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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z ? !

I've got a novel idea! How about if you don't waste my time.
-Frank Pacheco
In America everyone is intitled to an opinion. However you are not entitled to a professional opinion.
-Michael Padlipsky
Ayn Rand was the kind of bold female thinker who should immediately have been a centerpiece of women's studies programs, if the latter were genuinely about women rather than about a cliched, bleeding-heart, victim-obsessed, liberal ideology that dislikes all concrete female achievement.
-Camille Paglia
Civilized man conceals from himself the extent of his subordination to nature. The grandeur of culture, the consolation of religion absorb his attention and win his faith. But let nature shrug, and all is in ruin. Fire, flood, lightning, tornado, hurricane, volcano, earthquake - anywhere at any time. Disaster falls upon the good and bad. Civilized life requires a state of illusion.
-Camille Paglia
At this point, the IMF drags the gasping nation to Step Three: Market-Based Pricing, a fancy term for raising prices on food, water and cooking gas. This leads, predictably, to Step-Three-and-a-Half: what Stiglitz calls, 'The IMF riot.'
-Greg Palast, "The Globalizer Who Came In From the Cold"
Jello! I forgot about jello! This changes EVERYTHING!
-Norm Papernick
I want my 100 mip desktop PC to have the processor mounted on top of the case in a little ceramic square so I can use it for a coffee warmer. Burying all those heat sinks in the cabinet is a waste of good heat.
-Dale Parish
File not found. Should I fake it? (Y/N)
-Mark Parker
I don't care what is written about me so long as it isn't true.
-Dorothy Parker
If they laid all the coeds from Yale end to end...I wouldn't be surprised.
-Dorothy Parker
This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown away with great force.
-Dorothy Parker
And under HappyNet, whenever rn says "End of newsgroup alt.slack.", it'll rmgroup it for you.
-James "Kibo" Parry
And whenever rn sees your .signature it'll rmgroup alt.slack as well! Yay!
-James "Kibo" Parry
By the way, I know the names of all the Macintosh fill patterns. Like "Bark", "Linoleum", "Balls", and "Pressed Herring".
-James "Kibo" Parry
Derrida was NOT postmodern, you fool. He's not even modern, because he's dead! Get your facts straight.
-James "Kibo" Parry
I do NOT have a sense of humor! It says so in my 1000-line .sig!
-James "Kibo" Parry
I love any post in which somone claims to have done something really stupid while pointing out how cheap the stupid item was. I have a penny gumball stuck in my ear. Top that.
-James "Kibo" Parry
I'm not a NetGod. I _am_ the Net.
-James "Kibo" Parry
If this posting makes you laugh *and* makes you angry, then I win!
-James "Kibo" Parry
Yeah? Well, I AM the NSA!
-James "Kibo" Parry
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter.
-Blaise Pascal
Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world.
-Blaise Pascal
The U.S. Supreme court has a definition of Pornography, and it breaks down something like this: Anything which is without social redeeming value and which appeals to the prurient interest. In other words, any posting on the Usenet.
-T. Pascal
Chance favors only the prepared mind.
-Louis Pasteur
Your only duties in life are to fix my tapes and eliminate the people i don't like.
-Trupti Patel
Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
-Gen George S. Patton
wow! you really have a way with words!! they effectively convey your bitterness at your boyfriend's lack of attention to domestic chores. Edgar Allen Poe, eat your heart out!
-Adam Paul
This isn't right. This isn't even wrong.
-Wolfgang Pauli
Major funding for The Great Depression was provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
-heard on PBS
I guess I shouldn't blame her really, I mean she did give birth to me, which is more than most people do for the world.
-The Peace-ior
Science is one thing and Wisdom is another. Science is an edged tool, with which men play like children, and cut their own fingers.
-Thomas Love Peacock
He's completely gone off the deep end. I mean he's more than just a little off, we're talking more than two tacos short of a combination plate here.
-Ben Peal
I think my body just told me to lay off the 'Chef Boyardee'
-Ben Peal
What a weenie name, Firehawk - you need a cool name like "Great Pre-Historic Bird Rodin"
-Ben Peal
Ya know, you could vomit on all of your Magic cards. That way you'd know which ones are yours, and there would be no incentive to steal them.
-Ben Peal
Never worry about a book corrupting a child... Worry if your children are not getting ideas from books.
-Richard Peck
AOL and TimeWarner offer up the new org chart of a combined company. Case would be Chairman. Levin would be CEO. And Ted Turner would maintain his role as being pretty darn odd.
-Dave Pell
British Law prohibits the distribution of pornography for financial gain. What about for public good?
-Dave Pell
Mama always told me there would be days like these. Of course, Mama has been trading in long-term treasury bonds so she isn't quite as worried as some today.
-Dave Pell
San Francisco State University is starting a course that provides an academic approach to cybersex. The course directors had initially employed a Socratic method of teaching, but they had to abandon that strategy as everyone in the class just repeatedly yelled out "Yes".
-Dave Pell
Sesame Street is leading an effort to make sure that every newborn has a web page at birth. A web page? My future children already have equity in start-ups and are facing a backlog of anti-trust litigation.
-Dave Pell
Sites are now looking for new ways to attract and retain visitors. One of the more popular strategies is the use of sweepstakes. It may just work as 93 million Americans participated in a sweepstakes or other game of chance last year. If sweepstakes don't work, we may see some sites turn to the last resort of creating a compelling user experience and a quality value-proposition for visitors.
-Dave Pell
some music industrians are suggesting that the recent drop in cd sales among teens is due to the increasing popularity of MP3. There are two issues here. One, the place to compete is the marketplace, not the court. Two, the decrease in music sales among teens is more connected to the break-up of Led Zeppelin than MP3.
-Dave Pell
Thanks in large part to internet opportunities, US venture capitalists invested $7.6 billion in the second quarter. That is a cool 76% increase over the second quarter of last year. I'm not sure where all the money goes. I am able to run the entire davenetics operation for less than a billion...
-Dave Pell
Hero of Slashdot? That must rate somewhere below getting an MSCE certificate.
-Bruce Perens
The reason for the success of this somewhat communist-sounding strategy, while the failure of communism itself is visible around the world, is that the economics of information are fundamentaly different from those of other products.
-Bruce Perens
Some people say the best revenge is living well. Fuck that, the best revenge is your ex getting fat.
-Gary Perez
Bill likes gross margins so much, he changed his name.
-Lars Perkins, Idealab
A Lisp programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
-Alan Perlis
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to convince anyone of the existence of God.
-Alan Perlis
It is against the grain of modern education to teach children to program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be self-critical?
-Alan Perlis
The computing field is always in need of new cliches.
-Alan Perlis
You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing viability of Fortran.
-Alan Perlis
The fundamental idea of modern capitalism is not the right of the individual to possess and enjoy what he has earned, but the thesis that the exercise of this right redounds to the general good.
-Ralph Barton Perry
Hardware: The parts of a computer system that can be kicked.
-Jeff Pesis
A day without sunshine is like, night.
-J.D. Peterson
Arguably only art and music place us higher on the evolutionary ladder than any other species ... that is, until the arrival of Rap. I think we've fallen somewhere behind whales now.
-JD Peterson
art1 (ärt) n. Human effort to imitate, supplement, alter, or counteract the work of nature.
-J.D. Peterson
Before you go patting yourself on the back, I think you should know that koala bears have opposable thumbs as well, and that vultures, otters and chimpanzees all use tools to gather food. Of course, they don't use variable speed mixers or digital watches, but I think that's actually a point in their favor.
-JD Peterson
"General Interest" sites are rarely either.
-J.D. Peterson
It does not matter.... if you studied at the Sorbonne or not. It does not matter if you spent 5 months, 5 hours or even 5 minutes on your work. It does not matter if you use hot-press illustration board or a napkin; sable brushes or a bic pen. It does not matter what your last name is or who your friends are. The only thing that matters ... is that by the time you are done, someone, anyone likes what they see ... particularly yourself.
-J.D. Peterson
here is more to life than increasing its speed.
-Wilferd A. Peterson
Sendmail is, shall we say, unique. Some people say that a monkey would bang out the complete works of Shakespeare on a typewriter give an unlimited amount of time. In the meantime, what they would probably produce is a valid sendmail configuration file.
-Nicholas Petreley
Have I mentioned how bad the idiots in their admissions office suck? I'd like to get medieval with some of them.
-Chris Petro
You know your machine is slow when you start putting file commands like "rm" and "chmod" running in the background by habit...
-Chris Petro
Cobol has almost no fervent enthusiasts. As a programming tool, it has roughly the sex appeal of a wrench.
--Charles Petzold, "Programming Languages: Survivors and Wannabes"
To complete his camouflage, he was also joined at the last moment by four friends, all of whom were themselves [dressed in] black, though most of whom were probably grievously misled into attending -- after all, the number of people who will willingly attend a film that features giant bugs, exploding heads, and Rae Dawn Chong are few and far between.
-The Phantom
One or two days out of the big picture is nothing. They've gone to a lot of trouble; we've gone to a little trouble. Meanwhile, God hates fags."
-Shirley Phelps-Roper, Esq., Westboro Baptist Church
Capital punishment turns the state into a murderer. But imprisonment turns the state into a gay dungeon-master.
-Emo Philips
Well, like most members of America's cultural elite, I worship PAN, THE GOAT GOD!, but thanks for the thought.
-Duke Phillips, The Critic
We have not succeeded in solving all your problems. The answers we have found only serve to raise a whole set of new questions. In some ways, we feel we are as confused as ever, but we believe we are confused on a higher level and about more important things.
-door in the CMU Philosophy department
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-Pablo Picasso
Two boys arrived yesterday with a pebble they said was the head of a dog until I pointed out that it was really a typewriter.
-Pablo Picasso
I liken starting one's computing career with Unix, say as an undergraduate, to being born in East Africa. It is intolerably hot, your body is covered with lice and flies, you are malnourished and you suffer from numerous curable diseases. But, as far as young East Africans can tell, this is simply the natural condition and they live within it. By the time they find out differently, it is too late. They already think that the writing of shell scripts is a natural act.
-Ken Pier, Xerox PARC
I've just spent two days on the road and put nearly a thousand miles on my car. After that, logging on, selecting alt.config, and seeing "wacky idea" in the subject line of a post there filled my heart with a joy I cannot describe.
-Tim Pierce
Why don't you find yourself a nice knothole somewhere and shut up?
-Tim Pierce
Your suffering will be legendary, even in Hell...
-Pinhead, "Hellbound"
We must never forget that the ultimate purpose of an explosive is to explode.
-Petri Pihko
Not only is UNIX dead, it's starting to smell really bad.
-Rob Pike
A lot of effort went into making this effortless.
-Mark Pilgrim
As a matter of fact I hail from Europe and aim to maintain my sense of "whatever" when it comes to these highly North American city vs. suburbia lifestyles, choices, attitudes or whatever it is y'all argue about.
-Lidia Pines
No one can lack commonsense as much as an intellectual, especially a leftist one, and perhaps most of all a renowned French professor of sociology.
-Daniel Pipes
The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha -- which is to demean oneself.
-Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
I want to start a line of sex toys called "I Can't Believe It's Not Dick."
-Pixie
There are worse things than death. And I can do all of them.
-Plague, "Hackers"
There is no right and wrong. There is only fun, and boring.
-Plague, "Hackers"
Science means unresting endeavor and continually progressing development toward an aim which the poetic intuition may apprehend, but which the intellect can never fully grasp.
-Max Planck
We'd be out of our ever-loving minds to walk away from Unix [...] Sun Microsystems has made irresponsible claims that HP is abandoning Unix. These statements are a reflection of the small company they are coming from. [...] If HP was only an $8 billion company like Sun, we also might be less ambitious
-Hewlett Packard CEO Lewis Platt
Patience is the best remedy for every trouble.
-Titus Maccius Plautus
Also in the news: Our generation is the first ever to have sex or to die. We're special, so as a generation we must respectfully request that you bite us. And give us $20 to go to the movies.
-Greg Plesur
Back in the Old Days, there were some mail-reading programs called CUI and VUI. People pronounced them "sooey" and "vooey" and it never used to bug me, but in retrospect I think I would be a happier person today if I had kicked them all in the shins.
-Greg Plesur
Career Objective: A challenging position in which I can creatively use my computer-related skills to help more people die.
-Greg Plesur
Did you hear about Rob? He drank a whole case of Yoo Hoo in the dark and said "I summon thee with pony and helicopter. With pipe organ and Graham Greene memoirs. I summon thee." His office-mate heard him screaming from down the hall, and when he got into their office Rob was gibbering incoherently and all of his hair was white and he was hiding under his desk hugging his stomach and rocking obsessively. So his office-mate said "Damn it, Rob, I've had it up to here with the gibbering and the rocking and the screaming. Every day it's the same god-damned thing. By the way...nice hair."
-Greg Plesur
Either I'm getting predictable, or stay the hell out of my diary.
-Greg Plesur
Emperor Greg: Reject yesterday's tomorrow. Emperor Greg: Obey. Emperor Greg: He may not solve your problems, but he'll try not to crush you like a grape.
-Greg Plesur
Every place has its advantages and disadvantages. Pittsburgh has its snow, but Palo Alto has those giant carrion weasles. You decide which is worse.
-Greg Plesur
Heh. Very funny. The problem with engaging in such wild speculation, of course, is that you might strain yourself. I'd hate to see you get hurt or, god forbid, killed over such obviously false accusations, no matter how amusing they might be. Maybe in the future you should be more cautious.
-Greg Plesur
"Hey, you got your sexual misconduct in my power lust!" "Well you got your power lust in my sexual misconduct!" Fade into the logo for 'Unhinged Crunchies' or something....
-Greg Plesur
I lost all of my powers during the night, so I just returned to work to resume my "mild mannered programmer" persona until I am needed again. Until then... I wait.
-Greg Plesur
I still contend that shiftiness is a leading cause of murder.
-Greg Plesur
I promised that if you re-posted this statement then I'd comment, but I forget what I meant to say. Here are some email-things that I'm going to cleverly disguise as content: wHATEver. HTH. YMMV. ydcwtsbyaa-wam-ipysb! IMHO. grn.
-Greg Plesur
I think "funny" is the wrong word. I think it's a kind of art. (First, let me define what I mean by 'art'...oh, never mind. Hi Jay.)
-Greg Plesur
I think I identify with bats and squirrels -- small, quick, and potentially full of rabies.
-Greg Plesur
I think that I can confidently swear, to god and all things holy, that if I AM getting the cold that I suspect is stalking me, I will pick up the pick axe that I bought from Jody and start a spree of crime and killing of Old Testament proportions. I will commit such damage to American civilization that, hundreds of generations from now, parents will be telling legends about me to their children in front of the camp-fires that will be the most technologically advanced sources of light and heat that I will leave for them to inherit. Where I walk I will leave a trail of scorched and salted earth. Dogs will no longer be domesticated.
-Greg Plesur
I think you're selling yourself way short by just aspiring to Infomercial Thug. You've clearly got talent, kid, and that talent's going to take you places that my Thugs and I can only imagine. Make me proud. And one day, when you're the Infor-Pope looking out on your vast and profitable domain, all of your enemies long since expired on your Spiked Treadmills and sold at a fair mark-up to your white-toothed, wrinkle-free populace...think of me kindly. Or I will squash you.
-Greg Plesur
I want to be in a field where the big buzz words are "babies," "reaching" and "dopamine." That field would be "evil mad scientist who lives alone on an island making his or her race of freakish supermen with animal DNA and things I found in a meteorite."
-Greg Plesur
I wouldn't recommend it as a movie, but it's valuable as an example of the advancing state-of-the-art in "dissolving vampire" technology.
-Greg Plesur
I'd hold my breath, but I'd rather you hold yours.
-Greg Plesur
I'll tell you what the problem is with kids today. With your computers and your running water and your fancy-schmancy opposable thumbs...you have no appreciation for the sublime.
-Greg Plesur
I'm not trying to be an advocate of materialism. I'm trying to support a firm policy of "easy answers for difficult times."
-Greg Plesur
I'm often pissed when people don't notice jokes that make me particularly happy, but in keeping with the season I have chosen to be thankful that I don't get beat up more often.
-Greg Plesur
I'm philosophically opposed to grounding straps on the grounds that many powers originate with sparks of electricity. Sure, sparks are annoying, but there's a slippery slope; first grounding straps become acceptable, then people start avoiding catwalks spanning big vats of chemicals, then someone enacts legislation restricting radiation sources within population centers...do you see where I'm going here? Stop the madness.
-Greg Plesur
I'm pretty sure that I'd take a pay cut to be 'Irredeemable Idiot,' as long as I'd get to have business cards. I bet the job comes with a cool hat, too.
-Greg Plesur
I've been wondering if most people I know aren't just killing time until it returns the favor.
-Greg Plesur
If I had to distill all of my thirty years of personal experience into one piece of advice that would most help kids today, it would be this: Kids...Uncle Greg needs a nap right now. Why don't you play quietly in the other room for a couple of minutes. Just a few minutes, that's all I need. Really. Please.
-Greg Plesur
In this particular case, I'm pretty sure that he's rubber. You, it appears, are glue. (Martin's helium, and I'm the abstract concept of jingoism.)
-Greg Plesur
Informercial Tzar isn't a title that can be bestowed - you have to fight your way to the top in televised cage matches.
-Greg Plesur
It turns out that elf cookies are pretty weak individually, but they have a fudgy group consciousness and they attack in packs like wolves.
-Greg Plesur
It turns out that the rocket-pack is a fake...that guy just knows how to fly.
-Greg Plesur
Last night's dream started with a trip to New York for Thanksgiving and ended with an inter-stellar villain saying "You humans are too puny a race to receive the amount of crime that I can deliver." I'm hoping that my holiday season this year will start and end the same way.
-Greg Plesur
Maybe we could have a separate mailing list for discussing how the different members of unhinged look in Martin's pants?
-Greg Plesur
memo to myself - this probably won't be funny tomorrow. memo from myself - it's not even funny now.
-Greg Plesur
Now I have to decide if I want to battle evil or perpetrate it....
-Greg Plesur
Okay, back to my compelling narrative: Nothing else happened.
-Greg Plesur
Okay, in the pursuit of honesty and because of the respect in which I hold you people I should probably admit that I intend to savor your deaths as I would the gentlest sips of fine wine. Sorry about the initial confusion.
-Greg Plesur
Other skills might be useful. Send me your CV and a current photo. If I don't feel that there's a named-role suitable to your abilities, you may still be eligible to wear a t-shirt that says "Thug #7."
-Greg Plesur
People start out with souls for the same reason that D&D characters start out with a handful of gold - the thing itself isn't too useful, but you can trade it for magic items and cool powers that might come in handy later.
-Greg Plesur
Piracy isn't all parrots and eye-patches, you know. There's inspections and paperwork and boring coworkers who never stop talking to you even when you pretend to focus all of your attention on the anchor that you're polishing, and always the ever-present danger of being killed in China to the tune of a Ricky Martin song.
-Greg Plesur
Raise your hand if this sentence helps you to see the way that English looks to someone who doesn't speak it.
-Greg Plesur
Style, baby. I know that I'll show up at my sister's place bedraggled and cranky. If I start out in my normal persona I won't have accomplished anything, but I figure that if I start out all spiffy and happy then I'll demonstrate entropy and my trip will be art.
-Greg Plesur
Technology doesn't kill people. My mighty Fist of Wrath kills people.
-Greg Plesur
The math to explain it gets complicated, so you have to view it through mythological filters. Basically: Don't piss off Ishtar.
-Greg Plesur
There's no movie that sucks so much that you can't find good parts to enjoy, and there's no movie so good that you can't find sucky parts to resent. You go to a movie, and it's this big complicated detailed work, and you're the one who gets to pick your focus. You can bitch about the plot holes or rave about the music; the quality of your experience is in your own hands, and no experience is more objectively real than another one.
-Greg Plesur
Those things are useful for a while, but once you're finally the Centauri Emperor they just nag, nag, nag....
-Greg Plesur
today's weather: Sunny, with thunder, rain, hail and snow. That's another reason that I like Pittsburgh: It's like living in the End Times every day, without all of that pesky Judgement.
-Greg Plesur
Urg. That 'Emperor Greg' thing seems kind of lame in retrospect. Based on that, I think I'm going to move the whole 'control the world' project to a back-burner while I work on personal growth.
-Greg Plesur
...while we were there she got her nose pierced with a relatively big hoop. She asked me my opinion of it, and I said that I really liked it and that it gave her this whole "formidable woman of strength" look. She said that she'd always had that, and I said "Yes you've always had it, but now it's in your nose."
-Greg Plesur
World domination is like making a souffle' - if you get yourself embroiled in too many local instabilities, results will be poor. Local instabilities can be created by either alienating religious leaders or slamming the oven door.
-Greg Plesur
You're a good and valued friend but I probably wouldn't assassinate you without the proper fees, paid in advance.
-Greg Plesur
A fish doesn't know about water, a mac programmer doesn't know about core leaks
-Andrew Plotkin
All right, new policy: Whenever I get spam email, I reply not only to the listed reply address and postmaster@site, but also andrew@site. Because there's usually an "andrew" somewhere. And they probably deserve it.
-Andrew Plotkin
I believe there's something in the Bible about "Thou shalt not call anyone insane who owns and is competent with more firearms than you own sharp sticks."
-Andrew Plotkin
I'm sure there are dozens of "web authorship for cretins" books that have advice on this topic. I'm also sure most of them are brain-damaged.
-Andrew Plotkin
If C++ has taught me one thing, it's this: Just because the system is consistent doesn't mean it's not the work of Satan.
-Andrew Plotkin
It's like looking into the face of death, only it's Gilligan.
-Andrew Plotkin
It's not virtual reality until you can be tortured to death in it.
-Andrew Plotkin
Live the imagination. Lick the reality.
-Andrew Plotkin
On the planet next door to mine, writing poetry is regarded as a sort of metaphorical draining all the sewage out of your mind. Everyone does it, but nobody has the illusion that anyone else wants to see theirs, or could even understand it. They write it in small dark rooms furnished with cracked mirrors and musty shapeless carpets. When each poem is finished, it's burned in a dirty bucket. Then the author goes outside, locks the door, and gets on with enjoying his or her life. On my planet, nobody is any good at poetry. This includes me.
-Andrew Plotkin
Out of the penis-pan, into the crossfire.
-Andrew Plotkin on Bruce selling his Magic cards to buy a paintball gun
"Recursion: see 'Recursion'" is a very old joke. It's also a stinking lie. The correct definition is: Recursion: If you know what recursion is, just remember the answer. Otherwise, locate someone who is standing closer to Douglas Hofstadter than you are, and ask him/her what recursion is.
-Andrew Plotkin
So, is it my imagination, or are packets from CS to Andrew being written out in longhand by epileptics, taped to heavily sedated passenger pigeons, flown across campus, and re-entered by front panel toggles by a corpse?
-Andrew Plotkin
Spelling is hard because English is a slut of a language. I blame the Norman conquest.
-Andrew Plotkin
This post does not represent the official opinions of ATK, C&C, or any other groups that may have changed their names from one of those recently.
-Andrew Plotkin
Unsubtle cookies: "You can call me Sugar. This is my pal Milkfat. We're pretty big in town here, and we thought we'd come over and help you get settled in. And epoxy your arteries shut, and kick you in the blood sugar so hard it comes out your ears. Get the picture?"
-Andrew Plotkin
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must have been caused by an incompetent grad student.
-Andrew Plotkin
We've got too much beer.
-Tony Podrasky
They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
-Edgar Allan Poe
When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir pelcgb.
-Dave Polaschek
So perl is like a graceful swan, gliding across a lake. But underneath the water, there's these little legs, paddling like buggery."
-Beable Van Polasm
It is not news that the United States has the world's most stupid right-wing politicians. What is shocking is that they have managed to attract so many media and opinion makers to join their smear campaign against Bill Clinton.
-Danish daily paper Politiken
I would use trial-and-error but that always turns into trial-and-renistall-windows for me.
-Marc Popetz
A Harvard law degree or a Stanford MBA is not just a degree. It says everything about who you are. Without it, you're just ordinary.
-Roman Popik, former occupant of a 21st story office in the north tower of the World Trade Center, lamenting the destruction of his degree certificates (in the destruction of the towers)
An object in motion tends to stay in motion, until it needs gas or a taco or something.
-Porsche Carrera S Advertisement
I've got quotes that will get me fired. What I need are quotes that will get me laid off.
-Corey Porter
This week's DFMM unemployment seminar is scheduled for 1:00 PM today (Wednesday October 3, 2001) at the Hollywood Star Lanes. Refreshments will be available at the bar.
-Corey Porter
The core competency of an enterprise portal company was... you look like Yahoo.
-Jack Porter
You saw him? He calls himself the marquis de Carabas. He's a fraud and a cheat and possibly even something of a monster. If you're ever in trouble, go to him. He will protect you, girl. He has to.
-Portico, Neverwhere
Anyway, Faisal, the fate of the civilized world lies with you.
-Corey Post, Publisher, Generation Next magazine
As long as there are ill-defined goals, bizarre bugs, and unrealistic schedules, there will be Real Programmers willing to jump in and Solve The Problem, saving the documentation for later. Long live FORTRAN!
-Ed Post, "Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal"
Fortunately, the language adopted by DoD [ADA] has enough interesting features to make it approachable -- it's incredibly complex, includes methods for messing with the operating system and rearranging memory, and Edsgar Dijkstra doesn't like it. (Dijkstra, as I'm sure you know, was the author of "GoTos Considered Harmful" -- a landmark work in programming methodology, applauded by Pascal Programmers and Quiche Eaters alike.) Besides, the determined Real Programmer can write FORTRAN programs in any language.
-Ed Post, "Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal"
Real Programmers use FORTRAN. Quiche Eaters use PASCAL. Nicklaus Wirth, the designer of PASCAL, gave a talk once at which he was asked "How do you pronounce your name?". He replied, "You can either call me by name, pronouncing it 'Veert', or call me by value, 'Worth'." One can tell immediately from this comment that Nicklaus Wirth is a Quiche Eater.
-Ed Post, "Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal"
Some of the most awesome Real Programmers of all work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Many of them know the entire operating system of the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft by heart. With a combination of large ground-based FORTRAN programs and small spacecraft-based assembly language programs, they are able to do incredible feats of navigation and improvisation -- hitting ten-kilometer wide windows at Saturn after six years in space, repairing or bypassing damaged sensor platforms, radios, and batteries. Allegedly, one Real Programmer managed to tuck a pattern-matching program into a few hundred bytes of unused memory in a Voyager spacecraft that searched for, located, and photographed a new moon of Jupiter. The current plan for the Galileo spacecraft is to use a gravity assist trajectory past Mars on the way to Jupiter. This trajectory passes within 80 +/- 3 kilometers of the surface of Mars. Nobody is going to trust a PASCAL program (or PASCAL programmer) for navigation to these tolerances.
-Ed Post, "Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal"
The academics in computer science have gotten into the "structured programming" rut over the past several years. They claim that programs are more easily understood if the programmer uses some special language constructs and techniques. They don't all agree on exactly which constructs, of course, and the examples they use to show their particular point of view invariably fit on a single page of some obscure journal or another -- clearly not enough of an example to convince anyone. When I got out of school, I thought I was the best programmer in the world. I could write an unbeatable tic-tac-toe program, use five different computer languages, and create 1000 line programs that WORKED. (Really!) Then I got out into the Real World. My first task in the Real World was to read and understand a 200,000 line FORTRAN program, then speed it up by a factor of two. Any Real Programmer will tell you that all the Structured Coding in the world won't help you solve a problem like that -- it takes actual talent.
-Ed Post, "Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal"
The problem with these editors is that Real Programmers consider "what you see is what you get" to be just as bad a concept in Text Editors as it is in Women. No, the Real Programmer wants a "you asked for it, you got it" text editor -- complicated, cryptic, powerful, unforgiving, dangerous.
-Ed Post, "Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal"
Unix is a lot more complicated of course -- the typical Unix hacker never can remember what the PRINT command is called this week -- but when it gets right down to it, Unix is a glorified video game.
-Ed Post, "Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal"
i mean, there are only 12 notes in western music anyway - how hard can it be to stumble around them until it sounds good?
-Simon Postford
New contest: be the first to steal Scott Brown's tokens and do something clever with them. Of course, it'd be difficult to do anything with his account that would damage his character any more than what he's done been doing himself, but one can always try. :)
-Andrew Potratz
Taunting death is only fun until you lose.
-Andrew Potratz
All these people, and doubtless many more, were at some time during a long night castigated, vilified, embarrassed or, worst, bored, for which he most humbly and respectfully apologizes.
-Howard Potter
As no less an authority than the Pat Robertson has stated that all witches are in league with Satan, I would prepare to see a side of Samantha that only comes to the surface after a few Zimas.
-Scott Potter
A proper salad consists of 6 parts gin and one part verouth strained over ice into a glass with two olives
-Scott Potter
Don't call a fraternity a frat. I mean, you wouldn't call your country a tree.
-Scott Potter
Let me add that if the general population drank like cabal does, all hell would break loose, plus of course we'd eliminate the earth's vital alcohol reserves, causing moose to get even more irritable than he already is, however on balance, we would see more of the benefits and less of the harm associated with alcohol.
-Scott Potter
may the first person not in a glass house throw the first stone.
-Scott Potter
On the good side the open bar at the rear of the plane helped eradicate the fear said engine would cease functioning while the wheels were not chocked.
-Scott Potter
or like jesus said: "Let he who lives in a metal house be the first to throw horns"
-Scott Potter
Please complete this phrase "no additional French troops were deployed on the north side of": a)the city on Thursday, before the riot began, because commanders felt the existing number was sufficient. b)France, in WWII, because commanders felt the existing number was sufficient. c)Vietnam, before the communist uprising, because commanders felt the existing number was sufficient. d)this is a trick question. everyone knows the French don't deploy soldiers on the north side of anything.
-Scott Potter
Technically it is a proper usage. The least common, most worthless usage, but still acceptable.
-Scott Potter
for much of the Internet, the shortest path between two points doesn't exist.
-Kevin Poulsen
USENET is a wonderful mechanism for making a fool of yourself in front of a very large audience.
-Lars Poulsen
When I was traveling alone in Europe I decided that the secret to life was that control was an illusion. Of course, my dad, the philosophy major, had always told me that. But I learned that he wasn't completely right. You do have control over one lousy thing in life. And that's your reaction to the shit that the universe hands you. That's it.
-Derek Powazek
I can see it now...'It's summer, we're bored, we're all gonna go out and get lives!'
-Lynne Powell
You know, it's not a good idea to end a psalm with "dammit".
-Lynne Powell
Troll, troll, troll your post, gently down the datastream...
-Jason Powers
Not a man to mince words. People yes. But not words.
-Terry Pratchett
The way of the portable computer user is as a stony path strewn with plugs and sockets, all the wrong size...
-Terry Pratchett
Well, it looks like the excrement has hit the rotating oscillator.
-Faisal Premji
Life's a bitch, and life's got lots of sisters.
-Ross Presser
Mmm. Meetings. Only seppuku could be this much fun.
-John Prevost
Specialization is for insects.
-John Prevost
What's that, Lassie? What, girl? Klingons ... off the starboard bow?
-John Prevost
Zephyr is the perfect transport agent for stupid little shit...
-John Prevost
Civilisation can be reduced to the following: "I need a hug. Go away." Unable to solve this conundrum, and having nothing better to do in the meantime, we build cathedrals and drink heavily.
-Tom Price
If you're enlightened and you know it, clap one hand ...
-Tom Price
The Genie can smell fear.
-Tom Price
To be happy for a day: drink beer. To be happy for a year: get married. To be happy for a lifetime: buy a BMW touring bike.
-Tom Price
What's your point, Mr. "I learned to sublimate and all I got was this fabulous career"?
-Tom Price
We're going to use prototypes?!? Oh. My. God!
-Josh Pritikin
It worked once; it's got to work every time.
-Josh Pritikin
Bite me. eat chocolate
-Jody Prival
I'd be glad to jump on the "seven quotes" bandwagon. Unfortunately, all seven of my quotes would consist of the word "Fuck!" And they'd all be from the last five minutes, and they'd all be about my computer.
-Jody Prival
so, I have a bit of a dilemma. On the one hand, I hate life. On the other hand, I just made blackberry cobbler. How can I hate life while eating blackberry cobbler?
-Jody Prival
If you have the choice between humble and cocky, go with cocky. There's always time to be humble later, once you've been proven horrendously, irrevocably wrong.
-prcpj@panix.com
Rod Stewart, hair conspiracy.
-proctor@surf.rio.com
Of course, if your job is programming, you can get your job done with any 'complete' computer language, theoretically speaking. But we know from experience that computer languages differ not so much in what they make *possible*, but in what they make *easy*. At one extreme, the so-called 'fourth generation languages' make it easy to do some things, but nearly impossible to do other things. At the other extreme, certain well known, 'industrial strength' languages make it equally difficult to do almost everything.
-Programming Perl, 2nd Edition, Wall, Christiansen and Schwartz
I have found a proof / of Fermat's conjecture, but / Haiku is too short.
-Jim Propp, Department of Mathematics, MIT
Apathy, like anarchy, is a temporary state sometimes needed to attain greater enlightenment. The important points to note are: (1) One *can* attain enlightenment this way; (2) It must be temporary.
-PShell
Do not be arrogant because of your knowledge, but confer with the ignorant man as with the learned.
-Ptahhotpe
Obviously, the heroin-fueled fleshpot of Moscow gives rise to passages that some readers may find shocking. Rest assured that we toned down some of the lewdest parts to appease the delicate sensibilities of suburban readers who feign offense to our back-of-the-book sex ads while reaping the economic benefits of the valley's porn-fueled economic prosperity.
-Dan Pulcrano, Metro ("Silicon Valley's Weekly Newspaper")
I could believe that. I don't, but I could.
-Derek Purtell