Linux Computers

... one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that,
lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of
their C programs.
                -- Robert Firth

One of the most overlooked advantages to computers is...  If they do
foul up, there's no law against whacking them around a little.
                -- Joe Martin

        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, DECWORLD Vol. 8 No. 5, 1984
[It's been argued that the beauty of UNIX is the same as the beauty of Ken
Olsen's brain.  Ed.]

One person's error is another person's data.

One picture is worth 128K words.

Only great masters of style can succeed in being obtuse.
                -- Oscar Wilde

Most UNIX programmers are great masters of style.
                -- The Unnamed Usenetter

Only the fittest survive. The vanquished acknowledge their unworthiness by
placing a classified ad with the ritual phrase "must sell -- best offer,"
and thereafter dwell in infamy, relegated to discussing gas mileage and lawn
food.  But if successful, you join the elite sodality that spends hours
unpurifying the dialect of the tribe with arcane talk of bits and bytes, RAMS
and ROMS, hard disks and baud rates. Are you obnoxious, obsessed?  It's a
modest price to pay.  For you have tapped into the same awesome primal power
that produces credit-card billing errors and lost plane reservations.  Hail,
postindustrial warrior, subduer of Bounceoids, pride of the cosmos, keeper of
the silicone creed: Computo, ergo sum.  The force is with you -- at 110 volts.
May your RAMS be fruitful and multiply.
                -- Curt Suplee, "Smithsonian", 4/83

OS/2 Beer: Comes in a 32-oz can. Does allow you to drink several DOS
Beers simultaneously. Allows you to drink Windows 3.1 Beer simultaneously
too, but somewhat slower. Advertises that its cans won't explode when you
open them, even if you shake them up. You never really see anyone
drinking OS/2 Beer, but the manufacturer (International Beer
Manufacturing) claims that 9 million six-packs have been sold.

OS/2 Skyways:
The terminal is almost empty, with only a few prospective passengers milling
about. The announcer says that their flight has just departed, wishes them a
good flight, though there are no planes on the runway. Airline personnel
walk around, apologising profusely to customers in hushed voices, pointing
from time to time to the sleek, powerful jets outside the terminal on the
field. They tell each passenger how good the real flight will be on these
new jets and how much safer it will be than Windows Airlines, but that they
will have to wait a little longer for the technicians to finish the flight
systems. Maybe until mid-1995. Maybe longer.

"Our attitude with TCP/IP is, `Hey, we'll do it, but don't make a big
system, because we can't fix it if it breaks -- nobody can.'"

"TCP/IP is OK if you've got a little informal club, and it doesn't make
any difference if it takes a while to fix it."
                -- Ken Olson, in Digital News, 1988