Those who can, do.  Those who can't, simulate.

Real Users hate Real Programmers.

#define BITCOUNT(x)	(((BX_(x)+(BX_(x)>>4)) & 0x0F0F0F0F) % 255)
#define  BX_(x)		((x) - (((x)>>1)&0x77777777)			\
			     		 - (((x)>>2)&0x33333333)			\
			             - (((x)>>3)&0x11111111))

		-- really weird C code to count the number of bits in a word

"What is the robbing of a bank compared to the FOUNDING of a bank?"
		-- Bertold Brecht

Insanity is hereditary.  You get it from your kids.

We really don't have any enemies.  It's just that some of our best
friends are trying to kill us.

"About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the
ends."
		-- Herbert Hoover

One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they
never have to stop and answer the phone.

If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of
arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the
physical world.  One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker
entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability.
		-- Vannevar Bush

I can't understand why a person will take a year or two to write a
novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.
		-- Fred Allen

"I was playing poker the other night ... with Tarot cards. I got a full
house and four people died."
		-- Steven Wright

Confidence is the feeling you have before you understand the situation.

Whenever anyone says, "theoretically", they really mean, "not really".
		-- Dave Parnas

"When I was crossing the border into Canada, they asked if I had any
firearms with me.  I said, `Well, what do you need?'"
		-- Steven Wright

This login session: $13.99, but for you $11.88

Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code.

"I like your game but we have to change the rules."

The mosquito is the state bird of New Jersey.
		-- Andy Warhol

Of what you see in books, believe 75%.  Of newspapers, believe 50%.
And of TV news, believe 25% -- make that 5% if the anchorman wears a
blazer.

Sure he's sharp as a razor ... he's a two-dimensional pinhead!

There's so much plastic in this culture that vinyl leopard skin is
becoming an endangered synthetic.
		-- Lily Tomlin

The United States also has its native Fascists who say that they are
"100 percent American"...
		-- U. S. Army (1945)

Bringing computers into the home won't change either one, but may
revitalize the corner saloon.

I also believe that academic freedom should protect the right of a
professor or student to advocate Marxism, socialism, communism, or any
other minority viewpoint -- no matter how distasteful to the majority.
		-- Richard M. Nixon
What are our schools for if not indoctrination against Communism?
		-- Richard M. Nixon

To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three
men, two of them absent.

He's the kind of guy, that, well, if you were ever in a jam he'd be
there ... with two slices of bread and some chunky peanut butter.

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and
blow, "is to learn something.  That's the only thing that never fails.
You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at
night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only
love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or
know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds.  There is only
one thing for it then -- to learn.  Learn why the world wags and what
wags it.  That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust,
never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never
dream of regretting.  Learning is the only thing for you.  Look what a
lot of things there are to learn."
		-- T.H. White, "The Once and Future King"

Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the
beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get
out, and such as are out wish to get in?
		-- Ralph Emerson

"It's not just a computer -- it's your ass."
		-- Cal Keegan

"Avoid revolution or expect to get shot.  Mother and I will grieve, but
we will gladly buy a dinner for the National Guardsman who shot you."
		-- Dr. Paul Williamson, father of a Kent State student

Spirtle, n.:
	The fine stream from a grapefruit that always lands right in
	your eye.
		-- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends"

There is something fascinating about science.  One gets such wholesale
returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
		-- Mark Twain

The Preacher, the Politician, the Teacher,
	Were each of them once a kiddie.
A child, indeed, is a wonderful creature.
	Do I want one?  God Forbiddie!
		-- Ogden Nash

Children seldom misquote you.  In fact, they usually repeat word for
word what you shouldn't have said.

An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.

Heavy, adj.:
	Seduced by the chocolate side of the force.

Living in LA is like not having a date on Saturday night.
		-- Candice Bergen

"The C Programming Language -- A language which combines the
flexibility of assembly language with the power of assembly language."

Economists state their GNP growth projections to the nearest tenth of a
percentage point to prove they have a sense of humor.
		-- Edgar R. Fiedler

We are going to give a little something, a few little years more, to
socialism, because socialism is defunct.  It dies all by itself.  The
bad thing is that socialism, being a victim of its ... Did I say
socialism?
		-- Fidel Castro

An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.

You couldn't even prove the White House staff sane beyond a reasonable
doubt.
		-- Ed Meese, on the Hinckley verdict

One promising concept that I came up with right away was that you could
manufacture personal air bags, then get a law passed requiring that
they be installed on congressmen to keep them from taking trips.  Let's
say your congressman was trying to travel to Paris to do a fact-finding
study on how the French government handles diseases transmitted by
sherbet.  Just when he got to the plane, his mandatory air bag,
strapped around his waist, would inflate -- FWWAAAAAAPPPP -- thus
rendering him too large to fit through the plane door.  It could also
be rigged to inflate whenever the congressman proposed a law.  ("Mr.
Speaker, people ask me, why should October be designated as Cuticle
Inspection Month?  And I answer that FWWAAAAAAPPPP.") This would save
millions of dollars, so I have no doubt that the public would violently
support a law requiring airbags on congressmen.  The problem is that
your potential market is very small: there are only around 500 members
of Congress, and some of them, such as House Speaker "Tip" O'Neil, are
already too large to fit on normal aircraft.
		-- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"

Alone, adj.:
	In bad company.
		-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the
Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an
utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life
forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches
are a pretty neat idea ...
		-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

	THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #13: SLOBOL

SLOBOL is best known for the speed, or lack of it, of its compiler.
Although many compilers allow you to take a coffee break while they
compile, SLOBOL compilers allow you to travel to Bolivia to pick the
coffee.  Forty-three programmers are known to have died of boredom
sitting at their terminals while waiting for a SLOBOL program to
compile.  Weary SLOBOL programmers often turn to a related (but
infinitely faster) language, COCAINE.

The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be
pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.
		-- Elizabeth Taylor

			*** NEWSFLASH ***
Russian tanks steamrolling through New Jersey!!!!  Details at eleven!

Weinberg's Second Law:
	If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs,
	then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.

Mencken and Nathan's Ninth Law of The Average American:
	The quality of a champagne is judged by the amount of noise the
	cork makes when it is popped.

					



20.03.2001


"There is a road to freedom.  Its milestones are Obedience, Endeavor,
Honesty, Order, Cleanliness, Sobriety, Truthfulness, Sacrifice, and
love of the Fatherland."
                -- Adolf Hitler

19.03.2001


"Of course power tools and alcohol don't mix.  Everyone knows power
tools aren't soluble in alcohol ..."
		-- Crazy Nigel

If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
		-- Maslow

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age
brings wisdom.
		-- H. L. Mencken

Excess on occasion is exhilarating.  It prevents moderation from
acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
		-- W. Somerset Maugham

In Devon, Connecticut, it is unlawful to walk backwards after sunset.

Grelb's Reminder:
	Eighty percent of all people consider themselves to be above
	average drivers.

Job Placement, n.:
	Telling your boss what he can do with your job.

People will buy anything that's one to a customer.

Don't you feel more like you do now than you did when you came in?

18.03.2001


According to Arkansas law, Section 4761, Pope's Digest:  "No person
shall be permitted under any pretext whatever, to come nearer than
fifty feet of any door or window of any polling room, from the opening
of the polls until the completion of the count and the certification of
the returns."How many seconds are there in a year?  If I tell you there  are
3.155  x  10^7, you won't even try to remember it.  On the other hand,
who could forget that, to within half a percent, pi seconds is a
nanocentury.
		-- Tom Duff, Bell Labs

Despising machines to a man,
The Luddites joined up with the Klan,
	And ride out by night
	In a sheeting of white
To lynch all the robots they can.
		-- C. M. and G. A. Maxson

HOW YOU CAN TELL THAT IT'S GOING TO BE A ROTTEN DAY:
	#32: You call your answering service and they've never heard of
	     you.

Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy, but it's very funny--
	Did you ever try buying them without money?
		-- Ogden Nash

Before Xerox, five carbons were the maximum extension of anybody's
ego.

17.03.2001


Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
		-- Jules de Gaultier

A dozen, a gross, and a score,
Plus three times the square root of four,
	Divided by seven,
	Plus five times eleven,
Equals nine squared plus zero, no more.

You know the great thing about TV?  If something important happens
anywhere at all in the world, no matter what time of the day or night,
you can always change the channel.
		-- Jim Ignatowski

Try to get all of your posthumous medals in advance.

Misery no longer loves company.  Nowadays it insists on it.
		-- Russell Baker

A day without sunshine is like night.

Harry is heavily into camping, and every year in the late fall, he
makes us all go to Assateague, which is an island on the Atlantic Ocean
famous for its wild horses.  I realize that the concept of wild horses
probably stirs romantic notions in many of you, but this is because you
have never met any wild horses in person.  In person, they are like
enormous hooved rats.  They amble up to your camp site, and their
attitude is: "We're wild horses.  We're going to eat your food, knock
down your tent and poop on your shoes.  We're protected by federal law,
just like Richard Nixon."
		-- Dave Barry, "Tenting Grandpa Bob"

Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #52:

Q:  What is your name?
A:  Ernestine McDowell.
Q:  And what is your marital status?
A:  Fair.

16.03.2001


Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less
obvious as you begin to study the universe.  For example, there are no
solids in the universe.  There's not even a suggestion of a solid.
There are no absolute continuums.  There are no surfaces.  There are no
straight lines.
		-- R. Buckminster Fuller

VMS is like a nightmare about RXS-11M.

Computer Science is merely the post-Turing decline in formal systemstheory.

A bore is someone who persists in holding his own views after we have
enlightened him with ours.

15.03.2001


"I've seen, I SAY, I've seen better heads on a mug of beer"
		-- Senator Claghorn

E Pluribus Unix

For some reason, this fortune reminds everyone of Marvin Zelkowitz.

'Twas the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period
   preceding the annual Yuletide celebration, And
   throughout our place of residence,
Kinetic activity was not in evidence among the
   possessors of this potential, including that
   species of domestic rodent known as Mus musculus.
Hosiery was meticulously suspended from the forward
   edge of the woodburning caloric apparatus,
Pursuant to our anticipatory pleasure regarding an
   imminent visitation from an eccentric
   philanthropist among whose folkloric appelations
   is the honorific title of St. Nicklaus ...

Finagle's fourth Law:
	Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes
	it worse.

Why I Can't Go Out With You:

I'd LOVE to, but ...
	-- I have to floss my cat.
	-- I've dedicated my life to linguini.
	-- I need to spend more time with my blender.
	-- it wouldn't be fair to the other Beautiful People.
	-- it's my night to pet the dog/ferret/goldfish.
	-- I'm going downtown to try on some gloves.
	-- I have to check the freshness dates on my dairy products.
	-- I'm going down to the bakery to watch the buns rise.
	-- I have an appointment with a cuticle specialist.
	-- I have some really hard words to look up.
	-- I've got a Friends of the Lowly Rutabaga meeting.
	-- I promised to help a friend fold road maps.

There *__..is* intelligent life on Earth, but I leave for Texas on Monday.

From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving,
Whatever gods may be,
That no life lives forever,
That dead men rise up never,
That even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea.
		-- Swinburne

Eighty percent of air pollution comes from plants and trees.
		-- Ronald Reagan, famous movie star

Cabbage, n.:
	A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as
	a man's head.
		-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

The first myth of management is that it exists.  The second myth of
management is that success equals skill.
		-- Robert Heller

If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you
really make them think they'll hate you.

Scrubbing floors and emptying bedpans has as much dignity as the
Presidency.
		-- Richard Nixon

O give me a home,
Where the buffalo roam,
Where the deer and the antelope play,
Where seldom is heard
A discouraging word,
'Cause what can an antelope say?

Tertullian was born in Carthage somewhere about 160 A.D.  He was a
pagan, and he abandoned himself to the lascivious life of his city
until about his 35th year, when he became a Christian .... To him is
ascribed the sublime confession: Credo quia absurdum est (I believe
because it is absurd).  This does not altogether accord with historical
fact, for he merely said:

	"And the Son of God died, which is immediately credible because
	it is absurd.  And buried he rose again, which is certain
	because it is impossible."

Thanks to the acuteness of his mind, he saw through the poverty of
philosophical and Gnostic knowledge, and contemptuously rejected it.
		-- C. G. Jung, in Psychological Types

(Teruillian was one of the founders of the Catholic Church).

14.03.2001


Chicago Transit Authority Rider's Rule #36:
	Never ever ask the tough looking gentleman wearing El Rukn
	headgear where he got his "pyramid powered pizza warmer".
		-- Chicago Reader 3/27/81

Age before beauty; and pearls before swine.
		-- Dorothy Parker

"Plaese porrf raed."
		-- Prof. Michael O'Longhlin, S.U.N.Y. Purchase

The pitcher wound up and he flang the ball at the batter.  The batter
swang and missed.  The pitcher flang the ball again and this time the
batter connected.  He hit a high fly right to the center fielder.  The
center fielder was all set to catch the ball, but at the last minute
his eyes were blound by the sun and he dropped it.
		-- Dizzy Dean

13.03.2001


Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the
incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
		-- G. B. Shaw

While it may be true that a watched pot never boils, the one you don't
keep an eye on can make an awful mess of your stove.
		-- Edward Stevenson

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
		-- H. L. Mencken

There's so much plastic in this culture that vinyl leopard skin is
becoming an endangered synthetic.
		-- Lily Tomlin

By doing just a little every day, you can gradually let the task
completely overwhelm you.

The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
		-- Albert Einstein

"I drink to make other people interesting."
		-- George Jean Nathan

"All my friends and I are crazy.  That's the only thing that keeps us
sane."

10.03.2001


Government lies, and newspapers lie, but in a democracy they are
different lies.

07.03.2001


We wish you a Hare Krishna
We wish you a Hare Krishna
We wish you a Hare Krishna
And a Sun Myung Moon!
		-- Maxwell Smart

01.03.2001


"I'm in Pittsburgh.  Why am I here?"
		-- Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate

Dear Miss Manners:
	Please list some tactful ways of removing a man's saliva from
	your face.

Gentle Reader:
	Please list some decent ways of acquiring a man's saliva on
	your face ...

America was discovered by Amerigo Vespucci and was named after him,
until people got tired of living in a place called "Vespuccia" and
changed its name to "America".
		-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"

"The bland leadeth the bland and they both shall fall into the kitsch."

"I like work ... I can sit and watch it for hours."

Death to all fanatics!

The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
		-- Mark Twain

"If you don't want your dog to have bad breath, do what I do:  Pour a little
Lavoris in the toilet."
		-- Jay Leno

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men
of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
		-- Justice Louis D. Brandeis

The Abrams' Principle:
	The shortest distance between two points is off the wall.

If God had intended Man to Walk, He would have given him Feet.

28.02.2001


One way to stop a runaway horse is to bet on him.

Don't be humble ... you're not that great.
		-- Golda Meir

Never try to outstubborn a cat.
		-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"

Real Users are afraid they'll break the machine -- but they're never
afraid to break your face.

Eighty percent of air pollution comes from plants and trees.
		-- Ronald Reagan, famous movie star

Get Revenge!  Live long enough to be a problem for your children!

27.02.2001


What the world *really* needs is a good Automatic Bicycle Sharpener.

Bore, n.:
	A guy who wraps up a two-minute idea in a two-hour vocabulary.
		-- Walter Winchell

There is a natural hootchy-kootchy to a goldfish.
		-- Walt Disney

Come, let us hasten to a higher plane,
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indices bedecked from one to _.n,
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!
		-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

26.02.2001


It has just been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.

Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work ... I did not,
when a slave, understand the deep meanings of those rude, and
apparently incoherent songs.  I was myself within the circle, so that I
neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear.  They told a
tale which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension:  they
were tones, loud, long and deep, breathing the prayer and complaint of
souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish.  Every tone was a
testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from
chains.
		-- Frederick Douglass

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people
are right more than half of the time.
		-- E. B. White

"Laughter is the closest distance between two people."  
		-- Victor Borge

Shamus, n. [Yiddish]:
	A shamus is a guy who takes care of handyman tasks around the
temple, and makes sure everything is in working order.
	A shamus is at the bottom of the pecking order of synagog
functionaries, and there's a joke about that:
	A rabbi, to show his humility before God, cries out in the
middle of a service, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!"  The cantor, not to be
bested, also cries out, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!"
	The shamus, deeply moved, follows suit and cries, "Oh, Lord, I
am nobody!"  The rabbi turns to the cantor and says, "Look who thinks
he's nobody!"
		-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"

24.02.2001


Here is a simple experiment that will teach you an important electrical
lesson: On a cool, dry day, scuff your feet along a carpet, then reach
your hand into a friend's mouth and touch one of his dental fillings.
Did you notice how your friend twitched violently and cried out in
pain?  This teaches us that electricity can be a very powerful force,
but we must never use it to hurt others unless we need to learn an
important electrical lesson.

It also teaches us how an electrical circuit works.  When you scuffed
your feet, you picked up batches of "electrons", which are very small
objects that carpet manufacturers weave into carpets so they will
attract dirt.  The electrons travel through your bloodstream and
collect in your finger, where they form a spark that leaps to your
friend's filling, then travels down to his feet and back into the
carpet, thus completing the circuit.

Amazing Electronic Fact: If you scuffed your feet long enough without
touching anything, you would build up so many electrons that your
finger would explode!  But this is nothing to worry about unless you
have carpeting.
		-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"

The Schwine-Kitzenger Institute study of 47 men over the age of 100
showed that all had these things in common:

	(1) They all had moderate appetites.
	(2) They all came from middle class homes
	(3) All but two of them were dead.

The Ruffed Pandanga of Borneo and Rotherham spreads out his feathers in
his courtship dance and imitates Winston Churchill and Tommy Cooper on
one leg.  The padanga is dying out because the female padanga doesn't
take it too seriously.
		-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"

23.02.2001


If you can't be good, be careful.  If you can't be careful, give me a
call.

Gold, n.:
	A soft malleable metal relatively scarce in distribution.  It
is mined deep in the earth by poor men who then give it to rich men who
immediately bury it back in the earth in great prisons, although gold
hasn't done anything to them.
		-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"

Beware of the Turing Tar-pit in which everything is possible but
nothing of interest is easy.

Computers will not be perfected until they can compute how much more
than the estimate the job will cost.

Signs of crime: screaming or cries for help.
		-- from the Brown Security Crime Prevention Pamphlet

Machines certainly can solve problems, store information, correlate,
and play games -- but not with pleasure.
		-- Leo Rosten

In the force if Yoda's so strong, construct a sentence with words in
the proper order then why can't he?

22.02.2001


In Seattle, Washington, it is illegal to carry a concealed weapon that
is over six feet in length.

The District of Columbia has a law forbidding you to exert pressure on
a balloon and thereby cause a whistling sound on the streets.

"Die?  I should say not, dear fellow.  No Barrymore would allow such a
conventional thing to happen to him."
		-- John Barrymore's dying words

Psychotherapy is the theory that the patient will probably get well
anyhow and is certainly a damn fool.
		-- H. L. Mencken

"Always try to do things in chronological order; it's less confusing
that way."

A very intelligent turtle
Found programming UNIX a hurdle
	The system, you see,
	Ran as slow as did he,
And that's not saying much for the turtle.

"But this has taken us far afield from interface, which is not a bad
place to be, since I particularly want to move ahead to the kludge.
Why do people have so much trouble understanding the kludge?  What is a
kludge, after all, but not enough Ks, not enough ROMs, not enough RAMs,
poor quality interface and too few bytes to go around?  Have I
explained yet about the bytes?"

Reporter (to Mahatma Gandhi): Mr Gandhi, what do you think of Western
	Civilization?
Gandhi:	I think it would be a good idea.

21.02.2001


Good news.  Ten weeks from Friday will be a pretty good day.

It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a
warning to others.

"It's not just a computer -- it's your ass."
		-- Cal Keegan

Q:  Why do ducks have flat feet?
A:  To stamp out forest fires.
Q:  Why do elephants have flat feet?
A:  To stamp out flaming ducks.

"I argue very well.  Ask any of my remaining friends.  I can win an
argument on any topic, against any opponent.  People know this, and
steer clear of me at parties.  Often, as a sign of their great respect,
they don't even invite me."		
		-- Dave Barry

One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.

Board the windows, up your car insurance, and don't leave any booze in
plain sight.  It's St. Patrick's day in Chicago again.  The legend has
it that St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland.  In fact, he was
arrested for drunk driving.  The snakes left because people kept
throwing up on them.

If you can read this, you're too close.

It is only the great men who are truly obscene.  If they had not dared
to be obscene, they could never have dared to be great.
		-- Havelock Ellis

Cahn's Axiom:	
	When all else fails, read the instructions.