Quotes

Thoughts… on plans

November 30, 2011
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I’ve been having discussion regarding plans with some folks recently. It got me thinking and I’ve come to the conclusion that you should keep Eisenhower and Powell’s Axioms in mind, namely: Eisenhower’s Axiom: “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” Powell’s Axiom: “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.” To this I’d like to add my own: Eugen’s Axiom: “The foundation of a good plan is to rely on those you trust.” It makes the planning quite useful if you know that when the plan becomes obsolete you can move forward with conviction.

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Darth Vader: Venture Capitalist

May 28, 2011
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I’ve been through a number of start-ups and friends of mine are still toiling through theirs. And although I have rejoined their ranks as a CTO in a research-oriented startup I don’t miss the turmoil associated with trying to please investors, customers, and employees all before you have a product. Especially when it seems that you don’t get to include yourself in that mix of who has to be pleased. Like most geeky types I’ve been watched the Star Wars series repeatedly. My kids watch the original three at least twice a year, with my son and I’ve come to notice something: Darth Vader is a venture capitalist. Now, you may think me nuts — I’ve been called that before, usually before heading off on another start-up adventure — however, hear me out. When you listen to Darth Vader motivating the troops or attempting to get the upper hand on the competition (i.e., the Rebel Alliance), he speaks like a seasoned venture capitalist. I’ll provide some examples although this may mean you can never watch the Star Wars saga in the same way again. On Deals I am altering the deal, pray I do not alter it any further. When

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Quote of the month

April 22, 2011
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The invention of writing formed the real beginning of civilization. As language distinguishes man from other animals, so writing distinguishes civilized man from the barbarian. – William F. Friedman

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More Quotes

February 20, 2011
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The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits. – Anonymous Now there’s a man with an open mind … you can feel the breeze from here! – ?Groucho Marx It is better to seem a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. – Anonymous If I have seen further than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants. – Sir Isaac Newton Excellence can be achieved if you . . . risk more than others think is safe, love more than others think is wise, dream more than others think is practical, and expect more than others think is possible. – ?Anonymous Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. – Theodore Roosevelt My mother said to me, “If you become a soldier, you’ll be a general; if you become a monk, you’ll end up as the Pope.” Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso. – Pablo Picasso There

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Some of my Favourite Quotes

November 28, 2010
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I’ve been collecting quotes for years. Some are pithy, some deep, some make you laugh but the ones I’ve kept have always made an impression on me. Here are some of my favourites. Plans are nothing. Planning is everything. Eisenhower Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don’t need to be done. Andy Rooney DOS computers manufactured by companies such as IBM, Compaq, Tandy, and millions of others are by far the most popular, with about 70 million machines in use worldwide. Macintosh fans, on the other hand, may note that cockroaches are far more numerous than humans, and that numbers alone do not denote a higher life form. New York Times, November 26, 1991 Memory is like an orgasm. It’s a lot better if you don’t have to fake it. Seymore Cray, on virtual memory Programmer /n./ A red-eyed, mumbling mammal capable of conversing with inanimate objects. unknown 2 + 2 = 5, for extremely large values of 2 unknown I have never seen anything fill up a vacuum so fast and still suck. Rob Pike, commenting on the X Window System You start coding.

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Quote of the Day

May 26, 2010
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Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning. – Rick Cook, The Wizardry Compiled

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Quotes for the Day

May 20, 2010
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Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. If we knew what we were doing it wouldn’t be called research. – Albert Einstein.

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Quote of the Month

May 15, 2010
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Charlie Munger on who to blame for the crisis we may be just exiting: The academic elites failed us with their utterly asinine ideas of risk control. It was grounded on the idea that all risk took Gaussian distributions, which is just totally wrong. Very high IQ people can be completely useless. And many of them are. And this might well apply to IT security, too, where all too many academics figure we can actually control risk.

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Quotes from Alan Kay

May 12, 2010
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I’ve been enjoying the 1997 OOPSLA Keynote by Alan Kay, The Computer Revolution Hasn’t Happened Yet, and a few choice paraphrased quotes popped out of him. The main point of doing any programming work is that there must be some exquisite blend between beauty and practicality. There is no need to sacrifice either one of those. And people who are willing to sacrifice either one of those don’t really get what computing is all about. I invented the term Object-Oriented, and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind. HTML has taken us back to the dark ages wherein it presupposes a browser that understands its formats. This has to be one of the worst ideas since MS-DOS. Objects can act like anything! The most pernicious thing about languages like C++ and Java is that they think they’re helping the programmer by looking as much like the old thing as possible but they’re hurting the programmer terribly by making it difficult to understand what’s powerful in this new metaphor. A language that essentially forces you to develop outside of the language, requires you to compile and reload, is a dead end for building complex systems. The Internet

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Ph.D.s, Focus, and the Loss of the Infinite

July 2, 2009
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I’ve been trying for a long while to put into words why I became disenchanted with the Ph.D. process, and why that was one reason — though not the overriding reason — why I terminated my pursuit of a doctorate. But today, sitting back and reading a bit of Thomas Aquinas I came to a sudden epiphany. The reason is straightforward, and ironically was told to me by a dearly departed friend years ago. The problem, is that Ph.D.s are too narrowly focused. Or, as Jim Anderson so eloquently put it way back when, “Some of the stupidest people I know have Ph.D.s.” He bemoaned their inability to grasp the larger picture, instead focusing on minutiae, some small problem ignoring all else. Sometimes ignoring reality itself and coming up with a “solution” that worked only within some fantastical model that had little relation to how the real world functioned. Now Jim, like myself, was an old grey beard of security. In fact, I would argue that Jim was responsible for what today is called “information security”. The very foundations of computer security were formulated and documented by Jim way back in 1972. I was fortunate enough to work with Jim

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Musings

A blog of my musings. Some folks find it interesting and so I continue. Hopefully it will remain fairly interesting. At worst, it'll keep me writing orthogonally to my day job.

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