A Function for Clockwise Search Polygons with Match

[osp-assignment.git] / b.txt

Ask not for whom the <CONTROL-G>\a tolls.

The greatest productive force is human selfishness.
                -- Robert Heinlein

        "Any news from the President on a successor?" he asked hopefully.
        "None," Anita replied.  "She's having great difficulty finding someone
qualified who is willing to accept the post."
        "Then I stay," said Dr. Fresh.  "I'm not good for much, but I
can at least make a decision."
        "Somewhere," he grumphed, "there must be a naive, opportunistic
young welp with a masochistic streak who would like to run the most
up-and-down bureaucracy in the history of mankind."
                -- R. L. Forward, "Flight of the Dragonfly"

divorce, n:
        A change of wife.

Go 'way!  You're bothering me!

...cyberpunk wants to see the mind as mechanistic & duplicable,
challenging basic assumptions about the nature of individuality & self.
That seems all the better reason to assume that cyberpunk art & music is
essentially mindless garbagio. Willy certainly addressed this idea in
"Count Zero," with Katatonenkunst, the automatic box-maker and the girl's
observation that the real art was the building of the machine itself,
rather than its output.
                -- Eliot Handelman

"A fractal is by definition a set for which the Hausdorff Besicovitch
dimension strictly exceeds the topological dimension."
                -- Mandelbrot, "The Fractal Geometry of Nature"

Thus spake the master programmer:
        "Time for you to leave."
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"

brokee, n:
        Someone who buys stocks on the advice of a broker.

Go ahead, capitalize the T on technology, deify it if it will make you feel
less responsible -- but it puts you in with the neutered, brother, in with
the eunuchs keeping the harem of our stolen Earth for the numb and joyless
hardons of human sultans, human elite with no right at all to be where they
are --"
                -- Thomas Pynchon, _Gravity's Rainbow_

Logic doesn't apply to the real world.
                -- Marvin Minsky

How many Zen Buddhist does it take to change a light bulb?

Two.  One to change it and one not to change it.

< doogie> asuffield: how do you think dpkg was originally written?  :|
< asuffield> by letting iwj get dangerously near a computer
                -- in #debian-devel

It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a
warning to others.

A blind rabbit was hopping through the woods, tripping over logs and crashing
into trees.  At the same time, a blind snake was slithering through the same
forest, with identical results.  They chanced to collide head-on in a clearing.
        "Please excuse me, sir, I'm blind and I bumped into you accidentally,"
apologized the rabbit.
        "That's quite all right," replied the snake, "I have the same
problem!"
        "All my life I've been wondering what I am," said the rabbit, "Do
you think you could help me find out?"
        "I'll try," said the snake.  He gently coiled himself around the
rabbit. "Well, you're covered with soft fur, you have a little fluffy tail
and long ears.  You're... hmmm... you're probably a bunny rabbit!"
        "Great!" said the rabbit.  "Thanks, I really owe you one!"
        "Well," replied the snake, "I don't know what I am, either.  Do you
suppose you could try and tell me?"
        The rabbit ran his paws all over the snake.  "Well, you're low, cold
and slimey..."  And, as he ran one paw underneath the snake, "and you have
no balls.  You must be an attorney!"

Normally our rules are rigid; we tend to discretion, if for no other reason
than self-protection.  We never recommend any of our graduates, although we
cheerfully provide information as to those who have failed their courses.
                -- Jack Vance, "Freitzke's Turn"

Wishing without work is like fishing without bait.
                -- Frank Tyger

HELLO KITTY gang terrorizes town, family STICKERED to death!

Fortune Documents the Great Legal Decisions:

We think that we may take judicial notice of the fact that the term "bitch"
may imply some feeling of endearment when applied to a female of the canine
species but that it is seldom, if ever, so used when applied to a female
of the human race. Coming as it did, reasonably close on the heels of two
revolver shots directed at the person of whom it was probably used, we think
it carries every reasonable implication of ill-will toward that person.
                -- Smith v. Moran, 193 N.E. 2d 466.

Your mode of life will be changed for the better because of good news soon.

Individuality

My words are easy to understand
And my actions are easy to perform
Yet no other can understand or perform them.
My words have meaning; my actions have reason;
Yet these cannot be known and I cannot be known.
We are each unique, and therefore valuable;
Though the sage wears coarse clothes, his heart is jade.
                -- Lao Tse, "Tao Te Ching"

"Don't talk to me about disclaimers!  I invented disclaimers!"
                -- The Censored Hacker

Closed weekends and holidays.

If you make any money, the government shoves you in the creek once a year
with it in your pockets, and all that don't get wet you can keep.
                -- The Best of Will Rogers

        "Has anyone had problems with the computer accounts?"
        "Yes, I don't have one."
        "Okay, you can send mail to one of the tutors ..."
                -- E. D'Azevedo, Computer Science 372

"If anything can go wrong, it will."
                -- Edsel Murphy

I program, therefore I am.

He who is content with his lot probably has a lot.

Traveling through hyperspace isn't like dusting crops, boy.
                -- Han Solo

I know what "custody" [of the children] means.  "Get even."  That's all
custody means.  Get even with your old lady.
                -- Lenny Bruce

A man was talking to his best friend about his married life.  "You know," he
says, "I really trust my wife, and I think she has always been faithful to
me, but there's *always* that doubt.  There's *always* that little doubt."
        "Yeah, I know what you mean," his friend replies.
        "Well, buddy, I've got to leave on a business trip this weekend,
and I wonder... well... would you watch my house while I'm gone?  I trust
her, it's just that there's *always* that doubt."
        The friend agreed to help out and two weeks later gave his report.
        "I've got some bad news for you," says the friend.  "The evening
after you left I saw a strange car pull up in front of your house.  A man
got out of the car and went in the house and had dinner with your wife.
After dinner they went upstairs and I saw your wife kissing him.  Then, he
took off his shirt and she took off her blouse.  And then the light went
out."
        "*Then* what happened?" said the husband, his eyes opening wide.
        "Well, I don't know," replied the friend, "it was too dark to see."
        "Damn!" roared the husband.  "You see what I mean?  There's *always*
that doubt!"

I love being married.  It's so great to find that one special person
you want to annoy for the rest of your life.
                -- Rita Rudner

The gentlemen looked one another over with microscopic carelessness.

The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright --
And this was very odd, because it was
The middle of the night.
                -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"

Random, n.:
        As in number, predictable.  As in memory access, unpredictable.

All right, you degenerates!  I want this place evacuated in 20 seconds!

His life was formal; his actions seemed ruled with a ruler.

The basic menu item, in fact the ONLY menu item, would be a food unit called
the "patty," consisting of -- this would be guaranteed in writing -- "100
percent animal matter of some kind." All patties would be heated up and then
cooled back down in electronic devices immediately before serving.  The
Breakfast Patty would be a patty on a bun with lettuce, tomato, onion, egg,
Ba-Ko-Bits, Cheez Whiz, a Special Sauce made by pouring ketchup out of a
bottle and a little slip of paper stating: "Inspected by Number 12."  The
Lunch or Dinner Patty would be any Breakfast Patties that didn't get sold in
the morning. The Seafood Lover's Patty would be any patties that were
starting to emit a serious aroma.  Patties that were too rank even to be
Seafood Lover's Patties would be compressed into wads and sold as "Nuggets."
                -- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"

< DanielS> still, throne of blood sounds like a movie about overfiend
           and virgins or some crap
                -- in #debian-devel

For every vision there is an equal and opposite revision.

God is Dead.
                -- Nietzsche
Nietzsche is Dead.
                -- God
Nietzsche is God.
                -- Dead

This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.
                -- Winston Churchill

"We can't schedule an orgy, it might be construed as fighting"
                -- Stanley Sutton

You know your apartment is small...
        when you can't know its position and velocity at the same time.
        you put your key in the lock and it breaks the window.
        you have to go outside to change your mind.
        you can vacuum the entire place using a single electrical outlet.

A biologist, a statistician, a mathematician and a computer scientist are on
a photo-safari in Africa.  As they're driving along the savannah in their
jeep, they stop and scout the horizon with their binoculars.

The biologist: "Look!  A herd of zebras!  And there's a white zebra!
        Fantastic!  We'll be famous!"
The statistician: "Hey, calm down, it's not significant.  We only know
        there's one white zebra."
The mathematician: "Actually, we only know there exists a zebra, which is
        white on one side."
The computer scientist : "Oh, no!  A special case!"

Well, he didn't know what to do, so he decided to look at the government,
to see what they did, and scale it down and run his life that way.
                -- Laurie Anderson

        "In this replacement Earth we're building they've given me Africa
to do and of course I'm doing it with all fjords again because I happen to
like them, and I'm old-fashioned enough to think that they give a lovely
baroque feel to a continent.  And they tell me it's not equatorial enough.
Equatorial!"  He gave a hollow laugh.  "What does it matter?  Science has
achieved some wonderful things, of course, but I'd far rather be happy than
right any day."
        "And are you?"
        "No.  That's where it all falls down, of course."
        "Pity," said Arthur with sympathy.  "It sounded like quite a good
life-style otherwise."
                -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

There can be no twisted thought without a twisted molecule.
                -- R. W. Gerard

Kirk to Enterprise -- beam down yeoman Rand and a six-pack.

Most burning issues generate far more heat than light.

It is like saying that for the cause of peace, God and the Devil will
have a high-level meeting.
                -- Rev. Carl McIntire, on Nixon's China trip

program, n.:
        A magic spell cast over a computer allowing it to turn one's input
        into error messages.  tr.v. To engage in a pastime similar to banging
        one's head against a wall, but with fewer opportunities for reward.

Q:      Why do people who live near Niagara Falls have flat foreheads?
A:      Because every morning they wake up thinking "What *is* that noise?
        Oh, right, *of course*!

Someday, Weederman, we'll look back on all this and laugh... It will
probably be one of those deep, eerie ones that slowly builds to a
blood-curdling maniacal scream... but still it will be a laugh.
                -- Mister Boffo

Q:      What's tan and black and looks great on a lawyer?
A:      A doberman.

Language is a virus from another planet.
                -- William Burroughs

"Pardon me for breathing, which I never do anyway so I don't know why I bother
 to say it, oh God, I'm so depressed.  Here's another of those self-satisfied
 doors.  Life!  Don't talk to me about life."
                -- Marvin the Paranoid Android

Do not try this at home.

Pray:  To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single
petitioner confessedly unworthy.
                -- Ambrose Bierce

Now, if the leaders of the world -- people who are leaders by virtue of
political, military or financial power, and not necessarily wisdom or
consideration for mankind -- if these leaders manage not to pull us
over the brink into planetary suicide, despite their occasional pompous
suggestions that they may feel obliged to do so, we may survive beyond
1988.
                -- George Rostky, EE Times, June 20, 1988 p. 45

Dear Freshman,
        You don't know who I am and frankly shouldn't care, but
unknown to you we have something in common.  We are both rather
prone to mistakes.  I was elected Student Government President by
mistake, and you came to school here by mistake.

You see, I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty
attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose.  A fool
takes in all the lumber of every sort he comes across, so that the knowledge
which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with
a lot of other things, so that he has difficulty in laying his hands upon it.
Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his
brain-attic.  He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing
his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect
order.  It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and
can distend to any extent.  Depend upon it there comes a time when for every
addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before.  It is of
the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out
the useful ones.
                -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Study in Scarlet"

If you have nothing to do, don't do it here.

I did cancel one performance in Holland where they thought my music was so easy
that they didn't rehearse at all.  And so the first time when I found that out,
I rehearsed the orchestra myself in front of the audience of 3,000 people and
the next day I rehearsed through the second movement -- this was the piece
_Cheap Imitation_ -- and they then were ashamed.  The Dutch people were ashamed
and they invited me to come to the Holland festival and they promised to
rehearse.  And when I got to Amsterdam they had changed the orchestra, and
again, they hadn't rehearsed.  So they were no more prepared the second time
than they had been the first.  I gave them a lecture and told them to cancel
the performance; they then said over the radio that i had insisted on their
cancelling the performance because they were "insufficiently Zen."
Can you believe it?
                -- composer John Cage, "Electronic Musician" magazine, March 88, pg. 89

Why, every one as they like; as the good woman said when she kissed her cow.
                -- Rabelais

One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast
to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists,
a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also
just stupid.
                -- J. D. Watson, "The Double Helix"

You can always tell the Christmas season is here when you start getting
incredibly dense, tinfoil-and-ribbon- wrapped lumps in the mail. Fruitcakes
make ideal gifts because the Postal Service has been unable to find a way to
damage them.  They last forever, largely because nobody ever eats them.  In
fact, many smart people save the fruitcakes they receive and send them back
to the original givers the next year; some fruitcakes have been passed back
and forth for hundreds of years.

The easiest way to make a fruitcake is to buy a darkish cake, then pound
some old, hard fruit into it with a mallet.  Be sure to wear safety glasses.
                -- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"

Symptom:                Floor swaying.
Fault:                  Excessive air turbulence, perhaps due to air-hockey
                        game in progress.
Action Required:        Insert broom handle down back of jacket.

Symptom:                Everything has gone dim, strange taste of peanuts
                        and pretzels or cigarette butts in mouth.
Fault:                  You have fallen forward.
Action Required:        See above.

Symptom:                Opposite wall covered with acoustic tile and several
                        flourescent light strips.
Fault:                  You have fallen over backward.
Action Required:        If your glass is full and no one is standing on your
                        drinking arm, stay put.  If not, get someone to help
                        you get up, lash yourself to bar.
                -- Bar Troubleshooting