beltex - Software Engineer
Hello! Nice to meet you :)
Welcome to my corner of the internet. Make yourself at home.
"Denoting software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified."
"These are a few of favourite things!"
"Throughout the text we will use parenthetical notes such as this to describe historical notes and comparisons between different Unix implementations. Often the reason for a particular implementation technique becomes clear when the historical reasons are described."
"Flight, EECOM, try SCE to AUX"
"Perhaps I could best describe my experience of doing mathematics in terms of entering a dark mansion. One goes into the first room, and it's dark, completely dark. One stumbles around bumping into the furniture, and gradually, you learn where each piece of furniture is, and finally, after six months or so, you find the light switch. You turn it on, and suddenly, it's all illuminated. You can see exactly where you were."
"Just remember that whatever gets in your face, be it the weasels, the machine, or your own inexperience, the thing to keep in the forefront of your mind is this: You're in it to figure out how it works."
"Do you remember how you felt the first time you powered on the Giant and you knew it was something special? Well, I felt the same way when the first user entered my Community room. It was like... I don't know, it was like giving birth. You know? I know that sounds crazy."
"The sea's only gifts are harsh blows, and occasionally the chance to feel strong. Now, I don't know much about the sea, but I do know that that's the way it is here. And I also know how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong, but to feel strong, to measure yourself at least once, to find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions, facing the blind, deaf stone alone with nothing to help you but your hands and your own head."
"It sounds so naive and so obvious, but it begins and ends with the object. It's a physical thing that is so remarkably complex but wonderful in how you can relate to it on so many levels all at once. But your obsession has to be with the object; you can't just live in a little virtual world and develop forms in CAD and then remotely prototype and manufacture something and expect it will have any significance. A three-dimensional idea is not a product."
"From this day forward, Flight Control will be known by two words: 'Tough' and 'Competent.' Tough means we are forever accountable for what we do or what we fail to do. We will never again compromise our responsibilities. Every time we walk into Mission Control we will know what we stand for. Competent means we will never take anything for granted. We will never be found short in our knowledge and in our skills. Mission Control will be perfect. When you leave this meeting today you will go to your office and the first thing you will do there is to write 'Tough and Competent' on your blackboards. It will never be erased. Each day when you enter the room these words will remind you of the price paid by Grissom, White, and Chaffee. These words are the price of admission to the ranks of Mission Control.
"After our return, Reinhold and I were hailed as victors over Everest, but this is false. Everest was neither conquered nor overcome by us--it simply tolerated us. And if we can talk about a victory at all, then it is at the most a victory over our own bodies, over fear. It was a very personal, lonely victory in a struggle that each of us fought alone, and the victory was not achieved in the last feet that still lay before us. It had already been achieved at the moment when we took the first step out into the unknown. And it was secured and documented when we returned alive from the kingdom of the dead."
"Indeed, one of my major complaints about the computer field is that whereas Newton could say, 'If I have seen a little farther than others it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants,' I am forced to say, 'Today we stand on each other's feet.' Perhaps the central problem we face in all of computer science is how we are to get to the situation where we build on top of the work of others rather than redoing so much of it in a trivially different way. Science is supposed to be cumulative, not almost endless duplication of the same kind of things."
"Focusing is about saying no."