Some great quotes for you to read if nothing better to do....

"I don't think they could put him in a mental hospital. On the other hand, if he were already in, I don't think they'd let him out." -- unk

"Before we bring democracy to Iraq, or even to Afghanistan, maybe we should bring it to Florida." -- Paraphrased from Jon Stewart's "Daily Show"

"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest." -- Mohandas K. Gandhi: "Gandhi, An Autobiography", page 446

"Liberal democracy teaches that cultural tolerance is essential, but you don't have to get far from liberal democracy for liberal democrats to become very intolerant." -- Kim Stanley Robinson

"Faith cannot move mountains (though generations of children are solemnly told the contrary and believe it). But it is capable of driving people to such dangerous folly that faith seems to me to qualify as a kind of mental illness. It leads people to believe in whatever it is so strongly that in extreme cases they are prepared to kill and die for it without the need for further justification. Keith Hensen has coined the term 'memeoids' for 'victims that have been taken over by a meme to the extent that their own survival becomes inconsequential... You see lots of these people on the evening news from such places as Belfast and Beirut.' Faith is powerful enough to immunize people against all appeals to pity, to forgiveness, to decent human feelings. It even immunizes them against fear, if they honestly believe that a martyr's death will send them straight to heaven. What a weapon! Religious faith deserves a chapter to itself in the annals of war technology, on an even footing with the longbow, the warhorse, the tank, and the hydrogen bomb." -- Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

"The age of virtuous politics is past, and we are deep in that of cold pretence. -- Patriots are grown too shrewd to be sincere, and we are too wise to trust them." -- William Cowper (1731-1800)

"Somebody once told me that games programmers burn out by 30 and I'm already 32 years old, so I want to write one last masterpiece before my brain siezes up completely and I have to go into management." -- P.J.Jefferies (peter#agp.win-uk.net) in rec.games.programmer

"I also like old-fashioned, upbeat themes and happy endings. Although life doesn't always seem that way, I believe that in the long term things get better. I don't think we're about to overpopulate the planet, blow ourselves into oblivion, poison ourselves into extinction, degenerate into Nazis, or disappear under our own garbage. For ten thousand years the power of human reason and creativity has continued to build better tomorrows, and nothing says it has to change now." -- James P. Hogan

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." -- Thomas Jefferson, 1764

"The 'End of Work' is the same old nonsense that the people who get thrown out of work by increased productivity will have nowhere to go. Much the same could have been said in relation to the increase in agricultural productivity. Rifkin knows that the displaced agricultural workers simply went into industry, but now that industry is going the way of agriculture, and may only need 2% of the workforce, Rifkin doesn't know where they can go. Well, of course. If Rifkin knew where they could go, he would be starting a business instead of engaging in academic pontificating.

It is the hardest thing for intellectuals to understand, that just because they haven't thought of something, somebody else might. In fact, somebody else WILL, if we are to extrapolate on the most obvious trend of the past. Instead, Rifkin looks forward to a kind of Mediaeval stagnation. But that has always been what the Left is about anyway: Nostalgia for a fixed and ideal society -- since much of the past is remembered as, in certain respects, ideal, even if there is no desire to say that it was all ideal. The Mediaeval ideal was, indeed, government by the Best and the Worthy, which to people like Rifkin means people like him. That money grubbing capitalists might be better for the lot of humanity than academics will never be acceptible, whatever the evidence." -- Kelley L. Ross, in Perspective

"How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant'? Instead they say, 'No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.' A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths." -- Carl Sagan

"I am trying to call attention to the elephant in the room that everybody is too polite - or too devout - to notice: religion, and specifically the devaluing effect that religion has on human life. I don't mean devaluing the life of others (though it can do that too), but devaluing one's own life. Religion teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end." -- Richard Dawkins, Guardian, Saturday September 15, 2001

"Disagreeing with someone's absolute moral or religious beliefs is almost always taken as a flame, no matter how politely phrased. So I don't bother beating around the bush about this kind of thing any more. Religion is stupid. The only kind of morality that matters is the kind that springs naturally from human beings trying to find mutually satisfactory ways of getting along. Threats from imaginary gods are irrelevant." -- Jeff Dee (unigames#io.com) in rec.games.frp.misc

"Since 11 September the world has changed immeasurably, but some things remain the same. The single greatest threat to Internet security is still Microsoft - not the soon to be Osama Haz Bin. Microsoft is not, of course, a terrorist organization. But its ubiquity on the desktop coupled with its poor track record in network security is a tested formula for international disaster." -- "Oxblood Ruffin", The Register, 2001Dec14

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." -- James Nicoll

"As one who was raised an atheist, and who considers it plain common sense, I am always tempted to be skeptical that any adult could really truly believe such utter rubbish. It's like hearing a friend or respected colleague suddenly proclaim that they hope to get money from the tooth fairy, or gifts from Santa Claus, or that the Great Pumpkin will get me if I pick my nose.

But it's undeniable that millions of people really truly do believe that there's this guy up in the clouds who knows everything, is more powerful than Superman, has an IQ of lazy-eight, has been around since long before the beginning of time, and produces whole galaxies filled with hundreds of billions of solar systems more easily than you and I produce newsgroup postings. And that he takes intense personal interest in their sex lives and mine. And has grudges against various groups, and likes to play rather juvenile pranks such as throwing frogs around.

There is NOTHING so silly that nobody could possibly believe it. NOTHING. A perusal of Usenet should suffice to demonstrate this." -- Keith F. Lynch (kfl#KeithLynch.net) in rec.arts.sf.written

"2.5 A Problem Solver's Perspective. Good programmers are a little bit lazy: they sit back and wait for an insight rather than rushing forward with their first idea. That must, of course, be balanced with the initiative to code at the proper time. The real skill, though, is knowing the proper time. That judgement comes only with the experience of solving problems and reflecting on their solutions.

(...) Why do programmers write big programs when small ones will do? One reason is that they lack the important laziness mentioned in Section 2.5; they rush ahead to code their first idea." -- Jon Bentley, Programming Pearls, 2nd Ed.

"To make a fictional marvel wear the momentary aspect of exciting fact, we must give it the most elaborate possible approach -- building it up insidiously and gradually out of realistic material, realistically handled. The time is past when adults can accept can accept marvellous conditions for granted. Every energy must be bent toward the weaving of a frame of mind which shall make the story's single departure from nature seem credible -- and in the weaving of this mood the utmost subtlety and verisimilitude are required. In every detail except the chosen marvel, the story should be accurately true to nature." -- H.P. Lovecraft (from "Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos" (1972) by Lin Carter, emphasis in the original)

"When life is so harsh that a man loses all hope in himself, then he raises his eyes to a shining rock, worshipping it, just to find hope again, rather than looking to his own acts for hope and salvation. Yes, atheism IS a redemptive belief. It is theism that denies man's own redemptive nature." -- Isaac Asimov

"I'm just offering a kindly helping hand to those in need of illumination... <heroic and noble pose> Or just venting spleen (...) Take your pick for motivation. I'm a cynic, so I'd probably pick the second, but the first could be true. It's possible. I've been known to be nice. Okay, there are rumors. Okay, I spread all those rumors. Okay, I paid people $50 to spread the rumor that they'd heard I was nice once." -- Mark Hughes in rec.games.frp.cyber, 1994

"I began to sense faintly that secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy... censorship. When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, 'This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,' the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything -- you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him." -- Robert A. Heinlein, "If This Goes On --", ch.6

"Microsoft Windows is slowly but surely becoming an armed terrorspace. It's like an airport. You go into an airport nowadays, it's really kind of amazing that the people who run them still expect you to spend money in there. They still pretend to you that you are this pampered jet-set consumer, instead of a captive under armed guard, which is what you are." -- Bruce Sterling

"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back." -- Robert A. Heinlein

"Curiously absent from homeschoolers as a group is something many presumed to be a part of every childhood -- youthful angst and alienation. The burning desire to isolate and separate themselves from their parents just doesn't seem to be there, researchers say." -- Robin Wallace, Fox News, 5-Apr-2002

"Computers are not like oil or steel or cotton. Computers have loyalty. A computer is owned by whoever wrote the software making it run. You can only trust a computer as far as you can trust the person (or people) who wrote the software that runs on it.

This is one of the reasons why allowing a single, for profit corporation to own a monopoly on proprietary software is orders of magnitude worse than allowing a single, for profit corporation to own a monopoly on something like oil or steel.

You purchased the hardware, you pay for the electricity to run it, you provide the real estate where it sits, you pay for the air conditioning to keep it cool, and you pay the parts and labor when it breaks. But as soon as it starts running someone elses software, it will start doing what that other person want it to do. There's no reason for them to respect your wishes once they own your computer.

So ask yourself: Who wrote this software? What was their motivation for writing it? Was it about money? And where is that money coming from? What is their cause? And do you want to contribute to their cause?

Then choose your friends carefully." -- "sholton" on Slashdot

"I once heard computer science described as a question of choosing the correct wrench to pound in the right screw." -- Jonathan E. Guyer

"Our country was colonized by the religious, political, economic, and criminal rejects of every country in the world. We have been carefully breeding insane, obsessive, fanatic lunatics with each other for over 400 years, resulting in the glorious strain of humanity known as "Americans". You have to expect some... peculiarities." -- Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes (kamikaze#kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu) in the Scary Devil Monastery "And the islamic extremists think they're going to fight that." -- me

"Both ogliarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of arms." --Aristotle

"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty." -- Thomas Jefferson

"You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence." -- Charles A. Beard (1874 - 1948), U.S. historian

"We have awakened a sleeping giant and instilled in it a terrible resolve." -- Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, WWII.

"An especially frequent argument argument, however, is the result of Margret NOT STICKING TO THE DAMN ARGUMENT, FOR CHRIST'S SAKE. Margret jack-knifes from argument to argument, jigs direction randomly and erratically like a shoal of Argument Fish being followed by a Truth Shark." -- Mil Millington's 'Things my girlfriend and I have argued about'

"The Society for the Preservation of Tithesis commends your ebriated and scrutable use of delible and defatigable, which are gainly, sipid and couth. We are gruntled and consolate that you have the ertia and eptitude to choose such putably pensible tithesis, which we parage." -- Evan Kirshenbaum

"Although UNIX is more reliable, NT may become more reliable with time." -- US Navy Fleet Introduction deputy director Ron Redman explaining why the Navy uses NT.

Re: September 11, 2001 "My second day as chairman, a plane I lease, flying with engines I built, crashed into a building that I insure, and it was covered with a network I own." -- Jeff Immelt, new head of General Electric, which has donated more than $12 million to the families of rescue workers, along with generators and CT scanners for the rescue operation

"Once consumers can no longer get free music, they will have to buy the music in the formats we choose to put out." -- Steve Heckler, Sony Music Entertainment, Inc. Spoken like a true monopolist.

"If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons." -- James Thurber

"Steve Balmer, CEO of Microsoft*, recently referred to LINUX as a cancer. Unsurprisingly, that's incorrect; LINUX was released on August 25th, 1991 and is therefore a virgo.

*a legacy software provider based in Redmond, Washington." -- Kevin Lyda

"Apparently several foreign governments have started projects to develop stealth attack ships based on the design of a Japanese fishing trawler." -- unk

"Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he'll get nailed by a U.S. nuclear submarine." -- Glenn Brensinger

"Failure is not an option - it comes bundled with your software." -- unk, but obviously a Microsoft user...

"...the poor cannot get ahead through hard work and initiative. I agree. ... I also appeal to government. It should do the one thing in its power to remedy the situation: Get out of the way." -- Wendy McElroy

"Information is the currency of democracy. It's denial must always be suspect." -- Ralph Nader

"The Linux machine needs rebooting less often than Windows needs reinstalling." -- Ellen Spertus

"Microsoft made a mistake with IBM. Microsoft forgot one of Machiavelli's cardinal rules: 'Never leave an enemy wounded, either annihilate them or embrace them'. Microsoft did neither and a kinder, gentler IBM emerged. With IBM firmly in the Linux camp, suddenly Microsoft sees Microsoft as mortal." -- Tom Adelstein

"Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers." -- Mignon McLaughlin

"Programming is an art form that fights back." -- Saige

"Honk if you voted for Gore. (It's the big button in the middle of your steering wheel.)" -- bumpersticker in Florida

"Don't blame me, I voted for Gore and Buchanan" -- bumpersticker in Florida

"History will show that President Clinton abused his authority in a variety of ways and that his disrespect for the rule of law was unprecedented," -- Todd Gaziano, Center for Legal and Judicial Studies

"Government is not reason. Government is not eloquence. It is force. And, like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." -- George Washington

What "Liberal" is all about:
"LYNNE CHENEY has an openly gay daughter. So when the Vice President's wife criticized Grammy-winner Eminem's rap lyrics for promoting violence against homosexuals, she was obviously speaking from the heart. But apparently some in the celebrity-set would rather side with a homophobe than with (gasp!) a Republican.

Displaying her impressive capacity for logic and linear thinking, pop-performer Madonna shot back at Mrs. Cheney, 'Since when is offensive language a reason for being unpopular? I find the language of George W. much more offensive.'

Funny. The Hollywood left and music industry have blasted critics of the gay community for as long as we can remember. But when one of their best money- makers espouses hatred for homosexuals, they praise free speech and give him a standing ovation at the Grammys." -- Bernadette Malone Connolly

"A Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer is to computing what a McDonalds Certified Food Specialist is to fine cuisine." -- "defile" on Slashdot

"I've come to the realization that there are so many more Java jobs than Tcl jobs because it takes 10 Java programmers to do what I can do in Tcl." -- Jeffrey Hobbs

"Presenting anecdotal evidence as proof is saying, 'I played Russian roulette and lived, so it must be safe.'" -- "Sodium Attack" on Slashdot

"Comparing information and knowledge is like asking whether the fatness of a pig is more or less green than the designated hitter rule." -- David Guaspari

"If you had to choose between protecting children and protecting Hollywood, you would think you would make an exception (to the law) to protect children. But, perversely, our legal system has said children are going to be left to the winds of the Internet and parents have to take care of that themselves, but we're going to march in and back up the power of Hollywood with the courts as quickly as we can to make sure that copyright interests aren't invaded." -- Lawrence Lessig

"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats." -- Howard Aiken

"A computer without COBOL and Fortran is like a piece of chocolate cake without ketchup and mustard." -- Slashdot

"If you must use the wrong language for the job, I'd rather see you use C than C++. It's true that C gives you enough rope to hang yourself. But so does C++, and it also comes with a premade gallows and a book on knot tying." -- Kuro5hin

"So I envision Hillary sitting next to Jean Carnahan (who is taking her dead husband's Senate seat)... and Hillary thinking 'gee...if I'd have known it could be that easy, I'd have bumped off Bill long ago.'" -- Grace F. Rohrer

"Television: a medium. So called because it is neither rare nor well done." -- Ernie Kovacs.

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you." -- Nietzsche

"It's just astonishing how much we're wallowing in this orgy of cynicism. How we continue to plant a garden of thorns and snares that no talented person wants to get caught in. We are not attracting the most culturally talented or inspired people to run for office. The creatures who come forward are getting darker and darker instead." -- Anna Deavere Smith

"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." -- Samuel Adams, Boston, 1776.

"And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the right of resistance? Let them take arms...The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure. ... No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson

"Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone under independence...From the hour the Pilgrims landed to the present day, events, occurrences, and tendencies prove that to ensure peace, security, and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable...The very atmosphere of firearms everywhere re- strains evil interference--they deserve a place of honor with all that's good." "A free people ought...to be armed." "There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet the enemy." "To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace." -- George Washington

"...the Federal Judiciary...an irresponsible body, working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing it's noiseless step like a thief over the field of jurisdiction until all shall be usurped from the States; and the government of all be consolidated into one. When all government...in little as in great things...shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power; it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated." -- Thomas Jefferson, 1821

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." --Benjamin Franklin, 1759

"Here I am, fifty-eight, and I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up." -- Peter Drucker

"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle--be Thou near them! With them--in spirit--we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to burn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for refuge of the grave and denied it--for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him who is the Source of Love. Amen.--Mark Twain; "The War Prayer," from ON THE DAMNED HUMAN RACE (1916)

"Rumors have it that Estes is cash-poor in the wake of the Star Wars Episode One disaster. Could be they don't have the resources to buy (the engine-making machines), no matter how much they want them." -- "James Steven York" (j-steven-york@sff.net) "Hmm. This could be the best time to attack them - now that their soft underbelly has been exposed, we should attack in unison, capitalizing on their weaknesses, ripping out their bowels and leaving their intestines flopping in the wind. Then we should rip out their heart while it still beats and show it to them before they draw their last breath." -- Art Fuldodger

"But do (Open Source) licenses really ensure survival in an ever more litigious age? We have no idea. And yet free software is thriving. How is that? One answer is that it's not the legal standing of licenses that makes people respect them -- it's the consensus that the rules the licenses codify are essentially fair. That's the lesson that the entertainment industry needs to have drummed into its collective behind." -- Andrew Leonard, Salon, Sep 22, 2000

"Who would have imagined that the world would tolerate an environment with the dismal quality of Windows?" -- Larry Rosler

"You can't use the DCMA to rampage like a rabid pit bull on crystal meth and prohibit downloadable music or impede Penguinistas from watching DVDs on their platform and then disavow any responsibility for inappropriate marketing to young children. There's a bilateral obligation: the state protects your copyright while you market your products appropriately to the customers sought." -- Xavier Basora

"Marketing is about believable lies." -- "Tom" from Microsoft

"The day microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is the day they start making vacuum cleaners." -- "rot9: e4vyha@fqrcnejvyran.xap"

"A racetrack is a place where windows clean people." -- Danny Thomas

"In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one (...) citizen (...) to give to another." -- Voltaire, "Money" (1764).

The next time you encounter a "dumb cop" consider this: "The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York upheld a lower court's decision that the city did not discriminate against Robert Jordan whose bid to become a police officer was rejected after he scored too high on an intelligence test. (...) Jordan, a 49-year-old college graduate, took the exam in 1996 and scored 33 points, the equivalent of an IQ of 125. But New London police interviewed only candidates who scored 20 to 27, on the theory that those who scored too high could get bored with police work and leave soon after undergoing costly training. The average score nationally for police officers is 21 to 22, the equivalent of an IQ of 104, or just a little above average." -- Fox News, 8-Sep-00 So cops really ARE dumb...

"Yesterday upon the stair I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today -- I think he's from the CIA." -- unk

"A system based on charging people for copies they can easily make for themselves for free is not a stable situation. It just doesn't make any sense. More restrictive laws can't substitute for the consent of the governed.... The only way to deal with industries that refuse to change, and bet their existence on sustaining an obsolete status quo, is to hasten their destruction. Call it a mercy killing." -- Rob Landley

"In The Federalist, James Madison called the rage for equality 'a wicked project.' People differ and rewards differ---that's the essence of both liberty and justice. No nation that rewards effort, talent, inventiveness and luck can even pretend to cherish equal outcomes. In an inventive and dynamic society, equal (even relatively equal) incomes can be achieved only by abandoning liberty for tyranny." -- Michael Novak

"Linux's philosophy is 'laugh in the face of danger.' Oops. That's not it. 'Do it yourself.'" -- Linus Torvalds

"If there had been any formidable body of cannibals in the country, Harry Truman would have promised to provide them with free missionaries fattened at the taxpayer's expense." -- H. L. Mencken

"President Clinton boasts about 186,000 people denied firearms under the Brady Law rules. The Brady Law has been in force for three years. In that time, they have prosecuted seven people and put three of them in prison. You know, the President has entertained more felons than that at fundraising coffees in the White House, for Pete's sake." -- Charlton Heston, FOX News Sunday, 18 May 1997

"I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is called a 'disgrace'. That two are called a 'law firm'. And that three or more become a 'Congress'." -- John Adams.

"It is interesting to note here that the Europeans always consider themselves vastly superior to any other race they encounter, since they can lie, cheat, steal, and litigate (marks of a civilised culture they say) - whereas all the Aboriginals can do is happily survive being left in the middle of a vast red-hot desert, equipped with a stick." -- Douglas Adams

"I may seem more arrogant, but I think that's just because you didn't realize how arrogant I was before. :^)" -- Jeffrey Hobbs, jeffrey.hobbs@ajubasolutions.com

Want to know why cops are out of control? "Corruption is not the #1 priority of the Police Commissioner. His job is to enforce the law and fight crime." -- P.B.A. President E. J. Kiernan

"You're only given a little madness - you mustn't lose it." -- Robin Williams

"Why is it that we teach evolution in schools, but we can't teach about creation? Aren't they both technically theories? In a sense, evolution is a theory; the idea that the earth revolves around the sun is also, in some sense, a theory. The evidence in support of evolution from a scientific standpoint, is very compelling. The scientific evidence for creation as it is literally described in the Bible is virtually non-existent. One could argue, I suppose, that the Flat Earth Society should have an opportunity to provide its side of the story in a geography class, when the evidence that the earth is spherical is discussed, but I don't think that would be sound educational practice. -- Douglas Linder, Att'y, University of Missouri, Kansas City

"I worry about my child and the Internet all the time, even though she's too young to have logged on yet. Here's what I worry about. I worry that 10 or 15 years from now, she will come to me and say 'Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away from the Internet?' " -- Mike Godwin

"The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference." -- Dr. Richard Dawkins

"They express a preference for 'natural' methods of population limitation, and a natural method is exactly what they are going to get. It is called starvation." -- Dr. Richard Dawkins

"Today the theory of evolution is about as much open to doubt as the theory that the earth goes round the sun." -- Dr. Richard Dawkins

"...when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong." -- Dr. Richard Dawkins

"Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence." -- Dr. Richard Dawkins

"Molecular evidence suggests that our common ancestor with chimpanzees lived, in Africa, between five and seven million years ago, say half a million generations ago. This is not long by evolutionary standards. ... in your left hand you hold the right hand of your mother. In turn she holds the hand of her mother, your grandmother. Your grandmother holds her mother's hand, and so on. ... How far do we have to go until we reach our common ancestor with the chimpanzees? It is a surprisingly short way. Allowing one yard per person, we arrive at the ancestor we share with chimpanzees in under 300 miles." -- Dr. Richard Dawkins

"Sun believes the only place for 63,000 bugs is a rain forest." -- Sun Microsystems, on the projected number of bugs in W2K

"As a programmer, I enjoy myself much more when I'm programming in Linux. There is no helpless sense of fatality as there is in Windows; in Linux, when a library or component breaks or does not work as expected, I can simply go in there and fix it. In Windows-land, I must live by the Band-Aid and the workaround." -- Monty Manley

"I could cope with C++ if I was the only person on the earth allowed to write in it, if you see what I mean." -- Michael Hudson

"I asked if the FSF ever planned on porting gcc to MS-DOS, and (RMS) said it couldn't be done because gcc was too big and MS-DOS was a 16-bit operating system. Challenge in hand, I began." -- DJ Delorie, 1989 - the start of the DJGPP project (from http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/history.html)

"Doing the impossible may take a while. The merely difficult we do right away." -- unk

"So even among the Microsoft faithful, you won't find loyalty to a specific product. Usually, it is based on a hope that the next upgrade will finally live up to the promise of perfection." -- Matt Michie

"Perl: The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption." -- precize@hotmail.com

"Last week I ate a 5th Avenue bar on 5th Avenue while little kids eating Snickers bars snickered at me. It was probably that whole "irony" thing." -- anon

"I was seriously injured in a Chinese cooking accident the other day. The doctors told me that I might never be able to wok again." -- anon (thankfully)

"You know you're in some DEEP trouble when you're trapped in a mine shaft with MacGuyver and he pulls out a cell phone to call 911." -- anon

"I won my town's Chili cookoff last weekend. My secret ingredient? Pepper Spray Mace." -- anon

"You think WD40 is powerful? I tried some of the new WD50 yesterday. I got some on my fingers and they slipped right off my hand." -- anon

"I'm trying to breed a prognosticating dairy cow so I, too, can scry over spilt milk." -- Phil Foglio

"Similarly, I tell the cultural relativists that it is the way of my people (the Normans) to conquer and subject others, steal their lands, and suppress their culture. My people have been doing this for at least a thousand years. No-one has the right to tell us that it is any less valid that any other traditional way of life." -- Brett Evill

"Linux has been doing the impossible for a while, and carving out a bigger and bigger slice of the pie for itself based on its growing utility and popularity. When the day comes that the playing field is level, Linux will be there waiting, stronger than ever." -- Joe Barr

"There's a short list of people whose opinions of me I give a rat's ass about, and guess what? You're not on it!" -- Pfhreakaz0id

"Torture data long enough, and it will confess to anything." -- Anonymous

"I think the thought was that people fresh from surgery, like infant boys and lobsters, can feel no pain. This is apparently based on the theory that if it is helpless, it is OK to strap it down and torture it because, see? It isn't hitting you back." -- Bruce Tognazzini

Never, ever underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups. -- unk.

Populus vult decipi. (The people like to be deceived.) -- unk

"Bill Gates is just a monocle and a Persian Cat away from being one of the bad guys in a James Bond movie." -- Dennis Miller

"This is the best example of the difference between communism and capitalism: Communism is based on wealth redistribution. Where there is nothing to redistribute, communism fails instantly. Where is something, communism lasts until the wealth is consumed and wasted. Capitalism is based on wealth creation." -- Martin Ripa (artin#iol.cz)

"Open source software, by its nature, accelerates the rate of innovation, so when you combine Red Hat and Cygnus -- two of the leaders in open source software -- the pace naturally increases even more. The point is to out-innovate your competition. That's how you win." -- Mike Tiemann, CTO Red Hat.

"He who will not reason, is a bigot; he who cannot, is a fool; and he who dares not, is a slave." -- Byron

"I love the way Microsoft follows standards. In much the same manner that fish follow migrating caribou." -- Paul Tomblin (ptomblin#piper.xcski.com) in the Scary Devil Monastery

"I love deadlines - I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by..." -- Scott Adams

"There's something fundamentally sad about not being able to mention the "S" word in the potential presence of children, but being permitted to casually discuss violence at a level which I find shocking (if really cool!:-). -- Michael T. Richter (mtr#igs.net)

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing it, doesn't go away." -- Philip K. Dick

"The Welfarers don't think anybody ought to have to work to eat. They think everybody ought to be fed whether they do anything to earn it or not, and if you try to make people earn their food, you're guilty of economic coercion. And if you're in business for yourself and want them to work for you, you're an exploiter and ought to be eliminated as a class." -- H. Beam Piper, "Oomphel in the Sky"

"Furthermore, they (MCSE's) seemed genuinely puzzled that I would expect decent service and documentation without having paid mucho extra money for it. One or two even suggested that the more problems the better, as it meant more billable hours for them. I've concluded that being an NT sysadmin requires a level of cynicism so breathtaking that relatively few can achieve it. 'Hey dude -- bugs are money!' If you can't muster up this much gleeful nihilism first thing every Monday morning, I suppose you could come to the same conclusion by a combination of ignorance, lack of aesthetic sense, and terminal herdthink." -- Joyce Park, "Small Business Server Upgrade"

"Ok, so that's a straw man. But it's a nice straw man wearing a silly looking hat, so I'm going to mock it anyway." -- Shawn Isenhart (shawn.isenhart#artesyn.com) on RPG.net

"It's because of this that I do firmly believe that the GM is God, once play starts. I bow to no dice roll, no rule call and almost no player appeal. If the GM says you get hit by a speedboat and die, you do. Even if you rolled a 20. Even if you have the highest skill possible in dodge. Even in the middle ages. Even on dry land. And if the player argues, his next character gets hit by the second speedboat in the convoy. And yes, the GM has infinitely many speedboats at his command." -- Steve Darlington (sdarling#futureweb.com.au) on RPG.net

"People who are willing to rely on the government to keep them safe are pretty much standing on Darwin's mat, pounding on the door, screaming, 'Take me, take me!'" -- Cael (cjacobs#fallschurch.esys.quux) in the Scary Devil Monastery

"Thank God that they blamed the trenchcoat manufacturers instead of role playing games. Seriously though, what the hell is up with this country? What ever happened to the concept of personal responsibility? If I drink a case of vodka and go ram a school bus full of nuns and puppies, why am I allowed to sue the vodka company? Why is it that America is so gung ho about this whole victim mentality, in which it's the fault of the media, or role playing, or rock music, or your parents who beat you, or the liberals, or God? Heaven forbid that we all take responsibility for our own &*%$ing actions! 'Well officer, I know that I was the one who shot him 37 times from two feet away, but I was suffering pre-traumatic stress disorder from the extra box of Skittles I ate this morning, and it combined in my head with the Marilyn Manson music and that Purgatory game, and after cooking in my mind for 45 minutes at 350 degrees, out popped a psychopath.'" -- Jon Wilkie, author of Purgatory

"When fascism comes to this country, it won't be wearing jackboots; It'll be wearing sneakers with lights in them, and it'll have a smiley face and a Michael Jordan t-shirt." -- George Carlin

"I can see your inner child pretty much runs the place." -- Drew Carey

"The small advantage of not having California being part of my country would be overweighed by having California as a heavily- armed rabid weasel on our borders." -- David Parsons

"I have never seen the inside of the building at Microsoft where the top executives hang out, but I have this fantasy that in the hallways, at regular intervals, big red alarm boxes are bolted to the wall. Each contains a large red button protected by a windowpane. A metal hammer dangles on a chain next to it. Above is a big sign reading: IN THE EVENT OF A CRASH IN MARKET SHARE, BREAK GLASS." -- Neal Stephenson

"Mother Nature always corrects your [rocket] math dynamically... by filling in all the unknown variables you left out of your equations after you press the ignition button..." -- Rich Row

"Experience is a good teacher, but her fees are high." -- unk

"The term "daemons" is a Judeo-Christian pejorative. Such processes will now be known as "spiritual guides". -- anon

"I am afraid that as death becomes less certain, taxes will get worse." -- Mary Smith (mary#att.com) in rec.arts.sf.written

"Free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master." -- Sid Meier, Alpha Centuri.

"The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made." -- Jean Giraudoux