List of Laws


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.

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(2) If it does exist, it's out of date.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.

Baruch's Observation:
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Beifeld's Principle:
The probability of a young man meeting a desirable and receptive young female increases
by pyramidal progression when he is already in the company of:
(1) a date,
(2) his wife,
(3) a better looking and richer male friend.

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?"

Brewer's Observation:
No good deed goes unpunished.

Bucy's Law:
Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

Cahn's Axiom:
When all else fails, read the instructions.

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 Mum.

Churchill's Commentary on Man:
Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself
up and continue on.

Conway's Law:
In any organization, there will always be one person who knows what's going on; This
person must be fired.

Denniston's Law:
Virtue is its own punishment.

DeVries's Dilemma:
If you hit two keys on the typewriter, the one you don't want hits the paper.

Drew's Law of Highway Biology:
The first bug to hit a clean windshield lands directly in front of your eyes.

Ducharme's Precept:
Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment.

Fifth Law of Applied Terror:
If you are given an open-book exam, you will forget your book.

Fifth Law of Procrastination:
Procrastination avoids boredom; one never has the feeling that
there is nothing important to do.

Finagle's Creed:
Science is true. Don't be misled by facts.

Finagle's First Law:
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.

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

Finagle's Fourth Law:
Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes it worse.

Finster's Law:
A closed mouth gathers no feet.

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.

First Rule of History:
History doesn't repeat itself -- historians merely repeat each other.

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.

Fourth Law of Revision:
It is usually impractical to worry beforehand about interferences -- if you have none,
someone will make one for you.

Fresco's Discovery:
If you knew what you were doing you'd probably be bored.

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.

Ginsberg's Theorem:
1. You can't win.
2. You can't break even.
3. You can't even quit the game.

Glyme's Formula for Success:
The secret to success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made.

Gold's Law:
If the shoe fits, it's ugly

Goldenstern's Rules:
1. Always hire a rich attorney
2. Never buy from a rich salesman.

Gordian Maxim:
If a string has one end, it has another.

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.

Green's Law of Debate:
Anything is possible if you don't know what you're talking about.

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.

Hanson's Treatment of Time:
There are never enough hours in a day, but always too many
days before Saturday.

Harrisberger's Fourth Law of the Lab:
Experience is directly proportional to the amount of equipment
ruined.

Harrison's Postulate:
For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.

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.

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.

Hurewitz's Memory Principle:
The chance of forgetting something is directly proportional to
..... to ........ uh ..............

Johnson's Corollary:
Nobody really knows what is going on anywhere within the organization.

Kramer's Law:
You can never tell which way the train went by looking at the track.

Lieberman's Law:
Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter, cuz nobody listens.

Lynch's Law:
When the going gets tough, everyone leaves.

Meade's Maxim:
Always remember that you are absolutely unique, just like everyone else.

Muir's Law:
When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched
to everything else in the universe.

Munro's Law:
If what doesn't hurt, doesn't make you stronger, it may make you richer.

Naeser's Law:
You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it damnfoolproof.

O'Reilly's Law of the Kitchen:
Cleanliness is next to impossible

Oliver's Law of Location:
No matter where you go, there you are.

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.

Ralph's Observation:
It is a mistake to let any mechanical object realise that you
are in a hurry.

Sausage Principle:
People who love sausage and respect the law should never watch either one being made.

Stewart's law of Retroaction:
It's easier to get forgiveness than it is to get permission.

FIRST LAW OF ADVICE:
The correct advice to give is the advice that is desired.

FIRST LAW OF COMMUNICATION:
The purpose of the communication is to advance the communicator.

SECOND LAW OF COMMUNICATION:
The information conveyed is less important than the impression.

FIRST LAW OF INNOVATION MANAGEMENT:
Change is the status quo.

SECOND LAW OF INNOVATION MANAGEMENT:
Management by objectives is no better than the objectives.

THIRD LAW OF INNOVATION MANAGEMENT:
A manager cannot tell if he is leading an innovative mob or being chased by
it.

SECOND LAW OF DECISION MAKING:
Any decision is better than no decision.

THIRD LAW OF DECISION MAKING:
A decision is judged by the conviction with which it is uttered.

THIRD LAW OF SURVIVAL:
To protect your position, fire the fastest rising employees first.

FIFTH LAW OF DECISION MAKING:
Decisions are justified by the benefits to the organization,
but they are MADE by considering the benefits to the
decision-makers.

PARALLELS TO MURPHY'S LAW:
Anyone else who can be blamed should be blamed.
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong faster with computers.
Whenever a computer can be blamed, it should be blamed.

PUTTS-BROOKS LAW:
Adding manpower to a late technology project only makes it later.

Paul Dickson's THE OFFICIAL RULES, with its sequel THE OFFICIAL
EXPLANATIONS. I quote from "Gilb's Laws of Reliability":

(1) Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable.

(2) Any system which depends on human reliability is unreliable.

(3) The only difference between a fool and a criminal is that the fool will
attack a system unpredictably and on a broader front.

(4) A system tends to grow in complexity instead of simplicity, until the
resulting unreliability becomes intolerable.

(5) Self-checking systems tend to have a complexity in proportion to their
inherent unreliability.

(6) The error-detection and -correction capabilities of any system serve as a
key to understanding the types of errors it cannot handle.

(7) Undetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast to detectable
errors, which by definition are finite.

(8) All real programs contain errors until proved otherwise which is impossible.

(9) Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the probable
cost of errors, or until somebody insists on getting some useful work done.



Augustine's Laws

Norman R. Augustine, president and chief operating officer of Martin Marietta
has written a book (available in paperback) called "Augustine's Laws"in which
he succinctly sums up the pitfalls that confront business managers today.

LAW NUMBER I:
The best way to make a silk purse from a sow's ear is to begin
with a silk sow. The same is true of money.

LAW NUMBER II:
If today were half as good as tomorrow is supposed to be, it
would probably be twice as good as yesterday was.

LAW NUMBER III:
There are no lazy veteran lion hunters.

LAW NUMBER IV:
If you can afford to advertise, you don't need to.

LAW NUMBER V:
One-tenth of the participants produce over one-third of the
output. Increasing the number of participants merely reduces
the average output.

LAW NUMBER VI:
A hungry dog hunts best. A hungrier dog hunts even better.

LAW NUMBER VII:
Decreased business base increases overhead. So does increased
business base.

LAW NUMBER VIII:
The most unsuccessful four years in the education of a
cost-estimator is fifth grade arithmetic.

LAW NUMBER IX:
Acronyms and abbreviations should be used to the maximum
extent possible to make trivial ideas
profound...........Q.E.D.

LAW NUMBER X:
Bulls do not win bull fights; people do.
People do not win people fights; lawyers do.

LAW NUMBER XI:
If the Earth could be made to rotate twice as fast, managers
would get twice as much done. If the Earth could be made to
rotate twenty times as fast, everyone else would get twice as
much done since all the managers would fly off.

LAW NUMBER XII:
It costs a lot to build bad products.

LAW NUMBER XIII:
There are many highly successful businesses in the United
States. There are also many highly paid executives. The
policy is not to intermingle the two.

LAW NUMBER XIV:
After the year 2015, there will be no airplane crashes. There
will be no takeoffs either, because electronics will occupy
100 percent of every airplane's weight.

LAW NUMBER XV:
The last 10 percent of performance generates one-third of the
cost and two-thirds of the problems.

LAW NUMBER XVI:
In the year 2054, the entire defense budget will purchase just
one aircraft. This aircraft will have to be shared by the Air
Force and Navy 3-1/2 days each per week except for leap year,
when it will be made available to the Marines for the extra
day.

LAW NUMBER XVII:
Software is like entropy. It is difficult to grasp, weighs
nothing, and obeys the Second Law of Thermodynamics;i.e., it
always increases.

LAW NUMBER XVIII:
It is very expensive to achieve high unreliability. It is not
uncommon to increase the cost of an item by a factor of ten
for each factor of ten degradation accomplished.

LAW NUMBER XIX:
Although most products will soon be too costly to purchase,
there will be a thriving market in the sale of books on how to
fix them.

LAW NUMBER XX:
In any given year, Congress will appropriate the amount of
funding approved the prior yearplus three-fourths of whatever
change the administration requests -- minus 4-percent tax.

LAW NUMBER XXI:
It's easy to get a loan unless you need it.

LAW NUMBER XXII:
If stock market experts were so expert, they would be buying
stock, not selling advice.

LAW NUMBER XXIII:
Any task can be completed in only one-third more time than is
currently estimated.

LAW NUMBER XXIV:
The only thing more costly than stretching the schedule of an
established project is accelerating it, which is itself the
most costly action known to man.

LAW NUMBER XXV:
A revised schedule is to business what a new season is to an
athlete or a new canvas to an artist.

LAW NUMBER XXVI:
If a sufficient number of management layers are superimposed
on each other, it can be assured that disaster is not left to
chance.

LAW NUMBER XXVII:
Rank does not intimidate hardware. Neither does the lack of
rank.

LAW NUMBER XXVIII:
It is better to be the reorganizer than the reorganizee.

LAW NUMBER XXIX:
Executives who do not produce successful results hold on to
their jobs only about five years. Those who produce effective
results hang on about half a decade.

LAW NUMBER XXX:
By the time the people asking the questions are ready for the
answers, the people doing the work have lost track of the
questions.

LAW NUMBER XXXI:
The optimum committee has no members.

LAW NUMBER XXXII:
Hiring consultants to conduct studies can be an excellent
means of turning problems into gold -- your problems into
their gold.

LAW NUMBER XXXIII:
Fools rush in where incumbents fear to tread.

LAW NUMBER XXXIV:
The process of competitively selecting contractors to perform
work is based on a system of rewards and penalties, all
distributed randomly.

LAW NUMBER XXXV:
The weaker the data available upon which to base one's
conclusion, the greater the precision which should be quoted
in order to give the data authenticity.

LAW NUMBER XXXVI:
The thickness of the proposal required to win a multimillion
dollar contract is about one millimeter per million dollars.
If all the proposals conforming to this standard were piled on
top of each other at the bottom of the Grand Canyon it would
probably be a good idea.

LAW NUMBER XXXVII:
Ninety percent of the time things will turn out worse than you
expect. The other 10 percent of the time you had no right to
expect so much.

LAW NUMBER XXXVIII:
The early bird gets the worm.
The early worm....gets eaten.

LAW NUMBER XXXIX:
Never promise to complete any project within six months of the
end of the year -- in either direction.

LAW NUMBER XL:
Most projects start out slowly -- and then sort of taper off.

LAW NUMBER XLI:
The more one produces, the less one gets.

LAW NUMBER XLII:
Simple systems are not feasible because they require infinite
testing.

LAW NUMBER XLIII:
Hardware works best when it matters the least.

LAW NUMBER XLIV:
Aircraft flight in the 21st century will always be in a
westerly direction, preferably supersonic, crossing time zones
to provide the additional hours needed to fix the broken
electronics.

LAW NUMBER XLV:
One should expect that the expected can be prevented, but the
unexpected should have been expected.

LAW NUMBER XLVI:
A billion saved is a billion earned.

LAW NUMBER XLVII:
Two-thirds of the Earth's surface is covered with water. The
other third is covered with auditors from headquarters.

LAW NUMBER XLVIII:
The more time you spend talking about what you have been
doing, the less time you have to spend doing what you have
been talking about. Eventually, you spend more and more time
talking about less and less until finally you spend all your
time talking about nothing.

LAW NUMBER XLIX:
Regulations grow at the same rate as weeds.

LAW NUMBER L:
The average regulation has a life span one-fifth as long as a
chimpanzee's and one-tenth as long as a human's -- but four
times as long as the official's who created it.

LAW NUMBER LI:
By the time of the United States Tricentennial, there will be
more government workers than there are workers.

LAW NUMBER LII:
People working in the private sector should try to save money.
There remains the possibility that it may someday be valuable
again.

More of Murphy's Laws

* A clean tie attracts the soup of the day.

* A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.

* A free agent is anything but.

* As soon as the stewardess serves the coffee, the airline rencounters
turbulence.

* Exceptions always outnumber rules.

* Exceptions prove the rule ... and wreck the budget.

* Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

* For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.

* He who hesitates is probably right.

* If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.

* If enough data is collected, anyghing may be proven by statistical methods.

* If it says "one size fits all," it dosen't fit anyone.

* If only one price can be obtained for a quotation, the price will be
unreasonable.

* If somthing is confidential, it will be left in the copier machine.

* Interchangable parts won't.

* Life can be only understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.

* Love letters, business contracts and money due you always arrive three
weeks late, whereas junk mail arrives the day it was sent.

* Never ask the barber if you need a haircut or a salesman if his is a good
price.

* Never do card tricks for the group you play poker with.

* No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in
session.

* No matter which way you go, it's uphill and against the wind.

* No one is listening until you make a mistake.

* One child is not enough, but two children are far too many.

* People who love sausage and respect the law should never watch either of
them being made.

* Progress is made on alternative Fridays.

* Quality assurance dosen't.

* Success always occurs in private, and failure in full view.

* The bag that breaks is the one with the eggs.

* The book you spent $20.95 for today will come out in paperback tomorrow.

* The colder the X-ray table, the more of your body is required on it.

* The hardness of the butter is in direct proportion to the softness of the
butter.

* The hidden flaw never remains hidden.

* The ideal resume will turn up one day after the position is filled.

* The least experienced fisherman always catches the biggest fish.

* The more an item costs, the farther you have to send it for repairs.

* The one item you want is never the one on sale.

* The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the reach.

* The telephone will ring when you are outside the door, fumbling for your
keys.

* The tough part of a Data Processing Manager's job is that users don't really
know what they want, but they know for certain what they don't want.

* To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research

* To succeed in politics, it is often necessary to rise above your principles.

* Trust everybody ... then cut the cards.

* Two wrongs are only the beginning.

* When reviewing your notes for a test, the most important ones will be
illegible.

* When there are sufficient funds in the checking account, checks take two
weeks to clear. When there are insufficient funds, checks clear overnight.

* When you drop change at a vending machine, the pennies will fall nearby,
while all other coins will roll out of sight.

* Work is accomplished by those employees who have not reached their level
of
incompetence.

* You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.

* You never want the one you can afford.