%
43rd Law of Computing:
	Anything that can go wr
fortune: Segmentation violation -- Core dumped
%
A Law of Computer Programming:
	Make it possible for programmers to write in English and you
will find the programmers cannot write in English.

%
Alden's Laws:
	(1) Giving away baby clothes and furniture is the major cause
	    of pregnancy.
	(2) Always be backlit.
	(3) Sit down whenever possible.
%
All Finagle Laws may be bypassed by learning the simple art of doing
without thinking.
%
Anthony's Law of Force:
	Don't force it; get a larger hammer.
%
Anthony's Law of the Workshop:
	Any tool when dropped, will roll into the least accessible
	corner of the workshop.

Corollary:
	On the way to the corner, any dropped tool will first strike
	your toes.
%
Arnold's Laws of Documentation:
	(1) If it should exist, it doesn't.
	(2) If it does exist, it's out of date.
	(3) Only documentation for useless programs transcends the
	    first two laws.
%
Arthur's Laws of Love:
	(1) People to whom you are attracted invariably think you
	    remind them of someone else.
	(2) The love letter you finally got the courage to send will be
	    delayed in the mail long enough for you to make a fool of
	    yourself in person.
%
Baker's First Law of Federal Geometry:
	A block grant is a solid mass of money surrounded on all sides
by governors.
%
Bennett's Laws of Horticulture:
	(1) Houses are for people to live in.
	(2) Gardens are for plants to live in.
	(3) There is no such thing as a houseplant.
%
Bolub's Fourth Law of Computerdom:
	Project teams detest weekly progress reporting because it so
vividly manifests their lack of progress.
%
Boob's Law:
	You always find something in the last place you look.
%
Boren's Laws:
	(1) When in charge, ponder.
	(2) When in trouble, delegate.
	(3) When in doubt, mumble.
%
Brady's First Law of Problem Solving:
	When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more
easily by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger have
handled this?"
%
Brook's Law:
	Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later
%
Brooke's Law:
	Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool
discovers something which either abolishes the system or expands it
beyond recognition.
%
Bucy's Law:
	Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.
%
Captain Penny's Law:
	You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of
the people all of the time, but you Can't Fool Mom.
%
Chism's Law of Completion:
	The amount of time required to complete a government project is
precisely equal to the length of time already spent on it.
%
Chisolm's First Corollary to Murphy's Second Law:
	When things just can't possibly get any worse, they will.
%
Conway's Law:
	In any organization there will always be one person who knows
	what is going on.

	This person must be fired.
%
Drew's Law of Highway Biology:
	The first bug to hit a clean windshield lands directly in front
of your eyes.
%
Eagleson's Law:
	Any code of your own that you haven't looked at for six or more
months, might as well have been written by someone else.  (Eagleson is
an optimist, the real number is more like three weeks.)
%
Emerson's Law of Contrariness:
	Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we
can.  Having found them, we shall then hate them for it.
%
Fifth Law of Applied Terror:
	If you are given an open-book exam, you will forget your book.

Corollary:
	If you are given a take-home exam, you will forget where you
live.
%
Fifth Law of Procrastination:
	Procrastination avoids boredom; one never has the feeling that
there is nothing important to do.
%
Finagle's First Law:
	If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
%
Finagle's fourth Law:
	Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes
it worse.
%
Finagle's Second Law:
	No matter what the anticipated result, there will always be
someone eager to (a) misinterpret it, (b) fake it, or (c) believe it
happened according to his own pet theory.
%
Finagle's Third Law:
	In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct,
	beyond all need of checking, is the mistake

Corollaries:
	(1) Nobody whom you ask for help will see it.
	(2) The first person who stops by, whose advice you really
	    don't want to hear, will see it immediately.
%
First Corollary of Taber's Second Law:
	Machines that piss people off get murdered.
		-- Pat Taber
%
First Law of Bicycling:
	No matter which way you ride, it's uphill and against the
wind.
%
First Law of Procrastination:
	Procrastination shortens the job and places the responsibility
for its termination on someone else (i.e., the authority who imposed
the deadline).
%
First Law of Socio-Genetics:
	Celibacy is not hereditary.
%
Flon's Law:
	There is not now, and never will be, a language in which it is
the least bit difficult to write bad programs.
%
Flugg's Law:
	When you need to knock on wood is when you realize that the
world is composed of vinyl, naugahyde and aluminum.
%
Fortune's Law of the Week (this week, from Kentucky):
	No female shall appear in a bathing suit at any airport in this
State unless she is escorted by two officers or unless she is armed
with a club.  The provisions of this statute shall not apply to females
weighing less than 90 pounds nor exceeding 200 pounds, nor shall it
apply to female horses.
%
Fourth Law of Applied Terror:
	The night before the English History mid-term, your Biology
instructor will assign 200 pages on planaria.

Corollary:
	Every instructor assumes that you have nothing else to do
except study for that instructor's course.
%
Fourth Law of Revision:
	It is usually impractical to worry beforehand about
interferences -- if you have none, someone will make one for you.
%
Fourth Law of Thermodynamics:  If the probability of success is not
almost one, it is damn near zero.
		-- David Ellis
%
Fudd's First Law of Opposition:
	Push something hard enough and it will fall over.
%
Gerrold's Laws of Infernal Dynamics:
	(1) An object in motion will always be headed in the wrong
	    direction.
	(2) An object at rest will always be in the wrong place.
	(3) The energy required to change either one of these states
	    will always be more than you wish to expend, but never so
	    much as to make the task totally impossible.
%
Glib's Fourth Law of Unreliability:
	Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the
probable cost of errors, or until someone insists on getting some
useful work done.
%
Grabel's Law:
	2 is not equal to 3 -- not even for large values of 2.
%
Grandpa Charnock's Law:
	You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.
%
Gray's Law of Programming:
	`_n+1' trivial tasks are expected to be accomplished in the same
time as `_n' tasks.

Logg's Rebuttal to Gray's Law:
	`_n+1' trivial tasks take twice as long as `_n' trivial tasks.
%
Greener's Law:
	Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel.
%
H. L. Mencken's Law:
	Those who can -- do.
	Those who can't -- teach.

Martin's Extension:
	Those who cannot teach -- administrate.
%
Hacker's Law:
	The belief that enhanced understanding will necessarily stir a
nation to action is one of mankind's oldest illusions.
%
Hall's Laws of Politics:
	(1) The voters want fewer taxes and more spending.
	(2) Citizens want honest politicians until they want something
	    fixed.
	(3) Constituency drives out consistency (i.e., liberals defend
	    military spending, and conservatives social spending in
	    their own districts).
%
Harrisberger's Fourth Law of the Lab:
	Experience is directly proportional to the amount of equipment
ruined.
%
Hartley's First Law:
	You can lead a horse to water, but if you can get him to float
on his back, you've got something.
%
Hartley's Second Law:
	Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself.
%
Harvard Law:
	Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure,
temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables, the organism will
do as it damn well pleases.
%
Heller's Law:
	The first myth of management is that it exists.

Johnson's Corollary:
	Nobody really knows what is going on anywhere within the
organization.
%
Hlade's Law:
	If you have a difficult task, give it to a lazy person -- they
will find an easier way to do it.
%
Hoare's Law of Large Problems:
	Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get
out.
%
Hofstadter's Law:
	It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take
Hofstadter's Law into account.
%
Howe's Law:
	Everyone has a scheme that will not work.
%
Iles's Law:
	There is always an easier way to do it.  When looking directly
at the easy way, especially for long periods, you will not see it.
Neither will Iles.
%
In specifications, Murphy's Law supersedes Ohm's.
%
Iron Law of Distribution:
	Them that has, gets.
%
Issawi's Laws of Progress:

	The Course of Progress:
		Most things get steadily worse.

	The Path of Progress:
		A shortcut is the longest distance between two points.
%
It is true that if your paperboy throws your paper into the bushes for
five straight days it can be explained by Newton's Law of Gravity.  But
it takes Murphy's law to explain why it is happening to you.
%
Jenkinson's Law:
	It won't work.
%
Johnson's First Law:
	When any mechanical contrivance fails, it will do so at the
most inconvenient possible time.
%
Jone's Law:
	The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone
to blame it on.
%
Jones's First Law:
	Anyone who makes a significant contribution to any field of
endeavor, and stays in that field long enough, becomes an obstruction
to its progress -- in direct proportion to the importance of their
original contribution.
%
Katz' Law:
	Man and nations will act rationally when all other
possibilities have been exhausted.
%
Keep in mind always the two constant Laws of Frisbee:
	(1) The most powerful force in the world is that of a disc
	    straining to land under a car, just out of reach (this
	    force is technically termed "car suck").
	(2) Never precede any maneuver by a comment more predictive
	    than "Watch this!"
%
Kinkler's First Law:
	Responsibility always exceeds authority.

Kinkler's Second Law:
	All the easy problems have been solved.
%
Lackland's Laws:
	(1) Never be first.
	(2) Never be last.
	(3) Never volunteer for anything
%
Langsam's Laws:
	(1) Everything depends.
	(2) Nothing is always.
	(3) Everything is sometimes.
%
Larkinson's Law:
	All laws are basically false.
%
Law of Communications:
	The inevitable result of improved and enlarged communications
between different levels in a hierarchy is a vastly increased area of
misunderstanding.
%
Law of Probable Dispersal:
	Whatever it is that hits the fan will not be evenly
distributed.
%
Law of Selective Gravity:
	An object will fall so as to do the most damage.

Jenning's Corollary:
	The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is
directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.
%
Law of the Perversity of Nature:
	You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the
bread to butter.
%
Laws of Serendipity:

	(1) In order to discover anything, you must be looking for
	    something.
	(2) If you wish to make an improved product, you must already
	    be engaged in making an inferior one.
%
Lewis's Law of Travel:
	The first piece of luggage out of the chute doesn't belong to
anyone, ever.
%
Lieberman's Law:
	Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter since nobody listens.
%
Lowery's Law:
	If it jams -- force it.  If it breaks, it needed replacing
anyway.
%
Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology:
	There's always one more bug.
%
Maier's Law:
	If the facts don't conform to the theory, they must be disposed
	of.

Corollaries:
	(1) The bigger the theory, the better.
	(2) The experiment may be considered a success if no more than
	    50% of the observed measurements must be discarded to
	    obtain a correspondence with the theory.
%
Main's Law:
	For every action there is an equal and opposite government
program.
%
Malek's Law:
	Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way.
%
Meader's Law:
	Whatever happens to you, it will previously have happened to
everyone you know, only more so.
%
Mencken and Nathan's Fifteenth Law of The Average American:
	The worst actress in the company is always the manager's wife.
%
Mencken and Nathan's Ninth Law of The Average American:
	The quality of a champagne is judged by the amount of noise the
cork makes when it is popped.
%
Mencken and Nathan's Second Law of The Average American:
	All the postmasters in small towns read all the postcards.
%
Mencken and Nathan's Sixteenth Law of The Average American:
	Milking a cow is an operation demanding a special talent that
is possessed only by yokels, and no person born in a large city can
never hope to acquire it.
%
Meskimen's Law:
	There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to
do it over.
%
Miksch's Law:
	If a string has one end, then it has another end.
%
Mitchell's Law of Committees:
	Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are
held to discuss it.
%
Mosher's Law of Software Engineering:
	Don't worry if it doesn't work right.  If everything did, you'd
be out of a job.
%
Murphy's Law is recursive.  Washing your car to make it rain doesn't
work.
%
Murphy's Law of Research:
	Enough research will tend to support your theory.
%
"Murphy's Law, that brash proletarian restatement of Godel's Theorem ..."
		-- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"
%
Naeser's Law:
	You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it
damnfoolproof.
%
Newton's Fourth Law:  Every action has an equal and opposite satisfaction.
%
Newton's Little-Known Seventh Law:
	A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead.
%
Non-Reciprocal Laws of Expectations:
	Negative expectations yield negative results.
	Positive expectations yield negative results.
%
O'Toole's Commentary on Murphy's Law:
	Murphy was an optimist.
%
Ogden's Law:
	The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch
up.
%
Oliver's Law:
	Experience is something you don't get until just after you need
it.
%
Osborn's Law:
	Variables won't; constants aren't.
%
Ozman's Laws:
	(1) If someone says he will do something "without fail," he
	    won't.
	(2) The more people talk on the phone, the less money they
	    make.
	(3) People who go to conferences are the ones who shouldn't.
	(4) Pizza always burns the roof of your mouth.
%
Parker's Law:
	Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.
%
Parkinson's Fifth Law:
	If there is a way to delay in important decision, the good
bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.
%
Parkinson's Fourth Law:
	The number of people in any working group tends to increase
regardless of the amount of work to be done.
%
Paul's Law:
	In America, it's not how much an item costs, it's how much you
save.
%
Paul's Law:
	You can't fall off the floor.
%
Peter's Law of Substitution:
	Look after the molehills, and the mountains will look after
themselves.
%
Preudhomme's Law of Window Cleaning:
	It's on the other side.
%
Putt's Law:
	Technology is dominated by two types of people:
		Those who understand what they do not manage.
		Those who manage what they do not understand.
%
Quigley's Law:
	Whoever has any authority over you, no matter how small, will
atttempt to use it.
%
Rhode's Law:
	When any principle, law, tenet, probability, happening,
circumstance, or result can in no way be directly, indirectly,
empirically, or circuitously proven, derived, implied, inferred,
induced, deducted, estimated, or scientifically guessed, it will always
for the purpose of convenience, expediency, political advantage,
material gain, or personal comfort, or any combination of the above, or
none of the above, be unilaterally and unequivocally assumed,
proclaimed, and adhered to as absolute truth to be undeniably,
universally, immutably, and infinitely so, until such time as it
becomes advantageous to assume otherwise, maybe.
%
Rudin's Law:
	If there is a wrong way to do something, most people will do it
every time.
%
Sattinger's Law:
	It works better if you plug it in.
%
Scott's first Law:
	No matter what goes wrong, it will probably look right.
%
Scott's second Law:
	When an error has been detected and corrected, it will be found
to have been wrong in the first place.

Corollary:
	After the correction has been found in error, it will be
impossible to fit the original quantity back into the equation.
%
Second Law of Business Meetings:
	If there are two possible ways to spell a person's name, you
will pick the wrong one.

Corollary:
	If there is only one way to spell a name, you will spell it
wrong, anyway.
%
Silverman's Law:
	If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
%
Simon's Law:
	Everything put together falls apart sooner or later.
%
Slick's Three Laws of the Universe:
	(1) Nothing in the known universe travels faster than a bad
	    check.
	(2) A quarter-ounce of chocolate = four pounds of fat.
	(3) There are two types of dirt: the dark kind, which is
	    attracted to light objects, and the light kind, which is
	    attracted to dark objects.
%
Sodd's Second Law:
	Sooner or later, the worst possible set of circumstances is
bound to occur.
%
Speer's 1st Law of Proofreading:
	The visibility of an error is inversely proportional to the
number of times you have looked at it.
%
Sturgeon's Law:
	90% of everything is crud.
%
The Briggs/Chase Law of Program Development:
	To determine how long it will take to write and debug a
program, take your best estimate, multiply that by two, add one, and
convert to the next higher units.
%
The Third Law of Photography:
	If you did manage to get any good shots, they will be ruined
when someone inadvertently opens the darkroom door and all of the dark
leaks out.
%
The Three Laws of Thermodynamics:

The First Law:	You can't get anything without working for it.
The Second Law:	The most you can accomplish by working is to break
		even.
The Third Law:	You can only break even at absolute zero.
%
There are three schools of magic.  One:  State a tautology, then ring
the changes on its corollaries; that's philosophy.  Two:  Record many
facts.  Try to find a pattern.  Then make a wrong guess at the next
fact; that's science.  Three:  Be aware that you live in a malevolent
Universe controlled by Murphy's Law, sometimes offset by Brewster's
Factor; that's engineering.
%
There exist tasks which cannot be done by more than 10 men or fewer
than 100.
		-- Steele's Law
%
Turnaucka's Law:
	The attention span of a computer is only as long as its
electrical cord.
%
Tussman's Law:
	Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come.
%
Unnamed Law:
	If it happens, it must be possible.
%
Van Roy's Law:
	An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys.
%
Velilind's Laws of Experimentation:
	(1) If reproducibility may be a problem, conduct the test only
	    once.
	(2) If a straight line fit is required, obtain only two data
	    points.
%
Watson's Law:
	The reliability of machinery is inversely proportional to the
number and significance of any persons watching it.
%
Weiler's Law:
	Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it
himself.
%
Weinberg's First Law:
	Progress is made on alternate Fridays.
%
Weinberg's Second Law:
	If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs,
then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
%
Weiner's Law of Libraries:
	There are no answers, only cross references.
%
Wethern's Law:
	Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups.
%
Whistler's Law:
	You never know who is right, but you always know who is in
charge.
%
Wiker's Law:
	Government expands to absorb revenue and then some.
%
Williams and Holland's Law:
	If enough data is collected, anything may be proven by
statistical methods.
%
Wombat's Laws of Computer Selection:
	(1) If it doesn't run Unix, forget it.
	(2) Any computer design over 10 years old is obsolete.
	(3) Anything made by IBM is junk. (See number 2)
	(4) The minimum acceptable CPU power for a single user is a
	    VAX/780 with a floating point accelerator.
	(5) Any computer with a mouse is worthless.
		-- Rich Kulawiec
%