Orlowski Hardware Quotes

I assume that a sufficiently skilled will be able to do anything not explicitly forbidden by the hardware. ~ Bjarne Stroustrup

It has long been my personal view that the separation of practical and theoretical work is artificial and injurious. Much of the practical work done in computing, both in software and in hardware design, is unsound and clumsy because the people who do it have not any clear understanding of the fundamental design principles of their work. Most of the abstract mathematical and theoretical work is sterile because it has no point of contact with real computing. ~ Christopher Strachey

I always find myself stopping to write down ideas of things I'd like to make from computer hardware items to things new moms need - inventions to share with others to make their lives more fun or interesting or easy. ~ Lisa Loeb

The psyche's job is to keep us blissfully ignorant of who we are, what we think, and how we'll behave in any situation. We're all operating in a dense fog of mutual reinforcement. Our thoughts are shaped primarily by legacy hardware that evolved to assume that everyone else must be right. But even when the fog is pointed out, we're no better at navigating through it. ~ Richard Powers

To use a computer analogy, we are running twenty-first-century software on hardware last upgraded 50,000 years ago or more. This may explain quite a lot of what we see in the news. ~ Ronald Wright

Based on the above analyses, it is reasonable to expect the hardware that can emulate human-brain functionality to be available for approximately one thousand dollars by around 2020. As we will discuss in chapter 4, the software that will replicate that functionality will take about a decade longer. However, the exponential growth of the price-performance, capacity, and speed of our hardware technology will continue during that period, so by 2030 it will take a village of human brains (around one thousand) to match a thousand dollars' worth of computing. By 2050, one thousand dollars of computing will exceed the processing power of all human brains on Earth. Of course, this figure includes those brains still using only biological neurons. ~ Ray Kurzweil

Other girls carried tasers or pepper spray for safety. Rosa had bought herself a stapler in a hardware store on the corner of Baltic and Clinton Streets. Her thinking was simple. An electric shock is nasty but leaves no marks. With her method, though, she could put two or three staples into any attacker's body. Then he'd have to stop and decide whether to tangle with her or start getting the staples out of his skin. ~ Kai Meyer

You should never be able to reverse engineer a company's organizational chart from the design of its product. Can you figure out who reigns supreme at Apple when you open the box for your new iPhone? Yes. It's you, the customer; not the head of software, manufacturing, retail, hardware, apps, or the Guy Who Signs the Checks. That is exactly as it should be. ~ Eric Schmidt

We are as humans essentially products of our hardware - that is an insight that I've taken with me into the trading side. ~ Roy Niederhoffer

These men had not accepted the fact that culture and weaponry, or even culture and plumbing are not synonymous, and while a society may lag a hundred years behind in comforts and ethics, it may catch up in hardware in a human lifetime. ~ T.R. Fehrenbach

All the reasons that have made software so successful are beginning to happen with hardware. So much can be done so quickly, prototyped so rapidly, and the costs are so low. ~ Sam Altman

know, I have seen, the desperation and disorder of the powerless: how it twists the lives of children on the streets of Jakarta or Nairobi in much the same way as it does the lives of children on Chicago's South Side, how narrow the path is for them between humiliation and untrammeled fury, how easily they slip into violence and despair. I know that the response of the powerful to this disorder - alternating as it does between a dull complacency and, when the disorder spills out of its proscribed confines, a steady, unthinking application of force, of longer prison sentences and more sophisticated military hardware - is inadequate to the task. I know that the hardening of lines, the embrace of fundamentalism and tribe, dooms us all. And ~ Barack Obama

Reading computer manuals without the hardware is as frustrating as reading sex manuals without the software. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

The early researchers described em-tracking as a hardware upgrade for the nervous system, maybe the result of a genetic shift, possibly a fast adaptation, Studies revealed an assortment of cognitive improvements: acute perceptual sensitivity, rapid data acquisition, high speed pattern recognition. The biggest change was in future prediction. Normally, the human brain is a selfish prognosticator, built to trace an individual's path into the future. The em-tracker's brain offers a wider oracle, capable of following a whole culture's path into the future. ~ Steven Kotler

Imagine a computer. The monitor, keyboard, and processor are the hardware. Without any software to run it, your computer would be worthless. Your body is your hardware and your mindset is your operating system. It gives you access to the power of the hardware, and determines what software you can run. It lets you get the most out of your computer, allowing you to balance your checkbook and even create 3-D designs. Your mindset determines how you perceive and interact with the world. ~ Mike Cernovich

Still allergic to PowerPoints and formal presentations, he insisted that the people around the table hash out issues from various vantages and the perspectives of different departments.
Because he believed that Apple's great advantage was its integration of the whole widget- from design to hardware to software to content-he wanted all departments at the company to work together in parallel. The phrases he used were "deep collaboration" and "concurrent engineering." Instead of a development process in which a product would be passed sequentially from engineering to design to manufacturing to marketing and distribution, these various departments collaborated simultaneously. " Our method was to develop integrated products, and that meant our process had to be integrated and collaborative," Jobs said.
This approach also applied to key hires. He would have candidates meet the top leaders-Cook, Tevanian, Schiller, Rubinstein, Ive- rather than just the managers of the department where they wanted to work. " Then we all get together without the person and talk about whether they'll fit in," Jobs said. ~ Walter Isaacson

Influence is best measured not only by military hardware and GDP, but also by other people's perceptions that we, the United States, are using our power legitimately. That belief - that we are acting in the interests of the global commons and in accordance with the rule of law - is what the military would call a 'force multiplier.' ~ Samantha Power

The most amazing achievement of the computer software industry is its continuing cancellation of the steady and staggering gains made by the computer hardware industry. ~ Henry Petroski

We created Lyft because we want to establish a radically different concept of personal transportation. We want people to think of transportation as a service enabled by technology instead of as an expensive and large piece of hardware to own. ~ Logan Green

Well what would you have us do, Jason? Swan into a hardware store without any cash and say "give us your best rack or we'll set the adorable button-nosed robots on you for bunny-boiler death by cuddling?" Jared Thomas in Red Gods Sing ~ Trevor Barton

Even though most people won't be directly involved with programming, everyone is affected by computers, so an educated person should have a good understanding of how computer hardware, software, and networks operate. ~ Brian Kernighan

We need a wireless mobile device ecosystem that mirrors the PC/Internet ecosystem, one where the consumers' purchase of network capacity is separate from their purchase of the hardware and software they use on that network. It will take government action, or some disruptive technology or business innovation, to get us there. ~ Walt Mossberg

The suddenness of the leap from hardware to software cannot but produce a period of anarchy and collapse, especially in the developed countries. ~ Marshall McLuhan

Behind every small business, there's a story worth knowing. All the corner shops in our towns and cities, the restaurants, cleaners, gyms, hair salons, hardware stores - these didn't come out of nowhere. ~ Paul Ryan

A sudden jolt lifted his chair right into the air, and he saw that the floor below him had flipped up like a tin lid. All data through the hand interface cut out, then came an enormous shudder as the great ship again surfaced into the real. 'Jerusalem?' After a long pause the AI replied over intercom, 'My phasic modular B folderol.' 'Is it really?' Azroc enquired. 'Ipso facto total bellish.' 'Yes, mine is too.' 'Repairing.' Static hissed from the intercom, then came a sound suspiciously like someone kicking a piece of malfunctioning hardware. 'OK. Better. ~ Neal Asher

Here's the problem, when you're stargazing on a mountain top you are partially oxygen-deprived and you're in command of million dollars worth of hardware. So as much as I would like to sip wine under the stars, it's contraindicated in the instructions on operating telescopes. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

In designing hardware to be used every day, it was important to keep both the human aspects and the machine in mind. What looks good also often feels good. ~ Michael Graves

Technology is an inherent democratizer. Because of the evolution of hardware and software, you're able to scale up almost anything. It means that in our lifetime everyone may have tools of equal power. ~ Sergey Brin

The moon is a stone and the sky is full of deadly hardware, but oh God, how beautiful anyway. ~ Margaret Atwood

So when we go into a large hardware bid, there is usually a services component that is part of that. So as we enter these deals, we tend to talk about the capabilities and what else needs to be done, and from there the bid might expand beyond hardware to the services. ~ Kevin Rollins

While the hardware of civilization - iron pots, blankets, guns - was welcomed by Native people, the software of Protestantism and Catholicism - original sin, universal damnation, atonement, and subligation - was not, and Europeans were perplexed, offended, and incensed that Native peoples had the temerity to take their goods and return their gods. ~ Thomas King

It's hardware that makes a machine fast. It's software that makes a fast machine slow. ~ Craig Bruce

There will be an end point to how good TV pictures can get. The boob tube has hugely benefited from the rapid advance of digital electronics. Consequently, the strategy for hardware has changed. In the old days, sets had to be as simple as Elmer Fudd to keep them inexpensive. All the technical 'smarts' were at the transmitter end. ~ Seth Shostak

I get double-takes at the hardware store. I've had people say, 'I didn't know you did this.' With a celebrity, if folks don't see you, they think all you do is stay in the house. ~ Billy Williams

The voice I use is a very old hardware speech synthesizer made in 1986. I keep it because I have not heard a voice I like better and because I have identified with it. ~ Stephen Hawking

The NeXT purchase is too little too late. The Apple of the past was an innovative company that used software and hardware technology together to redefine the way people experienced computing. That Apple is already dead. Very adroit moves might be able to save the brand name. A company with the letters A-P-P-L-E in its name might survive, but it won't be the Apple of yore. ~ Nathan Myhrvold

What Do Women Want?"

I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what's underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I'm the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment
from its hanger like I'm choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I'll wear it like bones, like skin,
it'll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in. ~ Kim Addonizio

My first impulse, when presented with any spanking-new piece of computer hardware, is to imagine how it will look in ten years' time, gathering dust under a card table in a thrift shop. ~ William Gibson

When I was quite young, she was working in a hardware store, so I grew up knowing about hardware. ~ Elizabeth Moon

Universal education through schooling is not feasible. It would be no more feasible if it were attempted by means of alternative institutions built on the style of present schools. Neither new attitudes of teachers toward their pupils nor the proliferation of educational hardware or software (in classroom or bedroom), nor finally the attempt to expand the pedagogue's responsibility until it engulfs his pupils' lifetimes will deliver universal education. The current search for new educational funnels must be reversed into the search for their institutional inverse: educational webs which heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring. ~ Ivan Illich

With bundled machines you can throw away the hardware and keep the software, and it's still a good buy. ~ Adam Osborne

How many computer programmers does it take to change a light bulb? Are you kidding? That's a hardware problem! ~ Various

[Apple and RIM] are probably restricted, in some sense, to a certain maximum ... If you want to reach more people than that, you sort-of have to separate the hardware and the software issue. ~ Steve Ballmer