jack

Simont: Is there a set of players each of whom plays a single win-or-lose game against each other player, where every pair of players has a third player who beat both?
Jack: *thinks*
Jack: Yes.
Simont: Not that one.

Mark Rosewater

"At the end of one class, she asked for us to write a short story about a college student having breakfast and at the end of the next she asked us to write a short story about a serial killer having breakfast. When we turned the second paper in, she had the class discuss the differences between the two assignments."
-- Mark Rosewater

"But I was a smart alec, and submitted the same essay both times."
-- me

The original class went on (I think) to decide that it was easier because they were familiar with college students, but not with serial killers, so would need to do a lot of research for that. My philosophical point is that the chilling thing is, most of the time, a serial killer is just like everyone else.

Edsger Dijkstra

"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim."
-- Edsger Dijkstra

"The question of whether a human can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim."
-- me

I liked this quote because it gets truer the more you look at it. It doesn't necessarily say the question is uninteresting, but that it's likely irrelevant to whatever you wanted to do. I decided to generalise this and apply it with gay abandon to any meaning of any word I wanted to temporarily mock out of existence.

"Can I post binary files here?"
-- comp.basilisk faq

"My friend expressed surprise that you could get ants sent to you in the mail. I replied: 'What's really interesting is that these people will send a tube of live ants to anyone you tell them to.' Security requires a particular mindset."
-- Bruce Schneier

S: "It seems everyone's being hit by the baby stick."
Me: "The baby stick? Oh, is that what they call them nowadays?"

Me: "Thank you very much, I'm very glad I've found someone nice to share with, that's very convenient".
Sebastian: "Thank you for sharing."

" the article is quite good, and includes at least sketches of the various proofs that 0.999... = 1 ... the arguments ... are interesting, .. one gets to watch people who don't really understand why this should be true, but want to understand it ... It might give you a headache, though. It's like sausage being made."
--Isabel, God Plays Dice

"Headline: Gay Scientists Isolate Christian Gene!"
-- via robh

"Col Mustard is so heartbroken that he kills himself, in the billiard room, with the lead piping, which causes a certain amount of confusion further down the line."
--Andrew Rilstone

"If the planet’s seas really do rise, I’m going to the Netherlands. [The] attitude is 'what’s a few more feet on the dikes?' Not only have these people been keeping the North Sea out since the Middle Ages, but they also work at it 24/7. If you want to get something done, ask a busy person." -- Patrick Neilson Heydon

"I can understand why you were confused. If you're trying to combine Suction and Inverted Psycho Suction, that would be enough to confuse anyone. Actually, I think you got off lucky; I'd expect that mixing Suction and Inverted Psycho Suction in your brain would lead the two to react and create a fantastic explosion which would reduce your brain and your head to gamma radiation leaving nothing but the top end of your spinal cord sticking out of your shirt, attached to nothing.

Of course, if this happens, the opponents should immediately summon the Director."
-- rec.bridge

"I can easily check just by looking down that I am not a poached egg (I have arms and legs, but not a white or a yolk). But who my father is, and whether or not he created the universe, is much less obvious."
-- Jacob

"But I really can't complain, since my title's cotaken from Einstein anyway. Yes, cotaken, as in I took the complement of what Einstein said; there are no arrows getting reversed involved here."
--Isabel, God Plays Dice

Q: Are you scottish?
A: Yes.
Q: Where are you from?
A: Scotland.
-- From an ceilidh. (Actually, that didn't happen, but it's how I heard it in my head, ok?)

Lesbian Speed Dating Pastiche Video via Vyvyan via Feanalwa A: I'm sorry, I'm just not ready for a relationship right now.
Lesbian Speed Dating Pastiche Video via Vyvyan via Feanalwa Q: ... How about now?

GINI: Mmm, sex. It makes anything better.
FERRET: Not prison.

Q: You might not claim it was the best of all possible sonnets, but it was a spectacular local maximum.
A: Aww! That's not only a lovely compliment, it's a maths related lovely compliment.

"I probably should give the cow the benefit of the doubt."
-- bugshaw.

"My Census Bureau contact tells me that the authors of the data file have seen the wisdom of my point of view, in spite of my unconstructive and unhelpful feedback (I said 'Wow, that is an incredibly terrible idea')
-- Mark Dominus

"[Readers[1]] may not have heard about it, because it concerns (a) India, (b) Australia, and (c) cricket. For Americans who are not international news junkies, the quantity of news encountered about any of these three topics in a week will typically amount to zero."
-- Geoffrey K. Pullum

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mornington_Crescent_(game)
Mornington Crescent (game)
[box: All or part of this article may be confusing or unclear.]

DM: 'you are an evil dice...I like that'

GM: 'It's semi-evil! Evil-esque.'

Q: So we have four and a half elves?
A; Whats the exchange rate?
Q: How many of us would we need to swap to get a dragon?
DM: What would the rest of you do once you'd swapped yourselves?
Q: We could take turns playing it.
A: Or play bits of it. I'll be the left wing.
A: Flap! Flap!

[1] Interestingly, the original referred to American readers, but taken out of context, I thought it a lot funnier when the country in question wasn't emphasised.

return("You must express the magnitude of the dollar amount using modern, Arabic-derived numerals formatted according to base-10 (decimal) convention, most significant digit first.")
-- Andy Goth, thedailywtf.com

Officer to radio: There's a Darth-Vader-like figure on the loose. Probably Darth Vader. Last seen...
-- From a starwars rpg

The party found a luxurious room in the dungeon and went to ransack the place, ignoring the DM's description. There was supposed to be a giant bear in the place (acting like a rug or something) but no one noticed. A bit peeved, the DM had this bear attack the lot of us from out of nowhere, and by surprise.
 "Wait a minute! You never said there was a monster here!"
 "Sure I did. [reads] 'In the room there is a chair, bear, table...'"
Later the DM tried it again:
 "You see a chest, dragon, flagon..."
He didn't get any farther.
--From a non-starwars rpg

Me: OK, I know this bid went horribly wrong for you last hand, but Two No Trump.
LHO: Pass.
Part: Pass.
RHO: Double.
Me: ...wait, is this the hand we just played?
All: *sigh*
-- UBC

I don't know, but it's a full round spell, so it's probably bad. Let me rephrase, "The unarmed woman! Shoot the unarmed woman!"
-- Me, from a low-level roleplaying campaign.

DM: *rolls* Okay, the anitmatter grenade sails in a perfect arc into the creatures mouth and it swallows it. I'm wondering why you left the grenade unprimed.
Fighter:*grins* Those digestive juices? What'll be the first part of the grenade that fails?
DM: The casing, I gue...*comprehension* *facepalm* You are all okay, because you're shielded by the neutronium armor.
DM: Great game, guys.
DM: But now I have to revise my notes significantly.
--From a similar to starwars rpg

For all you know, it's the home of Lady Niceness von Puppies, local do-gooder.
-- From an rpg, DM on plot twists.

Rickrolled. Being rickrolled is when a hapless internet surfer clicks on a video link, but instead is brought to a music video of the 80's pop star Rick Astley. A video tutorial of how not to be rickrolled can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSsJ19sy3JI
-- wikipedia.org wiki.answers.org or rickrolled.org

I feel that this book started out well but lacked something of an ending. The writing styles change intermittedly and seem to lack something of a finesse, blatantly stating things that cannot be taken literally or figuratively well enough to purvey a superior understanding of the text.
-- Amazon reader review (of the bible).

Should array indices start at 0 or 1? My compromise of 0.5 was rejected without, I thought, proper consideration.
--S. Kelly-Bootle, via robhu

Fortunately for him, I had a commuting-suitable unicycle I could lend him.
--AJ

No *real* bunnies were harmed during the making of this idiolect entry.
-- rochvelleth

1. "We used to quip that "password" is the most common password. Now it's "password1." Who said users haven't learned anything about security?" -- Bruce Schneier.

In fact, there were many less funny but more optimistic trends to be drawn.

And indeed, often I want to use the simplest password the submission will let me. I have a weak password I use for throwaway accounts on websites where possible. Of course, this only works if the only thing risked is *my* access, if hacking the account wouldn't escalate someone else's privelege nor let them spam email to arbitrary addresses. Eg. if the site has no more functionality, or lets anyone sign up, or lets you do some things only after you've authenticaed in a slightly more rigorous fasion.

2. "If the PuTTY web site is down (Connection Timed Out), please don't bother mailing us to tell us about it. Most of us read our e-mail on the same machines that host the web site, so if those machines are down then we will notice before we read our e-mail." -- The PuTTY team

Which is completely true, of course. I just thought it was well-phrased.

3. // Version 0.1 "What happens when you try to develop a bug tracking system with a bug tracking system"
int main() {
printf("Bug 0\n");
printf("\n");
printf("printf("Reproduce: Run the program\n");
printf("What happened: Terminated immediately with errcode 0\n");
printf("What I expected: A bug tracking system\n");
printf("Assigned to: me\n");
printf("Suggested fix: Write a bug tracking system\n");
printf("Status: under development\n");
printf("\n");
return 0;
}

4. Two hale young men coming out of formal hall:
First: Do you remember Woof? The series of children's books about a guy who turns into a dog?
Second: No.
First: You're INSANE.
Second: But it sounds good!

5. "The male is generally silent but gives a low whistle during court. The female makes a gruff growling call."

6. Verne famously got ticked at Wells for making bleep up, pointing out that Wells had no Cavorite to hand, while he had used an entirely plausible cannon to launch three buckets of soup to the Moon. -- Making Light

7. TBQ: So Lestat and Nicolas run away to Paris together.
Other Person: Uh-huh.
TBQ: And get an apartment together.
OP: Uh-huh.
TBQ: And sleep together.
OP: Uh-huh.
TBQ: And talk about how they love each other.
OP: Uh-huh.
TBQ: And kiss each other before they go to bed at night - in the same bed, mind you.
OP: Uh-huh.
TBQ: And then in later books Lestat talks about how much he loved Louis. And then he tries to sleep with David. And in Tale of the Body Thief he repeatedly talks about how he loves men as much as he loves women.
OP: Uh-huh.
TBQ: So you see what I'm saying?
OP: Sure. But, he's not gay. He's French.
TBQ: [bangs forehead into desk] --BratQueen

8. We saw a pigeon with what looked like an olive branch, though it may have been privet, and the water is out of the house now, so we let the pairs of taller animals go. -- About recent flooding

9. int error() {
  return 0/0;
}

10 "I know some pretty unscrupulous art dealers, but I doubt even they deserve this." -- Five days a stranger

I occasionally read some mock_the_stupid. It's sometimes funny, though often a bit repetitive. I try to avoid it, because I always want to say "Ah, but what if..." and "If you define the words like this, it's not stupid" and "I think I said that once" and "It's a natural mistake, it needs to be ironic or at least punny"

But half a dozen items tonight made me think they were worth propagating abbreviated versions thereof.

Firstly, a wonderful example of out-out-out-out-pedanting

Student: I measured my heartrate like you said, but it doesn't change however I run.
Teacher: Hmm.
Student: Could my pacemaker be effecting it?
Teacher: *headdesk*
Poster #1: "Affecting"?
Poster #2: No, actually, it really should be effecting it -- or she'd be dead.
Poster #1: I think she meant "have an effect on", ie. affect.
Poster #2: I'm sure she did, but I think she *should* have meant "effect" ie. "cause to exist"
Poster #1: But it should beat anyway, if irregularly.
Poster #2: Ah, yes, it *affects* the heart *beat* but it *effects* the heart *rate* -- there would be no constant measurable rate otherwise.

( More... )

Apropos to my sleepyness my ideas from last night were not amazing, but all were fairly good. A wonderful quote on the subject from The Universe of Discourse is:

The next morning I remembered nothing but that I had had a "clever" inspiration while guzzling whisky from the bottle. "Oh, no," I muttered, "What did I do?" And I went to the computer to see what damage I had wrought. I called up the problematic part of the program, and regarded my alcohol-inspired solution. There was a clear and detailed comment explaining the solution, and as I read the code, my surprise grew. "Hey," I said, astonished, "it really was clever." And then I saw the comment at the very end of the clever section: "Told you so."

I don't know what to conclude from this, except perhaps that I should have spent more of my life drinking whiskey. I did try bringing a flask with me to work every day for a while, about fifteen years ago, but I don't remember any noteworthy outcome. But it certainly wasn't a disaster. Still, a lot of people report major problems with this strategy, so it's hard to know what to make of my experience.

One's subconcious is sometimes witty. And sometimes effective.

Coincidently, recently, I've got the hang of commenting my code well! Cool.

That blog, by Mark Dominus, is very intriguing. I think fanf or senji linked to it, but every few days he has something to say about something obscure but relevent to every day life, that always makes me think. If I had the time it's a good example of the sort of discourse I would like to output.

Latest entries in quotefile (either well known or personal):

1. Obituary game, French, James, 1966 "How about this for a headline? French fries." -- ???

2. Here's Dominique Bouhours, grammarian: "I am about to, or, I am going to die. Either expression is used."

3. "And one guy is more than 10x cheaper than ten, because (a) he won't waste any time in meetings, and (b) since he's probably a founder, he can pay himself nothing." -- Paul Graham

4. "Each deal has to be for multiple millions of dollars. It explains why [...] their due diligence feels like a body cavity search.And since most VCs aren't tech guys, the technology side of their due diligence tends to be like a body cavity search by someone with a faulty knowledge of human anatomy." -- Paul Graham

5. "The first discovery I'd like to present here is an algorithm for lazy evaluation of research papers. Just write whatever you want and don't cite any previous work, and indignant readers will send you references to all the papers you should have cited. I discovered this algorithm after ``A Plan for Spam'' [1] was on Slashdot." -- Paul Graham

6. "I don't know what it is that causes people to find disgusting things and then want to share them with other people, but..."-- Rory Blyth (and six fifths of everyone on the internet)

7. "Whatever his flaws, it can never be argued that George, in his tireless fight against evildoers and enemies of freedom, makes things seem more complicated than they are." -- Gene Weingarten'

8. "Your friend has no smell? How does he... wait, this won't work." -- Simon H.

9. "For a further description of the many ways in which BrikWars is not in any way connected with LEGO®, you are invited to read our lengthy legal disclaimer." -- BrikWars FAQ

10. "You're an internet denizen. What do you know about zoofile.com?" "I don't know. It sounds like a file sharing site." "Oh. Ah, no not 'f', 'ph'." "Wow! I didn't think there was any way you could make this conversation less worksafe, but that was an order of magnitude worse." -- Jack and Simon H.