Linux Computers

If the vendors started doing everything right, we would be out of a job.
Let's hear it for OSI and X!  With those babies in the wings, we can count
on being employed until we drop, or get smart and switch to gardening,
paper folding, or something.
                -- C. Philip Wood

If this is timesharing, give me my share right now.

If you ever want to have a lot of fun, I recommend that you go off and program
an imbedded system.  The salient characteristic of an imbedded system is that
it cannot be allowed to get into a state from which only direct intervention
will suffice to remove it.  An imbedded system can't permanently trust anything
it hears from the outside world.  It must sniff around, adapt, consider, sniff
around, and adapt again.  I'm not talking about ordinary modular programming
carefulness here.  No.  Programming an imbedded system calls for undiluted
raging maniacal paranoia.  For example, our ethernet front ends need to know
what network number they are on so that they can address and route PUPs
properly.  How do you find out what your network number is?  Easy, you ask a
gateway.  Gateways are required by definition to know their correct network
numbers.  Once you've got your network number, you start using it and before
you can blink you've got it wired into fifteen different sockets spread all
over creation.  Now what happens when the panic-stricken operator realizes he
was running the wrong version of the gateway which was giving out the wrong
network number?  Never supposed to happen.  Tough.  Supposing that your
software discovers that the gateway is now giving out a different network
number than before, what's it supposed to do about it?  This is not discussed
in the protocol document.  Never supposed to happen.  Tough.  I think you
get my drift.

If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.

If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out but tomfoolery.
But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very expensive machine,
is somehow enobled and no-one dare criticise it.
                -- Pierre Gallois

If you teach your children to like computers and to know how to gamble
then they'll always be interested in something and won't come to no real harm.

If you think the system is working, ask someone who's waiting for a prompt.

If you're crossing the nation in a covered wagon, it's better to have four
strong oxen than 100 chickens.  Chickens are OK but we can't make them work
together yet.
                -- Ross Bott, Pyramid U.S., on multiprocessors at AUUGM '89.

Ignorance is bliss.
                -- Thomas Gray

Fortune updates the great quotes, #42:
        BLISS is ignorance.

Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual
way.  This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of
complaining.
                -- Jeff Raskin