Linux Computers

        The FIELD GUIDE to NORTH AMERICAN MALES

SPECIES:        Cranial Males
SUBSPECIES:     The Hacker (homo computatis)
Courtship & Mating:
        Due to extreme deprivation, HOMO COMPUTATIS maintains a near perpetual
        state of sexual readiness.  Courtship behavior alternates between
        awkward shyness and abrupt advances.  When he finally mates, he
        chooses a female engineer with an unblinking stare, a tight mouth, and
        a complete collection of Campbell's soup-can recipes.
Track:
        Trash cans full of pale green and white perforated paper and old
        copies of the Allen-Bradley catalog.
Comments:
        Extremely fond of bad puns and jokes that need long explanations.

        The FIELD GUIDE to NORTH AMERICAN MALES

SPECIES:        Cranial Males
SUBSPECIES:     The Hacker (homo computatis)
Description:
        Gangly and frail, the hacker has a high forehead and thinning hair.
        Head disproportionately large and crooked forward, complexion wan and
        sightly gray from CRT illumination.  He has heavy black-rimmed glasses
        and a look of intense concentration, which may be due to a software
        problem or to a pork-and-bean breakfast.
Feathering:
        HOMO COMPUTATIS saw a Brylcreem ad fifteen years ago and believed it.
        Consequently, crest is greased down, except for the cowlick.
Song:
        A rather plaintive "Is it up?"

        The FIELD GUIDE to NORTH AMERICAN MALES

SPECIES:        Cranial Males
SUBSPECIES:     The Hacker (homo computatis)
Plumage:
        All clothes have a slightly crumpled look as though they came off the
        top of the laundry basket.  Style varies with status.  Hacker managers
        wear gray polyester slacks, pink or pastel shirts with wide collars,
        and paisley ties; staff wears cinched-up baggy corduroy pants, white
        or blue shirts with button-down collars, and penholder in pocket.
        Both managers and staff wear running shoes to work, and a black
        plastic digital watch with calculator.

The first time, it's a KLUDGE!
The second, a trick.
Later, it's a well-established technique!
                -- Mike Broido, Intermetrics

The first version always gets thrown away.

The flow chart is a most thoroughly oversold piece of program documentation.
                -- Frederick Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month"

The following quote is from page 4-27 of the MSCP Basic Disk Functions
Manual which is part of the UDA50 Programmers Doc Kit manuals:

As stated above, the host area of a disk is structured as a vector of
logical blocks.  From a performance viewpoint, however, it is more
appropriate to view the host area as a four dimensional hyper-cube, the
four dimensions being cylinder, group, track, and sector.
. . .
Referring to our hyper-cube analogy, the set of potentially accessible
blocks form a line parallel to the track axis.  This line moves
parallel to the sector axis, wrapping around when it reaches the edge
of the hyper-cube.

The fountain code has been tightened slightly so you can no longer dip
objects into a fountain or drink from one while you are floating in mid-air
due to levitation.
        Teleporting to hell via a teleportation trap will no longer occur
if the character does not have fire resistance.
                -- README file from the NetHack game

The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at
least until we've finished building it.

The Gurus of Unix Meeting of Minds (GUMM) takes place Wednesday, April
1, 2076 (check THAT in your perpetual calendar program), 14 feet above
the ground directly in front of the Milpitas Gumps.  Members will grep
each other by the hand (after intro), yacc a lot, smoke filtered
chroots in pipes, chown with forks, use the wc (unless uuclean), fseek
nice zombie processes, strip, and sleep, but not, we hope, od.  Three
days will be devoted to discussion of the ramifications of whodo.  Two
seconds have been allotted for a complete rundown of all the user-
friendly features of Unix.  Seminars include "Everything You Know is
Wrong", led by Tom Kempson, "Batman or Cat:man?" led by Richie Dennis
"cc C?  Si!  Si!" led by Kerwin Bernighan, and "Document Unix, Are You
Kidding?" led by Jan Yeats.  No Reader Service No. is necessary because
all GUGUs (Gurus of Unix Group of Users) already know everything we
could tell them.
                -- "Get GUMMed," Dr. Dobb's Journal, June '84