Freebsd Fortunes

        Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a
great crystal river.  Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to
the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of
life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth.  But
one creature said at last, "I trust that the current knows where it is
going.  I shall let go, and let it take me where it will.  Clinging, I
shall die of boredom."
        The other creatures laughed and said, "Fool!  Let go, and that
current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the
rocks, and you will die quicker than boredom!"
        But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go,
and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.
Yet, in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current
lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.
        And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried,
"See a miracle!  A creature like ourselves, yet he flies!  See the
Messiah, come to save us all!"  And the one carried in the current
said, "I am no more Messiah than you.  The river delight to lift us
free, if only we dare let go.  Our true work is this voyage, this
adventure.
        But they cried the more, "Saviour!" all the while clinging to
the rocks, making legends of a Saviour.

        One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How
enthusiastic is our support for UNIX?
        Unix was written on our machines and for our machines many
years ago.  Today, much of UNIX being done is done on our machines.
Ten percent of our VAXs are going for UNIX use.  UNIX is a simple
language, easy to understand, easy to get started with.  It's great for
students, great for somewhat casual users, and it's great for
interchanging programs between different machines.  And so, because of
its popularity in these markets, we support it.  We have good UNIX on
VAX and good UNIX on PDP-11s.
        It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will
run out of things they can do with UNIX. They'll want a real system and
will end up doing VMS when they get to be serious about programming.
        With UNIX, if you're looking for something, you can easily and
quickly check that small manual and find out that it's not there.  With
VMS, no matter what you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of
documentation -- if you look long enough it's there.  That's the
difference -- the beauty of UNIX is it's simple; and the beauty of VMS
is that it's all there.
                -- Ken Olsen, President of DEC, 1984

        Plumbing is one of the easier of do-it-yourself activities,
requiring only a few simple tools and a willingness to stick your arm
into a clogged toilet.  In fact, you can solve many home plumbing
problems, such as annoying faucet drip, merely by turning up the
radio.  But before we get into specific techniques, let's look at how
plumbing works.
        A plumbing system is very much like your electrical system,
except that instead of electricity, it has water, and instead of wires,
it has pipes, and instead of radios and waffle irons, it has faucets
and toilets.  So the truth is that your plumbing systems is nothing at
all like your electrical system, which is good, because electricity can
kill you.
                -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"

        "Reflections on Ice-Breaking"
Candy
Is dandy
But liquor
Is quicker.
                -- Ogden Nash

        "Seven years and six months!"  Humpty Dumpty repeated
thoughtfully.  "An uncomfortable sort of age.  Now if you'd asked MY
advice, I'd have said `Leave off at seven' -- but it's too late now."
        "I never ask advice about growing,"  Alice said indignantly.
        "Too proud?" the other enquired.
        Alice felt even more indignant at this suggestion.  "I mean,"
she said, "that one can't help growing older."
        "ONE can't, perhaps," said Humpty Dumpty; "but TWO can.  With
proper assistance, you might have left off at seven."
                -- Lewis Carroll

        So Richard and I decided to try to catch [the small shark].
With a great deal of strategy and effort and shouting, we managed to
maneuver the shark, over the course of about a half-hour, to a sort of
corner of the lagoon, so that it had no way to escape other than to
flop up onto the land and evolve.  Richard and I were inching toward
it, sort of crouched over, when all of a sudden it turned around and --
I can still remember the sensation I felt at that moment, primarily in
the armpit area -- headed right straight toward us.
        Many people would have panicked at this point.  But Richard and
I were not "many people."  We were experienced waders, and we kept our
heads.  We did exactly what the textbook says you should do when you're
unarmed and a shark that is nearly two feet long turns on you in water
up to your lower calves: We sprinted I would say 600 yards in the
opposite direction, using a sprinting style such that the bottoms of
our feet never once went below the surface of the water.  We ran all
the way to the far shore, and if we had been in a Warner Brothers
cartoon we would have run right INTO the beach, and you would have seen
these two mounds of sand racing across the island until they bonked
into trees and coconuts fell onto their heads.
                -- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"

        "The Good Ship Enterprise" (to the tune of "The Good Ship Lollipop")

On the good ship Enterprise
Every week there's a new surprise
Where the Romulans lurk
And the Klingons often go berserk.

Yes, the good ship Enterprise
There's excitement anywhere it flies
Where Tribbles play
And Nurse Chapel never gets her way.

        See Captain Kirk standing on the bridge,
        Mr. Spock is at his side.
        The weekly menace, ooh-ooh
        It gets fried, scattered far and wide.

It's the good ship Enterprise
Heading out where danger lies
And you live in dread
If you're wearing a shirt that's red.
                -- Doris Robin and Karen Trimble of The L.A. Filkharmonics

        THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #10: SIMPLE

SIMPLE is an acronym for Sheer Idiot's Monopurpose Programming Language
Environment.  This language, developed at the Hanover College for
Technological Misfits, was designed to make it impossible to write code
with errors in it.  The statements are, therefore, confined to BEGIN,
END and STOP.  No matter how you arrange the statements, you can't make
a syntax error.  Programs written in SIMPLE do nothing useful.  Thus
they achieve the results of programs written in other languages without
the tedious, frustrating process of testing and debugging.

        THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #12: LITHP

This otherwise unremarkable language is distinguished by the absence of
an "S" in its character set; users must substitute "TH".  LITHP is said
to be useful in protheththing lithtth.

        THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #13: SLOBOL

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