Murphy's Computer Laws
1. No matter how many resources you have, it is never enough.
2. Any cool program always requires more memory than you have.
3. When you finally buy enough memory, you will not have enough disk space.
4. Disks are always full. It is futile to try to get more disk space. Data expands to fill any void.
5. If a program actually fits in memory and has enough disk space, it is guaranteed to crash.
6. If such a program has not crashed yet, it is waiting for a critical moment before it crashes.
7. No matter how good of a deal you get on computer components, the price will always drop immediately after the purchase.
8. All components become obsolete.
9. The speed with which components become obsolete is directly proportional to the price of the component.
10. Software bugs are impossible to detect by anybody except the end user.
Murphy's Hardware Laws
1. The maintenance engineer will never have seen a model quite like yours before.
2. It is axiomatic that any spares required will have just been discontinued and will be no longer in stock.
3. Any VDU, from the cheapest to the most expensive, will protect a twenty cent fuse by blowing first.
4. Any manufacturer making his warranties dependent upon the device being earthed will only supply power cabling with two wires.
5. If a circuit requires n components, then there will be only n - 1 components in locally-held stocks.
6. A failure in a device will never appear until it has passed final inspection.
Murphy's Laws on Technology
1. You can never tell which way the train went by looking at the track.
2. Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.
3. Technology is dominated by those who manage what they do not understand.
4. An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing.
5. 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.
6. All great discoveries are made by mistake.
7. The first myth of management is that is exists.
8. A failure will not appear until the unit has passed final inspection.
9. Nothing motivates a man more than to see his boss putting in an honest day's work.
10. Some people manage by the book, even they don't know who wrote the book, or even what book.
11. To spot the expert, pick the one who predicts the job will take the longest and cost the most.
12. After all is said and done, a hell of a lot more is said than done.
13. Any system which depends on human reliability is unreliable.
14. The only perfect science is hindsight.
15. If it's not in the computer, it doesn't exist.
16. When all else fails, read the instructions.
17. 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.
18. When any instrument is dropped, it will roll into the least accessible corner.
19. Any simple theory will be worded in the most complicated way.
20. The degree of technical competence is inversely proportional to the level of management.
21. Build a system that even a fool can use and only a fool will want to use it.
22. After all is said and done, a lot more is said than done.
23. 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.
24. If you can't understand it, it is intuitively obvious.
25. If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
26. The degree of technical competence is inversely proportional to the level of management.
