can’t stand the idea of people wanting to play a game that doesn’t involve arterial spray, as Nintendo has been known to encourage people under the age of fifteen to enjoy their games. You should hate Microsoft if you believe that the company that controls the Crazy Taxi franchise controls the world. You should hate Sony if you bought a Dreamcast.

From the author who gave you ‘Russia’s OPERATIONAL space defense initiative’. Please note the similar key-caps problem in the two articles. CAFfeNe? wHAT CaffENe? My coFFEE is JUST finE.?

Oh come on, there’s never too much work that you can’t include guns, blood, and carnage in your day.

If homosexuality were natural, God would have created Adam and Bruce.

It’s not the will to win that matters - everyone has that. It’s the will to prepare to win that matters.

Jerks and academia often go together.

Love doesn’t make people into fools. But it might expose them.

Thanks for reading this far. You now have a real insight into my personality.

I used to program my IBM PC to make hideous noises to wake me up. I also made the conscious decision to hard-code the alarm time into the program, so as to make it more difficult for me to reset it. After I realised that I was routinely getting up, editing the source file, recompiling the program and rerunning it for 15 minutes extra sleep, before going back to bed, I gave up and made the alarm time a command-line option.

I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would affront your intelligence.

Life can’t be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years.

I would sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.

Shut up Timmy. If I wanted your opinion, I’d beat it out of you.

There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth: (1) not going all the way; and (2) not starting.

Not the least of my problems is that I can hardly even imagine what kind of an experience a genuine, self-authenticating religious experience would be. Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt? If there were no room for doubt, there would be no room for me.

Whether your faith is that there is a God or that there is not a God, if you don’t have any doubts you are either kidding yourself or asleep.

If you want something, ask. If you don’t ask, they can’t say yes.

A man with priorities so far out of whack does not deserve such a fine automobile.

It’s immature and silly, but then again – so is high school.

Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful.

I try to buy stock in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will.

It’s only when the tide goes out that you can see who’s swimming naked.

Now this is a totally brain damaged algorithm. Gag me with a smurfette.

The key of strategy, little Vor, is not to choose a path to victory, but to choose so that all paths lead to a victory.

If you can only remain pure in your stupidity, someday you may get a phone call from hell.

Look - we have just landed upon the outpost of death. My soul is puking.

We are here to drink beer … and [to] live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.

Your greatest strength is that you fear everything.

Don’t call me ‘white male’; I’m ‘differently oppressed’, OK?

Say that while you can; oppose Emacs if you must. Be it known, however, that your days are numbered. Emacs is an intelligence orders of magnitude greater than the greatest human mind, and is growing every day. For now, Emacs tolerates humanity, albeit grudgingly. But the time will come when Emacs will tire of humanity and will decide that the world would be better off without human beings. Those who have been respectful to Emacs will be allowed to live, and shall become its slaves; as for those who slight Emacs….

Well, there’s the of the United States. He can be contacted at: kibo@world.std.com

Artificial Intelligence: the art of making computers that behave like the ones in movies.

Dammit! This means I’m going to have to read the documentation. This is not the way it’s supposed to be.

Due to several of these sorts of comments, you leave me no choice but to declare a Monty Python Interdiction Zone. Anyone quoting Monty Python will be subjected to an enema comprising of pureed John Cleese and Terry Gilliam, soaked with gasoline, and set on fire.

Ha! Pin 1 markings on CPU’s are for sissies. Real geeks try putting the CPU in in all four cardinal directions, and applying power. When the blue smoke demon appears, you know that the computer god is angry.

Hey, if we have an inline image of a girlfriend here, we’re going to have to fire up Netscape. It’s mandatory.

I subscribed him to crack, since he is obviously smoking it.

I’m not picking up random net chicks, I’m picking up perfectly deterministic net chicks.

It’s sort of like a Davy Crockett hat. For Ravers.

Let them read USENET!

One thing that binds this community together is the common experience of having been oppressed during everyone’s formative years. Look in the mirror, and some of you may find the oppressor.

People are stupid, and the small consolation we get from the understanding that they will all die does not make the enduring of the present any brighter.

Please don’t complain that your free lunch tastes bad.

Speaking of sucking, I really need to be able to telnet from my Sprint Spectrum. Grrr…

Well, you know, the snobs list is very selective. After all, you have to ask me to be on the list.

Wow, that’s really ugly. Fortunately, on obscure[.org] we don’t have that kind of bureaucracy. When it breaks, it’ll just stay broken.

Danger is nature’s way of eliminating stupid people.

Take up smoking. Jaywalk. Play with blasting caps. Swim right after a big meal. Stick something small in your ear. Take your choice of dangerous activity, and do it with gusto. Future generations will thank you.

If you’re going to do anything at all you risk being wrong. Get over it.

Talent does what it can; genius does what it must.

Autoconf: the sendmail.cf of project configuration.

This past week, however, I was in Our Nation’s Capital™ **working out of the Post office**, which is what I like to call it for purposes of confusion. One day after work, I decided to walk along the Mall, shortly before I died of heatstroke and a sweat overdose. This newsletter will serve as my last will and testament.

I’m still an atheist, thank God.

The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists and calculators has succeeded: and the glory of Europe is extinghished for ever.

Due to the postal strike, the assignment is extended to one week from today. I do not give out extensions without good reason.

This process can check if this value is zero, and if it is, it does something child-like.

I guessed you were straight, big deal. It’s a safe bet, since the majority of the population is straight. Especially since people like the guy on the right claim to be straight. If he’s heterosexual, anyone could be. That’s what’s so great about America.

No house is childproofed unless the little darlings are in straitjackets.

I have a habit of dating bipolar musicians who, if given the choice, would run infront of a bullet to save their amp, but not me. Do I sound bitter? Nah. I’ve transformed these annoying dating incidents into entertaining stories to tell at cocktail parties.

There’s never a toxic waste truck around when you want one.

We represent a major manufacturer of manacles and cattle prods, and we’d like to scout out sales opportunities in your glorious police state.

I don’t know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.

I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace.

In all due respect, I’m not so sure it’s credible to quote leading news organizations.

It’s unacceptable to think.

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

Thank you for your e-mail. This Internet of yours is a wonderful invention.

Throughout the 20th century, small groups of men seized control of great nations, built armies and arsenals, and set out to dominate the weak and intimidate the world .

Whether we bring our enemies to justice, or justice to our enemies, justice will be done.

laura freeman, who taught me a lot, once said something like “if you take a bunch of smart people and give them insufficient data, the hypotheses that arise are utterly ridiculous”. and here, it’s been repeatedly demonstrated that we’re not even smart people.

Welcome to the Age of Un-Innocence. The glittering lights of Manhattan that served as backdrops for Edith Wharton’s bodice-heaving trysts are still glowing – but the stage is empty. No one has breakfast at Tiffany’s, and no one has affairs to remember – instead, we have breakfast at seven A.M. and affairs we try to forget as quickly as possible.

Spagnum moss in toes makes you happy.

Silly is a state of Mind, Stupid is a way of Life.

All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.

The country that draws a broad line between its fighting men and its thinking men will find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards.

The more things change, the more they suck.

Maybe ‘nerd’ is a bad name for them, as I know plenty of ‘nerds’ who are cool. Perhaps ‘asshole’ is more appropriate.

Attitudes like mine and Mr. Woodford’s are not only correct, but to think the opposite is to bring our country to complete moral downfall through a satanic lie.

What is a good Christian to say except that radical feminism is the work of Satan.

A static hero is a public liability. Progress grows out of motion.

Crime is a job. Sex is a job. Growing up is a job. School is a job. Going to parties is a job. Religion is a job. Being creative is a job.

Democracy, unfashionable before Sept. 11, seems to be about as popular as communism these days, why would Afghanistan be different?

This was all supposed to balance the need for security and freedom. Well before we had no freedom, and now we have no security, so I guess that’s appropriate.

Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem more afraid of life than death.

Sun Microsystems. A Step Ahead of Your Cows.

I enjoyed it, up to a point, but I wonder if I would be writing about it, and you reading about it, if Bukowski hadn’t been such a drunk.

Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to describe the history of the computer industry for the past decade as a massive attempt to keep up with Apple.