David McNett :: Favorite Quotes

Quotes I've enjoyed enough to save

Trying to build a RAID array out of IDE drives is like auto racing Yugos. Sure, you can do it, but it doesn't impress anyone and it's not very fun to watch.
- David McNett <nugget@slacker.com>

[The X Windowing System] is the second worst windowing system in the world, but all the others are tied for first.
- Paul Tomblin <ptomblin@xcski.com> [Ref]

The Miata is a roadster and as such it is not expected to have neck snapping acceleration. It is expected to handle - to tear around a corner so hard that it pulls your smile around on one side of your face - the Miata does this well.
- Richard Rhymes <richard.rhymes@msfc.nasa.gov> [Ref]

There is a style of design I call "wishful thinking engineering." It starts with something like "pigs can fly if you feed them enough beans" and develops utopian plans such as like having everyone commute to work riding on personal pigs, and along the way ignores minor details such as the consequent rain of the non-gaseous byproducts.
- Vernon Schryver <vjs@rhyolite.com> [Ref]

I think knowing what you're talking about on IRC violates the RFC
- Peter Gildea <peter@gildea.net>

... a language is just an dialect with an army and a navy.
- Paul Tomblin <ptomblin@xcski.com> [Ref]

The Windows Perl motto: It's just as well there's more than one way to do it because most of them don't work.
- Simon Cozens <simon@brecon.co.uk> [Ref]

Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Give him a fish on IRC and he'll expect you to clean and cook the fish too.
- Gordon Grieder <grub@grub.net>

I still have friends who persist in pointing out how fantastic GIMP is. GIMP is not fantastic. GIMP is "free"; "Free" is not (contrary to popular belief) the same as "good". Herpes, for instance, is generally free (unless you got it from a hooker or your ex-husband/wife, then you most likely paid for it one way or another). Herpes is generally not too useful for anything, people are usually not to happy about getting it and coincidentally, herpes flare-up is just about as erratic as GIMP's stability.
- moJoe <sl@ckz.org> [Ref]

Until you start making a point instead of stating a point, you're only ranting.
- Bruce Wilson (5-Sep-2001 in #distributed)

Nugget's Law: 95% of the time when a Linux user says "Linux" they really mean "Unix".
The other 5% of the time they're referring to an aspect that only applies to their particular distribution

Leto's Corollary: 95% of the time when a Unix user says "Linux", they really mean "RedHat".

I was merely stating that as a channel operator, I am able to operate my channel.
- Sean Kelly (drdink) (17-Jul-2002 in #slashdot)

<thumper^UNIX> what's collusion mean? <grub> I'm not your dictionary.com proxy

Makeup does not make ugly people beautiful, in general. It does make beautiful people look fake, though. Besides, who wants to kiss a painting of a girl, even if it's painted on a real girl?
- Peter Gildea <peter@gildea.net>

EVERY TIME i couldn't do something, as soon as i found out how, i always said, "Oh, that makes sense." That's what impressed me most about FreeBSD.
- ololiuhqui in #slashdot

You and I learned C when it was programmers, not compilers, which had to be intelligent.
- Terry Lambert [Ref]

Having a low Slashdot ID is like being proud of having boarded the Titanic first.
- Leto (Slashdot ID 113578) in #alg

Yeah, it was weird, getting a Mac was kind of like waking up one morning and being cured of Down's Syndrome.
- hoyhoy in #alg

Being a good sysadmin is all about being lazy in the proper way.
- Chris Hodson

It is well documented that using the phrase "it is well documented" in lieu of documentation is a solid indication that the statement documented has no foundation in reality.
- alchook on fool.com

In XML I hate how the markup is 10X the data. It's like a gilded envelope containing a post-it note.
- Karl Lehenbauer on XML

If you had to chose between giving a man a noble disposition or teaching him to think clearly, you do better to teach him to think clearly. Too many problems in this world are caused by men with noble dispositions and clouded minds. History provides us with numerous examples of people who were convinced that they were doing the right thing and committing terrible crimes because of it. Keep in mind that noone thinks of himself as a villain.
- Cristopher Paolini

Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use regular expressoons." Now they have two problems.
- Jamie Zawinski [Ref]

The English and food don't get along very well. One or the other is bound to suffer in every encounter.
- Chris Hodson (Nerf)