The system will be down for 10 days for preventive maintenance.
The Tao is like a glob pattern|used but never used up. It is like the extern void: filled with infinite possibilities. It is masked but always present. I don't know who built to it. It came before the first kernel.
The trouble with computers is that they do what you tell them, not what you want.\n-- D. Cohen
The UNIX philosophy basically involves giving you enough rope to hang yourself.  And then a couple of feet more, just to be sure.
The use of anthropomorphic terminology when dealing with computing systems is a symptom of professional immaturity.\n-- Edsger Dijkstra
The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offence.\n-- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
The value of a program is proportional to the weight of its output.
The world is coming to an end ... SAVE YOUR BUFFERS!!!
The world is coming to an end.  Please log off.
The world is not octal despite DEC.
The world will end in 5 minutes.  Please log out.
The young lady had an unusual list, Linked in part to a structural weakness. She set no preconditions.
THEGODDESSOFTHENETHASTWISTINGFINGERSANDHERVOICEISLIKEAJAVELININTHENIGHTDUDE
There are never any bugs you haven't found yet.
There are new messages.
There are no games on this system.
There are running jobs.  Why don't you go chase them?
There are three kinds of people: men, women, and unix.
There are three possibilities: Pioneer's solar panel has turned away from the sun; there's a large meteor blocking transmission; someone loaded Star Trek 3.2 into our video processor.
There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence.\n-- Jeremy S. Anderson
There are two ways of constructing a software design.  One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.\n-- C.A.R. Hoare
There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.
There is is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.\n-- Ken Olsen (President of Digital Equipment Corporation), Convention of the World Future Society, in Boston, 1977
There is no distinction between any AI program and some existent game.
There's got to be more to life than compile-and-go.
They are called computers simply because computation is the only significant job that has so far been given to them.
They are relatively good but absolutely terrible.\n-- Alan Kay, commenting on Apollos
They seem to have learned the habit of cowering before authority even when not actually threatened.  How very nice for authority.  I decided not to learn this particular lesson.\n-- Richard Stallman
Think of it!  With VLSI we can pack 100 ENIACs in 1 sq. cm.!
Think of your family tonight.  Try to crawl home after the computer crashes.
This dungeon is owned and operated by Frobozz Magic Co., Ltd.
This file will self-destruct in five minutes.
This is an unauthorized cybernetic announcement.
"This is lemma 1.1.  We start a new chapter so the numbers all go back to one."\n-- Prof. Seager, C&O 351
This login session: $13.76, but for you $11.88.
This login session: $13.99
This process can check if this value is zero, and if it is, it does something child-like.\n-- Forbes Burkowski, CS 454, University of Washington
This screen intentionally left blank.
This system will self-destruct in five minutes.
* * * * * THIS TERMINAL IS IN USE * * * * *
Those parts of the system that you can hit with a hammer (not advised) are called hardware; those program instructions that you can only curse at are called software.\n-- Levitating Trains and Kamikaze Genes: Technological Literacy for the 1990's.
Those who can't write, write manuals.
Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.\n-- Henry Spencer
Thrashing is just virtual crashing.
Thus spake the master programmer|"A well-written program is its own heaven; a poorly-written program is its own hell."\n-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
Thus spake the master programmer|"After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless."\n-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
Thus spake the master programmer|"Let the programmers be many and the managers few -- then all will be productive."\n-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
Thus spake the master programmer|"Though a program be but three lines long, someday it will have to be maintained."\n-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
Thus spake the master programmer|"Time for you to leave."\n-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
Thus spake the master programmer|"When a program is being tested, it is too late to make design changes."\n-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
Thus spake the master programmer|"When you have learned to snatch the error code from the trap frame, it will be time for you to leave."\n-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
Thus spake the master programmer|"Without the wind, the grass does not move.  Without software, hardware is useless."\n-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
Thus spake the master programmer|"You can demonstrate a program for a corporate executive, but you can't make him computer literate."\n-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
Time sharing: The use of many people by the computer.
Time-sharing is the junk-mail part of the computer business.\n-- H.R.J. Grosch (attributed)
To be a kind of moral Unix, he touched the hem of Nature's shift.\n-- Shelley
To communicate is the beginning of understanding.\n-- AT&T
To err is human -- to blame it on a computer is even more so.
To err is human, to forgive, beyond the scope of the Operating System.
To iterate is human, to recurse, divine.\n-- Robert Heller
To say that UNIX is doomed is pretty rabid, OS/2 will certainly play a role, but you don't build a hundred million instructions per second multiprocessor micro and then try to run it on OS/2.  I mean, get serious.\n-- William Zachmann, International Data Corp
To the systems programmer, users and applications serve only to provide a test load.
To understand a program you must become both the machine and the program.
Today is a good day for information-gathering.  Read someone else's mail file.
Today is the first day of the rest of your lossage.
Tomorrow's computers some time next month.\n-- DEC
Too often people have come to me and said, "If I had just one wish for anything in all the world, I would wish for more user-defined equations in the HP-51820A Waveform Generator Software."\n-- Instrument News [Once is too often.  Ed.]
TRANSACTION CANCELLED - FARECARD RETURNED
Trap full -- please empty.
Truly simple systems... require infinite testing.\n-- Norman Augustine
Try `stty 0' -- it works much better.
try again
Trying to be happy is like trying to build a machine for which the only specification is that it should run noiselessly.
Type louder, please.
U       X e dUdX, e dX, cosine, secant, tangent, sine, 3.14159...
Ummm, well, OK.  The network's the network, the computer's the computer. Sorry for the confusion.\n-- Sun Microsystems
"Uncle Cosmo ... why do they call this a word processor?"\n"It's simple, Skyler ... you've seen what food processors do to food, right?"\n-- MacNelley, "Shoe"
Unfortunately, most programmers like to play with new toys.  I have many friends who, immediately upon buying a snakebite kit, would be tempted to throw the first person they see to the ground, tie the tourniquet on him, slash him with the knife, and apply suction to the wound.\n-- Jon Bentley
UNIX enhancements aren't.
Unix gives you just enough rope to hang yourself -- and then a couple of more feet, just to be sure.\n-- Eric Allman ... We make rope. -- Rob Gingell on Sun Microsystem's new virtual memory.
Unix is a Registered Bell of AT&T Trademark Laboratories.\n-- Donn Seeley
* UNIX is a Trademark of Bell Laboratories.
UNIX is hot.  It's more than hot.  It's steaming.  It's quicksilver lightning with a laserbeam kicker.\n-- Michael Jay Tucker
UNIX is many things to many people, but it's never been everything to anybody.
Unix is the worst operating system; except for all others.\n-- Berry Kercheval
Unix soit qui mal y pense\n[Unix to him who evil thinks?]
UNIX was half a billion (500000000) seconds old on Tue Nov  5 00:53:20 1985 GMT (measuring since the time(2) epoch).\n-- Andy Tannenbaum
UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things.\n-- Doug Gwyn
Unix will self-destruct in five seconds... 4... 3... 2... 1...
Usage: fortune -P [-f] -a [xsz] Q: file [rKe9] -v6[+] file1 ...
Usage: fortune -P [] -a [xsz] [Q: [file]] [rKe9] -v6[+] dataspec ... inputdir
USENET would be a better laboratory if there were more labor and less oratory.\n-- Elizabeth Haley
User hostile.
Using TSO is like kicking a dead whale down the beach.\n-- S.C. Johnson
/usr/news/gotcha
Variables don't; constants aren't.
Vax Vobiscum
"Virtual" means never knowing where your next byte is coming from.
Vitamin C deficiency is apauling.
VMS Beer: Requires minimal user interaction, except for popping the top and sipping.  However cans have been known on occasion to explode, or contain extremely un-beer-like contents.
VMS is like a nightmare about RXS-11M.
VMS version 2.0 ==>
<< WAIT >>
Wasn't there something about a PASCAL programmer knowing the value of everything and the Wirth of nothing?
We all agree on the necessity of compromise.  We just can't agree on when it's necessary to compromise.\n-- Larry Wall
We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge.\n-- John Naisbitt, Megatrends
We are experiencing system trouble -- do not adjust your terminal.
We are Microsoft.  Unix is irrelevant.  Openness is futile.  Prepare to be assimilated.
We are not a clone.
"We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem."\n-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
We are preparing to think about contemplating preliminary work on plans to develop a schedule for producing the 10th Edition of the Unix Programmers Manual.\n-- Andrew Hume
We can found no scientific discipline, nor a healthy profession on the technical mistakes of the Department of Defense and IBM.\n-- Edsger Dijkstra
We don't really understand it, so we'll give it to the programmers.
[We] use bad software and bad machines for the wrong things.\n-- R.W. Hamming
Welcome to boggle - do you want instructions? D    G    G    O O    Y    A    N A    D    B    T K    I    S    P Enter words: >
What is the difference between a Turing machine and the modern computer? It's the same as that between Hillary's ascent of Everest and the establishment of a Hilton on its peak.
"What is the Nature of God?"\nCLICK...CLICK...WHIRRR...CLICK...=BEEP!=\n1 QT. SOUR CREAM\n1 TSP. SAUERKRAUT\n1/2 CUT CHIVES.\nSTIR AND SPRINKLE WITH BACON BITS. "I've just GOT to start labeling my software..."\n-- Bloom County
What the hell is it good for?\n-- Robert Lloyd (engineer of the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM), to colleagues who insisted that the microprocessor was the wave of the future, c. 1968
What this country needs is a good five cent microcomputer.
"What's that thing?"\n"Well, it's a highly technical, sensitive instrument we use in computer repair.  Being a layman, you probably can't grasp exactly what it does.  We call it a two-by-four."\n-- Jeff MacNelley, "Shoe"
When Dexter's on the Internet, can Hell be far behind?"
... when fits of creativity run strong, more than one programmer or writer has been known to abandon the desktop for the more spacious floor.\n-- Fred Brooks
When someone says "I want a programming language in which I need only say what I wish done," give him a lollipop.
When we understand knowledge-based systems, it will be as before -- except our fingertips will have been singed.\n-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
When we write programs that "learn", it turns out we do and they don't.
Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool discovers something which either abolishes the system or expands it beyond recognition.
Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equpped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vaccuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1 1/2 tons.\n-- Popular Mechanics, March 1949
"Who cares if it doesn't do anything?  It was made with our new Triple-Iso-Bifurcated-Krypton-Gate-MOS process ..."
Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.
Why did the Roman Empire collapse?  What is the Latin for office automation?
Why do we want intelligent terminals  when there are so many stupid users?
Windows Airlines|The terminal is very neat and clean, the attendants all very attractive, the pilots very capable. The fleet of Learjets the carrier operates is immense. Your jet takes off without a hitch, pushing above the clouds, and at 20,000 feet it explodes without warning.
With your bare hands?!?
Within a computer, natural language is unnatural.
Work continues in this area.\n-- DEC's SPR-Answering-Automaton
Worthless.\n-- Sir George Bidell Airy, KCB, MA, LLD, DCL, FRS, FRAS (Astronomer Royal of Great Britain), estimating for the Chancellor of the Exchequer the potential value of the "analytical engine" invented by Charles Babbage, September 15, 1842.
Would you people stop playing these stupid games?!?!?!!!!
Writing software is more fun than working.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of APL, I shall fear no evil, for I can string six primitive monadic and dyadic operators together.\n-- Steve Higgins
Yes, we will be going to OSI, Mars, and Pluto, but not necessarily in that order.\n-- George Michaelson
You are an insult to my intelligence!  I demand that you log off immediately.
You are false data.
You are in a maze of little twisting passages, all alike.
You are in a maze of little twisting passages, all different.
You are in the hall of the mountain king.
You are lost in the Swamps of Despair.
You can be replaced by this computer.
You can bring any calculator you like to the midterm, as long as it doesn't dim the lights when you turn it on.\n-- Hepler, Systems Design 182
You can do this in a number of ways.  IBM chose to do all of them. Why do you find that funny?\n-- D. Taylor, Computer Science 350
You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing viability of FORTRAN.\n-- Alan Perlis
You can now buy more gates with less specifications than at any other time in history.\n-- Kenneth Parker
You can tell how far we have to go, when FORTRAN is the language of supercomputers.\n-- Steven Feiner
You can tune a piano, but you can't tuna fish. You can tune a filesystem, but you can't tuna fish.\n-- from the tunefs(8) man page
You can write a small letter to Grandma in the filename.\n-- Forbes Burkowski, CS, University of Washington
You can't go home again, unless you set $HOME.
"You can't make a program without broken egos."
You can't take damsel here now.
You do not have mail.
You don't have to know how the computer works, just how to work the computer.
You had mail, but the super-user read it, and deleted it!
You had mail.  Paul read it, so ask him what it said.
You have a massage (from the Swedish prime minister).
You have a message from the operator.
You have a tendency to feel you are superior to most computers.
You have acquired a scroll entitled 'irk gleknow mizk'(n).--More-- This is an IBM Manual scroll.--More-- You are permanently confused.\n-- Dave Decot
You have junk mail.
You have mail.
You know you've been sitting in front of your Lisp machine too long when you go out to the junk food machine and start wondering how to make it give you the CADR of Item H so you can get that yummie chocolate cupcake that's stuck behind the disgusting vanilla one.
You know you've been spending too much time on the computer when your friend misdates a check, and you suggest adding a "++" to fix it.
You know, Callahan's is a peaceable bar, but if you ask that dog what his favorite formatter is, and he says "roff! roff!", well, I'll just have to...
You might have mail.
You must realize that the computer has it in for you.  The irrefutable proof of this is that the computer always does what you tell it to do.
You scratch my tape, and I'll scratch yours.
You will have a head crash on your private pack.
You will have many recoverable tape errors.
You will lose an important disk file.
You will lose an important tape file.
You're already carrying the sphere!
You're at Witt's End.
You're not Dave.  Who are you?
You're using a keyboard!  How quaint!
You've been Berkeley'ed!
Your code should be more efficient!
Your computer account is overdrawn.  Please reauthorize.
Your computer account is overdrawn.  Please see Big Brother.
Your fault -- core dumped
Your files are now being encrypted and thrown into the bit bucket. EOF
Your mode of life will be changed to ASCII.
Your mode of life will be changed to EBCDIC.
Your password is pitifully obvious.
Your program is sick!  Shoot it and put it out of its memory.
I mean, if 10 years from now, when you are doing something quick and dirty, you suddenly visualize that I am looking over your shoulders and say to yourself, "Dijkstra would not have liked this", well that would be enough immortality for me.
As seen on slashdot about what you can do with your cable modems|(http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=32387&cid=3495418): Summary: It's not about how you handle your equipment, it's where you have permission to stick it. The post is by "redgekko"
"The biggest problem facing software engineering is the one it will\nnever solve - politics."\n-- Gavin Baker, ca 1996, An unusually cynical moment inspired by working on a large project beseiged by politics
"Don't fear the pen. When in doubt, draw a pretty picture."\n--Baker's Third Law of Design.
Breakpoint 1, main (argc=1, argv=0xbffffc40) at main.c:29 29   printf ("Welcome to GNU Hell!\n");\n-- "GNU Libtool documentation"
