Some nice quotes
Posted 1998-07-05 21:54. Tagged quote.
Some statments that I feel is worth preserving.
My swedish page of quotes contain other quotes, not translations. It might be worth it to check out both.
There are only 3 things you can sell on the web: Eyeballs (advertising) Atoms (physical products) and Bits (the online experience itself). Only in the case of Bits is the economy geared exclusively to the quality of the online experience, and that’s the direction I’d like to head in.
– Scott McCloud, in his FAQ
The connection between the language in which we think / program and the problems and solutions we can imagine is very close. For this reason restricting language features with the intent of eliminating programmer errors is at best dangerous.
Microsoft and McDonald’s are alike. They don’t make the best, but they make the most. That is reason enough to avoid them both.
A Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer is to computing what a McDonalds Certified Food Specialist is to fine cuisine.
Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
– Anatole France
Last month I discussed BSD’s place in the UNIX community, and compared it to politics: System V on the right, Linux on the left, and BSD in the centre. This comparison was not intended to be definitive, but rather to arouse thought and discussion. I didn’t get much discussion, but Kirk McKusick came up with one comment, in an unrelated context: when asked about copyright and the GNU/Linux alternative “copyleft”, he stated that BSD had something more like a “copycenter”: the attitude is “Take this, go down to the copy center, and make as many copies as you like”. My case rests.
– grog@FreeBSD.org
I went to my first computer conference at the New York Hilton about 20 years ago. When somebody there predicted the market for microprocessors would eventually be in the millions, someone else said, “Where are they all going to go? It’s not like you need a computer in every doorknob!”
Years later, I went back to the same hotel. I noticed the room keys had been replaced by electronic cards you slide into slots in the doors.
There was a computer in every doorknob.
– Danny Hillis
A novice was trying to fix a broken lisp machine by turning the power off and on. Knight, seeing what the student was doing spoke sternly,
“You cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong.”
Knight turned the machine off and on. The machine worked.
The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them.
– Wind, Sand, Stars, Antoine De Saint-Exupery
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it’s just the opposite.
– J.K. Galbraith
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
– Bertrand Russell
Me? Feelings? Listen, just because a lumberjack has fellings; a dentist has fillings; a stuntman, fallings; a loser has failings; a clown has foolings; the clericists, filings; the pervert has foulings …
– Bruno
Yes, such toys are “unprofessional”. I wear my unprofessionalism as a badge of honor. Professionalism has no place in art, and hacking is art. Software Engineering might be science; but that’s not what I do. I’m a hacker, not an engineer.
– Jamie Zawinsky
Said to t.o. Guest tile of the week
Instead of trying to subvert Linux, what Gates should do is release the NT code and let the collective IQ of the Net fix it for him. He won’t do it, of course, which is why his company has just peaked. If you have Microsoft shares, prepare to sell them now.
– The Observer, Sunday November 8, 1998
Sorry, the article seems no longer to be availiable on the web
Well, you claim to know less, and I freely confess I know more. You know less, you like less, you prefer less, and the less there is of less, the less you like it, because the less there is of less the more it is more, and that less is better than more, because there is more to less, and more suffers due to it’s lack of being less. If I understand you, more is less, but that more is less than less, because less has more to offer than more. In some moebus-like fashion, more suits you less, and less suits you more.
Well, I must yield to your knowledge of less, cling to my knowledge of more, and since you cling to less and spurn more, I must leave you to your fate, more or less.
– unknown
Astrology is bogus. So is a bolt that is obviously about to break. So is someone who makes blatantly false claims to have solved a scientific problem. (This word seems to have some, but not all, of the connotations of random — mostly the negative ones.)
Deserves death! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.
– J. R. R. Tolkien
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
– Albert Einstein
Why do you people in the sciences always ask for so much funding for your labs? The math department only asks for paper, pencil and trash cans. And the philosophy department doesn’t even ask for trash cans.
– anonymous university dean
Every time you turn on your new car, you’re turning on 20 microprocessors. Every time you use an ATM, you’re using a computer. Every time I use a settop box or game machine, I’m using a computer. The only computer you don’t know how to work is your Microsoft computer, right?
– Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems, Inc.
from an April 1997 interview in Upside Magazine
Anyone who slaps a “this page is best viewed with Browser X” label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network.
– Tim Berners-Lee, in Technology Review, July 1996
You are responsible for any misinterpretation of your messages.
– User interface hall of shame
(no longer on the web)
There are but two ways of forming an opinion in science. One is the scientific method; the other, the scholastic. One can judge from experiment, or one can blindly accept autority. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is all-importand, and theory is merely a convenience in description, to be junked when it no longer fits. To the academic mind, authority is everything, and facts are junked when they do not fit theory laid down by authority.
– Life-Line, Robert A. Heinlein, 1939
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