In Hindsight... Tech Predictions and Quotes

I don't think the organizers of this page were able to read and understand the quote of mine that they posted. Yikes!

That quote is about human beings and how they react to what's around them vs to "what's new?". It will remain true as long we are still being born with the same kind of brains that we've had for several hundred thousand years.
 
I don't think the organizers of this page were able to read and understand the quote of mine that they posted. Yikes!

That quote is about human beings and how they react to what's around them vs to "what's new?". It will remain true as long we are still being born with the same kind of brains that we've had for several hundred thousand years.
Hi Alan, we meant to use your words as an inspirational quote (that's the reason we put it on top) among others that are mostly ironic. We do get it, and it's a beautiful quote, but "in hindsight," it can easily be misinterpreted standing next to the other quotations, so we've removed it. Thanks for your comment, we stand corrected.
 
The quote was something like, "No one will ever need more than 640k of memory", and has always been attributed to Gates. Those who say otherwise point to the lack of 'proof', as though there had to be a recording device of some kind, especially for someone as profound whenever he opens his mouth, and the acceptance of his own denial that he said it. The fact is that Gates was working with IBM about as closely as any software guy can work with a hardware manufacturer that had no idea what Bill's plans were for the os. Is it more likely that he gave them the go-ahead with the follow-up quote, or that IBM took the reigns of the hardware design away from the os designer and set that limit themselves? Gates' oses have always been a factor in the hardware design of the pc, and that's unfortunate. Whether Gates' denial or the memory limitation set by IBM were pulled out of either of their asses is still debatable.
The quote was something like, "No one will ever need more than 640k of memory", and has always been attributed to Gates. Those who say otherwise point to the lack of 'proof', as though there had to be a recording device of some kind, especially for someone as profound whenever he opens his mouth, and the acceptance of his own denial that he said it. The fact is that Gates was working with IBM about as closely as any software guy can work with a hardware manufacturer that had no idea what Bill's plans were for the os. Is it more likely that he gave them the go-ahead with the follow-up quote, or that IBM took the reigns of the hardware design away from the os designer and set that limit themselves? Gates' oses have always been a factor in the hardware design of the pc, and that's unfortunate. Whether Gates' denial or the memory limitation set by IBM were pulled out of either of their asses is still debatable.
Whether he said it or not is a moot point. What he and MS did for more than a decade was to introduce artificial limitations to file systems and memory allocation. It also indicates the idiocy of the "Market" that has made the most insecure and unreliable operating system, the best selling.
The REALLY clever men of the generation of Einsein, Bohr etc would be spinning in their graves to see the resultsof the modern day worship of the Market .
 
Linux's biggest problem isnt the lack of applications. It already has the apps for 99% of consumers.

Linux's 3 big problems are

1: public image. People think linux is all command line. Despite the likes of mint and ubuntu being able to do most stuff without terminal, people still think linux is some black box with no rules.

2: lack of user friendliness. Part of the reason #1 exists is that it it still partially true. You have to put in PPA's off of google, through terminal, to get the latest video drivers (and dont get me started on the dismal quality of old intel video drivers or AMD drivers for anything that isnt GCN 1.4). New hardware still needs fussing with terminal to make some oddball hardware work properly. Mounting a secondary drive for data storage, navigating the file system, restoring after a bad update, all these things are far more user friendly on windows then they are on linux. The issue is linux is geared to professional use, and as a result it has never truly caught on with end users.

3: fragmentation. The fragmentation of different drivers, kernels, software, PACKAGE MANAGERS (seriously why does linux need 6 different package managers that all do the same thing but use different commands?) ece. This fragmentation makes linux slow to adopt some new changes, like how long it took to get openGL 4 support on intel hardware, getting newer drivers out, the arguing of what will replace X11, ece. Arguable a lot of this wouldnt be an issue if, say, debian was the core of every distro. But linux doesnt work that way. so you end up with tons of distros all doing the same work at the same time, but for different distros, resulting in lots of wasted time making the same fix over and over again.

This is something MS got right. It's closed source, single player nature allowed MS to rapidly adapt to changing requirements and to keep it's OS consistent with itself. Which they miraculously screwed up with 8, and made worse with 10.
What consistence do you mean with MS OS? The consistent that it slows down the whole system even if not doing serious computing jobs? Than there is definitely a consistency there.

I am working since 15 years on Linux and every time I have to work on a Windows machine it's like a pain in the a...it seems like I am working with a toy machine.

But I give you a point about the image of Linux: People who are not familiar with it, still think that you have to be a programmer to use Linux...those times are over and the distros are always better and better.
The friendliness: Microsoft is one of the biggest IT companies on earth and has thousands of employees. Linux is totally different...people contribute to the project when they have time (and the will). So one can not expect that every hardware driver is available for the newest hardware. Additionally, and this is a big problem is that hardware manufacturer focus on Windows systems and build the drivers for it. So often, linux has to do the extra job to implement a driver on its own...
 
Here's one from me:

"Quantum entanglement is the key to instantaneous long-range interstellar communication between any two points in the universe."
- Me, 2020
 
Last edited:
Hi Alan, we meant to use your words as an inspirational quote (that's the reason we put it on top) among others that are mostly ironic. We do get it, and it's a beautiful quote, but "in hindsight," it can easily be misinterpreted standing next to the other quotations, so we've removed it. Thanks for your comment, we stand corrected.
You put a lot of work into gathering many quotes -- I think it would be great if you separated them into categories. For example, some of Doug Engelbart's were great then and even greater today. The Ken Olsen quote about personal computing was dumb then (it was in the early 80s) and really dumb now.

This is what I'd suggest, and if you tell the readers in the beginning what you are doing, they can glean enlightenment from each of the categories.
 
Some of those are very true. For example, this one from Elon Musk:

“AI doesn’t have to be evil to destroy humanity – if AI has a goal and humanity just happens to come in the way, it will destroy humanity as a matter of course without even thinking about it, no hard feelings.”

Of course, we'll set the rules for the machines. But those rules will become more and more complex, we'll be adding special cases so we can outperform competitors. In the end, the rules will be either too complex for us to understand (so the AI will destroy us on technicality, much like lawyers release murderers) or maybe humans will become so stupid they won't even care about the rules, in which case we deserve to be exterminated.
 
Not all of the quotes are "infamous" as you say they are in the opening paragraph. Some (like many of Elon Musks) are "famous", if perhaps difficult to understand, unless one is an engineer.
Here is the definition of "infamous" to show you want I mean.
1. Having an exceedingly bad reputation; notorious. 2. Causing or deserving severe public condemnation; heinous. 3. Convicted of a crime, such as treason or felony, that carries a severe punishment. No longer in technical use.
 
You put a lot of work into gathering many quotes -- I think it would be great if you separated them into categories. For example, some of Doug Engelbart's were great then and even greater today. The Ken Olsen quote about personal computing was dumb then (it was in the early 80s) and really dumb now.

This is what I'd suggest, and if you tell the readers in the beginning what you are doing, they can glean enlightenment from each of the categories.
Like all of the quotes they need to be taken in the context of the time and history. Ken Olsen did not understand or believe that the US was still that uncivilized and that high level of Government and Company corruption (there were fewer examples in the computation realm at that time and none as dramatic as Edward Snowden's) and the techies all thought that somehow the technology industry could avoid this and that they themselves would not/could not be corrupted - Bill Gates, Steve Jobs put you hand up here too. If we did not have the serious Privacy/Security concerns and all that suing/counter-suing for IP, Ken Olsen's vision would be our present reality.
 
Whether he said it or not is a moot point. What he and MS did for more than a decade was to introduce artificial limitations to file systems and memory allocation. It also indicates the idiocy of the "Market" that has made the most insecure and unreliable operating system, the best selling.
The REALLY clever men of the generation of Einsein, Bohr etc would be spinning in their graves to see the resultsof the modern day worship of the Market .
You are comparing Apples and Oranges. Marketing genius's vs Scientist/Engineering genius's. It is up to history to decide who contributed most to human evolution. But I suspect you are correct. It is hard to come up with any Marketing Genius from early 20th Century: maybe just the guy who put up the "Hollywood" sign? Now what was his name?
 
Hi Alan, we meant to use your words as an inspirational quote (that's the reason we put it on top) among others that are mostly ironic. We do get it, and it's a beautiful quote, but "in hindsight," it can easily be misinterpreted standing next to the other quotations, so we've removed it. Thanks for your comment, we stand corrected.
Might be easier if you just sorted by "famous" and "infamous" using the standard American definition available on the internet.
 
The Linux/OS Wars one was the funniest. Mostly funny because it'll never be true and a little more funny because some Linux fanatics actually think it will happen.

Not a Linux hater, but come on you got to be realistic.
You mean "funny peculiar" not "funny haha" correct? Yea, MS and Apple are always doing just enough to keep us from switching. Whats peculiar is that they seem to know exactly how lazy we are. We are certainly upset with the poor quality of their product; but never to the point of putting the time and effort into switching - we would rather just get on and make money ourselves than waste the time to switch. The better OS out there, to me, has always been VAXVMS (now OpenVMS). But it did not go "free" and therefore did not attract sufficient app developers like MS Windows and Apple iOS.
 
True. The article has evolved into something else where the infamous part of the headline is misleading. We have corrected that there and in the intro since we have added newer quotes from tech CEOs and leaders that are more inspirational than anything else.
 
Here's one from me:

"Quantum entanglement is the key to instantaneous long-range interstellar communication between any two points in the universe."
- Me, 2020
Imagine - travelling away from earth in spaceship . How many tangled particles would you need to take to have a meaningful communication ? - Plus entanglement will need to last 10000 years plus.- if you do all that you will have effectively faster than light communication - ie instantaneously - no physical laws were broken - the entangled particles had heaps of time to communicate as they separate slower than the speed of light in a vacuum ie a quantum particle knows it future self
 
“If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all its worth — and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago.”

This is the only correct quote in the article, (he did exactly that when he took over)

The iMac was barely enough revenue t keep the company afloat,while he secretly searched for thatnew product.

The iMac alone would have gotten overwhelmed by the invasion of friendly Windowx XP USB-only computers, but the Fire-wire iPod suddenly mad e a Mac an essential again,.

They did the bare-minimum to offer compatibility on Windows, while it was obvious where the preferred home of locked-in Apple consumer devices (can't work without itunes) would be.

You don't keep a PowerPC-powered iMac afloat in a sea of XP boxes without some killer accessories - once you create something in high demand (IPod + iTunes,)you can use "full backward compatibility with the old models" as a selling point for your first self-built iPhone.

The PC wars are still over,
but Apple sells enough associated locked-in accessories (iOs) that the software development infrastructure will be forever-here.
 
Last edited:
Lisa Su calling Fury X an overclockers dream was one of the most fun quotes of all considering it is the worst overclocker ever made, 1% perf gain for 100 more watts or so. Some could not even overclock.
 
Last edited:
Bill Gates loves being called the spawn of satans seed, which he is, he loves his evil father and his cronies....any predictions he makes will happen, specifically about killing off billions of humans to better control the planet... new virus coming "marburgvirus" soon to be used as a scape goat for all those vaxx haters... and loyal vlacine junkies... but they will have a fakecine for it... a new miracle one... that cures you of everything, never be sick again, get a new shot once a month... take it orally ..or use your thumb to insert it...
 
IMO, this list demonstrates that the more society puts those who "made it" on a pedestal, the more those that society puts on that pedestal demonstrate that they do not deserve to be there because they had and have no clue of what they are/were talking about.
 
“In the future, the primary means of communication with computers will be through speech, not through graphics”
– Nicholas Negroponte, director of MIT's Media Lab.

While this seems like the obvious direction to go, speech input is not particularly useful in public settings. Computer "call my proctologist and get the results of my colonoscopy". Uh, no.
 
Back