If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.
If a program is useful, it will have to be changed.
Any program will expand to fill the available memory.
The value of a program is proportional to the weight of its output.
Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the programmers to maintain it.
Make it possible for programmers to write in English and you will find out that programmers cannot write in English.
TROUTMAN'S PROGRAMMING LAWS:
If a test installation functions perfectly, all subsequent systems malfunction.
Not until a program has been in production for at least six months will the most harmful error then be discovered.
Job control card that cannot be arranged in improper order will be.
Interchangeable tapes won't.
If the input editor has been designed to reject all bad input, an ingenious idiot will discover a method to get bad data past it.
Machines work, people should think.
GOLUB'S LAWS OF COMPUTERDOM:
A carelessly planned project takes three times longer to complete than expected; a carefully planned project will take only twice as long.
The effort required to correct the error increases geometrically with time.
WEINBERG'S LAW: If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
HARE'S LAW OF LARGE PROGRAMS: Inside every large program is a small program struggling to get out.
BRADLEY'S BROMIDE: If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee - that will do them in.
posted by Cris Eck [UAQ] (4/29/95)
Sources
[UAQ] - Usenet alt.quotations newsgroup
Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began). As of today, there are 661 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
If you're older than about 50 (and I know I am), I challenge you to read these lyrics and not think of The Righteous Brothers and Phil Spector's brillant production, and if you're the sensitive type (and I know I am), they may even bring some moistness to your eye, even without hearing the song. (If you're over 40, but under 50, you might recall the version by The Human League from their first album, which was also quite good, and evocative of the original.)
You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' by Phil Spector, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil
(As performed by The Righteous Brothers on Phillies #124, released in 1964)
You never close your eyes any more when I kiss your lips, And there's no tenderness like before in your finger tips. You're trying hard not to show it (baby), But baby, baby I know it.
You've lost that lovin' feelin' Wo-oh, that lovin' feelin' You've lost that lovin' feelin' Now it's gone, gone, gone wo-oh wo oh.
Now there's no welcome look in your eyes when I reach for you, And girl you're startin' to criticize little things I do. It makes me just feel like crying (baby), 'Cause baby, something beautiful's dying.
You've lost that lovin' feelin' Wo-oh, that lovin' feelin' You've lost that lovin' feelin' Now it's gone, gone, gone wo-oh-oh-oh.
Baby, baby, I'll get down on my knees for you, If you would only love me like you used to do, yeah. We had a love, a love, a love you don't find every day, So don't, don't, don't, don't let it slip away.
Baby (baby), baby (baby) I beg you please (oooo), please (oooo) I need your love (I need your love) I need your love (I need your love) So bring it on back (So bring it on back) So bring it on back now (Bring it on back)
Bring back that lovin' feelin' Wo-oh that lovin' feelin' Bring back that lovin' feelin' 'Cause it's gone, gone, gone, And I can't go on wo-oh-oh-oh.
Bring back that lovin' feelin' Wo-oh that lovin' feelin' Bring back that lovin' feelin' 'Cause it's gone, gone, gone, wo-oh-oh-oh.
You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' certainly has to be in the running for one of the best pop songs of all time. (Rolling Stone rates it at #34, but that's ridiculously low. There's a reason that BMI says that in the 20th century, the song was played on the radio more than any other.)
819)In Germany they came first for the Communists, but I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, but I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up.
Martin Niemöller originated in a speech to the Confessing Church in Frankfurt (1/6/1946) [B16/WQ]
[Note: There are many versions of this speech, which include different groups listed in different orders. The one presented here is one of the most well known. For discussions of the history of the statement, see Wikiquote and this page.]
Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began). As of today, there are 662 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
812) A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof was to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
Douglas Adams Mostly Harmless (1992) posted by Kevin Anthony Boudreaux [UAQ] (4/28/95)
813) One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike - and yet it is the most precious thing we have.
Albert Einstein letter to Hans Muehsam (7/9/1951) Einstein Archive 38-408 [QE] posted by Kevin Anthony Boudreaux [UAQ] (4/28/95)
814) For herself, she declared that she paid no attention to her birthdays - didn't give a hoot about them; and it is true that when you have amassed several dozen of the same sort of thing, it loses that rarity which is the excitement of collectors.
Dorothy Parker "Lolita" The New Yorker (8/27/1955) posted by Kevin Anthony Boudreaux [UAQ] (4/28/95)
815)
The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.
There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist, except an old optimist.
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) Mark Twain's Notebook (1935), edited by Albert Bigelow Paine [CQ] / posted by Kevin Anthony Boudreaux [UAQ] (4/28/95)
[Note: While these two quotes are from the same source, I have not been able to determine if they are connected in the original text. See also #832 Cabell.]
816) Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) Notebook (1904) posted by Jeff Shepherd [UAQ] (4/28/95)
817) They talk about the meeting of minds on the Internet. It turns out a lot of those minds are petty, vulgar, deranged, rude, abusive and have other qualities that do not make them good companions for conversation or debate.
Eugene Spafford (attributed) posted by Nancy J. Gill [AFU] (4/28/95)
818) If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it.
Isadora Duncan (widely attributed) posted by George Osner [IQM] (4/29/95)
[Note: Also, this:
Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.
Attribution of this quote is uncertain (see here), but the leading contenders seem to be Laurie Anderson, David Breskin, Elvis Costello, Steve Martin or Martin Mull, dating from the mid- or early-80's. [QV]]
Sources
[AFU] - Usenet alt.folklore.urban newsgroup [CQ] - Columbia Dictinary of Quotations (1993) [IQM] - Internet Quotations mailing list [QE] - The New Quotable Einstein (2005), Alice Calaprice, ed. [QV] - The Quote Verifier (2006), Ralph Keyes [UAQ] - Usenet alt.quotations newsgroup
Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began). As of today, there are 663 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
Three years ago, I received a national security letter (NSL) in my capacity as the president of a small Internet access and consulting business. The letter ordered me to provide sensitive information about one of my clients. There was no indication that a judge had reviewed or approved the letter, and it turned out that none had. The letter came with a gag provision that prohibited me from telling anyone, including my client, that the FBI was seeking this information. Based on the context of the demand -- a context that the FBI still won't let me discuss publicly -- I suspected that the FBI was abusing its power and that the letter sought information to which the FBI was not entitled.
Rather than turn over the information, I contacted lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union, and in April 2004 I filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the NSL power. I never released the information the FBI sought, and last November the FBI decided that it no longer needs the information anyway. But the FBI still hasn't abandoned the gag order that prevents me from disclosing my experience and concerns with the law or the national security letter that was served on my company. In fact, the government will return to court in the next few weeks to defend the gag orders that are imposed on recipients of these letters.
Living under the gag order has been stressful and surreal. Under the threat of criminal prosecution, I must hide all aspects of my involvement in the case -- including the mere fact that I received an NSL -- from my colleagues, my family and my friends. When I meet with my attorneys I cannot tell my girlfriend where I am going or where I have been. I hide any papers related to the case in a place where she will not look. When clients and friends ask me whether I am the one challenging the constitutionality of the NSL statute, I have no choice but to look them in the eye and lie.
I resent being conscripted as a secret informer for the government and being made to mislead those who are close to me, especially because I have doubts about the legitimacy of the underlying investigation.
I haven't anything to say about this except the exceedingly obvious: such behavior on the part of the government is antithetical to everything that this country is supposed to stand for, and does little to protect us, but does undermine the very basis of our society. For a little short-term gain, we're destroying the very thing that we're supposed to be preserving.
I appreciate the blogging ethos which encourages bloggers to note when they change or update their posts -- it's something the mainstream media gives lip service to, but (partly because of their very nature) does not generally do a very good job at. Such transparency, however, can be carried to an extreme. A case in point is Wikipedia. There is hardly an article on Wikipedia that isn't defaced with a notice at the top loudly proclaimly the deficiencies of the article: "This article does not adequately cite its references or sources," or "This article may be confusing or unclear for most readers," or "This article is in need of attention from an expert on the subject," or "The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view of the subject."
There are hundreds of these "cleanup" tags, many of them about internal housekeeping matters which are of little interest to the general user:
This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedia's deletion policy.
An editor has expressed a concern that the subject of the article does not satisfy the notability guideline or one of the following guidelines for inclusion on Wikipedia: Biographies, Books, Companies, Fiction, Music, Neologisms, Numbers, Web content, or several proposals for new guidelines.
This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
It has been suggested that this article be split into multiple articles
This article (or section) may need to be wikified to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
There are very few or no other articles that link to this one.
The whole thing starts to look extremely fetishistic, and the multiple warnings on the top of each page are less informative than they are off-putting. Worse, such tagging has the potential to become a sort of Guerilla WikiWarfare, as editors vying for control of articles use the tags, and other internal devices of the Wikipedia community, as weapons against each other. Wikipedia then comes to seem less like a usable resource, and more like yet another victim of the fractiousness of online culture.
(It's also ironic that in a project which definitely does have a fetish about maintaining a "Neutral Point of View" (NPOV), most of the tags call for a value judgment on the part of the tagger, and value judgments are impossible to make without the framework of a point of view. What's most important in an encyclopedia is not, of course, a neutral point of view -- which in any case is impossible -- but accuracy and balance.)
Update (4/8): You can find other observations about Wikipedia and its community on my Wikipedia user page.
Make sure each pronoun agrees with their antecedent.
Just between you and I, the case of pronoun is important.
Watch out for irregular verbs which have crope into English.
Verbs has to agree in number with their subjects.
Don't use no double negatives.
Being bad grammar, a writer should not use dangling modifiers.
Join clauses good like a conjunction should.
A writer must be not shift your point of view.
About sentence fragments.
Don't use run-on sentences you got to punctuate them.
In letters essays and reports use commas to separate items in series.
Don't use commas, which are not necessary.
Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.
Its important to use apostrophes right in everybodys writing.
Don't abbrev.
Check to see if you any words out.
In the case of a report, check to see that jargonwise, it's A-OK.
As far as incomplete constructions, they are wrong.
About repetition, the repetition of a word might be real effective repetition - take, for instance the repetition of Abraham Lincoln.
In my opinion, I think that an author when he is writing should definitely not get into the habit of making use of too many unnecessary words that he does not really need in order to put his message across.
Use parallel construction not only to be concise but also clarify.
It behooves us all to avoid archaic expressions.
Mixed metaphors are a pain in the neck and ought to be weeded out.
Consult the dictionery to avoid mispelings.
To ignorantly split an infinitive is a practice to religiously avoid.
Last but not least, lay off cliches.
George L. Trigg "Grammar" Physics Review Letter (3/19/1979) posted by Donna Richoux [AUE]
811)
Avoid run-on sentences they are hard to read.
Don't use no double negatives.
Use the semicolon properly, always use it where it is appropriate; and never where it isn't.
Reserve the apostrophe for it's proper use and omit it when its not needed.
Do not put statements in the negative form.
Verbs has to agree with their subjects.
No sentence fragments.
Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
Avoid commas, that are not necessary.
If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
A writer must not shift your point of view.
Eschew dialect, irregardless.
And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
Don't overuse exclamation marks!!!
Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents.
Hyphenate between sy- llables and avoid un-necessary hyphens.
Write all adverbial forms correct.
Don't use contractions in formal writing.
Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.
It is incumbent on us to avoid archaisms.
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
Steer clear of incorrect forms of verbs that have snuck in the language.
Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixed metaphors.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
Never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.
If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, resist hyperbole.
Also, avoid awkward or affected alliteration.
Don't string too many prepositional phrases together unless you are walking through the valley of the shadow of death.
Always pick on the correct idiom.
"Avoid overuse of 'quotation "marks."'"
The adverb always follows the verb.
Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek viable alternatives.
William Safire "On Language: The Fumblerules of Grammar" New York Times (11/4/1979) posted by Donna Richoux [AUE]
Sources
[AUE] - Usenet alt.english.usage newsgroup
Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began). As of today, there are 664 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
807) The very purpose of the First Amendment is to foreclose public authority from assuming a guardianship of the public mind. [...] In this field every person must be his own watchman for the truth, because the forefathers did not trust any government to separate the truth from the false for us.
Thomas v Collins, 323 U.S. 516 (1945) posted by D. Citron [UAQ] (4/27/95)
808) A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse (that is, excessive gratuities) from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith.
From spiritual faith to great courage.
From courage to liberty.
From liberty to abundance.
From abundance to selfishness.
From selfishness to complacency.
From complacency to apathy.
From apathy to dependency.
From dependency back again into bondage.
Professor Alexander Tyler The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic posted by Gary Klau [UAQ] (4/27/95)
[Note: Also,
Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
John Adams letter (4/15/1814) published in The Works of John Adams (1851)]
809) When people put their ballots in the boxes, they are, by their act, inoculated against the feeling that the government is not theirs. They then accept, in some measure, that its errors are their errors, its aberrations their aberrations, that any revolt will be against them. It's a remarkably shrewd and rather conservative arrangement when one thinks of it.
John Kenneth Galbraith The Age of Uncertainty (1977) [CQ]
[Note: Of course, this response by the people is dependent on their collective belief that their votes will be counted with a reasonable degree of accuracy, a belief which has been considerably eroded by the U.S. Supreme Court-aborted recount in the 2000 Presidential election, and by the advent of paperless electronic voting machines which have an extraordinary lack of accountability.]
Sources
[CQ] - Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1993) [UAQ] - Usenet alt.quotations newsgroup
Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began). As of today, there are 666 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
absolutist
aggresive
anti-Constitutional
anti-intellectual
arrogant
authoritarian
blame-placers
blameworthy
blinkered
buckpassers
calculating
class warriors
clueless
compassionless
con artists
conniving
conscienceless
conspiratorial
corrupt
craven
criminal
crooked
culpable
damaging
dangerous
deadly
debased
deceitful
delusional
despotic
destructive
devious
disconnected
dishonorable
dishonest
disingenuous
disrespectful
dogmatic
doomed
fanatical
fantasists
felonious
hateful
heinous
hostile to science
hypocritical
ideologues
ignorant
immoral
incompetent
indifferent
inflexible
insensitive
insincere
irrational
isolated
kleptocratic
lacking in empathy
lacking in public spirit
liars
mendacious
misleading
mistrustful
non-rational
not candid
not "reality-based"
not trustworthy
oblivious
oligarchic
opportunistic
out of control
pernicious
perverse
philistine
plutocratic
prevaricating
propagandists
rapacious
relentless
reprehensible
rigid
scandalous
schemers
selfish
secretive
shameless
sleazy
tricky
unAmerican
uncaring
uncivil
uncompromising
unconstitutional
undemocratic
unethical
unpopular
unprincipled
unrealistic
unreliable
unrepresentative
unscientific
unscrupulous
unsympathetic
venal
vile
virtueless
warmongers
wicked
without integrity
wrong-headed
Thanks to: Breeze, Chuck, Ivan Raikov, Kaiju, Kathy, Roger, Shirley, S.M. Dixon
recently seen
i've got a little list...
Elliott Abrams
Steven Abrams (Kansas BofE)
David Addington
Howard Fieldstead Ahmanson
Roger Ailes (FNC)
John Ashcroft
Bob Bennett
William Bennett
Joe Biden
John Bolton
Alan Bonsell (Dover BofE)
Pat Buchanan
Bill Buckingham (Dover BofE)
George W. Bush
Saxby Chambliss
Bruce Chapman (DI)
Dick Cheney
Lynne Cheney
Richard Cohen
The Coors Family
Ann Coulter
Michael Crichton
Lanny Davis
Tom DeLay
William A. Dembski
James Dobson
Leonard Downie (WaPo)
Dinesh D’Souza
Gregg Easterbrook
Jerry Falwell
Douglas Feith
Arthur Finkelstein
Bill Frist
George Gilder
Newt Gingrich
John Gibson (FNC)
Alberto Gonzalez
Rudolph Giuliani
Sean Hannity
Katherine Harris
Fred Hiatt (WaPo)
Christopher Hitchens
David Horowitz
Don Imus
James F. Inhofe
Jesse Jackson
Philip E. Johnson
Daryn Kagan
Joe Klein
Phil Kline
Ron Klink
William Kristol
Ken Lay
Joe Lieberman
Rush Limbaugh
Trent Lott
Frank Luntz
"American Fundamentalists"
by Joel Pelletier
(click on image for more info)
Chris Matthews
Mitch McConnell
Stephen C. Meyer (DI)
Judith Miller (ex-NYT)
Zell Miller
Tom Monaghan
Sun Myung Moon
Roy Moore
Dick Morris
Rupert Murdoch
Ralph Nader
John Negroponte
Grover Norquist
Robert Novak
Ted Olson
Elspeth Reeve (TNR)
Bill O'Reilly
Martin Peretz (TNR)
Richard Perle
Ramesh Ponnuru
Ralph Reed
Pat Robertson
Karl Rove
Tim Russert
Rick Santorum
Richard Mellon Scaife
Antonin Scalia
Joe Scarborough
Susan Schmidt (WaPo)
Bill Schneider
Al Sharpton
Ron Silver
John Solomon (WaPo)
Margaret Spellings
Kenneth Starr
Randall Terry
Clarence Thomas
Richard Thompson (TMLC)
Donald Trump
Richard Viguere
Donald Wildmon
Paul Wolfowitz
Bob Woodward (WaPo)
John Yoo
guest-blogging
All the fine sites I've
guest-blogged for:
Be sure to visit them all!!
recent listening
influences
John Adams
Laurie Anderson
Aphex Twin
Isaac Asimov
Fred Astaire
J.G. Ballard
The Beatles
Busby Berkeley
John Cage
"Catch-22"
Raymond Chandler
Arthur C. Clarke
Elvis Costello
Richard Dawkins
Daniel C. Dennett
Philip K. Dick
Kevin Drum
Brian Eno
Fela
Firesign Theatre
Eliot Gelwan
William Gibson
Philip Glass
David Gordon
Stephen Jay Gould
Dashiell Hammett
"The Harder They Come"
Robert Heinlein
Joseph Heller
Frank Herbert
Douglas Hofstadter
Bill James
Gene Kelly
Stanley Kubrick
Jefferson Airplane
Ursula K. LeGuin
The Marx Brothers
John McPhee
Harry Partch
Michael C. Penta
Monty Python
Orbital
Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
"The Prisoner"
"The Red Shoes"
Steve Reich
Terry Riley
Oliver Sacks
Erik Satie
"Singin' in the Rain"
Stephen Sondheim
The Specials
Morton Subotnick
Talking Heads/David Byrne
Tangerine Dream
Hunter S. Thompson
J.R.R. Tolkien
"2001: A Space Odyssey"
Kurt Vonnegut
Yes
Bullshit, trolling, unthinking knee-jerk dogmatism and the drivel of idiots will be ruthlessly deleted and the posters banned.
Entertaining, interesting, intelligent, informed and informative comments will always be welcome, even when I disagree with them.
I am the sole judge of which of these qualities pertains.
E-mail
All e-mail received is subject to being published on unfutz without identifying names or addresses.
Corrections
I correct typos and other simple errors of grammar, syntax, style and presentation in my posts after the fact without necessarily posting notification of the change.
Substantive textual changes, especially reversals or major corrections, will be noted in an "Update" or a footnote.
Also, illustrations may be added to entries after their initial publication.
the story so far
unfutz: toiling in almost complete obscurity for almost 1500 days
If you read unfutz at least once a week, without fail, your teeth will be whiter and your love life more satisfying.
If you read it daily, I will come to your house, kiss you on the forehead, bathe your feet, and cook pancakes for you, with yummy syrup and everything.
(You might want to keep a watch on me, though, just to avoid the syrup ending up on your feet and the pancakes on your forehead.)
Finally, on a more mundane level, since I don't believe that anyone actually reads this stuff, I make this offer: I'll give five bucks to the first person who contacts me and asks for it -- and, believe me, right now five bucks might as well be five hundred, so this is no trivial offer.
810)
