wmw999 2,556 #26 January 25, 2005 One of my personal favorites... HOW TO HUNT ELEPHANTS How do you hunt elephants? MATHEMATICIANS hunt elephants by going to Africa, throwing out everything that is not an elephant, and catching one of whatever is left. Experienced mathematicians will attempt to prove the existence of at least one unique elephant before proceeding to step 1 as a subordinate exercise. Professors of mathematics will prove the existence of at least one unique elephant and then leave the detection and capture of an actual elephant as an exercise for their graduate students. COMPUTER SCIENTISTS hunt elephants by exercising Algorithm A: 1. Go to Africa 2. Start at the Cape of Good Hope. 3. Work northward in an orderly manner, traversing the continent alternately east and west. 4. During each traverse pass: a) catch each animal seen b) Compare each animal caught to a known elephant c) Stop when a match is detected. Experienced COMPUTER PROGRAMMERS modify Algorithm A by placing a known elephant in Cairo to ensure that the algorithm will terminate. Assembly language programmers prefer to execute Algorithm on their hands and knees. ENGINEERS hunt elephants by going to Africa, catching gray animals at random, and stopping when any one of them weighs within plus or minus 15 percent of any previously observed elephant. ECONOMISTS don't hunt elephants, but they believe that if elephants are paid enough, they will hunt themselves. STATISTICIANS hunt the 1st animal they see N times, and call it an elephant. CONSULTANTS don't hunt elephants, and many have never hunted anything at all, but they can be hired by the hour to advise those people who do. Operations Research Consultants can also measure the correlation of hat size and bullet color to the efficiency of elephant-hunting strategies, if someone else will only identify the elephants. POLITICIANS don't hunt elephants, but they will share the elephants you catch with the people who voted for them. LAWYERS don't hunt elephants, but they do follow the herds around arguing about who owns the droppings. Software lawyers will claim that they own an entire herd based on the look and feel of one dropping. VICE PRESIDENTS of engineering, research, and development try hard to hunt elephants, but their staffs are designed to prevent it. When the vice president does get to hunt elephants, the staff will try to ensure that all possible elephants are completely pre-hunted before the vice president gets to see them. If the vice president does see a non-prehunted elephant, the staff will : 1. compliment the vice president's keen eyesight, 2. enlarge itself to prevent any recurrence. SENIOR MANAGERS set broad elephant-hunting policy based on the assumption that elephants are just like field mice, but with deeper voices. QUALITY ASSURANCE INSPECTORS ignore the elephants and look for mistakes the other hunters made when they were packing the jeep. SALESPEOPLE don't hunt elephants but spend their time selling elephants they haven't caught, for delivery two days before the season opens. Software salespeople ship the first thing they catch and write up an invoice for an elephant. Hardware salespeople catch rabbits, paint them gray, and sell them as "Desktop Elephants" Wendy W.There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown) Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ChasingBlueSky 0 #27 January 25, 2005 for the unix folk: > man woman > segmentation fault (core dumped)_________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again..... Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ianmdrennan 2 #28 January 26, 2005 QuoteI'm an ADA girl! hehe. nice. It's dorky programmer humor, but it still makes me smile Blues, IanPerformance Designs Factory Team Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
stardog 0 #29 January 26, 2005 yhea...thats pretty gay...even for a geek. A guy at work had a bumper sticker on his truck that said ."I love wood"..Because ya know..the guy likes to build things...which is real cool.. finally got him to take the bumpers sticker down...Ha..that was funny.. to all the geeks out there..unite.. be strong !! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Dougiefresh 0 #30 January 27, 2005 Another T-shirt. Has a sorta double meaning for skydivers who are dorks. http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/science/65a4/Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. --Douglas Adams Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
flyingferret 0 #31 January 27, 2005 Good link Ivan!-- All the flaming and trolls of wreck dot with a pretty GUI. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Slappie 9 #32 January 27, 2005 QuoteGood link Ivan! I went back and looked at that link again. In response to the question: "what does "GIYF" mean" it's not a good answer. The list Ivan has linked doesn't have it in it. Granted it's a good link for those new to online acronyms. It wasn't an answer to the posters question though. "Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them." Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites