quote: technology

  • On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], “Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?” I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. – Charles Babbage

  • Mostly, when you see programmers, they aren’t doing anything. One of the attractive things about programmers is that you cannot tell whether or not they are working simply by looking at them. Very often they’re sitting there seemingly drinking coffee and gossiping,or just staring into space. What the programmer is trying to do is get…

  • Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning. – Rich Cook

  • Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are. – Unknown

  • It’s so fast, it can do an infinite loop in thirty seconds. – Brian Bechtel(On the Macintosh IIfx.)

  • Be suspicious of anything that works perfectly – it’s probably because two errors are cancelling each other out. – Dave Bartley

  • The only truly secure system is one that is powered off, cast in a block of concrete and sealed in a lead-lined room with armed guards – and even then I have my doubts. – Unknown

  • If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside. – Unknown

  • Uncle Cosmo … why do they call this a word processor? It’s simple, Skyler … you’ve seen what food processors do to food, right? – Unknown

  • What’s “real time”? Here and now. As opposed to fake time which only occurs there and then. – Unknown

  • Every once in a while, it’s a good idea to call out, “Computer, end program”, just to check. – David Noelle

  • My computer goes down on me more often than my girlfriend. – Robert Paul