By the time (the Leaning Tower of Pisa) was 10% built, everyone knew it would be a total disaster. But the investment was so big they felt compelled to go on. Since its completion, it cost a fortune to maintain and is still in danger of collapsing. There are no plans to replace it, since it was never needed in the first place. I expect every installation has its own pet software which is analogous to the above.
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The consequences of things are not always proportionate to the apparent magnitude of those events that have produced them. Thus read more
The consequences of things are not always proportionate to the apparent magnitude of those events that have produced them. Thus the American Revolution, from which little was expected, produced much; but the French Revolution, from which much was expected, produced little.
The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify read more
The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.
It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It read more
It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young.
Guide to understanding a net.addict's day: Slow day: didn't have much to do, so spent three hours on usenet. Busy read more
Guide to understanding a net.addict's day: Slow day: didn't have much to do, so spent three hours on usenet. Busy day: managed to work in three hours of usenet. Bad day: barely squeezed in three hours of usenet.
I'd wipe the machines off the face of the earth again, and end the industrial epoch absolutely, like a black read more
I'd wipe the machines off the face of the earth again, and end the industrial epoch absolutely, like a black mistake.
For a smart material to be able to send out a more complex signal it needs to be nonlinear. If read more
For a smart material to be able to send out a more complex signal it needs to be nonlinear. If you hit a tuning fork twice as hard it will ring twice as loud but still at the same frequency. That's a linear response. If you hit a person twice as hard they're unlikely just to shout twice as loud. That property lets you learn more about the person than the tuning fork. - When Things Start to Think, 1999.
All science is either physics or stamp collecting. -E. Rutherford.
All science is either physics or stamp collecting. -E. Rutherford.
May every young scientist remember... and not fail to keep his eyes open for the possibility that an irritating failure read more
May every young scientist remember... and not fail to keep his eyes open for the possibility that an irritating failure of his apparatus to give consistent results may once or twice in a lifetime conceal an important discovery. -Patrick Blackett.
Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under read more
Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.
