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Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve.
Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.
For every question there is an answer that is obvious, simple, and wrong.
We are now at a point where we must educate our children in what no one knew yesterday, and prepare our schools for what no one knows yet.
Education: The inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.
Children have a lot more to worry about from the parents who raised them than from the books they read.
Political Correctness: A doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical liberal minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.
Attributed to a student at Texas A&M
Spanking: Applying the board of education to the seat of knowledge.
NOTICE: Due to the shortage of ROBOTS and COMPUTERS some of our workers are HUMAN and therefore will act unpredictably when abused.
Michael S. Hart, Project Gutenberg
The mentality still exists that buying the hardware and software will create the data.
Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.
1. Database development takes about two years; four if you rush it.
2. No model survives first contact with the data.
3. Data are of no value without metadata but the metadata are seldom of value.
4. You will always need more disk drives than you have.
5. If you get a bunch of disk drives, the sysadmin will always want to configure them as RAID 5.
6. Vision and common sense are the rarest commodities in a database.
7. Management and database often appear to be antonyms.
8. For every problem, management will have an answer that is obvious, simple, and wrong.
9. GIGO: DBA — Garbage In, Garbage Out; Management — Garbage In, Gospel Out.
10. Replication — GIGO squared.
11. Data mining contains the implicit assumption that the original data contains something of value. See GIGO.
12. Data warehousing is often used to try and hide the shortcomings of the original design.
13. Referential integrity is for wimps who can't control their users or developers.
14. Write-only backup tapes are not as useful as commonly imagined.
15. Speaking-in-tongues is about as useful a communication tool as any other jargon.
16. The latest tool won't solve the problem either and contains new and different bugs.
17. Six months after a new release management will be looking for two years experience with it.
12. “Specifications are for the weak and timid!”
11. “This machine is a piece of GAGH! I need dual Pentium processors if I am to do battle with this code!”
10. “You cannot really appreciate Dilbert unless you've read it in the original Klingon.”
9. “Indentation?! — I will show you how to indent when I indent your skull!”
8. “What is this talk of 'release'? Klingons do not make software 'releases.' Our software 'escapes' leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality assurance people in its wake.”
7. “Klingon function calls do not have 'parameters”— they have 'arguments' — and they always win them.”
6. “Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Our software does not coddle the weak.”
5. “I have challenged the entire quality assurance team to a Bat-Leth contest. They will not concern us again.”
4. “A true Klingon Warrior does not comment his code!”
3. “By filing this PTR you have challenged the honor of my family. Prepare to die!”
2. “You question the worthiness of my code? I should kill you where you stand!”
1. “ Our users will know fear and cower before our software. Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!”
| Home Page | Contents | Index | Comments? |
| Chapter — Curmudgeon's Corner |
| Next — Lawyers and religion |
| Back — Notes On Relations With Women |