[Caz]

Famous computer related quotes

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at and repair.
—Douglas Adams
Mostly Harmless, 1992

There are two major products that came out of Berkeley: LSD and BSD. We don't believe this to be a coincidence.
—Jeremy S. Anderson

In a few minutes a computer can make a mistake so great that it would have taken many men many months to equal it.
—Anonymous

Never let a computer know you're in a hurry.
—Anonymous

The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at least until they've finished building it.
—Anonymous

Experts tell us that if the Millennium Bug is not fixed, when the year 2000 arrives, our financial records will be inaccurate, our telephone system will be unreliable, our government will be paralyzed and airline flights will be canceled without warning. In other words, things will be pretty much the same as they are now.
—Dave Barry, 1997
in Miami Herald

I am not the only person who uses his computer mainly for the purpose of diddling with his computer.
—Dave Barry, 1994
in Miami Herald

The function of RAM is to give us guys a way of deciding whose computer has the biggest, studliest, most tumescent MEMORY. This is important, because with today's complex software, the more memory a computer has, the faster it can produce error messages. So the bottom line is, if you're a guy, you cannot have enough RAM.
—Dave Barry
Dave Barry in Cyberspace, 1996

The Internet [is] a giant international network of intelligent, informed computer enthusiasts, by which I mean, "people without lives." We don't care. We have each other....While you are destroying your mind watching the worthless, brain-rotting drivel on TV, we on the Internet are exchanging, freely and openly, the most uninhibited, intimate and—yes—shocking details about our "CONFIG.SYS" settings.
—Dave Barry, 1994
in Miami Herald

Without computers, the government would be unable to function at the level of effectiveness and efficiency that we have come to expect....today's government uses computers which are capable of cranking out millions of documents per day without any regard whatsoever for their content, thereby freeing government employees for more important responsibilities, such as not answering their phones.
—Dave Barry
Dave Barry in Cyberspace, 1996

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.
—Nathaniel Borenstein

If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee—that will do them in.
—Bradley's Bromide

The difference between e-mail and regular mail is that computers handle e-mail, and computers never decide to come to work one day and shoot all the other computers.
—Jamais Cascio, 1995

If the automobile had followed the same development as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year killing everyone inside.
—Robert Cringely
in InfoWorld

Microsoft fears Intel is eventually going to create its own operating system and optimize its chips for its own OS, cutting Microsoft out of the picture. Kind of like what Microsoft allegedly does to people who write applications for Windows...
—John C. Dvorak, 1998
in PC Magazine

640K ought to be enough for anybody.
—Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, 1981

We're an information economy. They teach you that in school. What they don't tell you is that it's impossible to move, to live, to operate at any level without leaving traces, bits, seemingly meaningless fragments of personal information. Fragments that can be retrieved, amplified...
—William Gibson
"Johnny Mnemonic," Burning Chrome, 1986

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.
—Elbert Hubbard

There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.
—DEC Chairman Ken Olson, 1977

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 perhaps weigh 1-1/2 tons.
—Popular Mechanics, 1949

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

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

Microsoft isn't evil, they just make really crappy operating systems.
—Linus Torvalds
Author of Linux

I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.
—IBM Chairman Thomas Watson, 1943