| The Best 50 of Murphy's Law | ||
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The Best 50 of Murphy's Law
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. *********** All 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 *********** Any given program, when running, is obsolete. *********** Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. *********** A computer makes as many mistakes in two seconds as 20 men working 20 years make. *********** The faster a computer is, the faster it will reach a crashed state. *********** 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 *********** Any circuit design must contain at least one part which is obsolete, two parts which are unobtainable and three parts which are still under development.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 totalled 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. *********** Any instrument when dropped will roll into the least accessible corner. *********** Any simple theory will be worded in the most complicated way. *********** Build a system that even a fool can use and only a fool will want to use it. *********** The degree of technical competence is inversely proportional to the level of management. *********** Any attempt to print Murphy's laws will jam the printer. ***********
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