"Life is just one damn thing after another." -- Mark Twain

"This class is definitely open to beginners" Don't mind that guy drooling on himself in the corner he just landed on his head, and the fellow bleeding profusely from his nose simply must learn not to run full speed into sensei's clenched fist". -- Unknown

It was a time when all men were Christian and religion ruled the lands. It is no coincidence this was called the Dark Ages. -- Unknown

"They drool and they become blathering idiots
I intend to reduce all your friends to that before long ;) -- Anna Genoese

"This instrument can teach, it can illuminate, and yes it can inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is nothing but wires and lights in a box." -- Edward R. Murrow (speaking about the TV)

"Suspention of Reality is the Key to Fantasy" -- Kami

"The future masters of technology will have to be lighthearted and intelligent. The machine easily masters the grim and the dumb." -- Marshall McLuhan 1969

Of all the thirty-six alternatives, running away is best. -- Chinese Proverb

Put all your eggs in the one basket andWATCH THAT BASKET. -- Mark Twain (18351910), U.S. author. Pudd'nhead Wilson, ch. 15, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" (1894).

"Catch me when I have nothing to do, and the energy to do it." -- Anna Genoese and Jonathon Rosenthal

"Your a psychopath!!" "No no no. A Psychopath kills for no reason... I kill for money." -- Unknown

"Give me a few good hackers and 90 days, and I can bring this country to its knees. Telecommunications systems, power grid systems, financial systems all going down at the exact same time. Whether its from next door or halfway across the world, the capability to do this exists today." -- Jim Settle, the form chief of the FBI's computer crimes squad.

"I thought of it more like him showcasing stupidity...like in a museum :)" -- Anna Genoese

"Democracy is a poor system of government at best; the only thing that can honestly be said in its favor is that it is about eight times as good as any other method the human race has ever tried." -- Jubal to Ben Caxton - Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein

"Fewer than four hundred two-state switches, have more states than there are atoms in the entire universe." "Unlike letters in libraries, however, the smallest components of even the worlds largest computers are made out of the simplest possible parts - tiny pieces of fused sand."

"Watching a chip work, we seem to hear the lilt of a soaring dream. Its the Twentieth - Centurys Mandala, an icon of our struggle to achieve order over chaos, an image of our world written in sand with crystalline grace, intricate and beautiful: information made touchable."

"In our quest for ever more speed we may eventually fuse computers and biology into a single new technology by engineering molecular machines. That development took a long step forward in 1981, when two IBM scientists made a microscope that let us see and move single atoms. Five years later they got the Nobel Prize. Similar microscopes are now teacup-sized and available commercially. Then, in 1990, IBM took hours and used a massive cooling system to write the letters I-B-M using single atoms. Less than a year later, Hitachi could do similar things - but in seconds, and at room temperature. By 1992, researchers were building conducting wires one molecule thick. By 1995, others were building simple motors almost the size of molecules. By 1996, yet others were connecting those motors together."

"Already, computers make computers; theyre quickly shoving us out of their almost fully automated and almost totally dust-free factories. Were becoming brood hens, more and more puzzled by the curious eggs we keep laying. Eventually, none of us may know exactly whats in any computer. Year by year, were rapidly gaining power and, just as rapidly, losing control. Theres only one similar process in all our experience - a thermonuclear explosion."

"Theres a special fierce joy in programming computers today that non-programmers simply cant comprehend Some of the best computer programs we have today are simply elegant poems told in logic."

"What we have here is attempted governance by the completely clueless, in a place they've never been, using tools they don't possess...The audacity of these people to claim moral right to govern an area where they've never even been is stupefying." -- John Perry Barlow, Co-Founder Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

"One computer will do as it is told. But a million computers linked together, responding to the needs and desires and obsessions of a million people, will not. A network is inherently unstable. The Web will be ever restless. It is at no one's beck or call. And no matter how many times software protocols are patched or how many loopholes are plugged, no engineer, or team of engineers, will ever finish the job. The Net may be self- balancing, but it is never in balance. No organic system is truly in balance. It may strive for balance, it may continually seek equilibrium, but it will never actually achieve it." -- Page 186, 1st Paragraph, BOTS by Andrew Leonard