MURPHY.TXT - Murphy's Laws

BERGGREEN'S LAWS CONCERNING COMMUNICATION:

1. If you try to call a BBS, no matter what hour, it is busy.

2. When you have been downloading for more than an hour, a major
powerbreak will occur just as you are transferring the last bytes.

3. If you are a sysop and want to use your machine, a 300-baud user will
call just as you are about to enter DOS.
3.1 His first choice will be to download something.

4. If you forget to turn off the chat-function, someone will page you just
after you have fallen asleep.

5. When you have called the most impossible and distant BBS's to avoid
him, you can be sure that ** ** has left some smartass messages
there.

MURPHY'S LAWS

THE PRIME AXIOM: In any field of scientific endeavor, anything that
can go wrong, will.

2. If the possibility exists of several things going wrong, the one that
will go wrong is the one that will do the most damage.

3. Everything will go wrong at one time.
3.1 That time is always when you least expect it.

4. If nothing can go wrong, something will.

5. Nothing is as easy as it looks.

6. Everything takes longer than you think.

7. Left to themselves, things always go from bad to worse.

8. Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.

9. Given the most inappropriate time for something to go wrong, that's
when it will occur.

10. Mother Nature is a bitch.

10.1 The universe is not indifferent to intelligence, it is actively
hostile to it.

11. If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked
something.

12. If in any problem you find yourself doing an immense amount of work,
the answer can be obtained by simple inspection.

13. Never make anything simple and efficient when a way can be found to
make it complex and wonderful.

14. If it doesn't fit, use a bigger hammer.

15. In an instrument or device characterized by a number of plus-or-minus
errors, the total error will be the sum of all the errors adding in
the same direction.

16. In any given calculation, the fault will never be placed if more than
one person is involved.

16.1 In any given discovery, the credit will never be properly placed
if more than one person is involved.

17. All warranty and guarantee clauses become invalid upon payment of the
final invoice.

^L
LAWS RELATING TO DESIGN:

1. In any given price estimate, the cost of the equipment will exceed
estimated expenditure by a factor of 3.

2. Dimensions will always be expressed in the least useable terms. For
example, velocity will be expressed in furlongs/fortnight.

3. If the breadbox trial model functions perfectly, the finished product
will not percolate.

4. In a mathematical calculation, any error that can creep in, will. It
will be in the direction that will do the most damage to
the calculation.

5. In any collection of data, the figures that are obviously correct,
beyond all need of checking, contain the errors.

6. The probability of a dimension or value being omitted from a drawing
is directly proportional to its importance.

7. In specifications, Murphy's Law supersedes Ohm's.

8. Information necessitating a change in design will be conveyed to the
designer after, and only after, the plans are complete.

9. In simple cases, presenting one obvious right way vs. one obvious
wrong way, it is often wiser to choose the wrong way so as to
expedite subsequent revisions.

10. The more innocuous a modification appears to be, the further its
influence will extend and the more plans will have to be redrawn.

^L
LAWS RELATING TO ASSEMBLY:

1. If a project requires n components, there will be n-1 components
available.

2. Interchangeable parts won't.

3. Components that must not and cannot be assembled improperly will be.

4. The most delicate component will be dropped.

5. The construction and operation manual will be discarded with the
packing material. The garbage truck will have picked it up
five minutes before the mad dash to the rubbish can.

6. The necessity of making a major design change increases as the
assembly and wiring of the unit approach completion.

7. THE LAW OF SELECTIVE GRAVITATION:
A dropped tool will land where it will do the most damage.

8. A component selected at random from a group having a 99% reliability
will be a member of the 1% group.

9. Tolerances will accumulate unidirectionally toward maximum difficulty
of assembly.

10. The availability of a component is inversely proportional to the need
for that component.

11. If a particular resistance is needed, that value will not be available.
Furthermore, it cannot be developed with any series or parallel
combination.

12. After an instrument has been assembled, extra components will be found
on the bench.

^L
LAWS RELATING TO WIRING, TEST, AND OPERATION:

1. Any wire cut to length will be too short.

2. Milliammeters will be connected across the power source, voltmeters in
series with it.

3. The probability of an error in the schematic is directly proportional
to the trouble it can cause.

4. Identical units tested under identical conditions will not be identical
on the final test after being buried under other components and wiring.

5. A self starting oscillator won't.

6. A crystal oscillator will oscillate at the wrong frequency -- if it
oscillates at all.

7. A p-n-p transistor will be found to be an n-p-n.

8. A fail-safe circuit will destroy others.

9. If a circuit cannot fail, it will.

10. A transistor protected by a fast-acting fuse will protect the fuse by
blowing first.

11. Probability of failure of a component is inversely proportional to the
ease of repair or replacement.

12. A KEY RULE OF STARFLEET OPERATIONS:
Some idiot has left open the number two impulse vent.(Check the position
of all switches, knobs, and dials before turning on a piece of
equipment. Both you and the equipment will live longer.)

LAWS CONCERNING TROUBLE SHOOTING:

1. After the 24th cabinet-to-chassis screw has been removed to replace the
under chassis fuse, it will be observed that the line cord plug has
become disengaged from the a.c. receptacle.

2. After the 24th cabinet-to-chassis screw has been replaced, the driver tube
will be found under the schematic on the bench.

3. The bleeder resistor will quit discharging the filter capacitors as the
operator reaches into the power supply enclosure.

^L
PECK'S PROGRAMMING POSTULATES:

1. In any program, any error which can creep in will eventually do so.

2. Not until the program has been in production for at least six months will
the most harmful error be discovered.

3. Any constants, limits, or timing formulas that appear in the
manufacturer's literature should be treated as variables.

4. The most vital parameter in any subroutine stands the greatest chance of
being left out of the calling sequence.

5. If only one compiler can be secured for a piece of hardware, the compil-
ation times will be exorbitant.

6. If a test installation functions perfectly, all subsequent systems will
malfunction.

7. Job control cards that positively cannot be arranged in improper order
will be.

8. Interchangeable tapes won't.

9. If more than one person has programmed a malfunctioning routine, no one is
at fault.

10. If the input editor has been designed to reject all bad input, an
ingenious idiot will discover a method to get bad data past it.

11. Duplicated object decks which test in identical fashion will not give
identical results at remote sites.

12. Manufacturer's hardware and software support ceases with payment for the
computer.

13. At least one critical test tape will be lost, misplaced, destroyed, or
written over.

14. What goes up must come down---and can be expected to do so in the middle
of your job.

15. Any given program, when running, is obsolete.

16. Any given program costs more and takes longer.

17. If a program is useful, it will have to be changed.

18. If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.

19. Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the programmer
who must maintain it.

^L
MISCELLANEOUS LAWS AND THINGS THAT ARE TRUE:

FINAGLE'S LAWS:

1. No matter what result is anticipated, there is always someone willing to
fake it.

2. No matter what the result, there is always someone eager to misinterpret
it.

3. No matter what happens, there is always someone who believes it happened
according to his pet theory.

FINAGLE'S CREED

Science is Truth; don't be misled by facts.

THE FINAGLE FACTOR
(Sometimes called the SWAG(Scientific Wild-Assed Guess) Constant)

That quantity which, when multiplied by, divided by, added to, or
subtracted from the answer which you got, yields the answer you
should have gotten.

[note] Items such as 'Finagle's Constant' and the more subtle 'Bougerre
Factor' are loosely grouped, in mathematics, under constant
variables, or, if you prefer, variable constants.

Finagle's Constant, a multiplier of the zero-order term, may be
characterized as changing the universe to fit the equation.

The Bougerre (pronounced 'bugger') Factor is characterized as changing the
equation to fit the universe. It is also known as the 'Soothing Factor';
mathematically similar to the damping factor, it has the characteristic
of dropping the subject under discussion to zero importance.

A combination of the two, the Diddle Coefficient, is characterized as
changing things so that universe and equation appear to fit without
requiring a change in either.

FINAGLE'S COROLLARY

On a seasonally adjusted basis, there are only six months in a year.

IGGY'S RULE OF SCIENTIFIC ADVANCES

All scientific discoveries are first recorded on napkins or tablecloths.
Engineering advances are drawn inside matchbook covers. Keep supplies
of them handy at all times.

THE FOUR LAWS OF THERMODYNAMICS
1. You can't win.

2. You can't break even.

3. You can't get out of the game.

4. THE LAW OF ENTROPY:
The perversity of the universe tends towards a maximum.

^L
ALLEN'S AXIOM

When all else fails, read the directions.

RULES OF THE LAB

1. When you don't know what you're doing, do it neatly.

2. Experiments must be reproduceable, they should fail the same way
each time.

3. First draw your curves, then plot your data.

4. Experience is directly proportional to equipment ruined.

5. A record of data is essential, it shows you were working.

6. To study a subject best, understand it thoroughly before you start.

7. To do a lab really well, have your report done well in advance.

8. If you can't get the answer in the usual manner, start at the answer and
derive the question.

9. If that doesn't work, start at both ends and try to find a common middle.

10. In case of doubt, make it sound convincing.

11. Do not believe in miracles---rely on them.

12. Team work is essential. It allows you to blame someone else.

13. All unmarked beakers contain fast-acting, extremely toxic poisons.

14. Any delicate and expensive piece of glassware will break before any use
can be made of it. (Law of Spontaneous Fission)

^L
FURTHER HINTS ON WRITE-UPS:

1. In any collection of data, the figures that most closely confirm the
theory are wrong.

2. No one you ask for help will see the mistakes either.

3. Any nagging intruder who stops by with unsought advice will see them
immediately.

4. If an experiment works, you must be using the wrong equipment.

5. An experiment may be considered successful if no more than half the data
must be discarded to agree with the theory.

6. No experiment is ever a complete failure. It can serve as a bad example.

7. Always leave room, when writing a report, to add an explanation if it
doesn't work (Rule of the Way Out).

CLARKE'S LAWS

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist says that something is
possible, he is almost certainly right. When he says it is impossible,
he is very probably wrong.

2. The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond
them into the impossible.

3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

THE NO HAIR THEOREM

Black holes have no hair.

GUNNERSEN'S LAW

The probability of a given event is inversely proportional to it's
desirability.

GLASSER'S COROLLARY

If, of the seven hours you spend at work, six hours and fifty-five
minutes are spent working at your desk, and the rest of the time
you throw the bull with your cubicle-mate, the time at which
your supervisor will walk in and ask what you're doing can be
determined to within five minutes.

WEILER'S LAW

Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.

O'TOOLE'S COMMENTARY ON MURPHY'S LAWS

Murphy was an optimist.

MESKIMEN'S LAW

There's never time to do it right, but always time to do it over.

THE FIFTH RULE

You have taken yourself too seriously.

^L
JONES'S LAW

The man who can smile when things go wrong has thought of someone he can
blame it on.

LAW OF COMMUNICATION

The inevitable result of improved and enlarged communications between
different levels in a hierarchy is a vastly increased area of
misunderstanding.

LORD FALKLAND'S RULE

When it is not necessary to make a decision, it is necessary not to make
a decision.

THE ARMY AXIOM

Any order that can be understood has been misunderstood.

SEVAREID'S LAW

The chief cause of problems is solutions.

JONES' MOTTO

Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate.

MATSCH'S LAW

It is better to have a horrible ending than to have horrors without end.

ALLISON'S PRECEPT

The best simple-minded test of expertise in a particular area is the
ability to win money in a series of bets on future occurrences in that
area.

McNAUGHTON'S RULE

Any argument worth making within the bureaucracy must be capable of being
expressed in a simple declarative statement that is obviously true once
stated.

KIRKLAND'S LAW

The usefulness of any meeting is in inverse proportion to the attendance.

BECKER'S LAW

It is much harder to find a job than to keep one.

O'BRIEN'S PRINCIPLE (The 357.73 Theory)

Auditors always reject any expense account with a bottom line divisible
by 5 or 10.

THE FIRST LAW OF OFFICE HOLDERS

Get re-elected.

^L
THE NIXON PRINCIPLE

If two wrongs don't make a right, try three.

BELSKY'S COROLLARY

Never trust anyone who volunteers to assume authority.

WEIKER'S LAW

Government expands to absorb revenue and then some.

PARKINSON'S LAWS

1. Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

2. The thing to be done swells in perceived importance and complexity in a
direct ratio with the time spent in its completion.

3. Expenditures rise to meet income.

4. If there is a way to delay an important decision, the good bureaucracy,
public or private, will find it.

5. The number of people in any working group tends to increase regardless of
the amount of work to be done.

GUMMIDGE'S LAW

The amount of expertise varies in inverse proportion to the number of
statements understood by the general public.

FITZ-GIBBON'S LAW

Creativity varies inversely with the number of cooks involved with the
broth.

SHANAHAN'S LAW

The length of a meeting rises with the square of the number of people
present.

RUDIN'S LAW

In a crisis that forces a choice to be made among alternative courses of
action, most people will choose the worst one possible.

HAGERTY'S LAW

If you lose your temper at a newspaper columnist, he'll get rich, or
famous or both.

ROSS' LAW

Never characterize the importance of a statement in advance.

ZYMURGY'S SEVENTH EXCEPTION TO MURPHY'S LAWS

When it rains, it pours.

^L
TOPPER'S COROLLARY TO MURPHY'S LAWS

The shortest distance between two points is under construction.

THE 14TH COROLLARY OF ATWOOD'S GENERAL LAW OF DYNAMIC NEGATIVES

No books are lost by loaning except those you particularly wanted to keep.

THE PETER PRINCIPLE

In every hierarchy, whether it be government or business, every employee
tends to rise to his level of incompetence. Every post tends to be
filled by an employee incompetent to execute its duties.

PETER'S THEOREM

Incompetence plus incompetence equals incompetence.

PETER'S INVERSION

Internal consistency is valued more highly than efficiency.

PETER'S PARADOX

Employees in a hierarchy do not really object to incompetence in their
colleagues.

PETER'S PLACEBO

An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance.

JENKINSON'S LAW

It won't work.

PUDDER'S LAW

Anything that begins well ends badly.

LES MISERABLES METALAW

All laws, whether good, bad, or indifferent, must be obeyed to the letter.

OESER'S LAW

There is a tendency for the person in the most powerful position in an
organization to spend all his time serving on committees and signing
letters.

KITMAN'S LAW

Pure drivel tends to drive off the TV screen ordinary drivel.

DOW'S LAW

In a hierarchical organization, the higher level, the greater the
confusion.

SATTINGER'S LAW

It works better if you plug it in.

^L
THE LAW OF THE PERVERSITY OF NATURE

You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to
butter.

MALINOWSKI'S LAW

Looking from far above, from our high places of safety in the developed
civilization, it is easy to see all the crudity and irrelevance of magic.

THE 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.

VARIOUS TRUTHS OF MANAGEMENT

1. Think before you act; it's not your money.

2. All good management is the expression of one great idea.

3. No executive devotes effort to proving himself wrong.

4. Cash in must exceed cash out.

5. Management capability is always less than the organization actually needs.

6. Either an executive can do his job or he can't

7. If sophisticated calculations are needed to justify an action, don't
do it.

8. If you are doing something wrong, you will do it badly.

9. If you are attempting the impossible you will fail.

10. The easiest way to make money is to stop losing it.

PARETO'S LAW(The 20/80 Law)

20% of the customers account for 80% of the turnover, 20% of the parts
account for 80% of the cost, and so forth.

STURGEON'S LAW

90% of everything is bull.

ZYMURGY'S FIRST LAW OF EVOLVING SYSTEM DYNAMICS

Once you open a can of worms, the only way you can recan them is to use a
larger can. (Old worms never die; they just worm their way into larger
cans.)

OSBORN'S LAW

Variables won't, constants aren't.

^L
THE SNAFU EQUATIONS

1. Given any problem containing N equations, there will be N+1 unknowns.

2. The object or bit of information most needed will be least available.

3. The device requiring service or adjustment will be least accessible.

4. In any human eneavor, once you have exhausted all possibilities and
failed, there will be one solution, simple, obvious, and highly visible
to everyone else.

5. Badness comes in waves.

JOHNSON'S FIRST LAW OF AUTO REPAIR

Any tool dropped while repairing an automobile will roll under the car to
the vehicle's exact geographic center.

PUPIN'S LAW

The elevator is NEVER going in the direction you want to go.

PROFESSOR GORDON'S RULE OF EVOLVING BYROGRAPHIC SYSTEMS

While byrographic systems are typically encountered in substrata of earthy
or mineral matter in concreted state, discrete substrata elements
occasionly display a roughly spherical configuration which, in
presence of suitable gravitational and other effects, lends itself to
combined translatory and rotary motion One notices in such caes an
absence of the otherwise typical accretion of byrophyta; we therefore
conclude that A ROLLING STONE GATHERS NO MOSS.

CANADA BILL JOHNE'S MOTTO

It's morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.

CHEOP'S LAW

Nothing EVER gets built on schedule or within budget.

^L
FROM THE NOTEBOOKS OF LAZARUS LONG

Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done and why.
Then do it.

If it can't be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion.

Most 'scientists' are bottle washers and button sorters.

An elephant: a mouse built to government specifications.

The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And
vice versa.

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.

The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science
requires reasoning, while those other subjects require merely
scholarship.

Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts
often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge the more likely
they are to think so.

Natural laws have no pity.

Climate is what we expect. Weather is what we get.

A committee is a life form with six or more legs and no brain.

THE GIGO LAW

Deductive logic is tautological; there is no way to get a new truth out of
it, and it manipulates false statements as readily as true ones. If you
fail to remember this, it can trip you --- with perfect logic. This is
known as 'Garbage In --- Garbage Out'.

^L
Care of Omni Mag.:

1) Hofstadter's Law: "It always takes longer than you expect, even when you
take Hofstadter's Law into account."

2) Morton's Law: "If rats are experimented upon, they will develop cancer."

3) Epstein's Axiom: "With extremely few exceptions, nothing is worth
the trouble."

4) Mathis' Rule: "It is bad luck to be superstitious."

5) Laura's Law: "No child throws up in the bathroom."

6) "If there is a opinion, facts will be found to support it."
-- Judy Sproles.

7) "Rich folks get more strokes." -- Greg Beil.

8) "If A = B and B = C, then A = C except where void or prohibited by law".
-- Roy Santoro.

9) Preudhomme's Law of Window Cleaning: "It's on the other side."
-- Doug Preudhomme

10) "Anything that happens enough times to irritate you will happen at
least once more." -- Tom Parkins

11) 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."
-- Ely Slick

12) The two 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!'"

13) (Sam) Goldwyn's Law: "A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's
printed on."

14) (Murray) Gell-Mann's Law: "Whatever isn't forbidden is required; thus, if
if there's no reason why something shouldn't exist, then it
must exist."

15) (Mark) Twain's Rule: "Only kings, editors, and people with tapeworms
have the right to use the editorial 'we'."

16) "Bodies in motion tend to remain in motion. Bodies at rest tend to
remain in bed." -- Dave Tewksbury

17) "The probability of someone watching you is proportiox'h:a t/VL4hhhhhPtupidity of your action." -- A. Kindsvater

18) "Infl\a.ki 86YYV:le proportional to the cost of the periodical
that reports it." -- Jack Rosenberg