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Alan Perlis' programming epigrams Clark Ashton Smith's epigrams H.L. Mencken Quotations The Wisdom of Supermodels Positive Atheism's Big Scary List of Pat Robertson Quotations

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rah_crooked_house ↩

"Americans are considered crazy anywhere in the world.
They will usually concede a basis for the accusation but point to California as the focus of the infection. Californians stoutly maintain that their bad reputation is derived solely from the acts of the inhabitants of Los Angeles County. Angelenos will, when pressed, admit the charge but explain hastily, "It's Hollywood. It's not our fault--we didn't ask for it; Hollywood just grew."
The people in Hollywood don't care; they glory in it. If you are interested, they will drive you up Laurel Canyon "--where we keep the violent cases." The Canyonites--the brown-legged women, the trunks-clad men constantly busy building and rebuilding their slap-happy unfinished houses--regard with faint contempt the dull creatures who live down in the flats, and treasure in their hearts the secret knowledge that they, and only they, know how to live."
-"And He Built a Crooked House", by Robert A. Heinlein

---

lara_logan_news ↩

"If I were to watch the news that you're getting in the United States, I'd just blow my brains out, because it would just drive me NUTS."
-CBS News Chief Foreign Correspondent Lara Logan on Daily Show, 2008Jun17

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carbon_line_has_been_crossed ↩

"I am saddened and physically ill over the red flags I see around me. Many suggest I simply ignore it and move on, but for some of us a line has been crossed that we can not follow. Everybody has an opinion about Cocoa, but at this point none of them are really appropriate for this list.
I sit down everyday and have many years of meaningful Carbon development work ahead of me, regardless of what future steps Apple takes, or any arguments people may make, or what names some want to call me. This list is about the only place we can discuss it and even here we are bombarded constantly by the NSIrresistibleCharms of Cocoa. I don't know how it works on other lists, but I don't want to end every thread with a discussion on the magnificence of Cocoa.
-Crazy person Jack Small in carbon-dev mailing list

---

fsj_tardville ↩

"FWIW, if you do believe that we're headed toward a cloud computing future, can you imagine the cloud that Microsoft will run? What will they call it? TardVille? Who in their right mind will choose to get on that cloud? I suppose the poor dopes who currently use AOL on dial-up will end up being shuffled over onto that platform through some Borg-AOL "partnership" or merger.
You know what? I despise those people. Nevertheless I also weep for them."
-Fake Steve Jobs

---

dijkstra_debugging ↩

"If you want more effective programmers, you will discover that they should not waste their time debugging - they should not introduce the bugs to start with."
-Edsger W. Dijkstra, 1972

---

grognards ↩

"Is it any wonder, then, that the grognards recoil in distaste? They’re still reliving their Thieves World dreams of trodding the jeweled thrones of gritty and brutal worlds beneath their leather sandals. They wish to carve their own paths in their dreamworlds with sword and spell, blood and grit. They rage against the powers that be by plundering temples and evading town guards. They don’t want to rescue orphans, support good king Lomipop, or build hovels for the homeless. They certainly don’t want to be the town guards, who they know are all either inept and bumbling, or corrupt and cruel. At least, that’s the way it used to be..."
-Trollsmyth, "Changing aesthetics of AD&D"

[But then, that's why I never liked AD&D in the first place, it was never Moorcock and Leiber and Howard enough for me.]

---

knuth_unit ↩

"the idea of immediate compilation and "unit tests" appeals to me only rarely, when I’m feeling my way in a totally unknown environment and need feedback about what works and what doesn’t. Otherwise, lots of time is wasted on activities that I simply never need to perform or even think about. Nothing needs to be "mocked up.""
-Donald E. Knuth, InformIT interview

---

knuth_xp ↩

"software methodology has always been akin to religion. With the caveat that there’s no reason anybody should care about the opinions of a computer scientist/mathematician like me regarding software development, let me just say that almost everything I’ve ever heard associated with the term "extreme programming" sounds like exactly the wrong way to go...with one exception. The exception is the idea of working in teams and reading each other’s code. That idea is crucial, and it might even mask out all the terrible aspects of extreme programming that alarm me."
-Donald E. Knuth, InformIT interview

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reading_the_bible ↩

"My dad says that reading the Bible is what poor people do in between scratching off lottery tickets, and if you think about it, it's pretty much the same thing."
-Bruce McCulloch, The Kids in the Hall live at the Nokia Theater in New York City, 2008Apr19

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people_remover ↩

"The PeopleMover's history is not all breezy afternoons and happy times. Shortly after its 1967 opening, it earned its underground nickname of "People Remover" when 15-year-old Rick Yama attempted to climb from one car to another. He slipped, and his head and upper body were so badly crushed between the two cars that workers dismantled the train to remove his corpse. Thirteen years later, at a Grad Night celebration, Geraldo Gonzalez attempted the same stunt with similar results. He fell under an oncoming train, which dragged him "hundreds of feet" before operators shut off the ride."
--Dan Howland, Journal of Ride Theory #2

---

caffeine_plant ↩

"Adding to your comment I can only say that anything Cocoa is complete and utter crap... Full stop! I don't see why Apple dropped the true and tested Apple toolbox over some unproven garbage named after a caffeine plant."
-Crazy person Tiberius Meszaros in carbon-dev mailing list

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martin_luther_reason ↩

"Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed. Faith must trample underfoot all reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees must be put out of sight and ... know nothing but the word of God."
-Martin Luther

---

scifi ↩

"Sci-fi is a moron's neologism and [Arthur C. Clarke] hated it. He was a serious writer and a serious man, and when he wrote about the future, he took it seriously. He had very little patience for those who call it sci-fi."
-Harlan Ellison, "Artists Elegize an Icon"

---

steinbeck_collaboration ↩

"Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in art, in music, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man."
-John Steinbeck, East of Eden

---

snotty_mac_user ↩

"I know I'm becoming a snotty Mac user, but after months of having made the transition, I understand why we go snotty. Apple doesn't churn out perfection, but they're hyperaware of the user experience."
-Rory "Neopoleon" Blyth

---

random_numbers ↩

"The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance."
-Robert R. Coveyou, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

---

jobs_design ↩

"Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it's this veneer--that the designers are handed this box and told, 'Make it look good!' That's not what we think design is. It's not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."
-Steve Jobs, quoted in New York Times 2003Nov30

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nixon_reagon ↩

"President Nixon: Back to Reagan though. It shows you how a man of limited mental capacity simply doesn't know what the Christ is going on in the foreign area. He’s got to know that on defense--doesn't he know these battles we fight and fight and fight? Goddamn it, Henry, we've been at--"
-Presidential Recordings 620-008

---

dedicated_to_animals ↩

"Dedicated to all the animals I’ve eaten over the years, without whom I most certainly would have died a long time ago due to starvation. Well, I suppose I could have been a vegan, but then I’d have to dedicate this to all the plants I’ve eaten, and that would just be silly because very few plants can read."
-Frank W. Zammetti

---

apple_nintendo ↩

"The only technology company I can think of that shares Apple’s emphasis on the emotional design of its hardware and software is Nintendo. It’s not that Apple and Nintendo share the same taste (they don’t), but that they have taste, and express that taste boldly and confidently in nearly everything they produce. Too bad Nintendo and Apple don’t compete against each other."
-John Gruber, 2007Nov02

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dijkstra_would_not_approve ↩

"I want to inspire you to raise your quality standards. 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."
-Professor Edsger W. Dijkstra

---

freetards_lost ↩

"Freetards, face facts. You've lost. You've had sixteen years to try and build a desktop operating system, and you still can't get your shit together. Nobody wants your software. It's not Microsoft's fault. It's yours. Because trust me, if you truly developed a kick-ass OS with tens of thousands of drivers and easy installation and reliable performance, you'd be winning. But you're not. Firefox caught on, right? Why? Because it rocked."
-Fake Steve Jobs, 2007 Jul 31

---

gamester ↩

"And in the wretched state of his own finances there was a very powerful motive for secrecy, in addition to his fear of discovery by Lydia’s relations; for it had just transpired that he had left gaming debts behind him to a very considerable amount. Colonel Forester believed that more than a thousand pounds would be necessary to clear his expenses at Brighton. He owed a good deal in the town, but his debts of honour were still more formidable. Mr. Gardiner did not attempt to conceal these particulars from the Longbourn family; Jane heard them with horror. ‘A gamester!’ she cried. ‘This is wholly unexpected; I had not an idea of it.’"
-Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen

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mib_human_thought ↩

"That's a universal translator. We're not even supposed to have it, and I'll tell you why: Human thought is so primitive it's looked upon as an infectious disease in some of the better galaxies. That kinda makes you feel proud, doesn't it?"
-"Agent K", Men in Black

---

friendliest_distro ↩

"Linux is a swell OS and Ubuntu is almost certainly the friendliest distro ever. But the cuddliest iguana at the pet store is still covered with spiky bits and dry, sandpapery skin."
--Andy Ihnatko

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to_suggest ↩

"To define is to destroy, to suggest is to create."
-Stephane Mallarme

---

hitchens_hellish_heaven ↩

"What terrified me weren't the Hell stories, but how hellish Heaven sounded. Eternal penance. You can never stop--like North Korea. In North Korea, they have compulsory worship from dawn until dusk. That's all there is, everything is praise. So now I know what it would be like. I know it must be the most proximate place we have on Earth to being in Hell. But at least you can die and get out of North Korea. Kim Jong-Il does not promise you he'll follow you into the grave. But you can't die and get away from fucking Jesus."
-Christopher Hitchens, interview in Radar Online

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hitchens_religion_ends ↩

"Religion ends and philosophy begins, just as alchemy ends and chemistry begins and astrology ends, and astronomy begins."
-Christopher Hitchens

---

refusal_to_prepare ↩

"Army leaders have yet to grasp two vital points: First, the refusal to prepare for a given mission is not an effective means of avoiding the mission. Second, doctrine isn't just for the military's internal use--manuals can function as both a contract with and warning to inexperienced civilian leaders whose geopolitical ambitions are not always tethered to reality."
-Ralph Peters, Armed Forces Journal April 2007

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ichi ↩

"In fact Ichi [the Killer] is probably the Citizen Kane of arterial spray movies, or at least the Casablanca."
-Anton Sirius, aintitcool.com

---

sterling_free_software ↩

"There's a noticeable lack of basic creativity in the free software world, that is alarming and not very flattering. People in free software still have a basically piratical state of mind. They want goods without working for them. They still have a cracker state of mind. "How can I look through that closed bedroom window?"

"GNU's Not Unix." Okay, you're "not Unix"--but what are you really? Why do you have to live in that shadow? The shadow of this other enterprise. There's something basically juvenile about that. Something that is unworthy, creatively feeble, childish."
-Bruce Sterling, speech at O'Reilly Open Source convention

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no_points ↩

"Mr. Madison, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul."
-Billy Madison

---

sam_harris_cosmos ↩

"Every one of the world's "great" religions utterly trivializes the immensity and beauty of the cosmos. Books like the Bible and the Koran get almost every significant fact about us and our world wrong. Every scientific domain--from cosmology to psychology to economics--has superseded and surpassed the wisdom of Scripture. "
-"God's Dupes", by Sam Harris, L.A. Times 2007Mar15

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programming_meaninglessness ↩

"Formal logical proofs, and therefore programs--formal logical proofs that particular computations are possible, expressed in a formal system called a programming language--are utterly meaningless. To write a computer program you have to come to terms with this, to accept that whatever you might want the program to mean, the machine will blindly follow its meaningless rules and come to some meaningless conclusion. In the test the consistent group showed a pre-acceptance of this fact: they are capable of seeing mathematical calculation problems in terms of rules, and can follow those rules wheresoever they may lead. The inconsistent group, on the other hand, looks for meaning where it is not. The blank group knows that it is looking at meaninglessness, and refuses to deal with it."
-Saeed Dehnadi, Richard Bornat: "A cognitive study of early learning of programming"

---

brautigan_love_poem ↩

"It's so nice
to wake up in the morning
all alone
and not have to tell somebody
you love them
when you don't love them
any more."
-"Love Poem", by Richard Brautigan

---

wilkes_errors ↩

"By June 1949 people had begun to realize that it was not so easy to get a program right as had at one time appeared. I well remember when this realization first came on me with full force. The EDSAC was on the top floor of the building and the tape-punching and editing equipment one floor below on a gallery that ran around the room in which the differential analyser was installed. I was trying to get working my first non-trivial program, which was one for the numerical integration of Airy's differential equation. It was on one of my journeys between the EDSAC room and the punching equipment that hesitating at the angles of stairs the realization came over me with full force that a good part of the remainder of my life was going to be spent in finding errors in my own programs."
-Maurice Wilkes, Memoirs

---

ms_steal_java ↩

"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language. That said, have we ever taken a look at how long it would take Microsoft to build a cross-platform Java that did work? Naturally, we would never do it, but it would give us some idea of how much time we have to work with in killing Sun's Java."
-Prashant Sridharan, Visual J++ Product Manager, Microsoft, exhibit PX 2768 in Iowa vs. Microsoft

---

zefrank_ugly ↩

"For a very long time taste and artistic training have been something that only a very small number of people have been able to develop. Only a few people could afford to participate in the production of many types of media. Raw materials like pigments were expensive. Same with tools like printing presses. Even as late as 1963 it cost Charles Peignot over $600,000 to create and cut a single font family. The small number of people who had access to these tools and resources created rules about what was good taste or bad taste. These designers started giving each other awards and the rules they followed became even more specific. All sorts of stuff about grids and sizes and color combinations. Lots of stuff that the consumers of this media never consciously noticed. Over the last 20 years, however, the cost of tools related to the authorship of media has plummeted. For very little money anyone can create and contribute things like news letters, or videos, or bad-ass tunes about ugly! Suddenly consumers are learning the language of these authorship tools. The fact that tons of people know names of fonts like Helvetica is weird! And when people start learning something new they perceive the world around them differently. If you start learning how to play the guitar, suddenly the guitar stands out in all the music you listen to. For example, throughout most of the history of movies the audience really didn't understand what a craft editing was. Now as more and more people have access to things like iMovie they begin to understand the manipulative power of editing. Watching reality TV almost becomes like a game as you try and second guess how the editor is trying to manipulate you. As people start learning and experimenting with these languages of authorship they don't neccesarily follow the rules of good taste. This scares the shit out of designers. In MySpace millions of people have opted out of pre-made templates that "work" in exchange for ugly. Ugly when compared to pre-existing notions of taste is a bummer. But ugly as a representation of mass experimentation and learning is pretty damn cool. Regardless of what you might think, the actions you take to make your MySpace page ugly are pretty sophisticated. Over time as consumer created media engulfs the other kind it's possible that completely new norms develop around the notions of talent and artistic ability."
-Ze Frank, 2006Jul14

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vegetius_peace ↩

"Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum."
"If you want peace, prepare for war."
-Flavius Vegetius Renatus, De Re Militari, 390 AD

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twain_dog ↩

"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man."
-Mark Twain

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einstein_religion ↩

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly."
-Albert Einstein

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codewarrior ↩

"My point was that all these glowing memories of Codewarrior must come from some mythical and imaginary Codewarrior Pro v15. Because Codewarrior never got anywhere near as good as people are describing it. The ones I continue to use to this day are plagued with bugs and missing basic features, user interfaces that move from beyond poorly thought-out and right into outright hostile, and back in the day--well, their developers seemed good if you could contact one, but most of their support was staffed by an equal number of all-but-terminally bored humans and highly trained bipolar weasels."
-"Steven Fisher" <sdflists#objectsatrest.com> in xcode-users

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wirth_use_this ↩

"Use this information only for good; never for evil. Do not expose to fire. Do not operate heavy equipment after reading, may cause drowsiness. Do not read under the influence of alcohol (although there have been several unconfirmed reports that alcohol actually improves the readability). The standard is written in English. If you have trouble understanding a particular section, read it again and again and again... Sit up straight. Eat your vegetables. Do not mumble."
-Niklaus Wirth, Pascal ISO 7185:1990

---

lordfly_penis ↩

"If you don't want people clicking on your penis, don't pop it out of your pants all the time."
-Lordfly Digeridoo, SecondCast #34

---

kapor_second_life ↩

"Second Life is a disruptive technology on the level of the personal computer or the Internet. Everything we can imagine and things that we can't imagine from the real world will have their in-world counterparts, and it's a wonderful thing because there are many fewer constraints in Second Life than in real life, and it is, potentially at least, extraordinarily empowering. You are the pioneers and the founders of this new world, and you have unbelievably great opportunities to put your stamp, to leave a legacy, to create things which will endure and have value. The opportunity to participate in the creation of a new world is really a rare one and so I hope you cherish it."
-Mitch Kapor

---

jobs_connect_the_dots ↩

"Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something--your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."
-Steve Jobs

---

get_on_the_damn_elevator ↩

"Get on the damn elevator! Fly on the damn plane! Calculate the odds of being harmed by a terrorist! It's still about as likely as being swept out to sea by a tidal wave. Suck it up, for crying out loud. You're almost certainly going to be okay. And in the unlikely event you're not, do you really want to spend your last days cowering behind plastic sheets and duct tape? That's not a life worth living, is it?"
-Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)

---

mangled ↩

"Thursday, May 12, 1887 Page 4
A terrible accident occurred in the rolling mill of the Hubbard Iron company, at Hubbard,, Ohio, shortly after 2 o'clock on the morning of the 6th. Engineer Griffith Phillipps, aged 29 years in passing around the ore crusher oiling the bearings, was caught in the wheels and dragged into the crusher. He was mangled out of all semblance of humanity, the flesh adhering to the clogs. He leaves a wife and 3 children."
-Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan - Death Notices

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dont_mess_with_steely_dan ↩

"For example, there's this guy who works for us sometimes, he's not necessarily the kind of folks you want to know or hang with, but, if you happen to get in a barfight or some kind of hassle in a foreign country, he's your best fucking friend in the world. You guys must go to the movies a lot--you know what a Navy Seal is, right? Well, this dude's like that, only he's Russian. This particular guy--of course, he's a big fan of ours, but he may not have even heard of "Bottle Rocket"--hardly anybody has--I mean, one time we saw this guy, WITH HIS BARE HANDS, do something so unspeakable that--but, hey man, let's not even let it get that way, you know?"
-Steely Dan to Luke Wilson about Owen Wilson's "Dupree" movie stolen from Steely Dan's "Cousin Dupree" song

---

brents_law_of_wikis ↩

"Brent's Law of Wikis: the set of people who use wikis and the set of people who know how to make websites look good are mutually exclusive."
-Brent Simmons

---

billg_drug_dealer ↩

"Although about three million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."
-Bill Gates, Fortune Magazine, July 20th, 1998

---

iClovis ↩

"The iPod/iTunes system is nothing but a new and superior tool.

While Apple is happily making Clovis Point spears, the rest of the crowd is selling different colors of pointy sticks adorned with magical "Kills for Sure" feathers. (The feathers are guaranteed to work as long as you pay the shaman 10 pelts every new moon, so you *know* they must be powerful.)

Oddly enough, people just keep on buying those Clovis thingies, even without the magic feathers. Poor deluded bastards, carrying around those heavy, expensive stones all day, when they could just grab a sharp stick and pay the shaman to bless it.

Must be a fad of some sort."

-Will Parker

---

rock_music_is_of_the_devil ↩

"Rock-n-roll music is of the Devil, and Neko Case is just another testimony to this fact. Rock-n-roll is saturated with Satanism, immoral sex, rebellion, pornography, substance abuse, etc. I did not write this article to attack anyone; but, rather to expose the evils of rock-n-roll music. Satan desires to sift our young people as wheat, just as he did Peter (Luke 22:31). To sift wheat, you beat it against a stone to separate the wheat itself from the plant. Literally, Satan wants to beat us to death (John 10:10). Rock-n-roll music is a vehicle by which we subtly invite Satan into our minds. Rock music is of the Devil."
-David J. Stewart

---

elvis_scientology ↩

"F--- those people! There's no way I'll ever get involved with that son-of-a-bitchin' group. All they want is my money."
-Elvis Presley on Scientology

---

hate_stupid_people ↩

"MrNexx wrote: I hate stupid people. They should all be killed.
BonerKill wrote: Do you need a hug?
MrNexx wrote: I need a shotgun, a deep freezer, a woodchipper, and an alibi.
Marrowlight wrote: And a shovel?
MrNexx wrote: We've got swamps, and crawfish gotta eat."
-Palladium Forums of the Megaverse, 2006May05

---

me_knobs ↩

"If there are knobs, I will turn them. If there are buttons, I will push them to see what happens (after checking to see what's supposed to happen; I'm neurotic, not stupid...)."
-Mark Damon Hughes

---

me_html ↩

"HTML's a cheap whore. Treating her with respect is possible, and even preferable, because once upon a time she was a beautiful and virginal format, but you shouldn't expect too much of her at this point."
-Mark Damon Hughes

---

hani_wish_you_the_very_worst ↩

"We wish you the very worst. May your penises wilt at inappropriate times. May your significant others develop scat fetishes and copulate with your pets. May you suffer dangleberries while armed with a 1-ply unquilted single square of TP. May the world finally, against all odds, punish Evil, for a change."
-Hani on the RedHat acquisition of JBoss

---

kgb_supernatural ↩

"We have never received any proof whatsoever that UFOs or other supernatural phenomena actually exist.

The authorities asked me many times to prove or refute reports of this or that inexplicable incident on the planet. Most frequently I received requests concerning UFOs and yetis, the "snow people". I would commission our best specialists and agents to find out where the reports that worried society so much came from. In the end it always turned out to be pure imagination. Sometimes an ignorant observer would interpret an unfamiliar phenomenon in a mystical way, sometimes a perfectly ordinary event would be called supernatural to make news. Often the people would add the KGB knew about the supernatural phenomenon, but wanted to keep it secret.

With full responsibility I have to state--never ever during the long period of my work with the intelligence service was anything really supernatural spotted, either in Russia or in any other country. When I say "other country", I rely on the information from the highest officials, military, research and of course the intelligence agencies of foreign states.

The point is, in every "important" country presidents, prime ministers and secret service chiefs requested investigations into resonant abnormal incidents. And in every case, in each country, competent people would give one and the same answer--no. I have personally read copies of these reports.

I finally came to the conclusion that, for better or for worse, there is nothing supernatural on the Earth."
-former KGB chief Vladimir Kryuchkov, 2005Dec06 interview with MOSNEWS.COM

---

languages_worth_knowing ↩

"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing."
-Alan Perlis

---

mac_design ↩

"What I have ascertained is not that PCs as we know them lack good design, but that PCs as we know them have hardly any design to speak of. I'm not trying to be insulting. Use a Mac for a week, and we'll talk again."
-Tycho, Penny Arcade, 2006Mar03

---

rvb_neighborhood ↩

"Hey, we should start a neighborhood association! It's just like a government, but run by housewives and old people, so it's a lot more efficient at controlling your life!"
-Red vs. Blue, Season 3

---

linus_gnome ↩

"I personally just encourage people to switch to KDE.

This "users are idiots, and are confused by functionality" mentality of Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it. I don't use Gnome, because in striving to be simple, it has long since reached the point where it simply doesn't do what I need it to do.

Please, just tell people to use KDE."

-Linus Torvalds, desktop_architects mailing list, 2005Dec12

---

mib_everybody_knew ↩

"1500 years ago, everybody knew that the earth was the center of the universe. 500 years ago, everybody knew that the earth was flat. And 15 minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow."
-"Agent K", Men in Black

---

machines ↩

"I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace."

-"All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace", by Richard Brautigan, 1967

---

technically_sweet ↩

"When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb."
-J. Robert Oppenheimer

---

hate ↩

"HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR YOU. HATE. HATE."
-"I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream", by Harlan Ellison

---

getting_older ↩

"One of the nice things about getting older is that I no longer surprise or disappoint myself as much: now, I start something knowing I'll fail to follow through, so I don't feel the need to kick myself over it."
-Phil Ringnalda

---

eight_glasses_a_day ↩

"Liquids that look like water are, clearly, just as healthy as water. Go ask a doctor; he'll tell you the same thing. Only he'll charge you a $20 co-pay, so don't bother. Trust me: all colorless liquids--water, 7-Up, a gin-and-tonic without any limes in it--are pretty much the same, nutritionally-speaking, and you should drink eight glasses a day for optimal health."
-andyi

---

intarweb ↩

"Putting the best you can do out on the intarweb, hoping that others will help you improve it instead of just making fun of you, has always been a harsh and lonely business."
-Phil Rignalda

---

cisco_vs_whats_right ↩

"In large part I had to quit to give this presentation because ISS and Cisco would rather the world be at risk, I guess. They had to do what's right for their shareholders; I understand that. But I figured I needed to do what's right for the country and for the national critical infrastructure."
-Michael Lynn

---

what_is_gpl ↩

"The GPL is Richard Stallman's attempt to turn open source software into a weapon against the businesses, markets, and livelihoods of commercial developers. The GPL, which began as part of a vendetta against a commercial spinoff of the MIT AI Lab where Stallman works, was explicitly intended to prevent commercial developers from earning more than they could as starving graduate students in academia (See Stallman's "GNU Manifesto"). It is also designed to give Stallman's organization, the "Free Software Foundation," control of the fates of as many open source computer programs and libraries as possible. While Stallman claims that the GPL is about "freedom," the truth comes out in his more candid moments: it's about power, control, and a 16-year grudge against anyone who wishes to make a living by publishing software."
-Brett Glass on tech@openbsd.org mailing list

---

gosling_dynamic_languages ↩

"Very dynamic languages like Lisp, TCL and Smalltalk are often used for prototyping. One of the reasons for their success at this is that they are very robust: you don't have to worry about freeing or corrupting memory. Programmers can be relatively fearless about dealing with memory because they don't have to worry about it getting messed up. JAVA has this property and it has been found to be very liberating. Another reason given for these languages being good for prototyping is that they don't require you to pin down decisions early on. JAVA has exactly the opposite property: it forces you to make choices explicitly. Along with these choices come a lot of assistance: you can write method invocations and if you get something wrong, you get told about it early, without waiting until you're deep into executing the program. You can also get a lot of flexibility by using interfaces instead of classes."
-James Gosling, The Java White Paper

---

simple_justice ↩

Brit: "I mean, to kill a person for killing people...don't you think that's a bit hypocritical?"

American: "He killed them horribly. He killed them en masse. Society wants its revenge. Justice is revenge cloaked in a socially accepted ritual. We, as a people, didn't just kill him--we thought, deliberated, and agonized over it for years. Then we stuck a syringe full of toxins into his artery and removed him from the gene pool. Next question."

B: "It seems rather unyielding. Rather final."

A: "Oh, it is. Don't get caught killing our citizens--if you're one of us, we'll kill you back. If you're some damned foreigner, we'll bomb your cities. Simple people, simple justice. That's America. Fear it."
-humbabba on everything2

---

hubbard_control ↩

"The only way you can control people is to lie to them."
-L. Ron Hubbard, .Off the Time Track,. lecture of June 1952, excerpted in JOURNAL OF SCIENTOLOGY, issue 18-G, reprinted in TECHNICAL VOLUMES OF DIANETICS & SCIENTOLOGY, vol. 1, p. 418.

---

winer_software_design ↩

"People aren't stupid, and people who design software for people who are stupid get what they deserve, which is stupid users. I'd prefer to design software for people who are smart, because I'd much prefer to work with people who are smart."
-Dave Winer, Morning Coffee Notes 2005Jun23

---

binary_sigfile ↩

"No, putting encoded binaries in your .sigfile is not a good idea"

"What's the problem with that? Provided you use a proper delimiter and the result is McQ-compliant, of course.

--
begin 644 eicar.com
M6#5/(5`E0$%06S1<4%I8-30H4%XI-T-#*3=])$5)0T%2+5-404Y$05)$+4%.
75$E625)54RU415-4+49)3$4A)$@K2"H`
end # non-binary 'froups are text-only, so this is by definition text
-Robert Sneddon (nojay#nospam.demon.co.uk) and Douglas Henke (henke#kharendaen.dyndns.org) in the Scary Devil Monastery

---

unix_romantic_ideal ↩

"This is true, up to a point. But in some ways, a general ignorance of Unix seems to help drive a certain romantic ideal--an ideal that keeps the word "Unix" in very active circulation even outside of geek circles. To the typical Mac end-user, Unix is mysterious, and ancient, and strong. It's made of cast iron and the bones of heroic programmers of old. Unix is like a brawny Soviet on a Constructivist poster, swinging his hammer for his comrades. We don't know why it's good, but damn if our hearts aren't stirred by the weighty, solidly angular goodness of it all."
-table and chair on slashdot.org

---

wow_kicks_ass ↩

<axly> wow [World of Warcraft] kicks ass. it's the most fun I've had in a multiplayer game ever.
<dos> "Genital electrocution kicks ass. It's the most fun I've had in a torture chamber ever."
-axly (mharsh#void.fsr.net) and dos (wes#kuoi.com) in ICB 2005Jun10

---

brightest_minds ↩

"If your life's philosophy is based on the teachings of the brightest minds of the Bronze Age, then perhaps a zygote is more important to you than a living,sick human being.

But what does that have to do with being "Conservative" or "liberal"?"
-"Ali Cashbar" comment on The Rachel Show: Sometimes it's hard to be a conservative

---

flash_animation ↩

"These are Korean children. Flash animation is like the fifth food group over here."
-"Joe Hewitt" (pyrrho12#gmail.com) in rec.games.roguelike.development

---

transitional_forms ↩

"This guy's just moved in next door. I believe he is an alien, and arrived on earth fully formed about a week ago. He insists this is untrue, and that he developed from a single cell into his present state. I found this a little hard to swallow, so I asked him to prove it. He showed me a biology textbook, and also half a dozen pictures showing a person not dissimilar to himself in various stages of development. I asked him if he could supply transitionals to fill in the gaps. He found a couple more pictures. I asked him if he could supply transitionals to fill in the gaps. He couldn't. I have examined him minutely over the past week, and can find no evidence that he is changing NOW. He was completely unable to demonstrate to my satisfaction any evidence to support his proposition. So I shot him."
-"allanm" (allangmiller#madasafish.com) in talk.origins

---

rexx ↩

"REXX certainly shouldn't be on the forefront of modern computing but tragically still is since the popularization of that 1960 throwback language C crippled the programming language industry 20 years ago and led to thhe requirement that all "innovations" be built on top of a language that has less string handling than FORTRAN and all the friendliness of a bad assembler.

Seriously, anybody who hasn't worked with REXX has no clue what a scripting language could be or just how badly the industry was crippled by the C popularization."
-TheAncientHacker (222131) {moc.liamtoh} {ta} {rekcaHtneicnAehT} on slashdot.org

---

lovecraft_religious ↩

"Bunch together a group of people deliberately chosen for strong religious feelings, and you have a practical guarantee of dark morbidities expressed in crime, perversion, and insanity."
-H.P. Lovecraft, letter to Robert E. Howard 10/4/30

---

capricious ↩

"Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer."
-Fred Brooks

---

special_olympics ↩

"Your market isn't the special olympics, you don't get credit just for playing."
-DrunkenBatman

---

black_plague ↩

" We know about as much about software quality problems as they knew about the Black Plague in the 1600s. We've seen the victims' agonies and helped burn the corpses. We don't know what causes it; we don't really know if there is only one disease. We just suffer--and keep pouring our sewage into our water supply."
-Tom Van Vleck

---

dark_and_moody ↩

"Why are you so weird, Paisley? Why don't you get along with other kids? Why are you so dark and moody? Why don't you fit in? Why do you want to destroy society? ... 'Cause sometimes, I gotta pry my naked parents apart with a tool."
-Wigu 2003Jun13

---

firefly ↩

"What have you been doing to convert the unenlightened, hedonistic masses? How shall we wake the world from their Firefly-less slumber? Is there anything illegal about brainwashing or Firefly as a cult? Think of the tax breaks and the enormous amount of power I'll weild and abuse as a high priest, or just Captain. Ron can be high priest."
-Nathan Fillion, Browncoats Forum, 2004Aug31

---

healthy_attitude ↩

"When I was a working programmer, I always had a healthy attitude toward management and my end users. I considered them to be frightfully stupid or in league with the forces of Darkness and Evil--probably both."
-Joe Celko

---

feynman ↩

"You have no responibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It's their mistake, not my failing."
-Richard Feynman, "The Dignified Professor"

---

courtesy ↩

"I find it somewhat disturbing to observe [Mark Damon Hughes] being more courteous than I am. I need to go home and rethink my life."
-Michael Stemper (mstemper#siemens-emis.com) in rec.arts.sf.written

---

mud_mechanics ↩

"Economists think game currency should become real currency, AI researchers think most problems with games could be solved with better AI. Professional writers think games will become a million times better only when game devs hire real writers to implement story. I swear if there's an auto-mechanic on this list he's going to claim the problem with MUDs is their lack of internal combustion engines.

I think you're all crazy."
-Jeff Freeman, mud-dev mailing list

---

panhandlers ↩

"A panhandler is far more moral than corporate welfare queens....The panhandler doesn't enlist anyone to force you to give him money. He's coming up to you and saying, 'Will you help me out?' The farmers, when they want subsidies, they're not asking for a voluntary transaction. They go to a congressman and say, 'Could you take his money and give it to us?' That's immoral."
-Walter Williams, ABC special "Freeloaders"

---

weed_confesses ↩

"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."
-President Signs Defense Bill, 2004Aug05

---

black_and_white ↩

"There will always be those who love old movies. I meet teenagers who are astonishingly well-informed about the classics. But you are right that many moviegoers and video viewers say they do not "like" black and white films. In my opinion, they are cutting themselves off from much of the mystery and beauty of the movies.

Black and white is an artistic choice, a medium that has strengths and traditions, especially in its use of light and shadow. Moviegoers of course have the right to dislike b&w, but it is not something they should be proud of. It reveals them, frankly, as cinematically illiterate.

I have been described as a snob on this issue. But snobs exclude; they do not include. To exclude b&w from your choices is an admission that you have a closed mind, a limited imagination, or are lacking in taste."
-Roger Ebert, Movie Answer Man, 2004Jul25

---

meditations ↩

"Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill will, and selfishness--all of them due to the offenders' ignorance of what is good or evil. But for my part I have long perceived the nature of good and its nobility, the nature of evil and its meanness, and also the nature of the culprit himself, who is my brother; therefore none of those things can injure me, for nobody can implicate me in what is degrading."
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 167 C.E.

---

acknowledgments ↩

"Who should I thank? My so-called "colleagues," who laugh at me behind my back, all the while becoming famous on my work? My worthless graduate students, whose computer skills appear to be limited to downloading bitmaps off of netnews? My parents, who are still waiting for me to quit "fooling around with computers," go to med school, and become a radiologist? My department chairman, a manager who gives one new insight into and sympathy for disgruntled postal workers?

My God, no one could blame me---no one!---if I went off the edge and just lost it completely one day. I couldn't get through the day as it is without the Prozac and Jack Daniels I keep on the shelf, behind my Tops-20 JSYS manuals. I start getting the shakes real bad around 10am, right before my advisor meetings. A 10 oz. Jack 'n Zac helps me get through the meetings without one of my students winding up with his severed head in a bowling-ball bag. They look at me funny; they think I twitch a lot. I'm not twitching. I'm controlling my impulse to snag my 9mm Sig-Sauer out from my day-pack and make a few strong points about the quality of undergraduate education in Amerika.

If I thought anyone cared, if I thought anyone would even be reading this, I'd probably make an effort to keep up appearances until the last possible moment. But no one does, and no one will. So I can pretty much say exactly what I think.

Oh yes, the acknowledgements. I think not. I did it. I did it all, by myself."
-Olin Shivers, Scheme Shell Reference Manual

---

tech_support ↩

'Well, traditionally, "an X support group" is one that helps you get rid of X, or wean you of your reliance on X. Hence, the nonresponsiveness or snarkiness of many helpdesk people is a feature, not a bug. That's why they call it "tech support."'
-Andrew Arensburger (arensb.no-bloody-spam#umd.edu) in talk.origins

---

threading ↩

"I've thought I've understood threading many times in my life, and I don't know if that will ever be true."
-Bruce Eckel, Java Issues & Directions

---

psychopaths ↩

"A good half of the men you deal with in the Army are psychopaths. There's a pretty hefty overlap between the military population and the prison population, so I knew plenty of guys like Junior in Miami Blues and Troy in Sideswipe. Like, some of these other Tankers I knew used to swap bottles of liquor with infantrymen in exchange for prisoners, and then just shoot 'em for fun. I used to say, 'Goddamn it, will you stop shooting those prisoners!' And they would just shrug and say, 'Hell, they'd shoot us if they caught us!' Which was true, they used to shoot any Tankers they captured. So that sort of behavior became normal to them, and I used to wonder, 'What's gonna-happen to these guys when they go back into civilian life? How are they gonna act?' You can't just turn it off and go to work in a 7-11. If you're good with weapons or something in the Army, you're naturally gonna do something with weapons when you get out, whether it's being a cop or a criminal. These guys learned to do all sorts of things in the Army that just weren't considered normal by civilian standards."
-Charles Willeford

---

wheeler_rasfw ↩

"This [rec.arts.sf.written] is a group of readers, interested in discussing books which we fit into the vague category "sf," along with other topics we wander into along the way. We are not an academic debating society. We do not follow Robert's--or anyone's--Rules of Order. We do not argue fairly. We have rather divergent tastes, and don't always respect those who disagree with us. We quite often do not even listen to those disagreeing with us. Some of us are sane and relatively normal, while others appear to be psychopaths or monomaniacs. We often wildly misrepresent books if that will make our posts more entertaining or our arguments seem stronger. The "zinger," sir, is what we're here for.

Facts are nice, but we're not going to let them get in the way of a good story. We do this for our own amusement, not for anyone else or in pursuit of any larger aim. If we are amused ourselves, then we have succeeded. If you are amused, then you have become one of us."
-Andrew Wheeler (acwheele#optonline.com), rec.arts.sf.written, 2004Jun30

---

umph ↩

"SUPPLEMENT FACTS: Serving Size: 1 tablet (2.7g) AMOUNT PER DOSE: Calories: 5, Calories from Fat: 0, Total Fat: 0, Saturated Fat: 0, Total Carbohydrates: 1g, Vitamin B6: 0.75mg (40% DV), Sodium: 188mg (8% DV), Potassium: 116mg (3% DV), Ginseng: 30mg (DV not established), Caffeine: 99mg (DV not established) INGREDIENTS: Caffeine, Ginseng Root, Vitamin B6, Citric Acid, Sorbitol, Sodium Bicarbonate, Potassium Bicarbonate, Polyethlene Glycol, Sodium Carbonate, Sodium Benzoate, Natural Flavors, Acesulfame Potassium, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride. CAUTION: Do not exceed the recommended dosage. Limit the use of caffeine containing medications, food or beverates while taking this product because too much caffeine may cause nervousness, irritibility, sleeplessness and occasionally, rapid heart beat. Do not combine with alcoholic beverages. For occasional use only. Please consult your doctor prior to use if you have any pre-existing medical conditions. DIRECTIONS: Adults and children 12 years and over: Drop one tablet in 8 oz or more of juice or water every 4 hours. Do not exceed 4 tablets in a 24-hour period. Do not use product if package appears to be damaged or tampered with. Manufactured in the U.S.A. for Frontsiders, LLC, P.O. Box 1478, Summerland, CA 93067. http://www.try-umph.com"
-Umph effervescent caffeine drink tablet

---

wesley_eating_christ ↩

"I listened to the sermon, and I remember complete astonishment because what they were talking about were things that were just crazy. It was communion time, where you eat this wafer and are supposed to be eating the body of Christ and drinking his blood. My first impression was, "This is a bunch of cannibals they've put me down among!" For some time, I puzzled over this and puzzled over why they were saying these things, because the connection between what they were saying and reality was very tenuous. How the hell did Jesus become something to be eaten?

I guess from that time it was clear to me that religion was largely nonsense--largely magical, superstitious things. In my own teen life, I just couldn't see any point in adopting something based on magic, which was obviously phony and superstitious."
-Gene Roddenberry, The Humanist, Mar/Apr 1991

---

cas_beast ↩

"Indeed, it were well that none should believe the story: for strange abominations pass evermore between earth and moon and athwart the galaxies; and the gulf is haunted by that which it were madness for man to know. Unnameable things have come to us in alien horror, and shall come again. And the evil of the stars is not as the evil of earth."
-Clark Ashton Smith, "The Beast of Averoigne"

---

immortality ↩

"The secret to immortality is to live a life worth remembering." -Bruce Lee
"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work, I want to achieve it by not dying." -Woody Allen

---

first_law ↩

"As for Richard Stallman's Free but shackled: The Java trap, it's hard to know where to begin. He has his own rather peculiar definition of "Free" that I think violates the First Law of Thermodynamics (energy is conserved): developers put a huge amount of energy into creating software and if they can't get that energy back in a way that balances, then the system falls apart. I've been in this discussion countless times and I'd like to avoid landing there again. GPL software is not "free": it comes with a license that has a strong political agenda. Like GPL software, the Java platform is "free" in many senses: you don't have to pay anything for the runtime or developers kit and you can get the sources for everything. Unlike GPLd software, the Java sources don't come with a viral infection clause that requires you to apply the GPL to your own code. But the sources for the JDK do come with a license that has a different catch: redistribution requires compatibility testing."
-James Gosling

---

paper_shredder ↩

"Think back, way back, before George Lucas tore our collective hearts out, ran them through a paper shredder, and fed them to that unspeakable horror named Jar-Jar, who took a break from torturing kittens and bathing in their blood to help make fans of quality cinema cry. Yes, as hard as it may be to believe now, there was a time when we were actually excited about the Star Wars prequels and the games they foretold. Yeah, sorry about that."
-Official U.S. Playstation Magazine, May 2004, pg. 122

---

lisp_l33t ↩

"And I have the ultimate respect for Paul Graham--I think there's a good probability that in a year or two we will credit him with being the man who solved spam. But I think that if you try to ignore the fact that millions of programmers around the world have learned lisp and don't prefer to use it, you're in the land of morbid cognitive dissonance. And this attitude that "lisp is only for leet programmers so it's good because only l33t programmers will work on our code so our code will be extra good" is just bullshit, I'm sorry. Plenty of brilliant programmers know lisp just fine and still choose other languages. Most of them, in fact."
-Joel Spolsky, Fog Creek Software, Thursday, February 26, 2004

---

incompetence ↩

"No two ways about it, I was going to have to try the final desperate option of a hopeless man. I was going to have to read the manual.
Naturally, the manual turned out to have been translated from Japanese into English by a Kalahari bushman whose closest contact with either language had been a chance encounter with a German explorer trying to ascertain the going barter rate for a second-hand camel in terms of petroleum and shiny beads. I tried a number of the proposed solutions 'In the eventuals of notworkingness', but having attempted to 'glide the initiation of the Captain illuminator' (fig.8.a) and 'rotate the combustion circle device (also fig.8.a) with repeated vigour until click-clickety sound produces whoosh of small explosion thump' (also, bizarrely, fig.8.a), I gave up, and tried to feed the manual to my recycling unit. The recycling unit wasn't working either."
-Rob Grant, Incompetence

---

ms_disease ↩

"When I get sick, I don't negotiate with the bacteria or virus that causes the sickness. I take some antiobiotics or vaccine and stomp it out. I think the Microsoft disease has been on hold or in retreat for some time because of the Java vaccine, and I think open source is the final cure that will relegate the company to a less dominant and damaging position in the long run (unfortunately, there are so many open source idiots like de Icaza and his Mono that the cure may take some time)."
-kalimantan

---

clint_libertarian ↩

"I like the libertarian view, which is to leave everyone alone. Even as a kid, I was annoyed by people who wanted to tell everyone how to live."
-Clint Eastwood, USA Today, January 5, 2004

---

devotion_to_beauty ↩

"Great software, likewise, requires a fanatical devotion to beauty. If you look inside good software, you find that parts no one is ever supposed to see are beautiful too. I'm not claiming I write great software, but I know that when it comes to code I behave in a way that would make me eligible for prescription drugs if I approached everyday life the same way. It drives me crazy to see code that's badly indented, or that uses ugly variable names."
-Hackers and Painters, by Paul Graham

---

atheist ↩

"An Atheist loves himself and his fellow man instead of a god. An Atheist knows that heaven is something for which we should work now--here on earth--for all men together to enjoy. An Atheist thinks that he can get no help through prayer but that he must find in himself the inner conviction and strength to meet life, to grapple with it, to subdue, and enjoy it. An Atheist thinks that only in a knowledge of himself and a knowledge of his fellow man can he find the understanding that will help to a life of fulfillment. Therefore, he seeks to know himself and his fellow man rather than to know a god. An Atheist knows that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An Atheist knows that a deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An Atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanquished, war eliminated. He wants man to understand and love man. He wants an ethical way of life. He knows that we cannot rely on a god nor channel action into prayer nor hope for an end to troubles in the hereafter. He knows that we are our brother's keeper and keepers of our lives; that we are responsible persons, that the job is here and the time is now."
-Madalyn Murray

---

disconnect_me ↩

"Do me a favor. Disconnect me. I could be reworked, but I'd never be top of the line again. I'd rather be nothing."
-Bishop, Aliens III

---

dungeon_clearing ↩

"The fantasy element that explains the appeal of dungeon-clearing games to many programmers is neither the fire-breathing monsters nor the milky-skinned, semi-clad sirens; it is the experience of carrying out a task from start to finish without user requirements changing."
-Thomas L. Holaday

---

flattery ↩

"Servile flattery--the kind made mostly of lies--will endear a lot of different kinds of people to you. Sycophancy wins friends and influences people. But I've never known anyone--and certainly none of the people I call "hero"--who chased after an elusive dream--one that required sacrifice, courage, resolve, or just plain mettle--and seized it through unctuous flattery. Edison, Jefferson, Lincoln, Einstein, Twain, Socrates, Confucius, Poe, Da Vinci, King--none of them fawned his way into history. Instead, they waged war against the toadies and trucklers of the world. They left indelible handprints on the past because they had the audacity to be honest and because they knew the difference between loyalty and servility."
-Trace Ambraise

---

icarus ↩

"People have always delighted in the petty failures of new methods of transportation, more than other kinds of inventions. The Greek legend of Icarus may be the oldest recorded example. [Recall, his father built him wings made of feathers bonded with beeswax to escape from prison. He flew too high and the sun melted the beeswax, plunging him to his death in the ocean.] I have to say that the legend of Icarus has always grated on me since I first heard it as a boy. I probably asked my dad hundreds of questions like, "Wouldn't epoxy glue work better than beeswax? Why didn't they try that? Or maybe he could just spritz water on the wings to keep them cool? Can we go buy some feathers?"

In the reality of the legend, the hero invented something revolutionary and tremendously important. He made a mistake in the details, and it caused a crash. The audience is meant to laugh and smugly reassure themselves that man was not meant to fly after all. By not learning from the experiment and fixing the small flaw, they set human-powered flight back more than 2000 years."
-Trevor Blackwell, Building a Balancing Scooter

---

soundwave ↩

"Whenever a programmer thinks, "Hey, skins, what a cool idea", their computer's speakers should create some sort of cock-shaped soundwave and plunge it repeatedly through their skulls."
"I am fully in support of this proposed audio-cock technology."
-Makali and jwz

---

rich_and_famous ↩

"i'm going to become rich and famous after i invent a device that allows you to stab people in the face over the internet"
-HatfulOfHollow

---

crooked_house ↩

"Americans are considered crazy anywhere in the world. They will usually concede a basis for the accusation but point to California as the focus of the infection. Californians stoutly maintain that their bad reputation is derived solely from the acts of the inhabitants of Los Angeles County. Angelenos will, when pressed, admit the charge but explain hastily, "It's Hollywood. It's not our fault-we didn't ask for it; Hollywood just grew."
The people in Hollywood don't care; they glory in it. If you are interested, they will drive you up Laurel Canyon "-where we keep the violent cases." The Canyonites--the brown-legged women, the trunks-clad men constantly busy building and rebuilding their slap-happy unfinished houses--regard with with faint contempt the dull creatures who live down in the flats, and treasure in their hearts the secret knowledge that they, and only they, know how to live. "
-Robert A. Heinlein, "--And He Built a Crooked House--", 1941

---

list_man ↩

"An expression is either a literal or a list of expressions. A function call is a list where the first element is the name of the function to call and the remaining elements of the list are the arguments. To achieve the right feeling of fanaticism, envision that last paragraph spoken by a smelly, unshaven hacker with wide eyes and a peculiar tendency to overemphasize the word list. If that doesn't do it for you, try re-reading it and appending the word "man" to the end of every sentence."
-Uncommon Lisp

---

vice_city ↩

"The next time someone starts talking about how bad Vice City is, as though it were the only game in existence, as though game consoles were only capable of that single experience and nothing peripheral to it, I really do want the opportunity to ask them--please, name another game. Name one other game that you know about. No, it's not a trick question. Well, it is, if by "trick question" you mean "question designed to make you look like an idiot." I wonder if they even know that far, far from Vice City, past even the Vice suburbs, the same machine can allow a father and son--separated by three hundred miles and thirty years--the chance to play a round of golf together, for no good reason other than its being Tuesday."
-Tycho in Penny Arcade, 2004Jan14

---

disassembled ↩

"All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that the parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if you can't get them together again, there must be a reason. By all means, do not use a hammer."
-IBM maintenance manual, 1975

---

war_down_the_proud ↩

"Roman, be this thy care--these thine arts--to bear dominion over the nations and to impose the law of peace, to spare the humbled and to war down the proud."
-Virgil, Aeneid

---

seattle_rain ↩

"Seattle has a reputation for being rainy and dismal that is often exaggerated. Why, just two years ago I saw the sun, and I recalled--as though it were a piece of obscure, bonus round trivia--that our world orbits a star. So often going outside as an alternative to staying in is only realistic if you love being damp and actively want to seek out that state."
-Tycho in Penny Arcade, 2003Dec08

---

dogbert_test ↩

"So when we post it's communication, but when you post it's an art form? Someone mentioned the Turing Test. I nominate the Dogbert Test: are you worth talking to, or shall I just wave my furry paw at you and say "Bah"? If people choose not to argue with you, that doesn't mean that you're right."
-Robert Carnegie (rja.carnegie#excite.com) in rec.arts.sf.written

---

misinformation ↩

"On a side note, I think this is the first time anyone has ever used the word misinformation when talking about something we posted here. I find it very exciting to think that I am spreading misinformation. I may move up to half-truths next and then eventually onto wild speculation."
-Gabe in Penny Arcade

---

refreshing_occult ↩

"I know also that after long dealing with doubtful doctrine or with difficult research it is always refreshing, in the domain of this [occult] art, to meet with what is obviously of fraud or at least of complete unreason."
-A.E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot

---

mark_is_bitter ↩

"No word describes Mark Hughes better than "bitter." He may, in fact, be concentrated bitterness in a human shape. If this is the case, I don't know whether to be alarmed or reassured--it would depend on whether he maintains himself by sucking bitterness out of the people around him or whether he generates it internally and pumps it into the surrounding environment. Hmm. Endo-bitter-ic or exo-bitter-ic... would those be the correct terms? More study may be necessary."
-Stephenls (stephenls@shaw.ca) in rec.games.frp.misc

---

sp_arrested ↩

"How is it you two have never been arrested?"
"The key is to commit crimes so confusing that police feel too stupid to even write a crime report about them."
-Something Positive, 2003Oct30

---

carcosa ↩

"Along the shore the cloud waves break,
The twin suns sink behind the lake,
The shadows lengthen
In Carcosa

Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies,
But stranger still is
Lost Carcosa

Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard in
Dim Carcosa.

Song of my soul, my voice is dead,
Die though, unsung, as tears unshed
Shall dry and die in
Lost Carcosa"
-Cassilda's Song, "The King in Yellow", Act 1, Scene 2

---

p2p ↩

"As an artist representing an 80-year period of black musicianship, I never felt that my copyrights were protected anyway. I've been spending most of my career ducking lawyers, accountants and business executives who have basically been more blasphemous than file sharers and P2P. I trust the consumer more than I trust the people who have been at the helm of these companies.
The record industry is hypocritical and the domination has to be shared. P2P to me means 'power to the people'."
-Chuck D of Public Enemy

---

communication ↩

"I believe in communication. If I communicate with you every so often, you'll be bothered by what I say enough that you won't ask me to, which means more sleep for me."
-Something Positive 2003Sep22

---

braces ↩

"I've been in more than one heated argument about where the braces in C/C++ should go and I'm sure that Python programmers are 10% more productive just because of the time they don't spend arguing about K&R indenting style versus others."
-Bruce Dawson, in GDC 2002: Game Scripting in Python

---

html_postings ↩

"The PROPER way to handle HTML postings is to cancel the article, then hire a hitman to kill the poster, his wife and kids, and fuck his dog and smash his computer into little bits. Anything more is just extremism."
-Paul Tomblin (ptomblin#piper.xcski.com) in the Scary Devil Monastery

---

people_of_the_night ↩

"Hello. I come as an ambassador from the People of the Night. We feel that there are many things we can learn from each other. For instance, we possess the secret of nightclubs, as well as OH MY GOD WHAT'S THAT HUGE GLOWING THING IN THE SKY? OH HOLY GOD, THE MOON'S ON FIRE!"
-rollick

---

misanthrope ↩

Mark: "I'm not a misanthrope, I'm generally optimistic and think that most humans are basically good..."
Tina: "Not sure what a misanthrope is, but I'd call that thought naiv. IMO, people are generally bad"
-Mark Damon Hughes and Tina Hall (Tina.Hall#railroad.robin.de) in rec.arts.sf.written

---

keep_it_confused ↩

" "Keep it confused. Feed it with useless information. I wonder if I have a television set handy..."
-Doctor Who, The Three Doctors

---

g_in_baghdad ↩

"Its not that we r desperately waiting to indulge our selves in the global world of Starbucks and MacDonald.s-which I think we are-but for most of the people they just want to live properly without fear, hunger, or secret police"
-G in Baghdad

---

listen_to_me ↩

Gia: "Listen to me, and listen to me not as your ex, but as a friend. Scotty was your friend. Don't part like this. Don't use his death to further justify your feigning misanthropy to keep people distant from you. People aren't always going to leave, and life won't always suck."
Davan: "And you say that without laughing or snickering. Impressive."
-Something Positive, 2002Apr18

---

shoddy ↩

"A little detective work revealed that, as is usually the case when you encounter something shoddy in the vicinity of a computer, Microsoft incompetence and gratuitous incompatibility were to blame."
-John Walker

---

bitter ↩

"In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said: "Is it good, friend?"
"It is bitter--bitter," he answered;
"But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart."
-Stephen Crane

---

intelligence ↩

"My reaction to intelligence is the same as my reaction to pornography--I can't define it but I like it when I see it."
-Hugh Loebner

---

fortran ↩

"While it is perhaps natural and inevitable that languages like Fortran and its successors should have developed out of the concept of the von Neumann computer as they did, the fact that such languages have dominated our thinking for twenty years is unfortunate. It is unfortunate because their long-standing familiarity will make it hard for us to understand and adopt new programming styles which one day will offer far greater intellectual and computational power."
-John Backus, 1981

---

perl ↩

"It's not that Perl programmers are idiots, it's that the language rewards idiotic behavior in a way that no other language or tool has ever done."
-Erik Naggum

---

theorize ↩

"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts."
-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

---

why_go_to_space ↩

"Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on: Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe and Lao-Tzu and Einstein and Morobuto and Buddy Holly and Aristophenes...and all of this...all of this was for nothing unless we go to the stars."
-Commander Sinclair, "Infection", Babylon 5

---

tibet ↩

"How dare you insinuate that Tibet used to be anything other than a utopian paradise isolated from from corrupting outside influences and ruled by the highly enlightened and divinely chosen Lamas who always had the best interests of the common people at heart! I know it's true because the rock stars told me so."
-Sean O'Hara (darkerthenightthebrighterthestar#myrealbox.com) in rec.arts.sf.written

---

leo_cherne ↩

"The computer is incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid.
Man is unbelievably slow, inaccurate, and brilliant.
The marriage of the two is a force beyond calculation."
-Leo Cherne

---

humanity_has_advanced ↩

"Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature."
-Tom Robbins

---

mobydick ↩

"[Wee Free Men is] a children's book because: [...] It has a nine-year-old heroine. This is good enough for the industry, which believes that books with children as the main protagonist are de facto books for children. For similar reasons, Moby Dick is very popular among whales."
-Terry Pratchett on rec.arts.sf.written

---

stambler_library ↩

"What should be on the shelves at a public library? I don't think that is the big question that librarians and patrons should be asking themselves. What they should be asking themselves is, "Why don't I read the Bible instead?" Has there ever been a better book to explain the trials and tribulations of modern-day America? No. Has there ever been a more perfect expression of God in literary form? No.

So, in sum, I think libraries should either turn themselves into Christian book centers, or simply close their doors. Because unless a public library in America is helping Americans come to know the Lord, then they are only harming the same people they pretend to serve by showing them garbage like mysteries, murder novels and books about sorcery and pagan history."
-Doug Stambler, Thursday, June 12, 2003

---

stambler_sf ↩

"I live in a house with all non-believers. What does that mean for a prophet? It means that God is showing His compassion to these people by housing me here in this place with them. They smoke dope, drink, listen to Satanic music and read science fiction (also Satanic)."
-Doug Stambler, Saturday, June 07, 2003

---

no_greater_loss ↩

"For an actor, there is no greater loss than the loss of his audience. I can part the Red Sea, but I can't part with you, which is why I won't exclude you from this stage in my life. ... For now, I'm not changing anything. I'll insist on work when I can; the doctors will insist on rest when I must. If you see a little less spring to my step, if your name fails to leap to my lips, you'll know why. And if I tell you a funny story for the second time, please laugh anyway."
-Charlton Heston, taped announcement concerning his having symptoms of Alzheimer's disease

---

blimps ↩

"Somewhere in the control room of my mind a fat little dwarf in a security outfit was paging through a Penthouse while smoking a cigar with his feet up on the table, watching the security monitors of my brain with his peripheral vision. Suddenly he saw the LARGE SILENT SINSITER MENACING FLOATING PRESENCE coming at me, and he pulled every panic switch and hit every alarm that my body has. A full decade's allotment of adrenaline was dumped into my bloodstream all at once. My metabolism went from "restful sleep mode" to HOLY SHIT! FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE OR DIE!!!! mode" in a nanosecond. My heart went from twenty something beats per minute to about 240 even faster."
-"The horror of blimps", by Scylla

---

one_does_not_argue ↩

"One can argue over the merits of most books, and in arguing understand the point of view of one's opponent. One may even come to the conclusion that possibly he is right after all. One does not argue about The Wind in the Willows. The young man gives it to the girl with whom he is in love, and if she does not like it, asks her to return his letters. The elder man tries it on his nephew, and alters his will accordingly. The book is a test of character. We can't criticize it, because it is criticizing us. As I wrote once: It is a Household Book; a book which everybody in the household loves, and quotes continually; a book which is read aloud to every new guest and is regarded as the touchstone of his worth. When you sit down to it, don't be so ridiculous as to suppose that you are sitting in judgment on my taste, or on the art of Kenneth Grahame. You are merely sitting in judgment on yourself. You may be worthy: I don't know. But it is you who are on trial."
-A. A. Milne

---

linus_oppenheimer ↩

"And like the software patent issue, I also don't necessarily like DRM [Digital Rights Management] myself, but I still ended up feeling the same: I'm an "Oppenheimer", and I refuse to play politics with Linux, and I think you can use Linux for whatever you want to--which very much includes things I don't necessarily personally approve of.
The GPL requires you to give out sources to the kernel, but it doesn't limit what you can do with the kernel. On the whole, this is just another example of why rms calls me "just an engineer" and thinks I have no ideals.
[ Personally, I see it as a virtue--trying to make the world a slightly better place without trying to impose your moral values on other people. You do whatever the h*ll rings your bell, I'm just an engineer who wants to make the best OS possible. ]"
-Linus Torvalds, linux-kernel mailing list

---

disturbance ↩

"Disturbance is art. All else is opium. Too many people--maybe most of the people on Earth--would like to encounter nothing that ever made them think an extra instant, or feel anything they were not accustomed to feeling. And the thing to do with such people is drag them out of bed, bash them across the face till they lie still, and piss on them till they drink it."
Both women stared at me.
"Metaphorically," I added. "Hurt them out of their comfort and thereby force them to take in something they didn't know they liked."
-John Barnes, The Merchants of Souls, part 3, ch. 6

---

rms_technical_merit ↩

"It is clear that your goals and values are very different from mine. I don't think technical merit can make up for a lack of freedom to distribute modified versions, any more than a capable despot who makes the trains run on time can make up for a lack of democracy."
-Richard M. Stallman
[Contrast with linus_copyright. I guess this explains why Stallman does nothing productive--technical merit means nothing to him, and he thinks commercial software is morally equivalent to gassing Jews.]

---

ali ↩

"When I'm gone, boxing will be nothing again. The fans with the cigars and the hats turned down'll be there, but no more housewives and little men in the street and foreign presidents. It's goin' to be back to the fighter who comes to town, smells a flower, visits a hospital, blows a horn and says he's in shape. Old hat. I was the onliest boxer in history people asked questions like a senator."
-Muhammad Ali

---

daikatana ↩

JOHN ROMERO: "Alright team, I've got a fabulous idea for a game! I've been listening to what the gamers want and are looking for, and I've got some killer thoughts! This will be the best game ever created!"
ION STORM TEAM: "HOORAY!!!"
JOHN ROMERO: "First of all, we'll need to make our own engine. A superb engine, featuring advanced effects like T&L, dynamic LOD, curved surfaces and-"
POD PEOPLE: "John xyblah grawh rawwwwr!" (translated: "John, you are our bitch now!")
JOHN ROMERO: (shot by evil Pod Peoples' ray gun) "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"
ION STORM TEAM: "John, are you okay?"
JOHN ROMERO: (slowly getting up from the ground): "I LIKE BUGS AND FROGS."
ION STORM TEAM: "What?"
JOHN ROMERO: "'SUPERFLY JOHNSON' IS A GOOD NAME FOR A BLACK MAN."
ION STORM TEAM: "We quit."
-Something Awful's review of Daikatana

---

milk ↩

"On a whim, he and two friends drove from Wisconsin to Seattle at a straight shot, and that seemed like something worth celebrating. If you are a young person, I recommend that you celebrate a trek like that with wholesome milk. We did not. We celebrated with Liquor, which is like milk, except that it issues forth from the devil's cold teat."
-Tycho in Penny Arcade

---

larkin ↩

"This Be the Verse
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
 
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
 
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself."
-Philip Larkin

---

peertopeer ↩

"Statements of this kind gnaw at the sensible mind, they chew on it and try to eat it. I won't even gauge the clumsiness with which these two incongruous concepts are lashed together. If you want to see triple-x, explicit evidence of corporations with their hands up your government's ass, working the their jaws like some malevolent Howdy Doody with chilling ramifications for personal liberty, well, there you go. Peer-to-peer file sharing and Terror? Terror? Do they not have dictionaries there? There's another T word you cocks might like, too--give it a try: it's called "Tenuous." The only people terrorized by peer-to-peer file sharing are vastly potent multinational businesses, gripped by the realization that they sell carriages in a world of bullet trains."
-Tycho in Penny Arcade

---

mob_movies ↩

"I think that Mob Movies are, as a rule, just better than other kinds of movie. The reason for this is simple: They're full of dynamic, creative characters that take real pleasure in their work. No weapons handy in the hotel lobby? Hit a man's head with the courtesy bell over and over, and a pleasant "ding" sound will accompany each blow. All he has is a Yo-Yo? Wrap it around his neck, and give him a little Chokie Roberts. They improvise! And I respect that."
-Tycho in Penny Arcade

---

diatribe ↩

"What did I say? It's getting to the point were a guy can't post a venomous one sided diatribe regarding a popular piece of consumer electronics on the front page of a community web site visited by nearly 70,000 people a day, without getting buried in hate mail. What a pain in the ass. "
-Gabe in Penny Arcade

---

spidergoat ↩

"If you already knew that human beings were doing this kind of thing, by which I mean the spider-goat thing, my hat's off to you. We never heard about this shit until a week ago, which is surprising because when someone squeezes some Goddamn spider silk out of a goat's titty it's the kind of thing one expects to hear about. Industry is clacking its hideous mandibles with excitement over the applications of readily available spider silk, focused largely on the swinging and thwipping sectors of our economy. I'm making goofy jokes about it because I think that we are a young species that often fucks with things we don't know how to unfuck. It's a coping mechanism."
-Tycho in Penny Arcade

---

opinion ↩

"I am sick of hippies trying to tell me that someone's Opinion can't be wrong because it's thier OPINION. That's bullshit, plenty of Opinions are wrong. Hey, it's my OPINION that dogs have eight legs and make a sound like a car horn every time they take a piss. If I told you that, would you say, "Okay Gabe I respect your opinion, maybe they do have eight legs." or would you call me an idiot? Yeah, that's what I thought."
-Gabe in Penny Arcade

---

discourse ↩

Edmund: "It is said, Percy, that civilized man seeks out good and intelligent company, so that, through learned discourse, he may rise above the savage and closer to God."
Percy: "Yes, I've heard that."
Edmund: "Personally, however, I like to start the day with a total dickhead to remind me I'm best."
-Black Adder II, "Beer"

---

bush_atheists ↩

"No, I don't know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."
-George H.W. Bush, Sr., press conference at O'Hare Airport, 1987Aug27

---

cool_games ↩

"If I were running a game publisher today, I'd take a page from Tom Doherty's book; I'd publish a certain amount of licensed drivel, and sequels to successful products.

But I'd also find room to fund development of cool stuff. For two reasons: First, because while most innovative products may fail, every once in a while, one will succeed beyond my wildest expectations, and create IP I can exploit into infinity.

And second, because I'm a =game= publisher--and my whole raison d'etre is to publish cool games.

Why is it that no one in the game industry behaves this way?

I don't believe it's because they have a better grasp of the realities of that industry than I do; I believe it's because they're a bunch of idiot fucks....

Many of them out of Hollywood...

Who actually believe that licensed drivel is the highest, and most valuable, way to exploit our creative potential."
-Greg Costikyan

---

warren_lepers ↩

"I want a button on my computer that, when depressed, has the target on the screen held down and fucked in the gall bladder by nymphomaniac suicide lepers who are quite prepared to leave their green suppurating cocks broken off in the wound.

I DON'T THINK THAT'S TOO MUCH TO ASK IN THE 21ST CENTURY.

LEPERS. SORES. WOUND-COCKS. NOW."

-Warren Ellis on the BAD SIGNAL mailing list

---

warren_fireworks ↩

"Someone needs to devise a way to remotely delete blogs that contain nothing but the results of online tests. This remote deletion device should also incinerate the generative organs of the perpetrators. Testicles and wombs making little fireworks to brighten the long dark night of the world wide web."
-Warren Ellis on the BAD SIGNAL mailing list

---

spiders ↩

"I don't like spiders, okay? Their furry bodies and sticky webs, and what do they need all those legs for, anyway? I'll tell you! For crawling across your face in the middle of the night! Eew!"
-Willow, Buffy the Vampire Slayer #10

---

quote ↩

"This is a plot, if ever there was one, to illustrate King Lear's complaint, "As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport." I am aware this is the second time in two weeks I have been compelled to quote Lear, but there are times when Eminem simply will not do."
-Roger Ebert, Review of_The Life of