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Computer literacy is a contact with the activity of computing deep enough to make the computational equivalent of reading and writing fluent and enjoyable. As in all the arts, a romance with the material must be well under way. If we value the lifelong learning of arts and letters as a springboard for personal and societal growth, should any less effort be spent to make computing a part of our lives?-- Alan Kay (``Computer Software'', Scientific American)
(A)bort (R)etry (T)oss computer across room?
Guru, n: A computer owner who can read the manual.
Computer Science without FORTRAN and COBOL is like birthday cake without ketchup and mustard.
Real Programmers never work from 9 to 5. If any real programmer is around at 9 a.m., it's because they were up all night.-- Some computer geek
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.
All New: The software is not compatible with any previous version.
On an American Airlines package of nuts: Instructions: Open package, eat nuts.
"The first 80% of software development is the easy part. The hard part is the next 80%"
There's a common component of scientific thought which says that a) if you're not a convicted Scientist then you can't get involved in discussions about Science and b) Science is all about Progress and means that things will always get better if Scientists are in Control.-- Neil Lewis
Murphy's Eleventh Law of Computing:
A computer program will follow your orders, but rarely your intentions.
Computers save man a lot of guesswork, but then, so do bikini's.
"There is nothing wrong with the software that rm won't cure."-- Arnie Romo
Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window.-- Steve Wozniak
"If houses were built the way software is built,
the first woodpecker would bring down civilization."
"That's the trouble with women these days. They act like men and want to be treated like women" (An American in Paris)
Traditionally, emotional and social problems have been judged as the moral shortcomings of an individual. Someone suffering from a psychiatric illness or an addiction is rarely viewed as a person who has a disorder or who is taxed by overwhelming circumstances. Instead the affliction is becomes a metaphor for a host of evils; it serves a testimony of the individual's unworthiness, a cause for condemnation.-- Ellen L. Bassuk ("Scientific American", December 1991)
No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.-- H. L. Mencken
What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?-- Marilyn Pittman
98% of us Americans are hard-working people. It's the other 2% that give us a bad reputation. Then again, we did elect them.
"The computer world is like a great big toy store. But all the toys are broken."-- Steve Witham
On-line, adj: The idea that a human being should always be accessible to a computer.
The American public knows what it wants, and deserves to get it good and hard.-- H. L. Mencken
Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will piss on your computer.
"Our American professors like their literature clear, cold, pure and very dead."-- Sinclair Lewis
"Fast, fat computers breed slow, lazy programmers."-- Robert Hummel
"In America--as elsewhere--free speech is confined to the dead."-- Mark Twain
"The computer programmer is a creator of universes for which he alone is responsible. Universes of virtually unlimited complexity can be created in the form of computer programs."-- Joseph Weizenbaum
Nobody's gonna believe that computers are intelligent until they start coming in late and lying about it.
"The main differences between a computer salesman and a used car salesman is that the used car salesman can probably drive and knows when he's lying."-- Peter da Silva
Artificial Intelligence: the art of making computers that behave like the ones in movies.-- Bill Bulko
We may begin to see reality differently simply because the computer ... provides a different angle on reality.-- Heinz Pagels
"I really didn't foresee the Internet. But then, neither did the computer industry. Not that that tells us very much of course - the computer industry didn't even foresee that the century was going to end."-- Douglas Adams
"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress."-- Mark Twain
Well, there's a quantum computer that can factor [the number] 15, so those of you using 4-bit RSA should worry.-- Bruce Schneier
Bagdikian's Observation:
Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach's 'St. Matthew Passion' on a ukelele.
"Confronted with the choice, the American people would choose the policeman's truncheon over the anarchist's bomb.-- Spiro T. Agnew
"The most overlooked advantage to owning a computer is that if they foul up, there's no law against whacking them around a little."-- Porterfield
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.-- Edsger Dijkstra
The commercial availability of software to check spelling, grammar, and style does serve quite well as a form of stupidity tax.-- Amanda Walker
That seems to point up a significant difference between Europeans and Americans. A European says: "I can't understand this, what's wrong with me?" An American says: "I can't understand this, what's wrong with him?"-- Terry Pratchett (alt.fan.pratchett)
"America wasn't founded so that we could all be better. America was founded so we could all be anything we damn well please."-- P.J. O'Rourke
"People can travel great distances on a computer, so why can't we travel that way emotionally?"-- Tori Amos
In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take.-- Adlai Stevenson
In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs forever and ever.-- Oscar Wilde
Imaginative writers are valuable colleagues and their testimony is to be rated very highly because they draw on sources that we have not yet made accessible to science. The portrayal of the psychic life of human beings is, of course, the imaginative writer's most special demand. He has always been the forerunner of science and thus scientific psychology, too.-- Sigmund Freud
You can tell how far we have to go when FORTRAN is the language of supercomputers.-- Steven Feiner
Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft ... and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.-- Wernher von Braun
He's come up with half of the algorithms used in the 20th century, but wouldn't actually recognize an actual computer if you dropped it on him.-- Jason Riek (about Dana Scott)
"We are the flaming, exploding, CGI-movie saturated MTV generation after all. If it isn't bright pink and green, naked, on fire and computer animated, I just yawn and walk away." (Someone on Slashdot)
"In America sex is an obsession; in other parts of the world it is a fact."-- Marlene Dietrich
Dustin Pons, an American high-school student who attended a Soviet school for three weeks, as quoted in the New York Times: "American teenagers are more socially advanced. For instance, in their free time Soviets would rather read a book or walk in the park or play the piano. American teenagers would probably go out and watch TV, go to a movie, or something more actively inclined." ("The Progressive")
"A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention in human history, with the possible exception of handguns and tequila."-- Mitch Radcliffe
Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer.-- Fred Brooks
All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.-- Carl Sagan
Little Johnny was a scientist.
Little Johnny is no more.
For what he thought was H2O
was H2SO4.
I try to make computers say things like "You have 60 seconds to achieve safe distance".-- Terry Pratchett
America was founded by drug smugglers -- rum was the drug, but smugglers nonetheless.
Those parts of the system that you can hit with a hammer are called hardware; those program instructions that you can only curse at are software.-- Richard P. Brennan
"Buying the right computer and getting it to work properly is no more complicated than building a nuclear reactor from wristwatch parts in a darkened room using only your teeth."-- Dave Barry
PROGRAM, n.: A magic spell cast over a computer allowing it to turn one's input into error messages. v. tr.: To engage in a pastime similar to banging one's head against a wall, but with fewer opportunities for reward.
If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee -- that will do them in.-- Bradley's Bromide
Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done.-- Andy Rooney
In America you can go on the air and kid the politicians, and the politicians can go on the air and kid the people.-- Groucho Marx
I don't understand men, women, sheep, grass, or computers. Understanding is for those too weak to handle confusion.-- Stevie Ulrich
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
For a long time it puzzled me how something so expensive, so leading edge, could be so useless, and then it occurred to me that a computer is a stupid machine with the ability to do incredibly smart things, while computer programmers are smart people with the ability to do incredibly stupid things. They are, in short, a perfect match.-- Bill Bryson
America is like a melting pot. The people at the bottom get burned, and the scum floats to the top.
If you sat a million monkeys down at a million computers, they might just come up with a great... Oh wait... we're already doing that.-- J.P. Styskal
No, you may not speak freely. This is America. We have a high moral hypocrisy to uphold.-- Shannon Thomas Pricket
"It doesn't require any particular bravery to stand on the floor of the Senate and urge our boys in Vietnam to fight harder, and if this war mushrooms into a major conflict and a hundred thousand young Americans are killed, it won't be U. S. Senators who die. It will be American soldiers who are too young to qualify for the senate."
-- George McGovern
Hindsight is an exact science.
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music."-- Kristian Wilson (Nintendo Inc. 1989)
"I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image."-- Stephen Hawking
Scientists find wonder in everything, except extremely dull papers on quality assurance.
-- Telo (#xkcd)
The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them we are missing.-- Gamel Abdel Nasser
"Americans have different ways of saying things. They say 'elevator', we say 'lift' ... they say 'President', we say 'stupid psychopathic git'...."-- Alexi Sayle
"In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from."-- Peter Alexander Ustinov
"America has been discovered before, but it has always been hushed up."-- Oscar Wilde
"Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada, while Canadians are malevolently well informed about the United States."-- J. Bartlett Brebner
"I was recently on a tour of Latin America, and the only regret I have is that I didn't study my Latin harder in school so I could converse with those people."-- Dan Quayle
"The trouble with us in America isn't that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has turned to advertising copy."-- Louis Kronenberger
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."-- Theodore Roosevelt
Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh only 1 1/2 tons. (Popular Mechanics, March 1949)