Quotes

Via user 'sylvan' on reddit.com - "America: Land of the Sheep, Home of the 'Fraid."

In a discussion on the Iraq war:

user frenchguy: 

    the US need to fix what they broke

user redditcensoredme:  	

    If a burglar broke into your house, breaking down the doors and the
    windows, trashed your television and stereo, then peed on your
    couch, would you be asking them to "fix it"?  Would you be saying
    that they're "already there" and need to "be part of the solution"?!

From the movie "The Shadow":

Dr. Roy Tam: I guess you would call it an implosive-explosive sub-molecular device.
Lamont Cranston: Or an Atomic Bomb.
Dr. Roy Tam: Hey, that's catchy. 

Let's blow shit up with magic! - Roger Leafbower, gnome mage from our D&D campaign.

[... talking about some action / adventure movie ...]
Tom: Overall it was pretty good, but there were some boring parts.
Andrew: Boring parts?!?!
Tom: Sometimes there were two women talking on-screen.

I've seen the future, and it will be. - Prince

[... on Hungarian notation ...] "Stop prefixing your damn code with type declarations. Booleans don't need to start with b, strings don't need to start with 'str', wake the hell up and join this decade people." - from My Personal Pet Peeves I see in Other People's Code

There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Use them in that order. -- Ed Howdershelt

We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations. - Charles Swindoll

Old programming adage: "Good programmers write good code; great programmers steal great code."

Steven Levitt: "Morality is the way you'd like the world to work. Economics is the way the world actually does work."

"... I'd like to find your inner child, and kick it's little ass." - The Eagles, "Get Over It".

Adrian von Bidder, talking about greylisting on debian.org: "Hmm. Discussing mail problems on irc while answering mailing list mail in a mail setup related mail thread mail confuses me mail. can't mail stop mail."

From the CIA Officers' Letter on Torture: "The US has been in the forefront of the human rights campaign throughout the 20th century, led by Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. The end of World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust inspired the United States to take the lead in making the case that human rights were universal, not parochial. Until recently the policy of our country was that all people, not just citizens of the United States, were entitled to these protections."

Steve Yegge talking about Agile consulting: "You'll only find seminars about the Bad kind of Agile. And if in the future you ever find me touring around as an Agile Consultant, charging audiences to hear my deep wisdom and insight about Agile Development, you have my permission to cut my balls off. If I say I was just kidding, say I told you I'd say that. If I then say I'm Tyler Durden and I order you not to cut my balls off, say I definitely said I was going to say that, and then you cut 'em right off."

From reddit.com, user crwper talking about wingsuits (a special outfit worn during parachuting that allows the user to glide a considerable distance): There is at least one person seriously working on landing a wingsuit. The main problem as I see it is that even if you're able to flare the suit just right to kill the vertical speed, you're usually stuck with about 100 mph of horizontal speed. To those who have said, "Tuck and roll," I say, "Look out the window when you're driving down the highway at 100 mph, then tell me tucking and rolling sounds like a good plan." Heh, so you're basically a human-sized lawn dart. Good to know.

From 7 Reasons the 21st Century Is Making Us Miserable: [...talking about progress...] "That's another old-world inconvenience, like having to wash your clothes in a creek or wait for a raccoon to wander by the outhouse so you could wipe your ass with it. "

The character Sam (played by DeNiro) talking about assessing the risk of a given situation: "If there is doubt, there is no doubt." - from the movie "Ronin (1988)".

Phil Carmody, on playing Angband: "This is only the second character I've managed to take beyond 600', (and about only my 10th game ever) and I'm beginning to come up against things that enchant my trousers with brownness, IYKWIM."

C++ : an octopus made by nailing extra legs onto a dog. - unknown

Note to the neocons: "Big Brother is Big Government." - James Graves 2006/6/24

"No more compromises. No more half-measures." - Deacon Frost, from the movie Blade.

"Katrina, Harriet Myers, The Dubai Port Deal, skyrocketing gas prices, shrinking wages for working people, staggering debt, astronomical foreign debt, outsourcing, open borders, contempt for the opinion of the American people, the war on science, media manipulation, faith based initives, a cavalier attitude toward fundamental freedoms-- this President has run the most arrogant and out-of-touch administration in my lifetime, perhaps, in any American's lifetime." -- Doug McIntyre

From What You Can't Say by Paul Graham: "The statements that make people mad are the ones they worry might be believed. I suspect the statements that make people maddest are those they worry might be true."

  A post on Slashdot talking about eyesight research: "Actually,
  there was a scientific paper released recently (which I can't find in
  Google even after more than 90 seconds of serious searching) which
  suggested...".  

  Skippy kangaroo fires back: "Truly, this is living in the Internet
  age.  Ninety seconds!"

[Talking about the Reavers] Jayne Cobb: Hell, I'll kill a man in a fair fight. Or if I think he's gonna start a fair fight. Or if he bothers me, or if there's a woman. Or if I'm gettin paid... mostly only when I'm gettin paid. [...] But eating people alive, when does that get fun? -- from the movie "Serenity"

Another good one from Futurama:

  Fry: But won't that change history?
  
  Professor Hubert Farnsworth: [ultra sarcastic] Ohh, a lesson in not
  changing history from Mr. "I'm My Own Grandfather"! Let's just steal
  the damn dish and get out of here! Screw history! 

It it commonly believed that the foundation of science is mathmatics. This is incorrect. The foundation of science is engineering. If you can't, in any conceivable way, affect the world with the theory you seek to verify, then it isn't science. Mathmatics is pure fantasy, it does not need to have any basis in reality. - James Graves, September 2005.

"There's only one person who cannot walk away from your problems." --Vernor Vinge (via Don Blaheta's Blog)

"There is more to setting up a company than incorporating it, of course: insurance, business license, unemployment compensation, various things with the IRS. I'm not even sure what the list is, because we, ah, skipped all that. When we got real funding near the end of 1996, we hired a great CFO, who fixed everything retroactively. It turns out that no one comes and arrests you if you don't do everything you're supposed to when starting a company. And a good thing too, or a lot of startups would never get started." - Paul Graham.

"The surest way not to get anyone's approval or acceptance is to appear that you yearn for these." - Kaz Kylheku in comp.lang.lisp

John Ratey, discussing the many sources of interesting data we have access to and the resulting information overload: "There are more demands on our attention and less training for us to stop and take it all in. We seem to be amazing ourselves to death." From the Seattle Times article.

David Brin, commenting on people's reactions (especially Creationists) to the news about tiny humans recently discovered (via Boing Boing):

   "I find it truly stunning how many people can shrug off stuff like this,
   preferring instead a tiny, cramped cosmos just 6,000 years old,
   scheduled to end any-time-now in a scripted stage show. An ancient and
   immense and ongoing cosmos is so vastly more dramatic and worthy of a
   majestic Creator.  Our brains, capable of exploring His universe,
   picking up His tools and doing His work, seem destined for much more
   than cowering in a corner, praying that some of our neighbors will go to
   hell..."

Paul Graham talking about the rising popularity of nerds: "Now women ask me where they can meet nerds. (The answer that springs to mind is 'Usenix,' but that would be like drinking from a firehose.)"

Give a man a match, and he'll be warm for a minute, but set him on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life. (Paraphrased from Terry Pratchett) - via Khym Chanur on Groklaw

(discussing a DnD campaign) 

mark.green@reading.ac.uk said:
    Our wizard blew through everything with Twinned Repeated
    multiply-Admixed Fireballs with lifted damage caps.

kershek@somewhere.net replied: 
    That sounds like something you'd put in a drag racing stock car.

From Futurama, where God is talking to Bender:

God: Bender, being God isn't easy. If you do too much, people get
dependent on you; and if you do nothing, they lose hope. You have to use
a light touch, like a safecracker or a pickpocket.

Bender: Or a guy who burns down a bar for the insurance money!

God: Yes, if you make it look like an electrical thing. When you do
things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.

I've heard it elsewhere, but this sums it up pretty good. Marcus Cole from Babylon 5: "I used to think it was a terrible thing that life was so unfair. Then I thought, 'what if life *were* fair, and all of the terrible things that happen to us came because we really deserved them?' Now I take great comfort in the general unfairness and hostility of the universe."

Peter Drucker famously quipped, "There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all."

Thomas Edison, said it best: Most people miss out on opportunity, because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work.

This is the signature of Pooky on Groklaw: Veni, vidi, velcro. "I came, I saw, I stuck around."

Slashdot poster pclminion wrote this response to explain the difference between troubleshooting and debugging: 'Or, to put it another way, "troubleshooting" is what a tech support monkey does. "Debugging" is what an engineer does.'

From Cory Doctorow's Eastern Standard Tribe: 'I once had a Tai Chi instructor who explained the difference between Chinese and Western medicine thus: "Western medicine is based on corpses, things that you discover by cutting up dead bodies and pulling them apart. Chinese medicine is based on living flesh, things observed from vital, moving humans."'

Gordon D. Pusch wrote in sci.space.tech: "Hypersonic travel combines all the disadvantages of airplanes with all the disadvantages of rocket flight and all the disadvantages of re-entry --- continuously."

Eben Moglen (General Counsel for the FSF): "There's a traditional definition of a shyster: a lawyer who, when the law is against him, pounds on the facts; when the facts are against him, pounds on the law; and when both the facts and the law are against him, pounds on the table."

They say good fences make for good neighbors. In the programming world, good interfaces make for good modules.

From Markus Kuhn on the Risks Digest: "One is tempted to think of the planned RFID tagging of all US DoD supplies as a major step forward. This will finally enable the design of a new and far safer generation of mines that detonate only near people carrying DoD equipment."

Seen on Groklaw.net: "As someone wrote me the other day, Windows comes from a box. Linux comes from a community."

Here's one widely attributed to Stalin (but we don't know for sure): "Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything."

Old, old one: Never argue with an idiot. He'll drag you down to his level, then beat you with experience.

[Talking about reasonable vs. unreasonable requests made by software] 'Faulting the user for always saying "Ok" is like faulting a blindfolded man for bumping into walls. Capabilities remove the blindfold.' -- Tyler Close

Don't waste your time, or ours, on crude primate politics. - ESR in How To Ask Questions The Smart Way

Posted by Jim Royal in the B5 newsgroup:

"Of course the *people* don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders
of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple
matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist
dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no
voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. 
That is easy.  All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked,
and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the
country to greater danger." 

-- Herman Goering, Hitler's Reich-Marshall, at the Nuremberg trials 

BenjyD on Slashdot posits Ashcroft's Corolary to Godwin's Law: "As a dispute goes on, the probability of one side claiming the other is helping terrorists approaches one."

On a Slashdot poll about breakfast food, (Freedom Fries vs. French Fries, etc.): Dil NaOH writes: "No Freedom Toast option?" The Cydonian replies: "Freedom is already toasted."

The D.U.M.B. rule of thumb: Disasters Usually Motivate Backups. - posted by bpfinn on slashdot.

One of the stars of 'Star Trek: Nemesis' said something to the effect of: Considering how much time the main characters spend talking to themselves, the film should have been called 'Star Trek: Narcissist'.

Regarding the article on Thermal Depolymerization in Discover Magazine: "'There is no reason why we can't turn sewage, including human excrement, into a glorious oil,' says engineer Terry Adams, a project consultant." The Amigo quips: "So the phrase 'Shit! I'm outta gas.' is no longer an exclamation, but rather a command to your passengers.'

Slashdot poster brad-x wrote in reference to Microsoft's shared source initiatives: "You can't accuse a shyster of appealing to your needs because he's interested in them."

Slashdot poster AndroidCat wrote: "Star Trek V never happened! No way! They went straight from IV to VI. It was all a numbering mistake. But if it did happen, here's the plot synopsis: Star Trek V (Never Happened): God and Kirk compare egos. God loses."

Discussing a mercury self-poisoning incident by another poster, zenyu commented: "Since you probably have a slightly higher than normal mercury level you can advise your fellow passengers in an airplane crash not to eat you first."

In a recent article on slashdot about using fake access point broadcasts to hide yours, laserjet commented: "... There are better ways to protect yourself than this. This is just obscurity. It is like trying to avoid sexually transmitted diseases by dressing as a transvestite. Sure, it may work, but there are much better solutions."

Seen on rec.humor.funny: "There are only 10 kinds of people in the world -- Those who understand binary, and those who don't."

From Slashdot movie review discussion: I just hope it won't be worse than 'Battlefield Earth'. Now there's another movie that sucked. Indeed. Some would even go so far as to say it was... travolting. - why-is-it on Slashdot.

From the fortune file: Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.

Capitalism and free markets only work well when all the buyers and sellers aren't stupid. - unknown

If you want to see a good definition of 'invective', be sure to check out Nietzsche's Der Antichrist. Whew!

... to Count Dooku (Christopher Lee), and you know he's bad because his name sounds kind of like kidspeak for "turd." - salon.com review of SW:AotC.

From the RISKS Digest 22.09 : What they are sure about, however, is that no more credit reports will be stolen -- at least from this group. "We're not sure how this happened, to be honest," said Melinda Wilson, spokeswoman for Ford Motor Credit. "We thought we had a tight system. We're going to have an even tighter system now." - that really inspires confidence in me. Yikes. So where does their confidence come from?

The three R's of troubleshooting MS Windows: reboot, reinstall, reformat. - unknown

So now he's called: The Artist Formerly Known as the Artist Formerly Known as Prince. - unknown

From Reflections on Brilliant Digital: Single Points of Internet 0wnership: "Brilliant Digital and Doubleclick Can Bite My Shiny Metal Ass."

From comp.risks submitter Donald A. Norman on the discussion of user interfaces: "Don't get me started on intuitive. You know what's intuitive? Fear of heights. Everything else we call intuitive, such as walking or using a pencil took years of practice."

So I'm supposed to pay the State of Illinois to allow them to track my movements? I think I'll pass on IPass. - James

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate. - Unknown

"Flowers and jewelry are like ... sports and beer..." - bad analogy attempt by Lyn.

``Sufficiently advanced communication is indistinguishable from noise'' -- Steve Witham playing off the famous Arthur C. Clarke quote

Often, the things we find attractive in another are not the same things we find lovable.

Quote from a previous poster: "Elections can be fixed. Like the last one." "I thought the last election was broken, not fixed." (Refering to the 2000 presidential campaign in the USA) - big.ears on slashdot.org

"Not only does the English Language borrow words from other languages, it sometimes chases them down dark alleys, hits them over the head, and goes through their pockets." - Eddy Peters

Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens. - Jimi Hendrix

The difference between knowledge and wisdom is PAIN. - unknown

Data becomes information, information becomes knowledge, and knowledge becomes wisdom. Eventually.

The lottery is a tax on people who aren't good at math.

While I wish someone would explain elementary thermodynamics to the Wachowski brothers (writers of The Matrix), I do think the phrase "battery farm working conditions" has a certain cachet. If you've seen a modern call center you'll know what I mean.

My opinion was carved into stone, built as part of an ancient temple, abandoned, buried, dug up by archeologists, cleaned off, and put into a museum. (Now, how's that for non-negotiable?)

There is a fungus among us.

How glorious is God, that he gave use life and sentience. How cruel is God, that he also gave us knowledge of our own mortality.

[... talking about bandwidth scaling issues in regards to X-rated web sites ...] "From a purely technical point of view, it's quite interesting." - Albert

You know your company is doing bad when they plot your stock price chart on a logarithmic scale, which shows every last wiggle as the price hovers around one dollar.

From an interview by new Corel CEO Derek Burney in PCWORLD.COM talking about Microsoft's .NET:

PCW: In that sort of universe, couldn't we see open-source plug-ins for
Quattro Pro?

Burney: Well, it's the open source concept, but one notch better,
because the source wouldn't be open [...]

You can lead a man to science, but you can't make him think. - Orpheus

From the pets.com shutdown announcement: "The company plans to sell the majority of its assets, [...] and its Sock Puppet brand icon and other intellectual property." I am so proud to work in an industry where a sock puppet is considered valuable intellectual property.

From: dselesky@ma.ultranet.com (Don Selesky)
Subject: Updated proverb for this millenium

Give a man a fish, and you've fed him for a day.

Teach a man to fish, and you can sell him a ton of accessories.

The Internet makes it easy to be a jerk.

Quid quid Latine Dictum sit, altum viditur. (Whatever is said in Latin, sounds important.) - Stuart Thomson

"You are NOT what you eat... you are what you don't poop." -- king_rodent (putting the eek in geek)

When you go to achieve some new great thing, it is really helpful to only try to achieve *one* amazing thing at a time. If you try to do two or three, then the product of narrow probabilities bites you in the ass, and your chances of success dwindle to insignificance. -- Crispin Cowan on the Free Software Business List

There is this special biologist word we use for 'stable'. It is 'dead'. -- Jack Cohen

[ talking about dangrouous fuel / oxidizer combos (such as acetylene) for rocket engines ] At least H2O2 and various hydrazines need better reasons to explode than "He looked at me funny." - Jake McGuire

Question:

How does a rocket/jet engine work?

Answer from Ian Stirling:

It's not that hard. Stuff goes in, stuff happens, stuff goes out faster than it came in.

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny..." -- Issac Asimov

[ talking about intelligence tests and AI ] "Human-like thought consists of being able to understand what human-like thought is from having seen some examples but never having heard a rigorous definition." --JoSH (josh@discuss.foresight.org)

"He didn't just burn his bridges, he laser-guided-bombed them." - James, referring to some poor choices a former associate of mine made recently.

"... and my other friend, who is also a god ..." - Mark K. He was talking about his MUD'ding experience, I hope. I dunno, I'd better think twice about making him mad, or maybe I'll get zapped with a lightning bolt some day.

"It's everything that's wrong with America... in a carton." - Mark K. He was referring to the strawberry Quik milk I was drinking. I still don't know what he's got against it. He's fine with the chocolate flavor... go figure.

"Love us with money, or we'll hate you with hammers!" - Milk and Cheese (dairy products gone bad)

Posted in rec.humor.funny:

    >From: sar@mitre.org (Scott A. Renner)
    >Subject: vegetarians, explain this one

    If we aren't supposed to eat animals, then why are they made out of meat?

    [from the correspondence section of *Harper's Magazine*, November 1997]

"Life is more than a choice of which affectation to indulge in today." - Captain Yuan from Walter Jon William's Aristoi

"Statistics is like a bikini (can't you hear Forest Gump now), what is reveals is suggestive, but what is conceals is vital." - posted by Keith Schwols in soc.singles

Posted by Michelle Dick from alt.fashion:

        While you don't necessarily dress for a man,
        it doesn't hurt, once in a while, to see one
        drool like the pathetic dog that he is.
                 -- copy from a sexy lingerie ad

A [Holy] Roller finally got fed up with my responses to his dogma one day and
demanded, "Do you know what's going to happen when you stand in judgment
before God?"  I responded, "God is going to have some big explaining to do."
The Roller then gave up. 
    - Knute Rife (rifek@delphi.com), posted in soc.religion.unitarian-univ 
      May 31, 1996.

"Sleep is for the weak." - Bruno

"[While driving] I'd rather hit a person I don't like than a dog I don't know." - Jim K.

"But the light is on, Albert!" - James. He was explaining to me his estimate of the fuel reserve, while we were passing gas stations.

Descent Quotes:

Having grown up in the 80's and still being a somewhat avid video gamer, I can attest to both the advantages and risks of habits gained in VR-like situations. It is common for me to drive 30 miles to my home after an intense hour long multi-player DESCENT(*) session, during which, my nerves are *still* on alert from the game. At these times, I am more alert and aware of my surroundings, however, my Jeep doesn't have the ability to fire homing missiles and take off vertically at mach-3. - (c) 1996 Rob Streno xinc@infinet.com

After a long game of net-Descent I find that my visual field of concentration is wider than usual and I "spot" more than usual, but that I misjudge speed and placement, tend to "slide" around corners and bank my head when I turn, and rotate my body rather than my head to see things that aren't in front of me. - Garth Kidd

Technology / Programming

"...it's more fun to write assertions than to debug code..." - Roger Browne (roger@eiffel.demon.co.uk)

"Eiffel is the complete opposite of Perl... I'm still trying to figure out if that's a good thing or a bad thing." - James

Insults

"Take it like a man, baby, if that's what you are." - from "Movin' on Up" by M-People

My foot hurts from kicking your ass so much. - Ago (after a particularly vicious game of Doom)