Famous Tech Quotes

"Who in their right mind would ever need more than 640k of ram!?"
- Bill Gates, 1981

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." --Popular
Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." --Thomas
Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the
best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't
last out the year." --The editor in charge of business books for Prentice
Hall, 1957

"But what ... is it good for?" --Engineer at the Advanced Computing
Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." --Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp.,
1977
 

Submitted : 14th December 2001 By : Wayne

An excerpt from the Hacker's Dictionary

(From "back door":) Ken Thompson's 1983 Turing Award lecture to the ACM revealed the existence of a back door in early UNIX versions that may have qualified as the most fiendishly clever security hack of all time. The C compiler contained code that would recognize when the `login' command was being recompiled and insert some code recognizing a password chosen by Thompson, giving him entry to the system whether or not an account had been created for him.

Normally such a back door could be removed by removing it from the source code for the compiler and recompiling the compiler. But to recompile the compiler, you have to *use* the compiler --- so Thompson also arranged that the compiler would *recognize when it was compiling a version of itself*, and insert into the recompiled compiler the code to insert into the recompiled `login' the code to allow Thompson entry --- and, of course, the code to recognize itself and do the whole thing again the next time around! And having done this once, he was then able to recompile the compiler from the original sources; the hack perpetuated itself invisibly, leaving the back door in place and active but with no trace in the sources.
 

Submitted : 14th December 2001 By : Wayne

Socket to 'em

I started up my own little tech support service for the other students on my university campus. For a minimal charge, I'd go over and fix a PC problem. It's a pretty good deal for people having trouble printing and what not.

Well, I got this call from a damsel in distress. Her PC would just not turn
on no matter what she did. No LED's lit; no sign of life. She had mentioned moving her desk. So being the logical soul that I am, I told her to check to make sure everything was plugged in before I came over and charged her money. "Of course everything's plugged in, I just checked that, and so did my roommate!"

Submitted : 4th December 2001 By : Brennan