Squark Computer Quotes

Computers make excellent and efficient servants, but I have no wish to serve under them. ~ Leonard Nimoy

When the Mac first came out, Newsweek asked me what I [thought] of it. I said: Well, it's the first personal computer worth criticizing. So at the end of the presentation, Steve came up to me and said: Is the iPhone worth criticizing? And I said: Make the screen five inches by eight inches, and you'll rule the world. ~ Alan Kay

An international team of psychiatrists has flown to Redmond, WA in an attempt to discover exactly what makes Bill Gates tick. And, more especially, what makes him go cuckoo every half hour. ~ David Pogue

A fun thing to do to let off steam after layoffs began was to go into someone's office and send an email from their computer addressed to the entire agency. It might say something simple like "My name is Shaw-NEE! You are captured, Ha! I poopie I poopie I poopie." People came in in the morning and their reaction was so varied.
Jim Jackers read it and immediately sent out an email that we read, "Obviously someone come into my office last night and compossed an email in my name and sent it out to everyone. I apologise for any inconvenience or offence, although it wasn't my fault, and I would appreciate from whoever did this a public apology. I have read that email five times now and I still don't understand it. ~ Joshua Ferris

I heard a computer scientist the other day refer to playing with the Kinect as 'storytelling.' At first I thought that sounded a little high-minded, but after trying a few games I could see what she meant. ~ Susan Orlean

That's what I love about writing. Once you get the words down on paper, in print, they start to make sense. It's like you don't know what you think until it dribbles from your brain down your arm and into your hand and out through your fingers and shows up on the computer screen, and you read it and realize: That's really true; I believe that. ~ Ellen Wittlinger

Science, is the creation by humans of a particular paradigm and methodology for discovering truth and understanding reality. Hence it can never fully reflect the hidden face of humanity, its creator, in the same sense that a computer can never become fully human or know what it means to be human: however sophisticated, these machines will forever remain mere artifacts of humanity. ~ Stephen A. Diamond

But then one time, you track down an email address and you're near a computer with Internet access so you don't have that nice cushion and you type what you're feeling and press send before you have a chance to talk yourself out of it. And then you wait, and wait, and wait, and nothing comes back, so all those things you thought were so important to say, really, they weren't. They weren't worth saying at all. ~ Gayle Forman

Windows never planned for a VR device. When you plug a HDMI cable into the computer, Windows thinks it's a new monitor. The desktop blinks. It tries to rearrange windows and icons. ~ Brendan Iribe

Well, what we called a computer in 1977 was really a kind of electric abacus, but…" "Oh, now, don't underestimate the abacus," said Reg. "In skilled hands it's a very sophisticated calculating device. Furthermore it requires no power, can be made with any materials you have to hand, and never goes bing in the middle of an important piece of work." "So an electric one would be particularly pointless," said Richard. "True enough," conceded Reg. ~ Douglas Adams

Arimaa's a better game than I thought. It follows a fairly sound approach to making the game difficult for computers. ~ Bram Cohen

Here are the Top Ten things that your parents say to you:
-Is that all you're going to do all day, sit in front of the computer?
-When I was your age I had two jobs.
-Why don't you wear some clothes that fir for a change?
-Turn it down. I can hear it all the way over here.
-You're not eating that for dinner.
-Did you do your homework?
-Stop mumbling and speak up.
-Now what did you do?
-Because I said so.
-No. ~ Charles Benoit

Bill Gates says, 'Wait till you can see what your computer can become.' But it's you who should be doing the becoming. What you can become is the miracle you were born to work-not the damn fool computer. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

He stopped what he was doing and pulled out his magic phone.
Okay, the phone wasn't magic, but it does things my computer struggles with. ~ Patricia Briggs

Shit down your computer, and restart. ~ Claire Chilton

I am somebody who usually writes out the rough draft in longhand. Then I type it into the computer, and that is where I do my editing. I find that if I write it on the computer, I go too quick. So I like getting that first draft out and then typing it in; you are less self-conscious about it. ~ Barack Obama

Turing presented his new offering in the form of a thought experiment, based on a popular Victorian parlor game. A man and a woman hide, and a judge is asked to determine which is which by relying only on the texts of notes passed back and forth.
Turing replaced the woman with a computer. Can the judge tell which is the man? If not, is the computer conscious? Intelligent? Does it deserve equal rights?
It's impossible for us to know what role the torture Turing was enduring at the time played in his formulation of the test. But it is undeniable that one of the key figures in the defeat of fascism was destroyed, by our side, after the war, because he was gay. No wonder his imagination pondered the rights of strange creatures. ~ Jaron Lanier

In his book A WHOLE NEW MIND, Daniel Pink describes how the forces of automation, outsourcing, and an overabundance of products are ushering in a new era. Call it the Conceptual Age, or the Creative Age. The important thing, Pink writes, is that if you want to survive (much less thrive) you need to ask yourself three questions about whatever it is that you do: Can a computer do it for you? Can someone overseas do it cheaper? Is what I'm offering in demand in an age of abundance? ~ Srinivas Rao

I really like to write, so I can just relax and think about things and realize things and then try to express it on my computer. ~ Krist Novoselic

Your computer needn't be the first thing your see in the morning and the last thing you see at night. ~ Simon Mainwaring

Video games provide an easy lead-in to computer literacy. They can get you thinking like a video game designer and can even lead to designing since many games come with software to modify the game or redesign it. ~ James Paul Gee

It's impossible that James Joyce could have mentioned "talk-tapes" in his writing, Asher thought. Someday I'm going to get my article published; I'm going to prove that Finnegan's Wake is an information pool based on computer memory systems that didn't exist until a century after James Joyce's era; that Joyce was plugged into a cosmic consciousness from which he derived the inspiration for his entire corpus of work. I'll be famous forever. ~ Philip K. Dick

Long-term, we must begin to build our internal strengths. It isn't just skills like computer technology. It's the old-fashioned basics of self-reliance, self-motivation, self-reinforcement, self-discipline, self-command. ~ Steven Pressfield

People in the computer industry use the term 'user,' which to them means 'idiot.' ~ Dave Barry

I always told my team, "You have to believe that you are not in front of a computer, but that your canvas is a piece of paper. You have to believe this even if you have a computer in front of you." ~ Alex Abreu

In fact, my experiences as I was writing the 3:16 book weren't that different from writing computer books, although I wasn't using integral signs as much. ~ Donald Ervin Knuth

I've written books as acts of discovery: things I need to know and that I need to touch. And it's very dangerous work to deal with the most toxic internal elements ... I feel like Madame Curie at my computer. I feel like I should be hemorrhaging from my eyes and ears. ~ Kate Braverman

Anyone who has lost track of time when using a computer knows the propensity to dream, the urge to make dreams come true and the tendency to miss lunch. ~ Tim Berners-Lee

The modern computer with all its various gadgets and wonderful electronic facilities now makes it possible to preserve and reinvigorate all the cultural richness of mankind. ~ Alan Lomax

I see little commercial potential for the Internet for at least ten years. ~ Bill Gates

My wife handles all of our technology. So if something goes wrong with the computer, I throw up my arms and step aside while the IT gal figures it out. ~ Ty Burrell

The language of the internet is English, and an overwhelming proportion of the global computer chatter also originates from America, influencing the content of global conversation. ~ Zbigniew Brzezinski

In life ... better that your computer mouse die ... than your rabbit. ~ Timothy Pina

We can stretch our personalities, but only up to a point. Our inborn temperaments influence us, regardless of the lives we lead. A sizable part of who we are is ordained by our genes, by our brains, by our nervous systems. And yet the elasticity that Schwartz found in some of the high-reactive teens also suggests the converse: we have free will and can use it to shape our personalities.
These seem like contradictory principles, but they are not. Free will can take us far, suggests Dr. Schwartz's research, but it cannot carry us infinitely beyond our genetic limits. Bill Gates is never going to be Bill Clinton, no matter how he polishes his social skills, and Bill Clinton can never be Bill Gates, no matter how much time he spends alone with a computer.
We might call this the "rubber band theory" of personality. We are like rubber bands at rest. We are elastic and can stretch ourselves, but only so much. ~ Susan Cain

It's not what you know about the computer that's important, but your ability to do things with it. By studying French in an academic setting, you get to know a lot about it, but typically, you can't express yourself well or have an interesting conversation with it. ~ Seymour Papert

This fascination with computer models is something I understand very well. Richard Feynmann called it a disease. I fear he is right. ~ Michael Crichton

No computer, no gadget, no trickery. I am an animal, it is a plant. I will beat the weed! ~ Matthew McConaughey

With a 100-year perspective, the real value of the personal computer is not spreadsheets, word processors or even desktop publishing. It's the Web. ~ Bill Atkinson

Actual evil probably requires much more creativity, passion, and political ideology than anyone at or near the top of Microsoft seems to possess. ~ Jon Katz