fifo.push(stuff)

"I am only responsible for what I say. Not for what you understand."

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 11:45:00 +1000

“I am only responsible for what I say. Not for what you understand.”

- … used as someone’s forum signature. Uncredited, but I doubt they said it first.

"… and all the while, as people scoffed and joked about the ‘Year of the Linux..."

Sun, 06 Jan 2013 13:00:21 +1100

“… and all the while, as people scoffed and joked about the ‘Year of the Linux Desktop’ that never came, the desktop withered and died and all that was left was Linux - on mobile devices, servers and game consoles.”

- … the Steambox is coming.

"Anytime you want to join up with anything, any kind of service that lets you do things for free, the..."

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 14:29:45 +1000

“Anytime you want to join up with anything, any kind of service that lets you do things for free, the first question is, where is your export function, where can I grab a copy from your site of the material? If they say, we’re working on it, then they’re lying to you.”

- Jason Scott, On The Media interview, March 23rd, 2012.

Quote: Jean-Baptiste Queru on Jobs, Ritchie; cake vs. icing

Sun, 16 Oct 2011 10:38:57 +1100

“That is why the mainstream press and the general population has talked so much about Steve Jobs’ death and comparatively so little about Dennis Ritchie’s: Steve’s influence was at a layer that most people could see, while Dennis’ was much deeper. On the one hand, I can imagine where the computing world would be without the work that Jobs did and the people he inspired: probably a bit less shiny, a bit more beige, a bit more square. Deep inside, though, our devices would still work the same way and do the same things. On the other hand, I literally can’t imagine where the computing world would be without the work that Ritchie did and the people he inspired. By the mid 80s, Ritchie’s influence had taken over, and even back then very little remained of the pre-Ritchie world.”

https://plus.google.com/112218872649456413744/posts/dfydM2Cnepe

"Use of this program to generate postmodern poetry or sociology theses is strictly forbidden."

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 15:41:20 +1000

“Use of this program to generate postmodern poetry or sociology theses is strictly forbidden.”

- John Walker’s Stego! Javascript steganography tool: http://www.fourmilab.ch/javascrypt/stego.html

"Why does an ebook reader need a page-turn effect? Like having a fake needle on a CD player. Or..."

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 22:24:30 +1100

“Why does an ebook reader need a page-turn effect? Like having a fake needle on a CD player. Or horse-shit coming from the back of a car.”

- @blprint on Twitter … Couldn’t have said it better myself.

"… one thing is to love science; a completely different one is doing it. Like the proverbial..."

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 09:56:19 +1100

“… one thing is to love science; a completely different one is doing it. Like the proverbial sausage, you don’t want to know how it’s done.”

- Massimo Sandal, on leaving academia.

Photo

Sat, 05 Feb 2011 14:23:07 +1100

"The term ‘publish’ when used in science is nearly always accidentally-ironic, since most..."

Sun, 12 Dec 2010 20:47:25 +1100

“The term ‘publish’ when used in science is nearly always accidentally-ironic, since most work isn’t made public at all, but kept behind the ubiquitous pay-walls that plague the free exchange of scientific ideas.”

- Martin Robbins — http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-lay-scientist/2010/dec/08/2

"… by the early 1980s, the enzymes used in laundry detergents to treat stains had been..."

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 16:33:42 +1000

“… by the early 1980s, the enzymes used in laundry detergents to treat stains had been engineered to work at cold-water wash temperatures by companies such as Genencor, Inc., resulting in the potential reduction of hot water heating bills amounting to 100,000 barrels of oil per day, nationwide. Stated differently, the “energy impact” of a single engineered protein integrated upstream into our daily lives via a laundry detergent is greater than the current oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and is roughly equivalent to the volume of biofuel that could be produced using 1/2000th of our crop land.”

- Drew Endy, at the Committee on Energy and Commerce, 27th May, 2010.

"Biological systems are just sufficiently advanced technology. When we don’t understand them,..."

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 13:56:00 +1000

“Biological systems are just sufficiently advanced technology. When we don’t understand them, they appear to be magical.”

- Me, being highbrow.

"… unlike 50 years ago when a fully fledged, master craftsman scientist would work in the lab..."

Tue, 06 Apr 2010 16:52:55 +1000

“… unlike 50 years ago when a fully fledged, master craftsman scientist would work in the lab along with his apprentices and journeyman, today’s PI’s rarely get to work in the lab … So the hands-on technical skills that were honed during their apprentice and journeyman stages are worth little to a PI and instead, they need a whole new set of skills – writing, communicating, people management, schmoozing etc etc. Few of these skills are widely taught … which kind of defeats the purpose of the training system.”

- Snippets taken from http://bitesizebio.com/2010/03/31/does-anyone-know-the-funny-handshake/

"In which other profession do you make 8€/h after taxes with a Master’s and a doctorate for..."

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 15:46:14 +1000

“In which other profession do you make 8€/h after taxes with a Master’s and a doctorate for about 10 years on 2-3 year contracts until you’re around 40, only to then have a 1 in 60 chance of getting a contract without an end date ?”

- Bjorn Brembs — “Don’t Trust Scientists”

"Bureaucracies temporarily reverse the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In a bureaucracy, it’s easier to..."

Fri, 02 Apr 2010 13:36:29 +1100

“Bureaucracies temporarily reverse the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In a bureaucracy, it’s easier to make a process more complex than to make it simpler, and easier to create a new burden than kill an old one.”

- Clay Shirky — “The Collapse of Complex Business Models”

"The iPhone vision of the mobile Internet’s future omits controversy, sex, and freedom, but includes..."

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:44:05 +1100

“The iPhone vision of the mobile Internet’s future omits controversy, sex, and freedom, but includes strict limits on who can know what and who can say what. It’s a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers. The people who create the apps serve at the landlord’s pleasure and fear his anger.”

- Tim Bray - http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/03/15/Joining-Google

"Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it."

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 13:30:34 +1100

“Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.”

- George Bernard Shaw - playwright, Nobel Laureate and technology pundit.

"Build a command language interface that even an idiot can use, and only an idiot will ever want to..."

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 13:28:00 +1100

“Build a command language interface that even an idiot can use, and only an idiot will ever want to use it’ was the reigning principle before graphical user interfaces running on PCs changed that mind-set.”

- Know Your Personal Computer (1997), Chapter 9 - High-Level Operating Systems by S K Ghoshal. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF02834576

A protein crystallography pipeline (with...

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 10:01:39 +1100

A protein crystallography pipeline (with “pitfalls”), by Artem Evdokimov ( http://www.xtals.org/MB_toolbox.pdf ).

"We currently enjoy a free lunch, because energy, food and cement prices do not include the costs of..."

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 15:21:17 +1100

“We currently enjoy a free lunch, because energy, food and cement prices do not include the costs of decarbonisation. The sooner politicians are upfront with people about this, the better.”

- Myles Allen, Head of Climate Dynamics, Department of Physics, University of Oxford, in “Top climate scientists share their outlook”

"It’s weird I had to solve my own medical problem"

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:24:45 +1100

“It’s weird I had to solve my own medical problem”

- Jessica Terry, on diagnosing herself with Crohn’s disease in her highschool science class, based on intestinal biopsies.