Computer-Related Quotes found within the Weird Wild World
=========================================================

"We used to quip that "password" is the most common
 password. Now it's 'password1.' Who said users haven't
 learned anything about security?" -- Bruce Schneier

"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."
                - Nathaniel Borenstein

"The NSA, ensuring the government always listens"

"Your voice is always heard" -- NSA

Privacy is dead, get over it. -- Scott McNealy

If it's there, and you can see it, it's real. 
If it's not there, and you can see it, it's virtual. 
If it's there, and you can't see it, it's transparent. 
If it's not there, and you can't see it, you erased it. 
- IBM, 1978, on virtual memory

Good, fast and cheap. Pick any two.

Pick your favorite: Lousy, Slow, Expensive.

"The only problem with the cloud is that at some point it will
rain." -- Reinhard Posch, CIO for the Austrian Federal Government at EIC

Since the IBM Selectric, keyboards have gotten
steadily worse. Now we have touchscreen keyboards.
Can we make something even worse? -- Bill Frantz        

"If Java had true garbage collection, most programs
would delete themselves upon execution." -- Robert Sewell

"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."        -- Nathaniel Borenstein, co-creator of MIME


If universal surveillance were the answer, lots of us would have
moved to the former East Germany. If surveillance cameras were
the answer, camera-happy London, with something like 500,000 of
them at a cost of $700 million, would be the safest city on the
planet. -- Bruce Schneier

What's needed is more secure software, NOT more security software.
-- Jeremiah Grossman

"It is not UNIX's job to stop you from shooting your foot. If you so
choose to do so, then it is UNIX's job to deliver Mr. Bullet to Mr Foot
in the most efficient way it knows." -- Terry Lambert


(In response to another poster's assertion that Windows NT is
easier to configure than an otherwise-similar Unix system)
Indeed. With NT, I can usually see in a matter of minutes that
what I'm trying to do simply can't be done with the available
software. -- Daniel J. Bernstein

Windows: "Where do you want to go today?"
Linux: "Where do you want to go tomorrow?"
FreeBSD: "Are you guys coming, or what?"

---

FreeBSD is the most powerful OS.
NetBSD  is the most portable OS.
OpenBSD is the most secure OS.
Windoze is the most popular OS.
Linux   is no OS.

---

Linux is no OS. It's a core dump which boots by accident.

---
Choose Windows. Choose the eXPerience.
Choose flashy menus on your fucking server.
Choose Exchange. Choose IIS.
Choose Code Red, Nimda, the Lovebug, and a sexy Melissa...
Choose Outlook and end up wondering where your stupid .docs are.
Choose not to choose. Let Micro$oft do it for you.

But why would I want to do a thing like that?

I choose not to be chosen: I choose something else.
The reasons? There are too many reasons.
And who needs reasons when you've got Linux?

(from http://p.ulh.as/, found on http://www.0xdeadbeef.info/) 
---

Macs are for those who don't want to know why their computer works.
Linux is for those who want to know why their computer works.
DOS is for those who want to know why their computer doesn't work.
Windows is for those who don't want to know why their computer doesn't work.

"Help Microsoft fight software piracy: Give Linux to a friend today!"

"This is LINUX land, in silent nights you can hear the Windows machines 
 rebooting."

MACINTOSH - Most Applications Crash, If Not The Operating System Hangs

If it doesn't work, plug it in.
If you're still having trouble, switch it on.
If you think technology can solve your problems
you don't understand technology
and you don't understand your problems.

'Instead of asking why a piece of software is using "1970s technology,"
start asking why software is ignoring 30 years of accumulated wisdom.'


Why use Windows, since there is a door? - Andre Fachat

Those selling solutions, or more accurately, those marketing IT
solutions often choose to make products sound new and exciting. Quite
why they do so has often puzzled me since I, as a former IT manager,
have always been highly skeptical of anything really new as it usually
means trouble. - Tony Lock, Freeform Dynamics on
http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2007/11/08/virtualization_not_new/

Treat your password like your toothbrush.  Don't let anybody else use it,
and get a new one every six months.  ~Clifford Stoll

Passwords are like underwear.  You don't share them,
you don't hang them on your monitor or under your keyboard,
you don't email them, or put them on a web site,
and you must change them very often.


Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach that person to
use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks.

Phish someone, and you inconvenience him for a week.
Teach a man to be phished, and you screw him for the rest of his life.
--Perry Metzger


On the Internet, nobody can hear you scream.

Jesus saves!  The rest of us better make backups.

Industry executives and analysts often mistakenly talk about strategy
as if it were some kind of chess match.  But in chess, you have just
two opponents, each with identical resources, and with luck playing
a minimal role.  The real world is much more like a poker game, with
multiple players trying to make the best of whatever hand fortune has
dealt them.  In our industry, Bill Gates owns the table until someone
proves otherwise.  ~David Moschella

User, n.  The word computer professionals use when they mean "idiot."
-- Dave Barry

The only secure computer is one that's unplugged, locked in a safe,
and buried 20 feet under the ground in a secret location... and i'm
not even too sure about that one" - Dennis Huges, FBI.

From a security perspective, if you're connected, you're screwed.
-- Daniel J. Bernstein

There's an engineering term for systems like that: "garbage".
-- Daniel J. Bernstein

In our world, software has to be small, has to be debugged, 
has to ship as part of a major initiative, has to avoid 
compatibility problems, has to avoid end user calls.
-- Bill Gates

"The most amazing achievement of the computer software industry is its
continuing cancellation of the steady and staggering gains made by the
computer hardware industry..."-- Henry Petroski

"What is this talk of 'release'?  We do not make software 'releases'.
Our software 'escapes', leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality
assurance people in its wake." --unknown


"I invented Ctrl-Alt-Delete, but Bill Gates made it famous."
        -- David Bradley, original IBM PC design team

"640K should be enough for anybody." - Bill Gates, 1981

"640k is enough for most users. Windows, on the other hand..." 
- DJ Delorie, Linux Expo 1999.

"...there is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." 
Ken Olson, President, Chairman, and Founder of DEC, 1977

"The number of UNIX installations has grown to 10, with more expected..."
                    - Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson, June 1972

"I think there is a world market for about five computers." 
Thomas J. Watson, chairman of the board of IBM, 1943

A computer without COBOL and Fortran is like a piece of chocolate cake
without ketchup and mustard.

"Combinatorics -- how to count without counting."

Linux beer: A recipe originally created by a drunken Finn in his 
basement, it has since become the home-brew of choice for impecunious 
brewers and Unix beer-lovers worldwide, many of whom change the recipe.

Tell init(8) to lock'n'load! We're going zombie hunting!

Unix *is* user friendly! You just aren't necessarily on the A-list...

"Dijkstra probably hates me"  -- Linus Torvalds, in kernel/sched.c

Life would be much easier if I had the source code.

Running Windows on a Pentium is like having a brand new Porsche 
- but only be able to drive backwards with the handbrake on.

Intel - still number 0.999873464508

TCP/IP Illustrated... Is that the swimsuit edition?  -- rgh22

System requirements: 986 processor or higher, 340 MHz modem, 6.5TB free
disk space, 8GB RAM, anti-lock braking system and a partridge in a pear
tree. Note: This software will not run on your computer.

I haven't lost my mind...it's backed up on tape somewhere.

I'm only a sysadmin. 
What do you expect me to do - something useful?!?  -- btw21

HTTP is like being married: you have to be able to handle whatever
you're given, while being very careful what you send back.

Hi! I'm a signature virus! Copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!

The purpose of most computer languages is to lengthen your resume by
a word and a comma. -- Larry Wall

Programming graphics in X is like finding sqrt(pi) using Roman numerals.

Of course my password is the same as my pet's name. My macaw's name was
Q47pY!3, but I change it every 90 days.  

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

Last night I played a blank tape at full blast.
The mime next door went nuts!

shin (n): A device for finding furniture in the dark.

I tried to categorise my CD collection as well as order by artist, but
that would have needed a six-dimensional sparse matrix. This is a Hard
Problem, so I left it alphabetised.  -- jdh28 (paraphrased)

People who love sausages, respect the law, and work with IT standards 
shouldn't watch any of them being made.  -- Peter Gutmann 

The problem with people whose minds are in the gutter is that they keep 
blocking my periscope.  -- Peter Gutmann

Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.  -- esr

What Yoda meant to say:
Java leads to Shockwave. Shockwave leads to RealAudio. 
RealAudio leads to suffering.


Linux is like living in a teepee.  No Windows, no Gates, Apache in
house.  (Seen on Usenet)

If the box says ``Windows 95 or better'', it should run on Linux, right?
(Seen on Usenet)

(On the statement print "42 monkeys" + "1 snake":)  By the
way, both Perl and Python get this wrong.  Perl gives 43 and
Python gives "42 monkeys1 snake", when the answer is clearly
"41 monkeys and 1 fat snake".        -- Jim Fulton

Perl is worse than Python because people wanted it worse.
        -- Larry Wall

Python is executable pseudocode.  Perl is executable line noise.
        -- unknown

"Life is short (You need Python)"
        -- Bruce Eckel, ANSI C++ Comitee member, author
           of "Thinking in C++" and "Thinking in Java"

I suggested holding a "Python Object Oriented Programming Seminar",
but the acronym was unpopular.
        -- Joseph Strout

"Perl will consistently give you what you want,
unless what you want is consistency." -- Larry Wall


Surely the value of C++ is zero, but C's value is now 1?
  -- map36, commenting on the "No, C++ isn't equal to D. 'C' is undeclared
  [...] C++ should really be called 1" response to "C++ -- shouldn't it
  be called D?"

No, C++ isn't equal to D. 'C' is undeclared, so we assume it's an int,
with a default value of zero.  Hence, C++ should really be called 1.
-- met24, commenting on the quote "C++ -- shouldn't it be called D?"

"If you think C++ is not overly complicated, just what is a protected
abstract virtual base pure virtual private destructor, and when was the
last time you needed one?"
        -- Tom Cargil, C++ Journal

"I made up the term 'object-oriented', and I can tell you
I didn't have C++ in mind."
        -- Alan Kay, OOPSLA '97

"Python tricks" is a tough one, cuz the language is so clean. E.g.,
C makes an art of confusing pointers with arrays and strings, which
leads to lotsa neat pointer tricks; APL mistakes everything for an
array, leading to neat one-liners; and Perl confuses everything
period, making each line a joyous adventure .
        -- Tim Peters


[3rd party product] does just what it says on the tin.... 
except that it doesn't work. -- map36

I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large part of
my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my
own programs.       -- Maurice Wilkes discovers debugging, 1949 

"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not
tried it." -- Knuth

No one who has been a programmer can escape the conclusion that computers
highlight our inability to communicate.
-- Mike Walsh, _Infosystems_, Nov 87


How I learnt some basic logic (a true story):
Teacher:  Does A and B imply B?
Me:       Errr ... no.
Teacher:  You're ugly and you're stupid. Does this imply you're stupid?
          Yes, it does.
-- Henri Johnston



"...Then anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise
anyone who receives it, in the belief that such writing will be clear
and certain, must be exceedingly simple-minded..." -- Plato, _Phaedrus_ 

If you lie to the compiler, it will get its revenge. 
- Henry Spencer 

Call 226682779489712859637199678587902423107 for a good prime!

As far as I know, we have never had an undetected error.

B can be thought of as C without types; more accurately, it is BCPL
squeezed into 8K bytes of memory and filtered through Thompson's
brain.  -- Dennis Ritchie 

"C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success." 
  -- Dennis Ritchie 

"The last good thing written in C was Franz Schubert's Symphony number 9."
        -- Erwin Dieterich


That's what I love about GUIs:
They make simple tasks easier, and complex tasks impossible. 
  -- John William Chambless

The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore,
be regarded as a criminal offence.
  -- E.W. Dijkstra

"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."  -- E.W. Dijkstra

"Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about
telescopes."
    -- E.W. Dijkstra

It is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt axe. It is equally vain to
try to do it with ten blunt axes instead.
-- Edsgar W. Dijkstra


HTML has followed nature's example... bright, sometimes flashing, colors
are a sign of indigestiblility.
  -- Rob Hartill


It's important to have good cryptography even on small platforms
because otherwise someone will hack your nanites to give you a
really silly hairstyle.
  -- Bruce Schneier

Air Conditioned Environment - Do not open Windows.

Unable to locate Chocolate! -- Operator Halted!

On a clear disk you can seek forever

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ (Okay, so I can dream.)

Misspeled?  Imposable.  My modem is erorr corecting.

"I presume you created this with xfig?" / "Yes." / "Wuss!"
-- mdw & wry

(mdw) writes test programs like Nine Inch Nails write music. -- srl

A program designed for inputs from people is usually stressed beyond
breaking point by computer-generated inputs. -- Dennis Ritchie

I thought it was very clever sending an enormous JPEG to everyone to
whinge about spam.  Next thing, a talk on virus protection: just run
this executable for information...   -- [mdw]

December 32, 1999: We're pleased to report no Y2K failures!

recursion (n): See recursion.

 Is there a way to have acronyms/abbrevs in a BibTeX entry work
          correctly?
 {Yes.}

Be very glad that your PC is insecure---it means that after you buy it, you
can break into it and install whatever software you want. What YOU want, not
what [content providers] want.  -- John Gilmore of the EFF

One supplier of software for bank dealing rooms takes the view that anyone who
pirates its code is welcome, as using it without skilled technical support
would be a fast way for a bank to lose millions.  -- Ross Anderson

Echelon appears to work very much like a Web search engine, except that
instead of searching Web pages it searches through the world's phone and data
network traffic in real time.  -- Ross Anderson, _Security Engineering_

If I had never thought about computer typesetting, I might have had a happier
life in some ways.  -- Knuth

Most good crime on this planet involves insiders.  -- Bruce Schneier

It's the undetected attack that is the most threat.  -- Jeff Stapleton

Security should be as intuitive as possible.  -- Bruce Schneier

Mary had a little key (It's all she could export),
and all the email that she sent was opened at the Fort.
-- Ron Rivest

Mary had a little key - she kept it in escrow,
and every thing that Mary said, the feds were sure to know.
-- Sam Simpson

 We have found a bug! May we burn it?
 How do you know it's a bug?
 I dereferenced a pointer and turned into a newt!
(Seen on IRC)

In bygone years I received several mailshots asking me if it wasn't
time that I did some redecorating at P.O. Box 293.
(Seen on Usenet, apropos junk mail)

 Around here a customer question is a bit like a grenade.  It gets lobbed
into the company, and everyone who notices runs for cover.  Then it explodes
into little bits that bounce off the walls.

OF the classpath, a single `.' containing, you must beware, hmm?
-- When Yoda did Java

It seems to work fairly well but composing e-mail on a phone keypad is akin to
trigonometry in binary.  -- ajtr2

There are only 10 kinds of people in the world:
Those who understand binary, and those who don't.

 Whoah. What happened to the overnight builds ?
 Me. I foolishly assumed that if it would compile on AIX it would 
compile anywhere.
(Seen on IRC)

in googlis non est, ergo non est.

in googlis veritas

A. Top Posters
> Q. What's the most annoying thing in the world?

Consistently separating words by spaces became a general custom about the
tenth century A.D., and lasted until about 1957, when FORTRAN abandoned
the practice.
-- (credited to a Sun reference manual)

Any attempt to brew coffee with a teapot should result in the error
code "418 I'm a teapot". The resulting entity body MAY be short and stout.
-- RFC 2324

I'm not interrupting you, I'm putting our conversation in full-duplex mode.
-- Antone Roundy

And don't tell me there isn't one bit of difference between null and space,
because that's exactly how much difference there is.
-- Larry Wall

2 strings walk into a bar. The first string says to the bartender,
"Bartender, I'll have a beer. u.5n$x5t?*&4ru!2[sACC~ErJ" The second string
says "Pardon my friend, he isn't NULL terminated."

A policeman pulls Werner Heisenberg over on the autobahn for speeding.
Policeman: Sir, do you know how fast you were going?
Heisenberg: No, but I know exactly where I am.

Engineers aren't boring people; we just get excited over boring things.

... one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that,
lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of
their C programs.
-- Robert Firth

SNMP = Security Not My Problem

feature, n: a documented bug | bug, n: an undocumented feature 
- Mario S F Ferreira

------------------------------------------------------------

Microsoft Restaurant

 If restaurants functioned like shrink-wrapped 
             (Microsoft) software:


 Patron: Waiter!

 Waiter: Hi, my name is Bill, and I'll be your Support Waiter.
     What seems to be the problem?

 Patron: There's a fly in my soup!

 Waiter: Try again, maybe the fly won't be there this time.

 Patron: No, it's still there.

 Waiter: Maybe it's the way you're using the soup; try eating 
     it with a fork instead.

 Patron: Even when I use the fork, the fly is still there.

 Waiter: Maybe the soup is incompatible with the bowl; what kind 
     of bowl are  you using?

 Patron: A SOUP bowl!

 Waiter: Hmmm, that should work.  Maybe it's a configuration
      problem; how was the bowl set up?

 Patron: You brought it to me on a saucer; what has that to do 
      with the fly in my soup?!

 Waiter: Can you remember everything you did before you noticed 
     the fly in your soup?

 Patron: I sat down and ordered the Soup of the Day!

 Waiter: Have you considered upgrading to the latest Soup of 
     the Day?

 Patron: You have more than one Soup of the Day each day??

 Waiter: Yes, the Soup of the Day is changed every hour.

 Patron: Well, what is the Soup of the Day now?

 Waiter: The current Soup of the Day is tomato.

 Patron: Fine.  Bring me the tomato soup, and the check.  
     I'm running late now.

 Waiter leaves and returns with another bowl of soup and the 
     check.

 Waiter: Here you are, Sir.  The soup and your check.

 Patron: This is potato soup.

 Waiter: Yes, the tomato soup wasn't ready yet.

 Patron: Well, I'm so hungry now, I'll eat anything.

 Waiter leaves.

 Patron: Waiter!  There's a gnat in my soup!


 The check:
 Soup of the Day . ........... . . .   $5.00
 Upgrade to newer Soup of the Day. . . $2.50
 Access to support . . . . . . . . . . $1.00