Computer Quotes - page 20

For over a decade prophets have voiced the contention that the organization of a single computer has reached its limits and that truly significant advances can be made only by interconnection of a multiplicity of computers in such a manner as to permit cooperative solution. Variously the proper direction has been pointed out as general purpose computers with a generalized interconnection of memories, or as specialized computers with geometrically related memory interconnections and controlled by one or more instruction streams. Demonstration is made of the continued validity of the single processor approach and of the weaknesses of the multiple processor approach in terms of application to real problems and their attendant irregularities . (Gene Amdahl)
I have a real problem when people say, "Well I walked by and you should have seen what was on the computer screen." Well, don't look, sweetie. It's none of your business. Avert your eyes. View quote
Judith Krug
The word user is the word used by the computer professional when they mean idiot. View quote
Dave Barry
To better understand why you need a personal computer, let's take a look at the pathetic mess you call your life. View quote
Dave Barry
You know, one of these things that happened in the '60s and '70s was this confluence of, sort of, a counter-culture with computer culture. View quote
Walter Isaacson
My instructors in science and technology have taught us about how the brain works. It's full of electrical impulses. It's like a computer. If you stimulate one part of the brain with an electrode, it... - They know nothing. View quote
Lois Lowry
The only legitimate use of a computer is to play games. View quote
Eugene Jarvis
I am absolutely prepared to talk about the spiritual life of an electronic computer: to state that it is reflecting or is in a bad mood... The question whether the machine really feels or ponders, or whether it merely looks as though it did, is of course absolutely meaningingless. View quote
Niels Bohr
A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human. View quote
Alan Turing
If one wants to make a machine mimic the behaviour of the human computer in some complex operation one has to ask him how it is done, and then translate the answer into the form of an instruction table. Constructing instruction tables is usually described as "programming." View quote
Alan Turing
A digital computer can usually be regarded as consisting of three parts: (i) Store. (ii) Executive unit. (iii) Control. ...The executive unit is the part which carries out the various individual operations involved in a calculation. ...It is the duty of the control to see that...[the table of] instructions are obeyed correctly and in the right order. ...A typical instruction might say-"Add the number stored in position 6809 to that in 4302 and put the result back into the latter storage position." Needless to say it would not occur in the machine expressed in English. It would more likely be coded in a form such as 6809430217. Here 17 says which of various possible operations [add] is to be performed on the two numbers. ...It will be noticed that the instruction takes up 10 digits and so forms one packet of information... (Alan Turing)
I had written a beautiful piece for today. It was a rant about how much I despise Halloween. It was witty, well-written and a shining example of a writer at the top of his form. Then I tried to save it, and my computer crashed. So I guess you won't get to read it. Out of all the people in the world, I am the only one who had the opportunity to read my brilliant Halloween article, and now the text is already fading from my cruel, cruel short-term memory, the paragraphs lost in a whirling sea of data, never to be seen again. View quote
Ben Croshaw
We've learned that you should never trust English professors who stick computer chips in their arms, breakfast cereal mascots, Stephen King, the Borg collective, vegetarians, Christians, Microsoft Word helpers and people who put five exclamation marks on the ends of their statements. View quote
Ben Croshaw
On the bright side, however, it means I get to stay at home and stare at a computer screen all day as opposed to go to work and stare at a computer screen all day. View quote
Ben Croshaw
I think the combination of graduate education in a field like Computer Science and the opportunity to apply this in a work environment like Microsoft is what drove me. The impact these opportunities create can lead to work that has broad, worldwide impact. View quote
Satya Nadella
I have met bright students in computer science who have never seen the source code of a large program. They may be good at writing small programs, but they can't begin to learn the different skills of writing large ones if they can't see how others have done it. In any intellectual field, one can reach greater heights by standing on the shoulders of others. But that is no longer generally allowed in the software field-you can only stand on the shoulders of the other people in your own company. View quote
Richard Stallman
It is unfortunate that he still has nonfree software in his computer. He needs to defenestrate it (which means, either throw Windows out of the computer or throw the computer out of the window). View quote
Richard Stallman
People could no longer learn hacking the way I did, by starting to work on a real operating system, making real improvements. In fact, in the 1980s I often came across newly graduated computer science majors who had never seen a real program in their lives. They had only seen toy exercises, school exercises, because every real program was a trade secret. They never had the experience of writing features for users to really use, and fixing the bugs that real users came across. The things you need to know to do real work. View quote
Richard Stallman
Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died. View quote
Richard Stallman
It is absolutely critical that we understand this is not just a challenge, it's an opportunity, because if we create a new energy economy, we can create five million new jobs, easily, here in the United States. It can be an engine that drives us into the future the same way the computer was the engine for economic growth over the last couple of decades. And we can do it, but we're going to have to make an investment. The same way the computer was originally invented by a bunch of government scientists who were trying to figure out, for defense purposes, how to communicate, we've got to understand that this is a national security issue, as well. And that's why we've got to make some investments and I've called for investments in solar, wind, geothermal. View quote
Barack Obama
We flood communities with so many guns that it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than get his hands on a computer or even a book. (Barack Obama)
There was a recognition by all who participated in these reviews that the challenges to our privacy do not come from government alone. Corporations of all shapes and sizes track what you buy, store and analyze our data, and use it for commercial purposes; that's how those targeted ads pop up on your computer and your smartphone periodically. But all of us understand that the standards for government surveillance must be higher. Given the unique power of the state, it is not enough for leaders to say: Trust us, we won't abuse the data we collect. For history has too many examples when that trust has been breached. Our system of government is built on the premise that our liberty cannot depend on the good intentions of those in power; it depends on the law to constrain those in power. View quote
Barack Obama
Top down hierarchies make communication work when it is expensive, I hope that wiki can be a flagship in this move in the industry to produce computer support for this kind of work and evolve organizational forms. View quote
Ward Cunningham
Before wikis, computer writing was all about the words. The computer could help you type them, spell them, hyphenate them, size them, shape them, and align them. But when it came to developing your thought, well, you were on your own. View quote
Ward Cunningham
I love computer graphics, but every system I've seen to try to turn programming into pictures has lost that syntactic element. There's something about syntax that makes it very precise for reading. I love photography. A photograph will tell a story. But words tell a story even better. Words are more versatile. You can paint a verbal picture that's much richer than you can photograph. View quote
Ward Cunningham