Shlomi Fish's Quotes as Fortunes Cookies

I don't Believe in Fairies

I don't believe in fairies. Oops! A fairy died.
I don't believe in fairies. Oops! Another fairy died.

Shlomi Fish

The prefix "God Said"

The prefix "God Said" has the extraordinary logical property of converting any statement that follows it into a true one.

Shlomi Fish

A Jewish Deduction

A Jewish Deduction

The Bible dictates that "Thou shalt not seethe [= cook] a kid [= young goat] in his mother's milk." To avoid any possibility of breaking that regulation, the Jewish tradition ruled that it also applies to female goats, to mature goats, and to the meat and milk of two completely unrelated goats. It is also forbidden to eat the meat with fresh milk, and it applies to beef and mutten as well (including mixing the milk and meat of two different beasts). Finally, chicken, which are incapable of milk production, may not be eaten along with any mammal's milk either.

We are fortunate that most mathematicians were not Jewish. Otherwise, it would have been forbidden to divide by all numbers between -1 and 1.

Shlomi Fish

I Used to be Arrogant

I used to be arrogant. Now I'm simply Perfect.

Murphy's Law

If the ancient Greeks had invented UNIX, Murphy's Law would have been known as Aristotle's Law.

Had they invented MS-Windows, Murphy's Law would have been known as the Law of Socrates.

Shlomi Fish

Microsoft's Slogan

Microsoft's slogan used to be "Microsoft - making it all make sense."

Today it should be: "Microsoft - making everything make sense. Ours."

Shlomi Fish

Linux - Because Software Problems...

Linux - Because Software Problems Should not Cost Money.

Shlomi Fish

The American Lottery

The American Lottery - all you need is a dollar and a dream. We will take the dollar, but you can keep the dream.

Shlomi Fish

"Shit Happens" - 1

"Shit Happens" according to the religions of the world (Deltas by Shlomi Fish)

Judaism: God knows you will do shit, does nothing to prevent it, but makes you take the blame for it anyways.

Shit Happens - 2

"Shit Happens" according to the religions of the world
(Deltas by Shlomi Fish)

Judaism: God is all the shit, all the non-shit and all the intermediate demi-shits in between.

Interpret the Past

Let's interpret the past according to the present and not the present according to the past.

Shlomi Fish

Computer Science and C Programming

"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes"

Edsgar W. Dijkstra

"Programming Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about stars."

Shlomi Fish

Sarah Michelle Gellar's Next Movie

[Discussing the shortage of IT workers as of 1998 on E-mail]

Shlomi Fish to Omer Zak: "Even the NSA doesn't have enough programmers. But it is not likely that they will have more and that's because 'Summerschool at the NSA' may might as well be the name of Sarah Michelle Gellar's next movie."

Omer Zak to Shlomi Fish: "And as opposed to 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' it is going to be scary."

Objective Philosophy…

Objective philosophy is like a pencil sharpener for one's mind.

Shlomi Fish

"The Enemy and how I Helped to Fight It" - 1

Oh! I wish you could see the look on his face! Actually, I would have also liked to see the look on his face, but just then I woke up from the dream.

"The Enemy and how I Helped to Fight It"
Shlomi Fish

"The Enemy and how I Helped to Fight It" - 2

Had I not been already insane, I would have long ago driven myself mad.

"The Enemy and how I Helped to Fight It"
Shlomi Fish

"The Enemy and how I Helped to Fight it" - 3

"Except for that, I planned a political simulator that forecast the two World Wars after I entered all the relevant data until the year 1000 AD."

"Do you have a computer at home?"

"Oh no. At present the program is written on a paper. Don't ask how much time it took me to take out all the bugs from it. But it was great fun!"

"The Enemy and how I Helped to Fight it"
Shlomi Fish

"The Enemy and how I Helped to Fight it" - 4

"Likewise." Added the interviewer and said: "Your answers were also very ... unusual."

"Although this description cannot testify on their quality, I take it as a compliment."

"The Enemy and how I Helped to Fight It"
Shlomi Fish

"The Enemy and how I Helped to Fight it" - 4

The government of the Supporter will finance your travel, and you will be able to leave tomorrow morning. We would like to inform you of the following facts: we cannot assure your safety during this travel. Furthermore, despite your long service at the Organization and your constructive proposal, we cannot say, wholeheartedly or halfheartedly, that we wish to protect your safety. Likewise, we cannot guarantee that we would not take actions that may harm you, indirectly or in a direct manner.

We hope to see you here very soon.

"The Enemy and how I Helped to Fight It"
Shlomi Fish

"The Enemy and how I Helped to Fight it" - 5

"Okay, I think that I can now return to my country and my village. By the way, how many forbidden books do you have?"

"Oh,", one of them said to me, " their number grows up geometrically. When I checked two weeks ago, their number was 2,148,763. A week ago there were 4,278,109 forbidden writings. Now there must be about 8,600,000."

"You are wrong.", I said to him.

"I beg your pardon?"

"There are now exactly 8,517,559 or 8,517,560 forbidden books."

"Why is it so important?"

"Why, it means that meanwhile you have 82,440 or 82,441 extra books you can read at bedtime if you can't fall asleep!"

"The Enemy and how I Helped to Fight It"
Shlomi Fish

"The Enemy and how I Helped to Fight it" - 6

"And what is the nature of those activists: Socialists? Communists? Liberals? ... "

"Let's say for simplicity that they are people of my intellect, only that as opposed to me they are sane."

"The Enemy and how I Helped to Fight It"
Shlomi Fish

A more experienced programmer…

A more experienced programmer does not make less bugs. He just realizes what went wrong more quickly.

Shlomi Fish

Microsoft Notepad

BTW, for an editor with no replace feature (at least not on Windows 95), no regular-expression search and replace, no indentation support, no syntax-highlighting and no macros and scriptability features: MS Notepad is one hell of an editor!

"Wonderous are the ways of Microsoft" Shlomi Fish

WYSIWYT - Documentation Improvement

Suggested Improvements to the Documentation:

The WYSIWYT project was for a long time fascinated by Microsoft's tremendous desire to advance its Internet Explorer web-browser. We saw the fact that they switched the help systems of the upcoming Windows 98, as well as Microsoft Visual C++ 5.0, to HTML a major step in advancing our project.

As a complementary step, some of the chief heads of our project suggested that the Windows' manuals themselves, as well as all of Microsoft's ads, will be designed in HTML and printed after being rendered by IE4. While this project is in the preliminary and planning stages, we expect it to acquire a large momentum soon.

"IRPWUG Announces Project 'WYSIWYT'" Shlomi Fish

If A is A and A is not not-A…

If: 1. A is A.
2. A is not not-A.
does it also imply that:
1. B is B.
2. B is not not-B.

Shlomi Fish

I know I'm blond...

I know I'm blond, but I have to colour my hair brown, so people would not think I'm stupid. Because, like the title of the book says: "You've only got Three Seconds".

Actually, since Amazon sent us two books like that, you've only got six seconds.

"Knuth is not God!" - 1

Knuth is not God! It took him two days to build the Roman Empire.

Shlomi Fish in Hackers-IL message No. 2049

"Knuth is not God!" - 2

Knuth is not God! God has already released TeX version 4.0.

Shlomi Fish

Taking a Turing Test

>
> Shlomi,
>
> Have you ever considered taking a Turing test? ;-)
>
 
<sarcasm>
Sure I did. I sat at one point of an IRC channel, and someone
tested me. Eventually it was discovered that I am a computer, but it
turned out the other side was an Eliza program. Strangely enough, I could
not detect that the latter fact was true.
</sarcasm>

	Shlomi Fish in Hackers-IL message No. 2465

IGLU Cabal and the Turing Test

There is no IGLU Cabal! None of them could pass the Turing test. But strangely enough a computer program they coded, could.

Shlomi Fish in Hackers-IL message No. 2465

"Knuth is not God!" - 3

Knuth is not God! Google is not God! RMS is not God!

God himself said that was the case.

Shlomi Fish in Hackers-IL message No. 2385

"Knuth is not God!" - 4

Knuth is not God! Typing "God" into Google and pressing "I'm Feeling Lucky" would not lead you to his homepage.

Shlomi Fish in Hackers-IL message No. 2084 ("The Great WWW-Wisdom Shootout")

"Knuth is not God!" - 5

Knuth is not God! Unless you confuse him with Dijkstra.

Shlomi Fish in Hackers-IL message No. 2037

Patenting the TINIC

(I am patenting issuing a TINIC with anything else but the phrase "There is no IGLU Cabal!". The patent number is kept secret to avoid violating the copyright of its text)

Shlomi Fish in Hackers-IL message No. 2021

C++ and Object-Oriented Programming

C++ supports Object-Oriented Programming roughly as much as COBOL supports Functional Programming.

Shlomi Fish

If it was not Clear

I hope that if it had not been clear before, it isn't less clear now.

Hi, Sophie!

Jack: Hi, Sophie!

Sophie: Don't "Hi, Sophie!" me.

Jack: Don't "Don't 'Hi, Sophie!' me" me!

Shlomi Fish

Crazy Opinions

My opinions may seem crazy but they all make sense. Insane sense, but sense nonetheless.

Shlomi Fish

Corollary of Godwyn's Law

Shlomi, I'm considering naming a corollary of Godwyn's law after you - any discussion of anything is over when you mention Freecell Solver.

Muli Ben-Yeuhuda on #kernelnewbies (irc.kernelnewbiews.org)

Muli: BTW, I think that any discussion only begins to gain momentum when I mention Freecell Solver.

Shlomi Fish on #offtopic (irc.kernelnewbies.org)

Keeping an Idea to Yourself

There's no point in keeping an idea to yourself since there's a 10 to 1 chance that somebody already has it and will share it before you.

Shlomi Fish

An Apple a Day

An apple a day keeps the doctor away.

Two apples a day will keep two doctors away.

You are banished!

"You are banished! You are banished! You are banished! - hey I'm just kidding!"

Shlomi Fish

Foreign Languages

[Discussing Foreign Languages Knowledge in the U.S.A]

Ben Collins-Sussman: Tis' true, unlike Europe, the language doesn't change every 100 miles.

Shlomi Fish: And unlike England, the accent does not change every 10 miles.

What happened to Christopher Michael Pilato?

What happened to Christopher Michael Pilato?
Is he gone?
Is he gone for good?
Is he gone for better?
Is he gone for best?
Is he gone forever?
Will he return?
Who is Christopher Michael Pilato, anyway?

Shlomi Fish

Teaching a Computer to Laugh

> Can anyone draw a plan as to how to teach a computer to laugh? Say we
> define laugh as print "LOL", and define smile as print ":)". How would a
> computer know when to print any of those, and when to operate an Eliza
> program?

Judging by IRC or AOL, randomly would do just fine ;-)

	Muli Ben-Yehuda in Hackers-IL message No. 3513

In Philosophy, as much as in software engineering

In Philosophy, as much as in software engineering, you don't get credit for originality. What matters is the final product, not who came up with the idea for each feature first.

Shlomi Fish

HURD is Lacking in Developers

> Unfortunatly as other people have mentioned - the HURD is seriously
> lacking in developers, especially driver writers. Linux is to blame for
> most of that.

KImageShop is seriously lacking in developers, and the GIMP is to blame
for most of that.

He has a high degree of…

He has a high degree of idealism, a high degree of stubbornness, and an even higher degree of inability to distiniguish between the two.

Shlomi Fish

I expected that this patch won't go in so easily

> Thanks, applied as change #22936.

And thank you for applying this patch. But to be honest, I'm a little disappointed. I expected it won't go in so easily and will trigger some discussion here. But there was none. No typo corrections ("you mis-spelled 'floccinaucinihilipilification'"); no flames ("this patch is the worst thing since non-sliced bread"). Nothing.

Someone should do something about it. This direction is not healthy for p5p. Seriously.

sleep-fu

Contributing to #gimp

Girly Men

[Commenting in Slashdot after Arnold Schwarzenegger's decision to use open-source software in the California government:]

> This is obviously because Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are girly-men.

Yeah and what are the offerings of the open-source world? Let's see:

1. Linus Torvalds - Looks like a dweeb, ergo is a dweeb. How girly is that? (plus his wife can kick ass better than him) 2. Richard M. Stallman - a hippy. How girly is that? 3. Eric S. Raymond - a nice looking man with a mustache. Baby faced, so he looks a bit girly to me. 4. Larry Wall - a cross between Linus and RMS (i.e: a hippy dweeb) that is even more girly.

So who do we have left? Alan Cox? OK, he's manly. (huge man, huge facial hair, etc.) And all the others are so neglible people don't even know how they look like.

Note: this comment may have been a bit cruel, so sorry. Don't take it too seriously, especially if you're one of the guys I laughed about. I hold you all with the greatest respect. Seriously.

Sincerily yours, Shlomi Fish (who is a quite girly male himself).

- http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=117863&cid=9962843

If his programming…

If his programming is anything like his philosophising, he would find ten imaginary bugs in the "Hello World" program.

Shlomi Fish

Hacker Sees Bug

Hacker sees bug. Hacker fixes bug.

Shlomi Fish

Tcl is Lisp on Drugs…

Tcl is Lisp on drugs. Using strings instead of S-expressions for closures is Evil with one of those gigantic E's you can find at the beginning of chapters.

Shlomi Fish

95% of Programmers

Linus Torvalds: "95% of Programmers consider themselves in the top 5%".

Shlomi Fish's Corollary: "95% of Programmers consider 95% of the code they did not write, in the bottom 5%."

Too Girly

C++ is…

C++ is complex, complexifying and complexified.

(With apologies to the Oxford English Dictionary).

Shlomi Fish

Blogging Memes

Becoming Crazy

Discussing living with one's parents on IRC.

Moses-the-Smiley

:)-<
 +--

    -- Moses the Smiley by Shlomi Fish

The First Phrase that needs to be Taught

The first phrase that need to be taught when teaching a new language is how to say "Do you speak English?". The first thing that needs to be taught when teaching a new computer tool is how to exit it.

Shlomi Fish

Re-inventing the Wheel

He who re-invents the wheel, will understand much better how a wheel works.

He who re-invents the wheel, may actually invent a much better wheel.

Shlomi Fish

He who re-invents the wheel will likely design a square wheel and spend a year trying to figure out why it doesn't work properly.

Nadav Har'El

Better Alternative

Sometimes you don't need to be familiar with a better alternative to know that something sucks. Take Microsoft Word for example.

Good Student vs. Bad Student

The difference between a good student and a bad student is that a bad student forgets the material five minutes before the test, while a good student five minutes afterwards.

Real Programmers Don't Write

Real programmers don't write workarounds. They tell their users to upgrade their software.

Shlomi Fish

Jewish Atheists

Jewish Atheists are the only true Atheists. They beat the hell out of Goy Atheists.

Shlomi Fish

Chuck Norris Perlsixifies at FreeNode's #perl6 channel.

The ex-Member about Rashness

"You know:", The physicist said, "in my opinion since you left the Organization you acted without thinking a lot before you did things. I would define your behavior as deriving from spontaneousness and fickle-mindedness that border on rashness. Do you also think so?"

"Of course!" I answered him, "Except for arrogance, rashness is my only defect!"

Excerpt from "The Enemy and How I Helped to Fight it" By: Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/TheEnemy/

Second Best Solution

The current solution offered by Nvidia may be the second-best solution. But this is one case where the second best solution is not good enough.

Shlomi Fish in http://www.petitiononline.com/nvfoss/petition.html

If it isn't in my email…

If it isn't in my email, it doesn't exist.

And if the whole world says one thing and my email says something different, email will conquer.

-- an Israeli Linuxer.

Buffy and Willo

When Closed-source Bites

The Bad Thing about Hardware

The bad thing about hardware is that it sometimes work and sometimes doesn't. The good thing about software is that it's consistent: it always does not work, and it always does not work in exactly the same way.

Shlomi Fish

Welcome to Web 2.0

Unflattering Nicknames

Linux for Christians

More Advanced than CVS

On Sunday 01 April 2007, chromatic wrote:
> On Saturday 31 March 2007 15:26, Yuval Kogman wrote:
> > uses_version_control sounds more like lacks_manifest_skip_file which
> > should deduct kwalitee IMHO.
>
> Maybe so, but how else can CPANTS detect that you use the world's most
> advanced version control system: CVS?
>

Are you kidding?

CVS is not advanced as:

1. Microsoft Visual SourceSafe - the only sane choice for good data integrity
and portability.

2. tarballs/zip-files and patches. This one excels in convenience, and
robustness.

CVS is a very advanced version control system, however. I do wish that
Subversion (which is a VCS that I have to use against my will) was as good as
it is.

    -- Shlomi Fish answering to chromatic on 01-April-2007

Larry Wall Facts

• Larry Wall can understand the Perl code he wrote last year.
• Larry Wall gets the colon.
• There are at least 137 Larry Walls in the U.S. but only one that matters.
• Larry Wall applies a patch manually quicker than GNU patch.
• Larry Wall dreams in Perl.
• Larry Wall can program in his sleep.
• Larry Wall is lazy, impatient and full of hubris.
• Larry Wall has more dollars in the bank than in his Perl code.

-- Larry Wall facts by Shlomi Fish

Electrical Engineering Studies in the Technion

Electrical Engineering studies. In the Technion. Been there. Done that. Forgot a lot. Remember too much.

Shlomi Fish

"I am Without Faults"

Well, for the record, *I* am without faults, but i'll mention them here anyways:

1. i really hate scriptaculous
2. i kicked a dog the other day
3. i pushed an old lady aside, on my way to get a cup of free coffee
4. i secretly program in Python
5. i like to interject and make lists

"I'm not an actor"

I'm not an actor - I just play one on T.V.

Shlomi Fish

Discussing vapourware on Freenode's ##freebsd

Trying to Block Pornography…

Trying to block pornography is like climbing a waterfall and trying to stay dry.

Drew Dexter

I'm not Straight

I'm not straight - I'm Israeli.

Shlomi Fish (who is not gay)

Almost Worthy

Hi Omer! Mazal Tov on Chen and yours marriage. It reminds me of a quote from Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre:

"At this period she married, removed with her husband (a clergyman, an excellent man, *almost worthy of such a wife*) to a distant county, and consequently was lost to me."

Well, in your case I can say that both of you are almost worthy of each other. Congrats again!

Shlomi Fish in: http://omerm.livejournal.com/36505.html?thread=43673#t43673

It doesn't Mean What You Think it Means

> You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it
> means.

It does not mean what I think it means, but it means what *you* think it
means.

<evil-laugh>Muahahahah...</evil-laugh>

Tower of Babel and God the Dwarf

A few weeks ago, I've been to Freenode's #perl, talking to merlyn and other guys, when we got to discuss the Biblical "Tower of Babel Myth". As it turned out, the commonly perceived interpretation was not the one most scholars find as more sensible, which is the one we ended up being taught at Junior High School.

What most people think is something like that:

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< The people spoke to each other in the same language, concentrated in one place, and decided to build a tower high enough so they can reach God. God, a small dwarf who lived in the sky, was afraid of the efforts of these people, because he feared they'll reach him. So he casted an 8th level Spell of Language Fragmentation, caused these people to speak in different tongues, and without being able to understand each other, they ended up spreading across the Earth. God was relieved and returned to his dwarfish deeds, as dwarfs do. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Shlomi Fish in http://shlomif.livejournal.com/11889.html (Based on what his Bible teacher said)

One GEGL Per Child on GIMPNet's #gimp channel

Dream Language in Freenode's #lisp-il

Why Shlomi Fish Dislikes Lisp

> This reminds me of Paul Graham's articles, in which he claims that LISP
> programmers are better. But why is it so (whether or not you agree to
> the conclusion)? There are at least two opposite reasons: 1. Because
> programmers that learned LISP become better 2. Because good programmers
> prefer LISP when they come to know it.

No. 1 is true, naturally. No. 2 is not true - I know LISP but I prefer Perl.
Other like Python, etc. The reasons I don't prefer LISP are:

1. The standards of Common LISP and Scheme don't define anything practical.
2. LISP is at the moment incredibly verbose.
3. As Larry Wall noted, all LISP code comes in parenthesis and so it all looks
the same. (Perl is the exact opposite in this regard).
4. I cannot make heads nor tails of serious LISP code. Many LISPers create so
many macros and use them along with regular LISP code, so you keep having to
refer to the previous definitions, and make a lot of research to get you
started.

SICP Scheme is easy and fun. But serious LISP code can take too much time to
understand. OTOH, recently I had little problem reading the source code of
other Perl programmers, and extending it or fixing bugs. (likewise for
Python).

We don't Know His Cellphone

We don't know his cellphone number, and even if we did, we would tell you that we didn't know it.

Shlomi Fish

Engrew Sentence #1

plis tak mi auot from yuor mail list.

-- This Engrew sentence contains very few errors. -- From a message sent to Shlomi Fish

What do you mean?

What do you mean by "WDYM"?

Shlomi Fish

Windows-minus-minus

Chen Shapira: spent 5 hours yesterday trying to get Windows to print on my new wireless printer. It still doesn't work. On Ubuntu it worked after few minutes.

Shlomi Fish: Heh. Linux++ .

Chen Shapira: I'd do Windows-- , but this may result in an integer underflow.

"Use qmail Instead" Excerpt #1

A few days ago I joined #mandriva on Freenode trying to get to the bottom of a problem I have with KMail at work, where I cannot start KAddressBook from inside it. I asked my question and soon afterwards received:

* One Thunderbird recommendation.
* Two Evolution recommendations.
* One Sylpheed Claws recommendation.
* One GMail recommendation.

The problem is that I wasn't interested to learn about alternative E-mail clients, and just wanted to get my problem solved. And in GMail's case it was completely out of the question due to my work's constraints.

-- Shlomi Fish in -- http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/computers/web/use-qmail-instead/

RTFM vs. JATFM

RTFM vs. JATFM --------------

I recently had to figure out how to do something with wget: get everything below a directory on the web-server, without following links to outside it. So I logged in to FreeNode's #debian channel, where there are many knowledgable people to ask it. The first answer I got was "RTFM". So, I read the wget man page, but could not find it there. Eventually, after telling people that it would be faster to give an answer, I got a reply ( add the -np -r flags). But this has been the last straw.

I composed my own acronym. Just like RTFM is "Read the Fabulous Manual" and STFW is "Search the Fabulous Web", then JATFM is "Just Answer the Fabulous Man". It means that it's usually faster to answer someone's question than to ask him to RTFM, which is just going to annoy him. I think the RTFM mantra has done a lot of damage in the UNIX/Linux world, and I hope JATFMing would prove to be a more healthy ideology.

-- Shlomi Fish in -- http://www.advogato.org/person/shlomif/diary.html?start=215

I have to do TWAIN…

A: I'm busy right now - I have to do TWAIN.

B: Do Shania Twain?

C: Oh, I'd love to do Shania Twain.

-- Adapted from a conversation on Freenode's #perl

Fight for Perl

Perl Saints as an Alternative to Perl Heroes

> So, yeah... there are no gods, only heroes.  And anyone can become
> a hero.  And even heroes are just regular people.
>

I don't suppose we should propose that as an alternative to Perl Gods, there
should at least be Perl Saints:

http://www.stallman.org/saint.html

Of course, I'm not sure what being a Perl saint would imply. Using nothing but
Perl? (Including not C in which perl 5 is written?)

Oh well.

Not that I mind the Perl Gods stereotype stuff.

Regards,

        Shlomi Fish (a Perl saint^W hero wannabe, but definitely
        not a Perl God)

    --

What does being a Perl Saint Implies

> > > Of course, I'm not sure what being a Perl saint would imply.
> >
> >  It would imply having been killed for your faith in Perl.
>
> Does that make Randal the Spanish Inquisition?

No one expects the Randal Schwartz condition ;)

    -- Shlomi Fish, frosty, Duane Obrien and David Fetter in:
    --http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/sanfrancisco-pm/2008-April/001650.html

San-Fransisco Perl Mongers Randal Schwartz Noise Band

>  > > > Of course, I'm not sure what being a Perl saint would imply.
>  > >
>  > >  It would imply having been killed for your faith in Perl.
>  >
>  > Does that make Randal the Spanish Inquisition?
>
>  No on expects the Randal Schwartz condition ;)

I almost feel honor bound now to start a noise band called The Randal
Schwartz Condition.  I could shout his rants into a microphone while
the rest of the band flogged a newbie live on stage.

    -- Duane Obrien in:
    -- http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/sanfrancisco-pm/2008-April/001651.html

San-Fransisco Perl Mongers Randal Schwartz Condition

>>>>> "Duane" == Duane Obrien <duane.obrien at gmail.com> writes:

Duane> Alternately, The Randal Schwartz Condition is now accepting bookings
Duane> for birthdays, weddings, religious ceremonies of any kind, or occasions
Duane> where your consulting company throws a big party at some conference.
Duane> Email me off-list for details on how to get advance copies of our demo
Duane> "I'm The Real Tim Toady"

I'm already thinking of words to the "tune" of "I'm the real Slim Shady".

Damn you. :)

    -- Duane Obrien and Randal L. Schwartz
    -- http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/sanfrancisco-pm/2008-April/001655.html

Godwin's Law

> > In that case, lacking good links or a definitive reference text, I'll have
> > to ignore your comment earlier.
> >
> > I hope it's not much of a flamewar so far, but it sure seems to have
> > escalated into a minor one. "You are a Nazi!"
> > ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law ) - oops!
>
> Please.  The Nazi's were socialists.  I'm a little to the right of
> Attila the Hun.
>

And I thought Attila was a Humanitarian.

    -- Shlomi Fish, Guy Hulbert and Shlomi Fish in:
    -- http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.module-authors/2008/04/msg6432.html

Pedantic People

I often wonder why I hang out with so many people who are so pedantic. And then I remember - because they are so pedantic.

-- an Israeli Perl Monger

Variable Naming on #not-##freebsd

Monty Python on Computer Interfaces

<monty-python>

A: You Linux kids are so lucky. When we were using Windows 95 and Windows 3.11 it kept getting stuck and we lost all our data. We had to reboot it.

B: You used Windows 95! Lucky Bastard! When I was your age, we used DOS on CGA screens, and we were lucky if we had 4 colors, much less a true windowing environment.

C: You had DOS with graphics? Lucky bastard! When I was your age, I used VT-100 terminals connected to a VAX. 128 characters should be enough for everybody?

D: Visual Terminals? When I was your age, we used teletypes on a PDP-11: the computer printed on paper - very slowly. Can you imagine cat'ing a really long document?

E: Teletypes were heaven compared to the punch cards that I was using. Imagine going over to the computer with a large amount of punch cards and then dropping them all.

F: Punch cards! What is this talk about punch cards? We inputted machine code direclty using buttons and LEDs.

G: And all we had were NAND gates!

</monty-python>

#python on Incrementing

I Met a Guy in the Bar

I met a guy in the bar, talked to her and she gave me her phone number.

BASIC, Pugs and After Death

On the Internet

Two female dogs talking about modern-life:

Jasmine: It's so cool! On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog!

Daisy: Yeah, but everyone can tell right away that you're a bitch!

#perl6 about Lisp Mentality and Usability

kilmo about the NSA

[Discussing the shortage of IT workers as of 1998 on E-mail]

Shlomi Fish to Omer Zak: "Even the NSA doesn't have enough programmers. But it is not likely that they will have more and that's because 'Summerschool at the NSA' may might as well be the name of Sarah Michelle Gellar's next movie."

Omer Zak to Shlomi Fish: "And as opposed to 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' it is going to be scary."

Kilmo: why would you like to make fun 'bout the crypto world ? ;) The NSA does know what you did last summer. And by putting this on the web, they know that you know.

Which may lead to interesting philosophical issues. BTW, in a conference I was attending we were given a sticker saying: "NSA - free email backup".

They still have some issue with the retrieval procedures, but besides of that - they are quite a trusted service.

Shlomi Fish: In my case, I think every random joe can learn a lot about me. Even if he's not in Google or the NSA or whatever.

Kilmo: Yep. but this is a world-wide service that they offer. (Along with several cooperations, like MI5/6).

What are you Working on?

Ran Eilam To Shlomi Fish: so what are you working on? Working on a new wiki about unit testing fortunes in freecell?

My blog post got chromatic'd

Well, despite the fact that I hardly publicised my last essay about the "Closed Books", it has been chromatic'd. Rumours are that all the bloggers whose blog posts/essays were deprecated on chromatic's blog are now rich, famous and the object of the affection of many attractive members of the appropriate sex. Memo to self: prepare a limited edition T-shirt: "My blog post was chromatic'd. I pwn you as a blogger."

Birth of an Editor

Richard M. Stallman (RMS) decides to release his brand-new editor, "Emacs" on the CPAN with its first version 29.999.99. In order to package it, he invokes the trusty ol' module-starter (see http://search.cpan.org/dist/Module-Starter/ ) which creates a skeleton of a CPAN distribution for him.

He fills in the skeleton with the actual code of Emacs, types "perl Build.PL", and "./Build test" and makes sure all the tests pass. Then he types "./Build config --gui" and gets a nice GUI to configure the various parameters of the Module meta-data.[M-B-Data]

In the GUI, Richard goes to the Trove categorisation tab, and selects categories. This is done in a similar way to Freshmeat's project categorisation dialog (a list of options to the left, with selected options to the right and arrows to move them left or right, while allowing multiple select options.). He chooses such categories as "Programming Language :: Lisp", and "Intended Audience :: Emacs Users", "Operating System :: GNU", and "Topic :: Editors". (Note: I believe the category list should be fetched using a public web-service to keep them up-to-date.)

Second Birth of an Editor

After several weeks of having the editor on CPAN, Richard has received many patches, and wrote a lot of code on his own. Now Emacs is not only an editor but a calendar tool, an Eliza program, a web browser, a mail user agent and many other things.

So in order to release version 30.000.00 he needs to update the categorisation. He runs ./Build config --gui again, and adds more categories. However, he enters too many categories (because Emacs now does them all), and the GUI refuses to save the file because it will overflow the limit that the web-service specified the CPAN classification services allow to handle. So Richard keeps only the important categories, adds more tags, and saves it.

He then tests the distribution again, and uploads the new distribution to the CPAN.

Microsoft Editing Macros

Bill Gates, CEO of Microsoft decides to use Richard Stallman's Emacs as the basis of his company's state-of-the-art product Microsoft Editing Macros™ Enterprise Edition XP .NET Professional. However since MS Editing Macros™ is a commercial, proprietary program which he intends to sell at computer stores, Bill is not going to upload it to the CPAN. He builds upon Emacs, sends patches to Richard and learns a lot about it.

When he's finished building Microsoft Editing Macros™ he surfs to the Emacs homepage on CPAN, and adds some categories and tags of his own.

Eventually, enough people like Bill tag and categorise Emacs, and it gains more classification.

Looking Back at Your Old Habits

Really Extreme Programming

"You should shoot me"

Larry: final exams are on Tuesday and through Friday, so you won't see me for a while, or if you do - then you should shoot me.

Shlomi: I Will shoot you with my cross-intertubes-laser-gun.

Larry: HAHAHA.

Shlomi: Which I don't have.

Larry: Which network topology will you implement, for better accuracy ?

Shlomi: I'll just depend on the standard TCP/IP routing. Overlay the laser on top of the TCP packets.

God gave us…

God gave us two eyes and ten fingers so we will type five times as much as we read.

Shlomi Fish

Only wimps complain about bad code

Only wimps complain about bad code. Real men clean it up.

Shlomi Fish

Wikipedia has…

Wikipedia has a page about everything including the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_sink .

Hack, hack, hack…

shlomif: hack, hack, hack ; save ; make ; make test; commit. And start over.

mrjink:hack, hack, hack; save; make; swear; fix typos; save; make; make test; swear some more; hack some more; save; make; make test; cheer; commit.

meep: hack, make, test, segfault, oh noes, revert to previous revision

Threat vs. Warning

Well, it's not a threat - it's a warning, and he won't be harmed much by acting against my advice. A threat is something like "Stop posting political posts or I will burn your house, rape your wife and daughters, banish you to the middle of Antarctica, convert all your Perl code to PHP, and then post it on thedailywtf.com."

Regarding what you say that "no one cares if you unsubscribe", then this reminds me of what Fred Brooks says in "The Mythical Man-Month": "How does a project becomes late? One day at a time.". If you're not careful, you might lose a large percent of your blog's readership, one subscriber at a time.

Take that to a different channel

Do you speak French?

What does IDK stand for?

What does "IDK" stand for? I don't know.

PHP Error Debug List

PHP error debug list:

1) did you use the correct argument order? if you're a good programmer, use the *reverse* from what you think it is. see if it works. no? you're not a good programmer, or you learned php's braindeadness and can go on to step 2).

2) did you think about your code? if so, don't. php will do it for you so you can do mindbogglingly stupid stuff, such as not escape the data that goes into your sql queries.

Dazjorz

More Geek Facts about Chuck Norris

Give me ASCII

Give me ASCII or give me deaþ!

Technion Ways

In the Technion, there are many ways to get from one place to the other, but they are all the same length.

Sjors the Awayer

Reflections on Trusting Documentation

Emulating cats on #jquery

English Spelling

English spelling aims to be consistent. Publicly and methodically.

Virtual Money