The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come read more

The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents.

What goes up must come down. Ask any system administrator.

What goes up must come down. Ask any system administrator.

For a smart material to be able to send out a more complex signal it needs to be nonlinear. If read more

For a smart material to be able to send out a more complex signal it needs to be nonlinear. If you hit a tuning fork twice as hard it will ring twice as loud but still at the same frequency. That's a linear response. If you hit a person twice as hard they're unlikely just to shout twice as loud. That property lets you learn more about the person than the tuning fork. - When Things Start to Think, 1999.

Usenet is like Tetris for people who still remember how to read.

Usenet is like Tetris for people who still remember how to read.

I have a spelling checkerIt came with my PC;It plainly marks four my revueMistakes I cannot sea.I've run this poem read more

I have a spelling checkerIt came with my PC;It plainly marks four my revueMistakes I cannot sea.I've run this poem threw it,I'm sure your pleased too no,Its letter perfect in it's weigh,My checker tolled me sew.

Hardly a year passes that fails to find a new, oft-times exotic, research method or technique added to the armamentarium read more

Hardly a year passes that fails to find a new, oft-times exotic, research method or technique added to the armamentarium of political inquiry. Anyone who cannot negotiate Chi squares, assess randomization, statistical significance, and standard deviations is less than illiterate; he is preconscious.

FORTRAN --'the infantile disorder'--, by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in read more

FORTRAN --'the infantile disorder'--, by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is now too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use.
PL/I --'the fatal disease'-- belongs more to the problem set than to the solution set.
It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offence.
APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of the future for the programming techniques of the past: it creates a new generation of coding bums.

We seem to have a compulsion these days to bury time capsules in order to give those people living in read more

We seem to have a compulsion these days to bury time capsules in order to give those people living in the next century or so some idea of what we are like.

I assert that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and the noblest driving force behind scientific research.

I assert that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and the noblest driving force behind scientific research.