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Sunday, January 16, 2011

Murphy's laws

  • Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.
  • Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool discovers something which either abolishes the system or expands it beyond recognition.
  • Technology is dominated by those who manage what they do not understand.
  • If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
  • The opulence of the front office decor varies inversely with the fundamental solvency of the firm.
  • The attention span of a computer is only as long as it electrical cord.
  • An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing.
  • Tell a man there are 300 billion stars in the universe and he'll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint on it and he'll have to touch to be sure. great discoveries are made by mistake.
  • Always draw your curves, then plot your reading.
  • Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.
  • All's well that ends.
  • A meeting is an event at which the minutes are kept and the hours are lost.
  • The first myth of management is that it exists.
  • A failure will not appear till a unit has passed final inspection.
  • New systems generate new problems.
  • To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.
  • We don't know one millionth of one percent about anything.
  • Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
    Arthur C. Clark
  • A computer makes as many mistakes in two seconds as 20 men working 20 years make.
  • Nothing motivates a man more than to see his boss putting in an honest day's work.
  • Some people manage by the book, even though they don't know who wrote the book or even what book.
  • The primary function of the design engineer is to make things difficult for the fabricator and impossible for the serviceman.
  • To spot the expert, pick the one who predicts the job will take the longest and cost the most.
  • After all is said and done, a hell of a lot more is said than done.
  • Any circuit design must contain at least one part which is obsolete, two parts which are unobtainable and three parts which are still under development.
  • A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.
  • If mathematically you end up with the incorrect answer, try multiplying by the page number.
  • Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable. Any system which depends on human reliability is unreliable.
  • .Give all orders verbally. Never write anything down that might go into a "Pearl Harbor File."
  • Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure, temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables the organism will do as it damn well pleases.
  • If you can't understand it, it is intuitively obvious.
  • The more cordial the buyer's secretary, the greater the odds that the competition already has the order.
  • In designing any type of construction, no overall dimension can be totaled correctly after 4:30 p.m. on Friday. The correct total will become self-evident at 8:15 a.m. on Monday.
  • Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. And scratch where it itches.
  • All things are possible except skiing through a revolving door.
  • The only perfect science is hind-sight.
  • Work smarder and not harder and be careful of yor speling.
  • If it's not in the computer, it doesn't exist.
  • If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
  • When all else fails, read the instructions.
  • If there is a possibility of several things going wrong the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
  • Everything that goes up must come down.
    Corollary: Not always