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QuotationsSee also Humour and Slashdot Quotes A promising young executive at IBM was involved in a risky venture that lost $10 million for the company. When Tom Watson Sr., the founder and CEO of IBM, called the executive to his office, the executive tendered his resignation. Watson is reported to have said, "You can't be serious. We've just spent $10 million dollars educating you!" There has been a little distress selling on the stock exchange. Odes 1.11 - Wikisource, the free online library (where "carpe diem" is from) He who has the courage to laugh is almost as much a master of the world as he who is ready to die. Give a man a mask and he will show his true face. Be careful. People like to be told what they already know. Remember that. They get uncomfortable when you tell them new things. New things…well, new things aren’t what they expect. They like to know that, say, a dog will bite a man. That is what dogs do. They don’t want to know that man bites a dog, because the world is not supposed to happen like that. In short, what people think they want is news, but what they really crave is olds…Not news but olds, telling people that what they think they already know is true. Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. Each of these cults correspond to one of the two antagonists in the age
of Reformation. In the realm of the Apple Macintosh, as in catholic
Europe, worshipers peer devoutly into screens filled with "icons." All
is sound and imagery and Appledom. Even words look like decorative
filigree in exotic typeface. The greatest icon of all, the inviolable
Apple itself, stands in the dominate position at the upper-left corner
of the screen. A central corporate headquarters decrees the form of all
rites and practices. Infallible doctrine issues from one executive
officer whose selection occurs in a sealed board room. Should anyone in
his curia question his powers, the offender is excommunicated into outer
darkness. The expelled heretic founds a new company, mutters obscurely
of the coming age and the next computer, then disappears into silence,
taking his stockholders with him. The mother company forbids financial
competition as sternly as it stifles ideological competition; if you
want to use computer programs that conform to Apple's orthodoxy, you
must buy a computer made and sold by Apple itself. Do not seek death; death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment. Education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed. Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. "I found that eight or nine of every 10 articles published in the leading journals make the fatal substitution" of equating statistical significance to importance, [Stephen Ziliak] said in an interview. Ziliak’s data are documented in the 2008 book The Cult of Statistical Significance, coauthored with Deirdre McCloskey of the University of Illinois at Chicago. Even if you can deceive people about a product through misleading statements, sooner or later the product will speak for itself. "The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." "It is often easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission." "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." "Never memorize something that you can look up." Inception Quotes: Kicks, Sedatives and Limbo @ Slashdot Latin Proverbs (@ Wikiquote) "And comfort will never be comfortable enough for those who seek what is not on the market — or rather, that which the market eliminates." "When the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat everything as if it were a nail." — Abraham Maslow "One hundred percent of what is collected [in US federal income tax] is absorbed solely by interest on the federal debt. All individual income tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services taxpayers expect from government." "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else." "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun." Ecclesiastes 1:9 (NIV) Some people cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go. (After Barack Obama's Victory) "We wish you strength and fortitude in the challenging days and years that lie ahead." "Forty-five years ago Martin Luther King had a dream of an America where men and women would be judged not on the colour of their skin but on the content of their character. "Today what America has done is turn that dream into a reality." Roadside magpies (Score:5, Interesting) by kobotronic (240246) on Wednesday August 20, @06:41AM (#24670783) Watching the roadkill feeding magpies cooly walk around just behind the white road lines, you can tell they have worked out a pretty solid theory for how cars move and that they understand how the cars are dangerous hazards but nevertheless predictable and avoidable. Other birds simply take flight in panic and some don't even recognize cars as a hazard - dumb turkeys and pheasants dumbly just obliviously waddle out in traffic. In Tokyo crows - corvid relatives of magpies - have been observed figuring out how to exploit the traffic signal cycles. The crows drop nuts in the path of the cars, in the middle of the pedestrian crossings, and patiently sit overhead waiting for the light to change so they can go down and have a look and pick up the nuts crushed by the car tires. Maybe these crows developed a theory of cars as practical and dependable "thing crushers" - producing crispy roadkill and other delicious crush jobs. Fascinating birds. Waking Life "It's not necessarily passive to not respond verbally. "The world is an exam to see if we can rise into the direct experiences. |