Freebsd Fortunes

        A doctor, an architect, and a computer scientist were arguing
about whose profession was the oldest.  In the course of their
arguments, they got all the way back to the Garden of Eden, whereupon
the doctor said, "The medical profession is clearly the oldest, because
Eve was made from Adam's rib, as the story goes, and that was a simply
incredible surgical feat."
        The architect did not agree.  He said, "But if you look at the
Garden itself, in the beginning there was chaos and void, and out of
that, the Garden and the world were created.  So God must have been an
architect."
        The computer scientist, who had listened to all of this said,
"Yes, but where do you think the chaos came from?"

        A man goes to a tailor to try on a new custom-made suit.  The
first thing he notices is that the arms are too long.
        "No problem," says the tailor.  "Just bend them at the elbow
and hold them out in front of you.  See, now it's fine."
        "But the collar is up around my ears!"
        "It's nothing.  Just hunch your back up a little ... no, a
little more ... that's it."
        "But I'm stepping on my cuffs!"  the man cries in desperation.
        "Nu, bend you knees a little to take up the slack.  There you
go.  Look in the mirror -- the suit fits perfectly."
        So, twisted like a pretzel, the man lurches out onto the
street.  Reba and Florence see him go by.
        "Oh, look," says Reba, "that poor man!"
        "Yes," says Florence, "but what a beautiful suit."
                -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"

        A master was explaining the nature of Tao to one of his
novices.  "The Tao is embodied in all software -- regardless of how
insignificant," said the master.

        "Is Tao in a hand-held calculator?" asked the novice.

        "It is," came the reply.

        "Is the Tao in a video game?" continued the novice.

        "It is even in a video game," said the master.

        "And is the Tao in the DOS for a personal computer?"

        The master coughed and shifted his position slightly.  "The
lesson is over for today," he said.
                -- "The Tao of Programming"

        A musician of more ambition than talent composed an elegy at
the death of composer Edward MacDowell.  She played the elegy for the
pianist Josef Hoffman, then asked his opinion.  "Well, it's quite
nice," he replied, but don't you think it would be better if ..."
        "If what?"  asked the composer.
        "If ... if you had died and MacDowell had written the elegy?"

        A novel approach is to remove all power from the system, which
removes most system overhead so that resources can be fully devoted to
doing nothing.  Benchmarks on this technique are promising; tremendous
amounts of nothing can be produced in this manner.  Certain hardware
limitations can limit the speed of this method, especially in the
larger systems which require a more involved & less efficient
power-down sequence.
        An alternate approach is to pull the main breaker for the
building, which seems to provide even more nothing, but in truth has
bugs in it, since it usually inhibits the systems which keep the beer
cool.

        A priest was walking along the cliffs at Dover when he came
upon two locals pulling another man ashore on the end of a rope.
"That's what I like to see", said the priest, "A man helping his fellow
man".
        As he was walking away, one local remarked to the other, "Well,
he sure doesn't know the first thing about shark fishing."

        After his Ignoble Disgrace, Satan was being expelled from
Heaven.  As he passed through the Gates, he paused a moment in thought,
and turned to God and said, "A new creature called Man, I hear, is soon
to be created."
        "This is true," He replied.
        "He will need laws," said the Demon slyly.
        "What!  You, his appointed Enemy for all Time!  You ask for the
right to make his laws?"
        "Oh, no!"  Satan replied, "I ask only that he be allowed to
make his own."
        It was so granted.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

        An architect's first work is apt to be spare and clean.  He
knows he doesn't know what he's doing, so he does it carefully and with
great restraint.
        As he designs the first work, frill after frill and
embellishment after embellishment occur to him.  These get stored away
to be used "next time".  Sooner or later the first system is finished,
and the architect, with firm confidence and a demonstrated mastery of
that class of systems, is ready to build a second system.
        This second is the most dangerous system a man ever designs.
When he does his third and later ones, his prior experiences will
confirm each other as to the general characteristics of such systems,
and their differences will identify those parts of his experience that
are particular and not generalizable.
        The general tendency is to over-design the second system, using
all the ideas and frills that were cautiously sidetracked on the first
one.  The result, as Ovid says, is a "big pile".
                -- Frederick Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month"

        An old Jewish man reads about Einstein's theory of relativity
in the newspaper and asks his scientist grandson to explain it to him.
        "Well, zayda, it's sort of like this.  Einstein says that if
you're having your teeth drilled without Novocain, a minute seems like
an hour.  But if you're sitting with a beautiful woman on your lap, an
hour seems like a minute."
        The old man considers this profound bit of thinking for a
moment and says, "And from this he makes a living?"
                -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"

        "And what will you do when you grow up to be as big as me?"
asked the father of his little son.
        "Diet."