Ralph's Observation:
  It is a mistake to allow any mechanical object
  to realize that you are in a hurry.


Cole's Law:
  Thinly sliced cabbage


Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana.


Firestone's Law of Forecasting:
  Chicken Little only has to be right once.


MURPHY'S LAW:
  If anything can go wrong, it will.


Murphy's Corollary:
  Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.


Murphy's Corollary:
  It is impossible to make anything foolproof
  because fools are so ingenious


Murphy's Constant:
  Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value


Quantized Revision of Murphy's Law:
  Everything goes wrong all at once.


O'Toole's Commentary:
  Murphy was an optimist.


Finagle's Third Law:
  In any collection of data, the figure most obviously
  correct, beyond all need of checking, is the mistake.


Gumperson's Law:
  The probability of anything happening is in
  inverse ratio to its desirability.


Rudin's Law:
  In crises that force people to choose among
  alternative courses of action, most people will
  choose the worst one possible.


Ginsberg's Restatement of the Three Laws of Thermodynamics:
  You can't win.
  You can't break even.
  You can't quit.


Commoner's Second Law of Ecology:
  Nothing ever goes away.


Zymurgy's First Law of Evolving Systems Dynamics:
  Once you open a can of worms, the only way to
  re-can them is to use a bigger can.


Non-Reciprocal Law of Expectations:
  Negative expectations yield negative results.
  Positive expectations yield negative results.


Interchangeable parts won't.


You never find a lost article until you replace it.


If nobody uses it, there's a reason.


Etorre's Observation:
  The other line moves faster.


Corollary to the First Law of Revision:
  In simple cases, presenting one obvious right way versus
  one obvious wrong way, it is often wiser to choose the wrong
  way, so as to expedite subsequent revision.


Any given program, when running, is obsolete.


Any given program costs more and takes longer.


If a program is useful, it will have to be changed.


If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.


Any program will expand to fill available memory.


The value of a program is proportional to the weight of its output.


Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capabilities
     of the programmer who must maintain it.


Any non-trivial program contains at least one bug.


Undetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast to
detectable errors, which by definition are limited.


Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.


Shaw's Principle:
  Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool
  will want to use it.


It works better if you plug it in.


When all else fails, read the instructions.


Enough research will tend to support your theory.


The solution to the problem changes the problem.


  Beware of the man who works hard to learn something,
learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is
full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant
without having come by their ignorance the hard way.
    - Bokonon


  Help a man when he is in trouble and he will
remember you when he is in trouble again.


  Don't get mad, get even.


It's better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick.


The Golden Rule:
  He who has the gold, makes the rules.


  Love is a matter of chemistry;
  sex is a matter of physics.


  The trouble with resisting temptation is it may
never come your way again.


  Only a mediocre person is always at his best.


Benchley's Law of Distinction:
  There are two kinds of people in the world, those who believe
there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don't.


Fools rush in where fools have been before.


Clarke's Third Law:
  Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.


Weiler's Law:
 Nothing is impossible for the man who 
 does not have to do it himself.


  If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs,
the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.


Katz's Law:
  Men and women will act rationally when all other
possibilities have been exhausted.


Cole's Axiom:
  The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant;
the population is growing.


Vique's Law:
  A man without a religion is like a fish without a bicycle.


Churchill's commentary on man:
  Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the
time he will pick himself up and continue on.


The ultimate Law:
  All general statements are false.


Farnsdick's corollary:
  After things have gone from bad to worse,
the cycle will repeat itself.


Lynch's Law:
  When the going gets tough, everybody leaves.


The hidden flaw never remains hidden.


Langsam's Law:
  Everything depends.


Complex problems have simple, easy to understand wrong answers.


Conway's Law:
  In every organization there will always be one person
who knows what is going on.
 
  This person must be fired.


First Law of Laboratory Work:
  Hot glass looks exactly the same as cold glass.


To err is human, but to really screw things up requires a computer. 


The Sausage Principle:
  People who love sausage and respect the law
should never watch either one being made.


Horngren's Observation: (generalized)
  The real world is a special case.


Hawkin's Theory of Progress:
  Progress does not consist of replacing a theory that is wrong
with one that is right. It consists of replacing a theory that is
wrong with one that is more subtly wrong.


Never attribute to malice that which is
adequately explained by stupidity.


  If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out
but tomfoolery. But this tomfoolery, having passed through a
very expensive machine, is somehow ennobled, and no one dares
to criticize it.


Allen's Distinction:
  The lion and the calf shall lie down together,
but the calf won't get much sleep.


You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.


Berra's Law:
  You can observe a lot just by watching.


Comin's Law:
  People will accept your idea much more readily if you
tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first.


Fourth Law of Thermodynamics:
  If the probability of success is not almost one,
then it is damned near zero.


Goldwyn's Law of Contracts.
  A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.


Jacquin's Postulate on Democratic Government:
  No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while
the legislature is in session.


Langin's Law:
  If things were left to chance, they'd be better.


If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs,
maybe you just don't understand the situation.


Mencken's Metalaw:
  For every human problem, there is a neat, simple solution;
and it is always wrong.


Sevareid's Law:
  The chief cause of problems is solutions.


Thoreau's Law:
  If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intention
of doing you good, you should run for your life.


Peer's Law:
  The solution to the problem changes the problem.


Never play leapfrog with a unicorn.


Lyall's Fundamental Observation:
  The most important leg of a three legged stool
is the one that's missing.


Design flaws travel in groups.


  You can't fight the law of conservation of energy
but you sure can bargain with it.


Gerrold's Fundamental Truth:
  It's a good thing money can't buy happiness.
We couldn't stand the commercials.


Gerrold's Law:
  A little ignorance can go a long way.


Gerrold's Pronouncement:
  The difference between a politician and a snail is
that a snail leaves its slime behind.


  When a man laughs at his misfortunes, he loses a great
many friends. They never forgive the loss of their prerogative.
               H. L. Mencken


  An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better
than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
               H. L. Mencken


  Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country,
it is a sure sign he expects to be paid for it.
               H. L. Mencken


  Democracy is the theory that the common people know what
they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
               H.L. Mencken


  Puritanism - The haunting fear that someone, somewhere,
may be happy.
               H. L. Mencken


The Arithmetic of Cooperation:
  When you're adding up committees
    there's a useful rule of thumb:
  that talents make a difference,
    and follies make a sum.
               Piet Hein


The Ultimate Wisdom
  Philosophers must ultimately find their true perfection
in knowing all the follies of mankind by introspection.
               Piet Hein


Murphy's Military Laws:
3. Friendly fire ain't.


Murphy's Military Laws:
8. Incoming fire has the right of way.


Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit
the national debt.
                         Herbert Hoover


Revolution, never won
it's just another bomb or gun,
to do again what they have done.
                    The Moody Blues


Living on earth may be expensive,
but it includes a free annual trip around the sun.


Carpe Carp:
Seize the Fish!


The earth is like a tiny grain of sand,
only much, much, heavier.


I'd like to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather;
not screaming in terror, like his passengers.


Engineering: "How will this work?"
Science: "Why will this work?"
Management: "When will this work?"
Liberal Arts: "Do you want fries with that?"


"Symbolic representation of quantitative entities is doomed to its rightful
place of minor importance in a world where flowers and beautiful women
abound."                       -- Albert Einstein


If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person
were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified
in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would
be justified in silencing mankind.             John Stuart Mill


No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize that as a
thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever
conclusions it may lead.                       John Stuart Mill


He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.
                                               John Stuart Mill


As soon as mankind have unanimously accepted a truth, does the
truth perish within them? ... Do the fruits of conquest perish
by the very completeness of the victory?       John Stuart Mill


The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to
human advancement.                             John Stuart Mill


A state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more
docile instruments in its hands [--]even for beneficial 
purposes-- will find that with small men no great thing can 
really be accomplished.                        John Stuart Mill


"See - the thing is - I'm an absolutist.  I mean, kind of ... in a way ..."


Love does not make the world go around, just up and down a bit.


"Is it just me, or does anyone else read `bible humpers' every time
someone writes `bible thumpers?'
                -- Joel M. Snyder, jms@mis.arizona.edu


Q:  How much money do you give to a 900 foot Jesus?
A:  As much as he wants.


Women who want to be equal to men lack imagination
                -- Graffito in a women's restroom


"In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with
reality at any point."     -- Friedrich Nietzsche


Nuke the gay, unborn, baby whales for Jesus.


The word "spine" is, of course, an anagram of "penis".  This is true in
almost fifty percent of the languages of the Galaxy, and many people
have attempted to explain why.  Usually these explanations get bogged
down in silly puns about "standing erect".
                -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"


I love this fucking University, and this University loves fucking me.


Q:  How many right-to-lifers does it take to change a light bulb?
A:  Two.  One to screw it in and one to say that light started when the
    screwing began.


I wouldn't mind dying -- it's that business of having to stay dead that
scares the shit out of me.         -- R. Geis


I regret to say that we of the F.B.I. are powerless to act in cases of
oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate
commerce.            -- J. Edgar Hoover


"Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra.  Suddenly
it flips over, pinning you underneath.  At night the ice
weasels come."              --Nietzsche


The United States Army;
194 years of proud service,
unhampered by progress.


We come into this world screaming, naked, and covered in bodily fluids.
If we live our lives correctly, this never has to change...


I have an inferiority complex, but it isn't a very good one.


The meek shall inherit the Earth, if that's all right with you.


Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no 
matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason 
and your own common sense.       --Buddha


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


Going beyond this point may result in death 
and/or loss of skiing privileges.
--Snow park boundary sign at Sierra Summit


At no time is freedom of speech more precious than when a 
man hits his thumb with a hammer.  -- Marshall Lumsden


How many Newton users does it take to change a lightbulb?
Foux! There to eat lemons, axe gravy soup.


Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some
people have mediocrity thrust upon them.  -- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"


Data Encryption Standard (DES), supposedly the greatest most
convoluted encryption algorithm ever not quite good enough to keep
classified as a government secret. 


Prof:    So the American government went to IBM to come up with a
data encryption standard and they came up with ...
Student: EBCDIC!


Q: What did the Catholic Church call its new fat-free, low-calorie
communion wafer?
A: "I can't believe it's not Jesus!"


I despise ineptitude.  Especially when it's my own.


Going to church does not make a person religious,
nor does going to school make a person educated,
any more than going to a garage makes a person a car.


Renning's Maxim:
        Man is the highest animal.  Man does the classifying.


"It is by caffeine alone I set  my mind in motion, it  is by the beans of
 Java that thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shaking, the shaking
 becomes  a warning,  it is by  caffeine  alone I set  my mind in motion."


1.10) Should I program everything in Perl?
Most definitely.  In fact, you should delete the binaries for sed, awk,
cc, gcc, grep, rm, ls, cat... well, just delete your /bin directory.
--comp.lang.perl FAQ


Idiot, n.:
A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human
affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"


"Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea--
massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, 
and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you 
least expect it."  -- Gene Spafford (spaf@cs.purdue.edu), 1992


Sax was very fond of them. He liked their devotion to science,
it made sense to him--an urge to understand things, to be able
to express them mathematically.  It was a sensible desire.  In
fact, it often seemed to him that if everyone were a physicist
then they would be much better off.


"The woods are lovely, dark and deep.  But I have promises to keep,
And lines to code before I sleep, And lines to code before I sleep."


Q:  How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?
A:  Two.  One to hold the giraffe and the other to fill the bathtub
    with brightly colored machine tools.


"There is no honor in crashing a UNIX machine, because there is
no challenge in it.  It's like walking up to a lone grass hut in 
the middle of nowhere, and lighting in on fire.  Any moron can do 
that.  The challenge lies in making that grass hut fire proof."


Contrary to popular belief, Unix is user friendly. It just happens to be
very selective about who it decides to make friends with.


Linux is like a Vorlon.  It is incredibly powerful, gives terse,
cryptic answers and has a lot of things going on in the background.


I'm a 29th level Cypherpunk!


For my life
is still ahead.
Pity Me


Remember, it's not a good idea to have sex with your sister, 
your brother, your parents, your pet dog, or the farm animals, 
unless of course God tells you to. --Tim May


"Ever wonder why the SAME PEOPLE make up ALL the conspiracy theories?"


If you not part of the solution. you're part of the precipitate


[Re: India]
Q: With so many religions, how do you stay united ?
A: A common hatred of stupid Americans.


War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
Microsoft makes good software.


The price of seeking to force our beliefs on others is that someday
they might force their beliefs on us.  -- Mario Cuomo


Same old story,
not much to say;
hearts are broken every day. 
--Jewel


If the designers of X-window built cars, there would be no fewer than five
steering wheels hidden about the cockpit, none of which followed the same
principles -- but you'd be able to shift gears with your car stereo.  
Useful feature, that.  -- From the programming notebooks of a heretic, 1990.


Which is worse: ignorance or apathy?  Who knows?  Who cares?


Life is a sexually transmitted disease.


"You can bring any calculator you like to the midterm, as long as it 
doesn't dim the lights when you turn it on." 
   -- Hepler, Systems Design 182


Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.


Nothing endures but change.
                -- Heraclitus


The man who understands one woman is qualified to 
understand pretty well everything.    -- Yeats


Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he 
does not become a monster.  And when you look into an abyss, the 
abyss also looks into you.    -- Friedrich Nietzsche


When man calls an animal "vicious", he usually means that it 
will attempt to defend itself when he tries to kill it.


"It's a Prego world, Josh.  It's in there"


SUPER FUJISAWA KIIIIIIIIIIICK!!!!


"Businesses will continue to suffer break-ins until they 
 successfully defuse the motives behind them.  In many cases, 
 these are directly tied to pride and reputation; for a hacker, 
 taking down microsoft.com would be like blowing up the Death Star"


In other words, even if someone came along today and showed that RSA
is as hard as factoring, that factoring is NP-complete, and that
P!=NP (and we know none of these things), that still wouldn't be enough
to satisfy the skeptic that RSA was actually secure. --Matt Blaze


Oh, ok, Alan that's a stupid idea, listen to pinhead ;-)


It's OK to start thinking... 
BUT YOU HAVE TO KNOW WHEN TO STOP!!!


We are Microsoft.  Unix is irrelevant.  
Openness is futile.  Prepare to be assimilated.


Why would you want to own /dev/null?  "ooo!  ooo!  look!  I stole 
nothing!  I'm the thief of nihilism!  I'm the new god of zen monks."
-- Kevin Lyda, alt.sysadmin.recovery


At the first sign of betrayal, I _will_ kill him, but I'll make 
sure to bring the body back, intact.  --Worf DS9


Remember the truth that once was spoken:
To love another person is to see the face of God.


I need a guru,
I need to chill,
I need a Mercedes 280SL! 
  --Maredith Brooks


No one ever talks about their feelings, anyway,
without dressing them in dreams and laughter;
I guess it's just too painful otherwise.   --Jackson Browne


I have not yet _begun_ to display my true ignorance.


If you have to hate, hate gently.


The BBS is reality.  Everything else is done with mirrors.


A lot of the cover-up is just little things, public relations
type of bullshit, kind of like the military naming a nuclear missile
the "PeaceKeeper" instead of the "Angel of Death." So when the average
Joe has a computer problem, it's the result of 'bugs' instead of
"Demons,' or 'hardware failure' rather than the 'Hounds of Hell.'


This is the consumer society, goddamn it! Just use what you need and throw 
it in the garbage when you're done with it. Fuck relationships!  Anything 
you can possibly desire is being made out of plastic now, and you can just 
chuck it when you're done, or get another one when the batteries run down.


The basic approach to Unix is that it assumes that you are willing to 
stay up all night, grab it by the nuts, and squeeze until it will do 
anything you goddamn-well want it to do.


Software is like sex; it's better when it's free. - Linus Torvalds


OK, so you're a PhD - just don't touch anything.


Women are just like men, only different.


Microsoft Magic Line, The: n; the curve on a price-performance 
chart defined by the set of current shipping MS products.  New MS 
products shift the MML upward.  Competitive products that fall below 
the MML become unmarketable and disappear.  Hence, Microsoft is 
always the worst marketable solution for any real problem.


Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from a perl script.


Excerpt from a conversation between a customer support person and a
customer working for a well-known military-affiliated research lab:
Support:  "You're not our only customer, you know."
Customer: "But we're one of the few with tactical nuclear weapons."


Life is a game.  In order to have a game, something has to be more
important than something else.  If what already is, is more important
than what isn't, the game is over.  So, life is a game in which what
isn't, is more important than what is.  Let the good times roll.
                -- Werner Erhard


"As a software development model, Anarchy does not scale well."
                -Dave Welch


Old MacDonald had an agricultural real estate tax abatement.


Swizzle Stick... Well put.


I have only three words for you:
Ronco Food dehydrater


Wife and friends: "So, doctor, what was the cause of death?" 
Doctor: "Well, after extensive investigation, we determined he died of
being just too damned fat. My condolences on your loss and casket bill."


Indeed, the first noble truth of Buddhism, usually translated as
`all life is suffering,' is more accurately rendered `life is filled
with a sense of pervasive unsatisfactoriness.'   -- M.D. Epstein


Drinking coffee from a styrofoam cup is like eating pizza with a straw.


"regression testing"? What's that? If it compiles, it is good, 
if it boots up it is perfect.   -- Linus Torvalds


Here's the difference between capitalism and communism:
In capitalism, men take advantage of other men.
In communism it's the other way around.


You may be sure that when a man begins to call himself a "realist," he
is preparing to do something he is secretly ashamed of doing.
                -- Sydney Harris


GridBagLayout can bite me!


"Thou shalt not follow the NULL pointer for 
chaos and madness await thee at its end."


It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a
sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate
in all times and situations.  They presented him the words: "And this,
too, shall pass away."          -- Abraham Lincoln


Charles Babbage:
He never used Linux,
and now, he's dead.


Y2K haiku:
Stupid programmer,
think ahead next time, when the
power's back.


If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.


If God had wanted us to be concerned for the plight of the toads, 
he would have made them cute and furry.             -- Dave Barry


What strange patches have you been smoking? -- Linus Torvalds


Genius is pain.  -- John Lennon


Among the "warning signs" of marijuana use: "excessive preoccupation with 
social causes, race relations, environmental issues, etc."  -- From a 
66-page booklet called "How Parents Can Help Children Live Marijuana 
Free,"  by the Salt Lake Education Foundation (forward by Orrin Hatch). 


Basically, I want people to know that when they use binary-only modules,
it's THEIR problem.  I want people to know that in their bones, and I
want it shouted out from the rooftops.  I want people to wake up in a
cold sweat every once in a while if they use binary-only modules.  
-- Linus Torvalds


Time is an illusion perpetrated by the manufacturers of space.


Windows Hiku:
Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.


Oh, and a five o'clock shadow is a real turn-on.  It says, "Look at me.  I 
am unkempt.  I have no time for tawdry mortal toiletry concerns.  Kneel." 


Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs. 


Too much fighting.  Just play Trivial Pursuit & have raunchy sex up 
against a wall.  Works for just about anybody.  =) 


[An argument involving] Mark Crispin and Dan Bernstein 
isn't a discussion.  It's an event sponsored by the WWF.


[Re: W2K Beta] Christ!  From the abysmal repaint speed, 
you'd think they rewrote the GUI using the AWT...


I'll hold the bag over his head while you beat him with the baseball bat.


AJ: You're going to need a bigger gun!
Riff: That's what I like to hear.  How much bigger?
-- Sluggy Freelance (Worship the Comic!)


Tequila: Have you hugged your toilet today?


I've gotten the chance to talk to some high end MSCEs. Most
of them couldn't successfully find their asshole with a
road map and explicit directions from their hemorrhoids.


I am hired because I know what I am doing, not because I will do whatever
I am told is a good idea. This might cost me bonuses, raises, promotions,
and may even label me as "undesirable" by places I don't want to work at
anyway, but I don't care. I will not compromise my own principles and
judgement without putting up a fight. Of course, I won't always win,
and I will sometimes be forced to do things I don't agree with, but
if I am my objections will be known, and if I am shown to be right and
problems later develop, I will shout "I told you so!" repeatedly, laugh
hysterically, and do a small dance or jig as appropriate to my heritage.
   --Abigail's Oath for Sysadmins 


People who are willing to rely on the government to
keep them safe are pretty much standing on Darwin's mat,
pounding on the door, screaming, "Take me, take me!"


We are either doing something, or we are not. 
'Talking about' is a subset of 'not'.


I am AS400 Man! PH3@R MY M@D 1BM SK1LLZ!!!


One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the 
belief that one's work is terribly important. -- Bertrand Russell 


We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can
do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.  -- Huxley


"The truth -- that which is actually happening -- cannot be written down
or spoken about.  Once it becomes spoken or written down, it is knowledge.
 And knowledge is not truth, because knowledge is fixed in time.  And the
truth is ever moving and changing, without regard to time.  Truth is
outside all knowledge, of all thought.  As soon as you pause to reflect,
it is not truth." -- Brian Enos, _Practical Shooting: Beyond Fundamentals_


"Keep in mind that it's hard to rob someone who has taken the
precautionary measure of setting him or herself ablaze." 
-- The Onion


"According to the NRA, the best form of personal protection is to be
in possession of a loaded firearm at all times. To ensure your personal
safety, stay the hell away from NRA members."  -- The Onion


The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature
but plunges him more deeply into them.  ~Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand,
and Stars, 1939


"What's the use of being Irish if you don't know that life is 
going to break your heart?" -- Stephen Colbert