Quotes, Sundry and Obscure


 
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 [1360] #profound
We've arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster.
     Carl Sagan
 
 
 [1333] #profound
<ttkei> pcre in C was pretty easy and straightforward, fifteen years ago
<ttkei> pcre2 seems a lot less straightforward
<qq> nothing is straightforward now
<qq> like for real, anything in computing that's simple or straightfoward is considered outdated :)
<ttkei> <-- outdated
     #atbot, 2020-08-18
 
 
 [1331] #profound
<phone> ah, this quip from a much longer thread about how to navigate covid19 news, really works in general:
<phone> Q: How to find your best sources?
<phone> A: People who say "we don't know" a lot
<phone> https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1281014305631109121.html
     #atbot, 2020-07-09
 
 
 [1317] #profound
One lesson has been beaten into me at this point.  "Ignoring the haters" is a bad strategy when they are not trying to seek your attention but trying to make you disappear.
https://medium.com/@therealsexycyborg/shenzhen-tech-girl-naomi-wu-part-3-defunding-deplatforming-and-detention-140fed4b9554
     Naomi Wu, 2019-11-07
 
 
 [1262] #profound
She was not easy to live with,
And often traumatic,
But the best things in life are not easy,
And a man must endure,
To be inured
To adversity
     anon
 
 
 [1246] #profound
<mmlj4> youth is wasted on the young
<Demon_Fox> No, it's wisdom that's wasted on the old.
     ##slackware, 2016-12-12
 
 
 [1229] #profound
<shonudo> neither a keeper nor a prisoner be
     ##slackware, 2016-08-09
 
 
 [1217] #profound
<geggam> americans argue over who gets to drive... UK types just want someone to drive
     ##slackware, 2016-03-23
 
 
 [1215] #profound
I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be.
     Alexander Hamilton, 1782-08-13
 
 
 [1205] #profound
"This telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." -- An internal Western Union memo, 1876
 
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." -- IBM chairman Thomas Watson, 1943
 
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." -- Ken Olson, founder, chairman & president of DEC, 1977
 
"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." -- Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
 
"Everything that can be invented has already been invented." -- Charles H. Duell, director of the U.S. Patent Office, 1899
 
"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." -- Kristin Wilson, Nintendo, Inc., 1989.
 
"A rocket will never be able to leave the earth's atmosphere." -- The New York Times, 1936
 
"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year." -- The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957
 
"But what is it good for?" -- Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.
 
"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?" -- David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.
 
"There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom." -- Nobel Prize-winning physicist Robert Milliken, 1923
 
"Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools." -- 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work.
 
"Television won't last because people will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night." -- Producer Darryl Zanuck, 20th Century Fox, 1946
 
"Well-informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires and that were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value." -- Boston Post, 1865
 
"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value." -- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.
 
"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction." -- Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872
 
"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon." -- Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873.
 
"You ain't going nowhere, son. You ought to go back to driving a truck." -- The Grand Ole Opry's Jim Denny to Elvis Presley, 1954
 
"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C', the idea must be feasible." -- A Yale University management professor in response to student Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)
 
"You'd better learn secretarial skills or else get married." -- Modeling agency, rejecting Marilyn Monroe in 1944
 
"Radio has no future." "X-rays are clearly a hoax". "The aeroplane is scientifically impossible." -- Royal Society president Lord Kelvin, 1897-99
 
"Forget it. No Civil War picture ever made a nickel." -- MGM executive, advising against investing in Gone With The Wind
 
"The atom bomb will never go off - and I speak as an expert in explosives." -- U.S. Admiral William Leahy in 1945
 
"Television won't matter in your lifetime or mine." -- Radio Times editor Rex Lambert
 
     Naysayers Gotta Nay
 
 
 [1204] #profound
To be scientifically literate is to empower yourself to know when someone else is full of bullshit.
     Neil deGrasse Tyson
 
 
 [1191] #profound
Never do something, when doing nothing is technically superior.
     -- Philosophies of Slackware
 
 
 [1187] #profound
He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
     Thomas Paine
 
 
 [1185] #profound
The majority of the stupid is invincible and guaranteed for all time.
The terror of their tyranny, however, is alleviated by their lack of consistency.
     Albert Einstein
 
 
 [1174] #profound
<cfedde> theory is closer to reality in theory than it is in reality.
     #perl, 2015-04-07
 
 
 [1104] #profound
I've started skimming Quora.com every so often... (and in another one of those many "small world" incidents that seem to rule my life, I ran across an old HS classmate that way). Today, there was a question that asked what it feels like to be old. There was a great answer from a guy who appears to have lived an amazingly rich life. He said:
 
"From time to time something reminds you of the past.
 
You remember things.
Mostly nice things.
There is a tendency to reminisce, meander, and ramble when talking and writing about the past, and I wonder if anyone is listening, reading, or caring much.
 
But _that_ is not feeling old, it's more like wondering if there isn't something better I could be doing.
 
There is of course, but I can't be bothered. _That's it._
 
When you get old you feel you can't be bothered because most things don't matter that much.
Or not as much as they used to.
Or not as much as they ever should have done.
 
I just wish I had known that then when I was younger."
 
And that very much rings true for me. Maybe not "I can't be bothered", but ... I feel like I have become more stoic as I have grown older. It's not that I don't feel passion, it's that the swings of passion doesn't rule me like they did when I was younger. It's not that don't feel insecurity, insecurity just doesn't have as much sway over me.
 
Life has changed from a sprint to a marathon... and my emotions no longer sprint from place to place. Instead, they pace themselves ... allowing me to find the right-fit response without the emotionally exhausting angst and "fits" (not exactly the right word, I wasn't prone to fits, but ... the overly emotional reactions is what I mean). Many of the things we think require emotional sprinting, in my experience, not only don't require an emotional sprint, they are better served by a more calm response.
 
It's not that I can't be bothered to react, it's that my reactions are much more measured.
 
     John Rudd, 2014-02-26
 
 
 [1095] #profound
There is an invisible world connected at the handle to every tool.  Use the tool as it is intended, and it fits you to the mold of all who do the same; disconnect the tool from that world, and you can set out to chart others.
     -- Hunter/Gatherer
 
 
 [1094] #profound
<Deke> 6: i've long said that Deng Xiaoping should be celebrated for being the guy who's brought more people out of abject poverty than anyone ever
<Deke> but Bill is 100% right...
<geoffk> although if you want the person who *reduced* the number of people in abject poverty the most, I think it's between Mao and Stalin
     #bitmines, 2014-01-24
 
 
 [1061] #profound
"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats."
     H.L. Mencken
 
 
 [1044] #profound
It is not what they take away from you that counts -- it's what you do with what you have left.
     Hubert H. Humphrey
 
 
 [1032] #profound
The only justification for our concepts and systems of concepts is that they serve to represent the complex of our experiences; beyond this they have not legitimacy.
     Albert Einstein
 
 
 [1022] #profound
Celestial navigation is based on the premise that the Earth is the center of the universe.  The premise is wrong, but the navigation works.  An incorrect model can be a useful tool.
     Kelvin Throop III
 
 
 [1005] #profound
There are two kinds of fools -- those who never climb Mt. Fuji, and those who climb it twice.
     Old Japanese proverb
 
 
 [1001] #profound
The camera will never be a threat to the brush and the palette until such time as photographs are allowed to be taken in heaven or hell.
     Edvard Munch
 
 
 
 
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