Why we even bothered to leave the trees

“But you are telling me, Susan, that the ‘Society for Humanity’ is right; and that Mankind has lost its own say in its future.”

“It never had any, really. It was always at the mercy of economic and sociological forces it did not understand — at the whims of climate, and the fortunes of war. Now the Machines understand them; and no one can stop them, since the Machines will deal with them as they are dealing with the Society, — having, as they do, the greatest of weapons at their disposal, the absolute control of our economy.”

“How horrible!”

“Perhaps how wonderful! Think, that for all time, all conflicts are finally evitable. Only the Machines, from now on, are inevitable!”

And the fire behind the quartz went out and only a curl of smoke was left to indicate its place.

~ Asimov, Isaac. "I, Robot". pp. 147-148. Available online: http://ekladata.com/-Byix64G_NtE0xI4A6PA1--o1Hc/Asimov-Isaac-I-Robot.pdf

This is the year of Linux on the desktop

 The promise: "The modular, single-purpose, interface focused design of the GNU/Linux architecture means infinite customizability. Any configuration you want is within your grasp."

The reality: "You changed your window manager and now your laptop no longer goes to sleep when you close the lid."

Pull the Lever

Blew up one of my development systems today by pushing the checkbox that says something else but means "Definitely blow up the system."

In software engineering, this image continues to be useful.

(A major part of the art of software design lies not in knowing what features to add, but what features to remove or omit).