Engineering & Science Notable Quote Archive #9

• "The role of government is not to create wealth. The role of government is to create an environment in which the entrepreneur can flourish, in which minds can expand, in which technologies can reach new frontiers." - President George W. Bush
• "The slide rule helped to design the very machines that would render it obsolete." - Robert Ragen, designer of the Friden 130 electronic calculator, in Scientific American (p87)
• "[Linux] can't be used for serious business, because it would be too easy for employees of a business to learn to use - and abuse - the source code of essential programs," Hermann Chinery-Hesse, "the Bill Gates of Ghana"
• "These fierce new competitors are ready to engage you, your company and your kids in extreme competition. They play hardball and dominate their industries. They'll go to the ends of the earth to employ factory workers for 9 cents an hour and PhDs in science and technology for $20k a year." Peter Fingar
• "And some of us still believe that real radios glow in the dark." - Ed Mustoe (referring to tube types)
• "I never knew a man who was good at making excuses who was good at anything else." - Benjamin Franklin
• "News is what companies do not want you to know; everything else is marketing." - Loring Wirbel, EE Times
• "Are you going to go to jail over it? No. Are you going to go to court over it? Yes." - Corey Rosen, referring to companies backdating stock options (ala Vitesse Semi)
• "I've never seen age discrimination in consulting. Having white hair or a lack of hair adds to your credibility." - Bob Gauger, 82-yr-old consultant
• "Noise doesn't obey Moore's Law" - Mike Press, RFMD
• "The Supreme Court has rules that firing someone based on expense is not necessarily age discrimination." - Paul Mollica, Esq.
• "Shooting down an enemy missile against the backdrop of space is like trying to score a hole-in-one when the hole is moving at 17,000 mph." - Philip Coyle, CDI
• "I read the patent. You don't usually think of movie stars having brains, but she sure did." - Franklin Antonio, Qualcomm Founder, said of Hedy Lamarr, the “mother of spread spectrum”