Whistler’s Law: You never know who is right, but you always know who is in charge.

Whitehead’s Law: The obvious answer is always overlooked.

William’s Law: There is no mechanical problem so difficult that it cannot be solved by brute strength and ignorance.

Wood’s Axiom: As soon as a still-to-be-finished computer task becomes a life-or-death situation, the power fails.

Woodward’s Law: A theory is better than its explanation.

Zall’s Laws: First Law - Anytime you get a mouthful of hot soup, the next thing you do will be wrong. Second Law - How long a minute is, depends on which side of the bathroom door you’re on.

Zymurgy’s First Law Of Evolving System Dynamics Once you open a can of worms, the only way to recan them is to use a larger can.

Vuilleumier’s Laws For Building Electronic Prototypes: First Law - Any pre-cut equipment is too short; this is specially true of optic fiber cables with expensive connectors at both ends. Second Law - If n electronic components are required, n-1 are available. Third Law (also known as “Selective Gravitational Field”) - Any tool escaping manipulator’s hands will not necessarily follow Earth’s gravitational field, but will land in the most unreachable location in the prototype, smashing on its way the most expensive component of the prototype; this will know only one exception if the tool is particularly heavy, in which case it will land on the manipulator’s foot. Fourth Law - When proteup first, thankfully leaving the fuses intact. Fifth Law - Prototype npn blackboxes actually hold pnp transistors, and vice-versa. Sixth Law - A quartz oscillator oscillates at a frequency off the rated one by a minimum of 25%, if it does oscillate at all. Seventh Law - When the prototype has been fully assembled according to lab instructions, a minimum of 11 components are left.

Cutler Webster’s Law: There are two sides to every argument, unless a person is personally involved, in which case there is only one.

Weiler’s Law: Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn’t have to do the work.

Weinberg’s Corollary: An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while sweeping on to the grand fallacy.

Wethern’s Law: Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups.

Schemmer’s Law (Organization & Programs): When an organization faces a 20 year threat, it responds with 15-year programs, organized with 5-year plans, managed by 3-year directors, and funded by 1-year appropriations.

Simmons’s Law: The desire for racial integration increases with the square of the distance from the actual event.

SNAFU Equations: 1) Given any problem containing N equations, there will be N+1 unknowns. 2) An object or bit of information most needed will be least available. 3) Any device requiring service or adjustment will be least accessible. 4) Interchangeable devices won’t. 5) In any human endeavor, once you have exhausted all possibilities and fail, there will be one solution, simple and obvious, highly visible to everyone else. 6) Badness comes in waves.

Thoreau’s Theories Of Adaptation: 1) After months of training and you finally understand all of a program’s commands, a revised version of the program arrives with an all-new command structure. 2) After designing a useful routine that gets around a familiar “bug” in the system, the system is revised, the “bug” taken away, and you’re left with a useless routine. 3) Efforts in improving a program’s “user friendliness” invariable lead to work in improving user’s “computer literacy”. 4) That’s not a “bug”, that’s a feature!

Thyme’s Law: Everything goes wrong at once.

Universal Technical Document Units Law: Characteristics, specifications, dimensions, and any other data included in technical documents must be stated in exotic units, such as “tenth of troy once per barn” for pressures, or “acre times atmosphere per kilogram” for speeds.

Vail’s Second Axiom: The amount of work to be done increases in proportion to the amount of work already completed.

Rhode’s Corollary To Hoare’s Law: Inside every complex and unworkable program is a useful routine struggling to be free.

Ross’s Law: Bare feet magnetise sharp metal objects so they always point upwars from the floor-especially in the dark.

Rudin’s Law: In a crisis that forces a choice to be made among alternative courses of action, people tend to choose the worst possible course.

Rudnicki’s Nobel Prize Principle: Only someone who understands something absolutely can explain it so no one else can understand it.

Rule Of Accuracy: When working toward the solution of a problem it always helps you to know the answer.

Ryan’s Law: Make three correct guesses consecutively and you will establish yourself as an expert.

Sattinger’s Law: It works better if you plug it in.

Peter’s Principle: In every hierarchy, each employee tends to rise to the level of his incompetence.

Pudder’s Law: Anything that begins well will end badly. (Note: The converse of Pudder’s law is not true.)

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.

Putts-Brooks Law: Adding manpower to a late technology project only makes it later.

Quigley’s Law: Whoever has any authority over you, no matter how small, will attempt to use it.

Ralph’s Observation: It is a mistake to let any mechanical object realise that you are in a hurry. Corollary: On the way to the corner, any dropped tool will first strike your toes.

Reisner’s Rule of Conceptual Inertia: If you think big enough, you’ll never have to do it.

Peter’s Principle: In every hierarchy, each employee tends to rise to the level of his incompetence.

Pudder’s Law: Anything that begins well will end badly. (Note: The converse of Pudder’s law is not true.)

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.

Putts-Brooks Law: Adding manpower to a late technology project only makes it later.

Quigley’s Law: Whoever has any authority over you, no matter how small, will attempt to use it.

Ralph’s Observation: It is a mistake to let any mechanical object realise that you are in a hurry. Corollary: On the way to the corner, any dropped tool will first strike your toes.

Reisner’s Rule of Conceptual Inertia: If you think big enough, you’ll never have to do it.

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

Orben’s Packaging Discovery: For the first time in history, one bag of groceries produces two bags of trash.

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.

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

O’Toole’s Commentary On Murphy’s Law: Murphy was an optimist.

Parkinson’s Laws: First Law - Work expands to fill the time available for its completion. Second Law - Expenditures rise to meet income. Fourth Law - The number of people in any working group tends to increase regardless of the amount of work to be done. Law of Committees - The amount of time spent by a committee on an agenda item is inversely proportional to the cost of the item. Fifth Law - If there is a way to delay in important decision, the good bureaucracy, public or private, will find it. Sixth Law - Action expands to fill the void created by human failure.

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

Mencken’s Law: There is always an easy answer to every human problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.

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

Newlan’s Truism: An “acceptable” level of unemployment means that the government economist to whom it is acceptable still has a job.

Ninety-Ninety Rule Of Project Schedules: The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of the time, and the last ten percent takes the other ninety percent.

Nolan’s Placebo: An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance.

Nowlan’s Theory: He who hesitates is not only lost, but several miles from the next freeway exit.

Lieberman’s Law: Everybody lies, but it doesn’t matter, because nobody listens.

Logg’s Rebuttal to Gray’s Law: ‘n+1′ trivial tasks take twice as long as ‘n’ trivial tasks.

Lorenz’s Law of Mechanical Repair: After your hands become coated with grease, your nose will begin to itch.

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

Manly’s Maxim: Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.

Mason’s First Law of Synergism: The one day you’d sell your soul for something, souls are a glut.

May’s Law: The quality of correlation is inversely proportional to the density of control. (The fewer the data points, the smoother the curves.)

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.

Larkinson’s Law: All laws are basically false.

The Last One’s Law Of Program Generators: A program generator creates programs that are more “buggy” than the program generator.

Law Of The Perversity of Nature: You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter.

The Law Of The Too Solid Goof: In any collection of data, the figures that are obviously correct beyond all need of checking contain the errors. Corollary 1: No one you ask for help will see the error either. Corollary 2: Any nagging intruder, who stops by with unsought advice, will spot it immediately.

Robert E. Lee’s Truce: Judgement comes from experience; experience comes from poor judgement.