Category Archives: Quotes

Quote of the day

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Web 1.0 was all about connecting people. It was an interactive space, and I think Web 2.0 is of course a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means. If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along.

Tim Berners-Lee, in a fascinating interview (transcript here) conducted on 28 July, 2006 and published as an IBM podcast.

He goes on to talk about his original concept of the Web:

And the original World Wide Web browser of course was also an editor. I never imagined that anybody would want to write in anchor brackets. We’d had WYSIWYG editors for a long time. So my function was that everybody would be able to edit in this space, or different people would have access rights to different spaces. But I really wanted it to be a collaborative authoring tool.

And for some reason it didn’t really take off that way. And we could discuss for ages why it didn’t. You know, there were browser editors, maybe the HTML got too complicated for a browser just to be easy.

But I’ve always felt frustrated that most people don’t…didn’t have write access. And wikis and blogs are two areas where suddenly two sort of genres of online information suddenly allow people to edit, and they’re very widely picked up, and people are very excited about them.

And I think that really for me reinforces the idea that people need to be creative. They want to be able to record what they think. They want to be able to, if they see something wrong go and fix it…

Quote of the day

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“Why — in the age of the Internet — [does] the FBI [restrict] itself to a dead-tree source with a considerable time lag between death and publication, with limited utility for the FBI’s purpose, and with entries restricted to a small fraction of even the ‘prominent and noteworthy’? Why, in short, doesn’t the FBI just Google the two names? Surely, in the Internet age, a ‘reasonable alternative’ for finding out whether a prominent person is dead is to use Google (or any other search engine) to find a report of that person’s death. Moreover, while finding a death notice for the second speaker — the informant — may be harder (assuming that he was not prominent), Googling also provides ready access to hundreds of websites collecting obituaries from all over the country, any one of which might resolve that speaker’s status as well.”

D.C. Circuit Judge Merrick B. Garland introducing the FBI to a wonderful new investigative tool.

The judge was deciding a case involving four audiotapes recorded more than twenty-five years ago during an FBI corruption investigation in Louisiana. The plaintiff, an author, had sought release of the tapes under the Freedom of Information Act . There are two speakers on the tapes, one a “prominent individual” who was a subject of the FBI’s investigation, and the other an “undercover informant” in that investigation. The nub of the appeal was whether the FBI had undertaken reasonable steps to determine whether the speakers are now dead, in which event the privacy interests weighing against release would be diminished.

The FBI claimed that it had not been able to determine whether either speaker is dead or alive. It said further that it could not determine whether the speakers were over 100 years old (and thus presumed dead under FBI practice), because neither mentioned his birth date during the conversations that were surreptitiously recorded. It said that it could not determine whether the speakers were dead by referring to a Social Security database, because neither announced his social security number during the conversations. And it declined to search its own files for the speakers’ birth dates or social security numbers, because that is not its practice. “The Bureau”, said the judge acidly, “does not appear to have contemplated other ways of determining whether the speakers are dead, such as Googling them.”

And in a footnote, he helpfully points to the OED definition of “googling”.

Thanks to GMSV for the link.

Quote of the day

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“I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone”.

Bjarne Stronstrup, actress.

Not to be confused (as I had originally done) with Bjarne Stroustrup, the designer and original implementor of the programming language, C++. I mean, an ‘n’ is just a ‘u’ standing on its head (he said, feebly). Haven’t looked at my email yet, but I bet someone picked up my elementary schoolboy mistake. Wonder what the emoticon for ’embarrassed’ is? Hmmm…. There seems to be some debate on the matter. This source claims that any of these will do:

  • :”->
  • :”-)
  • :$ or
  • :-$

    • Quote of the day

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    It was the worst retail store I had ever seen. Sam had brought a couple of trucks of watermelons in and stacked them on the sidewalk. He had a donkey ride out in the parking lot. It was about 115 degrees, and the watermelons began to pop, and the donkey began to do what donkeys do, and it all mixed together and ran all over the parking lot. And when you went inside the store, the mess just continued, having been tracked in all over the floor. He was a nice fellow, but I wrote him off. It was just terrible.

    David Glass, who later succeeded Sam Walton as Chairman of Wal-Mart, on his first encounter with the brand. Cited by John Lanchester in a nice review of two books about Wal-Mart. It just goes to show that one should never judge by first impressions. Or does it?

    En passant… I see that Mr Lanchester, whose writing I admire, is keeping a Blog about the World Cup.

    Quote of the day

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    The attractively simple thesis of The Change Function is that most technology ventures fail because technologists manage them. Technologists think their business is the creation of cool technologies loaded with wonderful new features. They think this because they are engineers who thrill to the idea of change. By contrast, Coburn says, “technology is widely hated by its users,” because ordinary folk loathe change. Therefore, any new artifact, no matter how much its various features might appeal to technologists, will always be rejected by its intended customers unless “the pain in moving to a new technology is lower than the pain of staying in the status quo.”

    Or in Pip’s geeky formulation:

    The Change Function = f (perceived crisis vs. total perceived pain of adoption).

    [Former UBS analyst Pip Coburn, quoted in Technology Review.]

    Quote of the day

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    “We support democracy, but that doesn’t mean we have to support governments elected as a result of democracy.”

    George Bush on dealing with the Hamas government elected by the Palestinian people. Cited in David Hirst’s Guardian column today.

    Quote of the day

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    Scott McNealy, ex-CEO of Sun, on the Top 10 best things about not being CEO.

    No. 10: “I don’t have to apologize for the stuff I say to Wall Street, Jonathan [Schwartz, the new CEO] does.”

    No. 9: “I’m no longer on the most overpaid CEO list.”

    No. 8: “I just say, ‘See Jonathan on that.'”

    No. 7: “I read Hockey News without guilt.”

    No. 6: “I shave even less often.”

    No. 5: “No more SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley) certifications to sign.”

    No. 4: “I have someone to blame now.”

    No. 3: “I can sell my last business suit.”

    No. 2: “Jonathan doesn’t golf, so I guess I gotta do it.”

    No. 1 “My new office is very close to the men’s room.”

    Quote of the day

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    Hanks seems constantly perturbed, behaving as if Forrest Gump had been cast as Sherlock Holmes.

    Philip French, magisterially reviewing the Da Vinci Code movie. It’s a lovely piece, marred only by the use of “millenniums” as the plural of millennium. (Tut, tut.) Also contains a useful summary of the plot:

    After working out the clues with the speed of a stockbroker doing the Telegraph crossword on the 8.15 from Tunbridge Wells, they go on the run together. Over the next two days, they brief each other on matters of cryptology, the Holy Grail, the birth of Christianity, Opus Dei and the Priory of Sion, while escaping from the British and French cops and various would-be assassins with the ease and ingenuity of Harry Houdini. The cryptographers are constantly creeping into crypts, talking crap and copping out as clues lead to bizarre discoveries and encounters in churches in France, Scotland and England, including Westminster Abbey.