Monkey 1: I heard Tom Wolfe is speaking at Lincoln Center.
Monkey 2: (sign language)
Monkey 1: Well of course we’re going to throw poo at him!
Madagascar, 2005
Monkey 1: I heard Tom Wolfe is speaking at Lincoln Center.
Monkey 2: (sign language)
Monkey 1: Well of course we’re going to throw poo at him!
Madagascar, 2005
Of course, my existing device may be perfectly OK, and I could go another five or six years before a low battery causes that bulge in my chest to start beeping, telling me that it’s time for a replacement.
A problem close to my heart by Duncan Graham-Rowe in New Scientist, 2005 December 10
I thought I should seize the opportunity, because among my interests there is one thread which has preoccupied me for 20 years. Describing this kind of experience can surely yield insight, provided one remembers that it is a personal thread; science is woven from may such threads and is all the stronger when each thread is hard to trace in the finished fabric.
Elements of Interaction by Robin Milner in Communications of the ACM, 1993 January
Many books strive to create the illusion of usefulness.
Light Reading Gone Wild by Janet Maslin in The New York Times, 2005 December 9
I shall begin by explaining how I came to see that concurrency requires a fresh approach, not merely an extension of the repertoire of entities and constructions which explain sequential computing.
Elements of Interaction by Robin Milner in Communications of the ACM, 1993 January
In June this year, more than three years after I received my implant, I was sent a letter by my cardiologist informing me that the manufacturer of my defibrillator, the Indianapolis-based company Guidant, had issued a product recall.
A Problem Close to My Heart by Duncan Graham-Rowe in New Scientist, 2005 December 10
Such behavior from a company like Sony posed a problem for the security community and everyone else. It’s difficult to fight skilled hackers out for fun. It’s difficult to fight experienced, financially motivated criminal operations. But fighting a billion-dollar, corporate-funded hacking operation is impossible.
Explorations in Namespace: White-Hat Hacking Across the Domain Name System by Dan Kaminski in Communications of the ACM, 2006 June
Will Miller and Glenn Sparks, authors of a book entitled Refrigerator Rights, suggest that the lack of the very kind of intimacy refrigerator rights imply is the cause of the mental and emotional suffering of so many Americans.
Focus on the Fridge by Margaret Blackman in Gastronomica, 2005 Fall
In The New Hacker’s Dictionary under “superprogrammer,” we read that “productivity can vary from one programmer to another by three orders of magnitude.” I would argue that at least one of these factors of ten comes from the ability to quickly recognize what algorithms should be used to solve different parts of a problem and to find or write implementations of those algorithms that will result in an efficient program, given the available time and the characteristics of the problem. This ability is developed through experience and by understanding the highlights of the large body of algorithms and analysis of algorithms that has been developed to solve problems that occur over and over again in computer programs.
Mastering Algorithms with Perl by John Regehr in Slashdot, 1999 December 8
In speaking English, for example, it would not matter if I put a broad nasal twang on every vowel I uttered, because it does not make any difference to the meaning of what I am saying — it would just sound (to British ears, at any rate) as if I were an American, or had a cold.
Linguistics by David Crystal, 1971
Where computers race for faster calculations, mathematics races for more clever algorithms. An idea that cuts in half the number of steps is as good as a chip that doubles the speed.
Wavelets by Gilbert Strang in American Scientist, 1994 May-June
Sabbath was a realist, ferociously a realist, so that by sixty-four he had all but given up on making contact with the living, let alone discussing his problems with the dead.
Sabbath’s Theater by Philip Roth, 1995
I hate data structures; people can change them.
Croquet Presentation by Alan Kay at Stanford University, 2003 April 25
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace in The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster by Richard Brautigan, 1968
You know what I called that a long time ago? I called it “object-oriented programming.” Too bad C++ came along.
Croquet Presentation by Alan Kay at Stanford University, 2003 April 25
In a sense, what is being described here is not friendliness to the user, but friendliness to the user’s way of doing work.
Software Engineering Environments by Leon Osterwiel in IEEE Computer, 1981 April
Her real identity was no more my business than it was that of her clients. But almost two years later, I listened again to my tapes. In one section, late in the interview, in a part I hadn’t transcribed because it wasn’t important, she unguardedly said her daughter’s first name.
I got out my files. For some reason, I still had the model releases I had gotten the women to sign for Paolo that night. Jocelynne had signed only her first initial and had scrawled out her real last name in a nearly illegible hand. I could make out the first letter and a few possibilities for the next four. But if the daughter’s first name was real and the Texas A&M story true that might be enough. I went to the Texas A&M web site and began typing in names. Within five minutes, I had found Jocelynne’s daughter. I went to Facebook and there she was. She looked like Jocelynne, the wholesome co-ed version. She looked sweet. She had posted hundreds of pictures of herself, mostly wearing Aggie Sprint wear and posing with an arm around friends. Looking through her friends list, I found her little brother. She had recently written on his wall: “Congrats to my favorite Little League pitcher—you rule little bro!!!” Read More »
I believe progress comes from making our implmentation process and supporting tools so powerful that they will subsume design and analysis, thereby removing from the software construction process the “impedance mismatches” that are so detrimental to the quality of the final product.
The Conceptual Perspective by Bertran Meyer in IEEE Computer, 1996 January
Smoke is how robots express love.
Rapid Prototype Your Life by Bre Pettis at 25th Chaos Communication Congress, Berlin, 2008
As with many other operating system projects, the system we actually constructed disappointed us in several ways. It was larger, slower and considerably more complicated than we expected.
A Postmortem for a Time Sharing System by Howard Sturgis, Xerox PARC Technical Report CSL 74-1, 1974 January