Time for more jokes

[Elric of Grans]

Hail Occhi,

I keep a file on my system of the funniest Unix Fortunes I've seen pop up for me: here's a selection of the best of those :)


Dos: N., A small annoying boot virus that causes random spontaneous system
crashes, usually just before saving a massive project. Easily cured by
UNIX. See also MS-DOS, IBM-DOS, DR-DOS.
(from David Vicker's .plan)


If an S and an I and an O and a U
With an X at the end spell Su;
And an E and a Y and an E spell I,
Pray what is a speller to do?
Then, if also an S and an I and a G
And an HED spell side,
There's nothing much left for a speller to do
But to go commit siouxeyesighed.
-- Charles Follen Adams, "An Orthographic Lament"


If you throw a New Year's Party, the worst thing that you can do would be
to throw the kind of party where your guests wake up today, and call you to
say they had a nice time. Now you'll be be expected to throw another party
next year.
What you should do is throw the kind of party where your guest wake
up several days from now and call their lawyers to find out if they've been
indicted for anything. You want your guests to be so anxious to avoid a
recurrence of your party that they immediately start planning parties of their
own, a year in advance, just to prevent you from having another one ...
If your party is successful, the police will knock on your door,
unless your party is very successful in which case they will lob tear gas
through your living room window. As host, your job is to make sure that
they don't arrest anybody. Or if they're dead set on arresting someone,
your job is to make sure it isn't you ...
-- Dave Barry


We don't need no indirection
We don't need no flow control
No data typing or declarations
Hey! did you leave the lists alone?

Chorus: Oh No. It's just a pure LISP function call.

We don't need no compilation
We don't need no load control
No link edit for external bindings
Hey! did you leave that source alone?
(Chorus)

We don't need no side-effecting
We don't need no flow control
No global variables for execution
Hey! did you leave the args alone?
(Chorus)

We don't need no allocation
We don't need no special-nodes
No dark bit-flipping for debugging
Hey! did you leave those bits alone?
(Chorus)

-- "Another Glitch in the Call", a la Pink Floyd


Our OS who art in CPU,
UNIX be thy name.
Thy programs run, thy syscalls done,
In kernel as it is in user!


"Our attitude with TCP/IP is, `Hey, we'll do it, but don't make a big
system, because we can't fix it if it breaks -- nobody can.'"

"TCP/IP is OK if you've got a little informal club, and it doesn't make
any difference if it takes a while to fix it."
-- Ken Olson, in Digital News, 1988


better !pout !cry
better watchout
lpr why
santa claus < north pole > town

cat /etc/passwd > list
ncheck list
ncheck list
cat list | grep naughty > nogiftlist
cat list | grep nice > giftlist
santa claus < north pole > town

who | grep sleeping
who | grep awake
who | grep bad || good
for (goodness sake) {
be good
}


Congratulations! You have purchased an extremely fine device that would
give you thousands of years of trouble-free service, except that you
undoubtably will destroy it via some typical bonehead consumer maneuver.
Which is why we ask you to PLEASE FOR GOD'S SAKE READ THIS OWNER'S MANUAL
CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU UNPACK THE DEVICE. YOU ALREADY UNPACKED IT, DIDN'T
YOU? YOU UNPACKED IT AND PLUGGED IT IN AND TURNED IT ON AND FIDDLED WITH
THE KNOBS, AND NOW YOUR CHILD, THE SAME CHILD WHO ONCE SHOVED A POLISH
SAUSAGE INTO YOUR VIDEOCASSETTE RECORDER AND SET IT ON "FAST FORWARD", THIS
CHILD ALSO IS FIDDLING WITH THE KNOBS, RIGHT? AND YOU'RE JUST NOW STARTING
TO READ THE INSTRUCTIONS, RIGHT??? WE MIGHT AS WELL JUST BREAK THESE
DEVICES RIGHT AT THE FACTORY BEFORE WE SHIP THEM OUT, YOU KNOW THAT?
-- Dave Barry, "Read This First!"

The New Testament offers the basis for modern computer coding theory,
in the form of an affirmation of the binary number system.

But let your communication be Yea, yea; nay, nay:
for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.
-- Matthew 5:37


It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students
that have had prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are
mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5


No, I'm not interested in developing a powerful brain. All I'm after is
just a mediocre brain, something like the president of American Telephone
and Telegraph Company.
-- Alan Turing on the possibilities of a thinking
machine, 1943.


And, for a regular joke, my personal favourite...

*Knock Knock*

"Who's there?"

"A little boy who cannot reach the doorbell"

EDIT: Formatting