Linux Cookie

A comment on schedules:
 Ok, how long will it take?
   For each manager involved in initial meetings add one month.
   For each manager who says "data flow analysis" add another month.
   For each unique end-user type add one month.
   For each unknown software package to be employed add two months.
   For each unknown hardware device add two months.
   For each 100 miles between developer and installation add one month.
   For each type of communication channel add one month.
   If an IBM mainframe shop is involved and you are working on a non-IBM
      system add 6 months.
   If an IBM mainframe shop is involved and you are working on an IBM
      system add 9 months.
Round up to the nearest half-year.
--Brad Sherman
By the way, ALL software projects are done by iterative prototyping.
Some companies call their prototypes "releases", that's all.

    UNIX Shell is the Best Fourth Generation Programming Language

    It is the UNIX shell that makes it possible to do applications in a small
    fraction of the code and time it takes in third generation languages.  In
    the shell you process whole files at a time, instead of only a line at a
    time.  And, a line of code in the UNIX shell is one or more programs,
    which do more than pages of instructions in a 3GL.  Applications can be
    developed in hours and days, rather than months and years with traditional
    systems.  Most of the other 4GLs available today look more like COBOL or
    RPG, the most tedious of the third generation lanaguages.

"UNIX Relational Database Management:  Application Development in the UNIX
 Environment" by Rod Manis, Evan Schaffer, and Robert Jorgensen.  Prentice
 Hall Software Series.  Brian Kerrighan, Advisor.  1988.

"Laugh while you can, monkey-boy."
-- Dr. Emilio Lizardo

"Floggings will continue until morale improves."
-- anonymous flyer being distributed at Exxon USA

"Hey Ivan, check your six."
-- Sidewinder missile jacket patch, showing a Sidewinder driving up the tail
 of a Russian Su-27

"Free markets select for winning solutions."
-- Eric S. Raymond

"I dislike companies that have a we-are-the-high-priests-of-hardware-so-you'll-
like-what-we-give-you attitude.  I like commodity markets in which iron-and-
silicon hawkers know that they exist to provide fast toys for software types
like me to play with..."
-- Eric S. Raymond

"The urge to destroy is also a creative urge."
-- Bakunin
[ed. note - I would say: The urge to destroy may sometimes be a creative urge.]

"A commercial, and in some respects a social, doubt has been started within the
 last year or two, whether or not it is right to discuss so openly the security
 or insecurity of locks.  Many well-meaning persons suppose that the discus-
 sion respecting the means for baffling the supposed safety of locks offers a
 premium for dishonesty, by showing others how to be dishonest.  This is a fal-
 lacy.  Rogues are very keen in their profession, and already know much more
 than we can teach them respecting their several kinds of roguery.  Rogues knew
 a good deal about lockpicking long before locksmiths discussed it among them-
 selves, as they have lately done.  If a lock -- let it have been made in what-
 ever country, or by whatever maker -- is not so inviolable as it has hitherto
 been deemed to be, surely it is in the interest of *honest* persons to know
 this fact, because the *dishonest* are tolerably certain to be the first to
 apply the knowledge practically; and the spread of knowledge is necessary to
 give fair play to those who might suffer by ignorance.  It cannot be too ear-
 nestly urged, that an acquaintance with real facts will, in the end, be better
 for all parties."
-- Charles Tomlinson's Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks,
   published around 1850

 In respect to lock-making, there can scarcely be such a thing as dishonesty
 of intention: the inventor produces a lock which he honestly thinks will
 possess such and such qualities; and he declares his belief to the world.
 If others differ from him in opinion concerning those qualities, it is open
 to them to say so; and the discussion, truthfully conducted, must lead to
 public advantage: the discussion stimulates curiosity, and curiosity stimu-
 lates invention.  Nothing but a partial and limited view of the question
 could lead to the opinion that harm can result: if there be harm, it will be
 much more than counterbalanced by good."
-- Charles Tomlinson's Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks,
   published around 1850.