Computing Quotes

Thanks to Danny Yee for passing excerpt of a posting by Gene Spafford on to me:

...
In closing, I'd like to repost my 3 axioms of Usenet. I originally posted these in 1987 and 1988. In my opinion as a semi-pro curmudgeon, I think they've aged well:

Axiom #1:: "The Usenet is not the real world. The Usenet usually does not even resemble the real world."
Corollary #1:: "Attempts to change the real world by altering the structure of the Usenet is an attempt to work sympathetic magic -- electronic voodoo."
Corollary #2:: "Arguing about the significance of newsgroup names and their relation to the way people really think is equivalent to arguing whether it is better to read tea leaves or chicken entrails to divine the future."

Axiom #2:: "Ability to type on a computer terminal is no guarantee of sanity, intelligence, or common sense."
Corollary #3:: "An infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of keyboards could produce something like Usenet."
Corollary #4:: "They could do a better job of it."

Axiom #3:: "Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crap) applies to Usenet."
Corollary #5:: "In an unmoderated newsgroup, no one can agree on what constitutes the 10%."
Corollary #6:: "Nothing guarantees that the 10% isn't crap, too."

Which of course ties in to the recent:

"Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea -- massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it." --spaf (1992)

"Don't sweat it -- it's not real life. It's only ones and zeroes." -- spaf (1988?)

--
Gene Spafford, COAST Project Director
Software Engineering Research Center & Dept. of Computer Sciences
Purdue University, W. Lafayette IN 47907-1398
Internet: spaf@cs.purdue.edu phone: (317) 494-7825

A FEW WEEKS AGO we noted the crisis of faith revealed by an Internet browser when it was asked to find the address www.god.com and replied that the host wasn't available (10 July). Now Richard Gibbons writes to tell us of the commendable religious modesty of an IBM mainframe using the Phoenix system, which he once worked with at the University of Cambridge. When, in a moment of desperation, he typed in "Help, God", the computer replied: "Deities must be invoked directly and not via Phoenix MVS."

-- Feedback Column in New Scientist, 11 Sept 1999.

From Raven's Memorable Quotes from Alt.Sysadmin.Recovery:

If men are from Mars and women are from Venus, there's going to be one big-ass fight over where to set the thermostat. -- Jim Rosenberg
I'm an apatheist. The question is no longer interesting, and the answer no longer matters. -- petro
People who are willing to rely on the government to keep them safe are pretty much standing on Darwin's mat, pounding on the door, screaming, "Take me, take me!" -- Carl Jacobs
Violence, rude language, excessive drinking, paganism. It's hard to find children's books like that these days. -- Stig Morten Valstad
[Re: Linda McCartney's backing vocal mike.] I've never heard it, but it is apparently one of the more painful experiences that a sentient being can undergo. Entire songs, written in the key of C, being sung in the key of P sharp major with a demented ninth. -- Joe Bidgood
You can lead an idiot to knowledge but you cannot make him think. You can, however, rectally insert the information, printed on stone tablets, using a sharpened poker. -- Nicolai
Remember - if all you have is an axe, every problem looks like hours of fun. -- Frossie
I can offer you some industrial-strength Beef, Egg and Onion pies; served with a healthy amount of baked beans, if that doesn't get your emissions of Eggdimethyl Beansoxide up to a level which constitutes a violation of the Geneva Convention on chemical warfare, i don't know what will. -- -:Tanuki:-
I'm not sure that the ability to create routing diagrams similar to pretzels with mad cow disease is actually a marketable skill. -- Steve Levin
Then the home office "took control of the situation". That consisted of demanding the root password, and then contacting me at least once every three hours until 0100 last night. Sometimes they paged me. Sometimes they called me at home. After I unplugged my phone from the wall and took the battery out of my pager, my boss showed up at my front door. -- Jack Twilley
I used to herd dairy cows. Now I herd lusers. Apart from the isolation, I think I preferred the cows. They were better conversation, easier to milk, and if they annoyed me enough, I could shoot them and eat them. -- Rodger Donaldson
Damn, squid must have satisfied my reloads from cache. -- Peter da Silva
That sounds so very much nastier than it is. -- adam
To me it sounds like a flock of ducks trying to out-honk a Mac Truck, but getting cut short tragically as they all fly into the grill work of the truck. But that's just me. -- Paul Tomblin, about the system beep on the Alpha UDB.
A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable. -- Leslie Lamport
I'm locked in a maze of little projects, all of which suck. -- Chris "Saundo" Saunderson
I think that sick people in Ankh-Morpork generally go to a vet. It's generally a better bet. There's more pressure on a vet to get it right. People say "it was god's will" when granny dies, but they get *angry* when they lose a cow. -- Terry Pratchett
If you tell them, they never listen. If they listen, they never learn. If they learn, they never remember. If they remember, they never obey. -- Markus
[Re: "Da Bomb" hot sauce] This stuff will not only take the paint off a battleship, it'll also hunt down the painter and hir family, murder them, desecrate the bodies, and proceed to have its way with the family pet. -- Mark C. Langston
The main difference between lusers & budgies is that it's standard practice to keep one's budgie in a cage. I feel that there is a lesson here for all of us. -- Lionel Lauer
We aim to please. Ourselves, mostly, but we do aim to please. -- Anthony DeBoer
ALL programs are poems, it's just that not all programmers are poets. -- Jonathan Guthrie
Ah. So-called "developers" who cannot be bothered to skim an O'Reilly book, let alone read an RFC. ... People who react to the comment, "Check the source" with an expression suggesting I _really_ said "Shove a weasel up your ass." -- crawford
Windows is the answer, but only if the question was 'what is the intellectual equivalent of being a galley slave?' -- Larry Smith, in comp.os.linux.misc
It is possible to cause a Mac to fail to boot by corrupting preference files. Sometimes, the Mac does this for you.
The MacOS is robust only in the sense that a 400-pound lard-arse pro wrestler can be described as `robust'. -- Rodger Donaldson
"Hi, we're a group of ominous looking people who happen to deal with way too much spam. We'd like to wander aimlessly around your house discussing vivid images of what should be done to spammers, their families and casual acquaintences, and make veiled threats as to the future of your limbs (attached or not), animals and the insertion of farming implements into your orifices". -- Chris "Saundo" Saunderson
"Lotus Notes for Dummies" is surely a single page pull out with "don't" printed on it. -- Unknown
While preceding your entrance with a grenade is a good tactic in Quake, it can lead to problems if attempted at work. -- C Hacking
I managed to out-cool even the disgustingly cool people normally found at the cafe I went to, without trying. I'm assuming it was the IETF draft I was reading, because nothing else really accounts for it. -- Kirrily 'Skud' Roberts
Keeping UUCP running is starting to seem a lot like keeping a 130-year-old man who smokes 4 packs a day on life support because he's the last person on Earth who knows how to do the cha-cha, but he won't tell anyone. -- Ryan Tucker
Take note of the toes you step on today as they may be connected to the ass you have to kick tomorrow. -- Ben
PC's are designed by a committee of people who are in different companies in different countries and who never talk to each other. -- Derick Siddoway
And nobody speaks the same language and they hate each other... -- Chris Adams
When computers emit smoke, it means they've chosen a new Pope. Unfortunately, they invariably choose the wrong one and immediately get condemned to nonfunctionality for heresy. -- Anthony DeBoer
People who love sausages, respect the law, and work with IT standards shouldn't watch any of them being made. -- Peter Gutmann
Cmdmt. XI: Thou shalt not inflict upon me thy useless prattlings, for I thy God am a busy God. -- Joe Thompsonn
Is there a tape drive that isn't a DLT that doesn't suck dead weasels through a lint-clogged dryer hose? -- Peter da Silva
Contrary to popular belief, Unix is user friendly. It just happens to be very selective about who its friends are. -- Kyle Hearn
When I first started working with sendmail, I was convinced that the cf file had been created by someone bashing their head on the keyboard. After a week, I realised this was, indeed, almost certainly the case -- Unknown
When you need a helpline for breakfast cereals, it's time to start thinking about tearing down civilisation and giving the ants a go. -- Chris King
I've found that things like "If you change even one configuration setting and your system ceases to function, or functions in a manner other than expected, our support staff will laugh at you in the sinister manner of Joseph Stalin just before he enslaved eastern Europe" helps to draw peoples attention to essential details like this. -- Edward Grimm
It's nice to be loved, but there's a lot to be said for CRINGING RESPECT -- Anonymous button bin
I admit that X is the second worst windowing system in the world, but all the others I've used are tied for first. -- Paul Tomblin
Never meddle in the affairs of BOFHs, for we have no need of subtlety. -- Bruce
It used to be said [...] that AIX looks like one space alien discovered Unix, and described it to another different space alien who then implemented AIX. But their universal translators were broken and they'd had to gesture a lot. -- Paul Tomblin
A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction into a battle of wills and add drama to an otherwise dull day. -- Calvin discovers Usenet
I believe that there is a special room in Tarterus reserved for Brian Eno, in which a Windows '95 machine constantly reboots itself, displays clouds, plays the Microsoft Sound, reboots, displays clouds, plays the Microsoft Sound, reboots... -- Steve Conley
[Re: Hiring a programmer as a sysadmin] My problem is, do I corrupt his soul and lead him down the path of eternal darkness through deceit and lies about the nature of our work because we could use the talent, or do I tell him to run screaming from this endless pit of despair and damnation? -- Seagull
It looks like the machines have figured out that I'm enjoying myself a little too much, though, as one is now having daily freakouts where it basically just starts shrieking "The network connections! All the network connections! AAAAAGH!" and curls up on the floor whimpering and catatonic for up to an hour about every day. -- Steve VanDevender
Irix is about as stable as a one-legged drunk with hypothermia in a four- hundred mile wind, balancing on a banana peel on a greased cookie sheet. When someone throws him an elephant with bad breath and a worse temper. -- Simon Cozens
bing-bong. Brimish Rull regret that mumble maz bem dermumble a mir mumble mumble bimble late. Passengers mizzing to mumble rimble mumble are advised to momble mar at murmble. Thank you mor mumble mimbling Brimble mum. bing-bong. -- Gaz on railway announcements
I've found that nurturing one's Zen nature is vital to dealing with technology. Violence is pretty damn useful too. -- Lionel Lauer
[It] contains "vegetable stabilizer" which sounds ominous. How unstable are vegetables? -- Jeff Zahn
Sanity is like money; you should just have enough to get by. Any more and you turn into a freak. -- rone

... More quotes from alt.sysadmin.recovery in Microsoft Forlorn and Programming Quotes

From The Artful Universe by John D. Barrow (Oxford University Press, 1995):

The theoretician's prayer: "Dear Lord, forgive me the sin of arrogance, and Lord, by arrogance I mean the following ..." -- Leon Lederman [source of quote unknown ; appears in Chapter 2, p. 31]
More quotes from "The Artful Universe"

Technology

"I wish you hadn't waked me," he muttered at the sleeper. "I'm not on duty. I don't want any calls. Just put me back to sleep."

"But, sir!" the machine reproved him sulkily. "You can't ignore this message. The sender rated it urgent. The index code implies crisis on an interplanetary scale, with probable danger to billions of your fellow human creatures."

"Great Almalik!" He blinked at the pink folds of pulsating plastic. "Where's the message from?"

"The central zone," the sleeper said. "The local address is Planet 3, Star 7718, Sector Z-989-Q, Galaxy 5 ..."

"That's Earth!"

"A local name perhaps," the sleeper said. "We don't record such unofficial designations."

-- Fred Pohl & Jack Williamson: Rogue Star

Technology II

It was the computer's revenge. In rage, in frenzy, he turned us into monstrosities, imprisoned deep inside his endless banks. Now I am a great soft jelly thing.
I have no mouth. And I must scream.

-- Quote or blurb about Harlan Ellison's I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream from an ad for the Science Fiction Book Club on the back of an old Analog magazine.

Technology III

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
And the bus is interrupted and the interrupt's not caught
Then the socket packet pocket has an error to report.

Thanks to David Radcliffe tracking down the original, complete poem by Gene Ziegler.

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