Linux Computers

The so-called "desktop metaphor" of today's workstations is instead an
"airplane-seat" metaphor.  Anyone who has shuffled a lap full of papers
while seated between two portly passengers will recognize the difference --
one can see only a very few things at once.
                -- Fred Brooks

The steady state of disks is full.
                -- Ken Thompson

                      THE STORY OF CREATION
                               or
                         THE MYTH OF URK

In the beginning there was data.  The data was without form and null, and
darkness was upon the face of the console; and the Spirit of IBM was moving
over the face of the market.  And DEC said, "Let there be registers;" and
there were registers.  And DEC saw that they carried; and DEC separated the
data from the instructions.  DEC called the data Stack, and the instructions
they called Code.  And there was evening and there was morning, one interrupt
...
                -- Rico Tudor

The system was down for backups from 5am to 10am last Saturday.

The system will be down for 10 days for preventive maintenance.

The Tao doesn't take sides;
it gives birth to both wins and losses.
The Guru doesn't take sides;
she welcomes both hackers and lusers.

The Tao is like a stack:
the data changes but not the structure.
the more you use it, the deeper it becomes;
the more you talk of it, the less you understand.

Hold on to the root.

The Tao is like a glob pattern:
used but never used up.
It is like the extern void:
filled with infinite possibilities.

It is masked but always present.
I don't know who built to it.
It came before the first kernel.

The tao that can be tar(1)ed
is not the entire Tao.
The path that can be specified
is not the Full Path.

We declare the names
of all variables and functions.
Yet the Tao has no type specifier.

Dynamically binding, you realize the magic.
Statically binding, you see only the hierarchy.

Yet magic and hierarchy
arise from the same source,
and this source has a null pointer.

Reference the NULL within NULL,
it is the gateway to all wizardry.

The trouble with computers is that they do what you tell them, not what
you want.
                -- D. Cohen

The UNIX philosophy basically involves giving you enough rope to
hang yourself.  And then a couple of feet more, just to be sure.