Specifications Quotes - Page 2

• The hardest part of the software task is arriving at a complete and consistent specification, and much of the essence of building a program is in fact the debugging of the specification.

  Fred Brooks

  Learning, Essence, Arriving

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• In experimental art, men are given the exact specifications of coming violence to their own psyches from their own counter-irritant or technology... But the counter-irritant usually proves a greater plague than the initial irritant, like a drug habit.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Art, Technology, Men

  Marshall McLuhan (1964). “Understanding media: the extensions of man”

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• I loved music, and in my ninth year at MIT, I decided to buy a hi-fi set. I figured that all I needed to do was look at the specifications. So I bought what looked like the best one, turned it on, and turned it off in five minutes, the sound was so poor.

  Amar Bose

  Years, Sound, Looks

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• To treat programming scientifically, it must be possible to specify the required properties of programs precisely. Formality is certainly not an end in itself. The importance of formal specifications must ultimately rest in their utility -in whether or not they are used to improve the quality of software or to reduce the cost of producing and maintaining software.

  Jim Horning

  Learning, Quality, Cost

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• Our schools are, in a sense, factories, in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned into products to meet the various demands of life. The specifications for manufacturing come from the demands of twentieth-century civilization, and it is the business of the school to build its pupils according to the specifications laid down.

  Ellwood Patterson Cubberley

  Children, School, Civilization

  Ellwood Patterson Cubberley (1916). “Public School Administration: A Statement of the Fundamental Principles Underlying the Organization and Administration of Public Education”

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• Given that the label "immigrant literature" is already established, unavoidable for anyone with a migrant background and used in any given context, I strongly advocate an absurd amount of specification to go along with the label.

  Sasa Stanisic

  Migrants, Labels, Literature

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Kantian ethical theory distinguishes three levels: First, that of a fundamental principle (the categorical imperative, formulated in three main ways in Kant's Groundwork); second, a set of duties, not deduced from but derived from this principle, by way of its interpretation or specification, its application to the general conditions of human life - which Kant does in the Doctrine of virtue, the second main part of the Metaphysics of Morals; and then finally an act of judgment, through which these duties are applied to particular cases.

  Allen W. Wood

  Principles, Doe, Doctrine

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Isn't it true that whatever isn't determined by our genes must be determined by our environment? What else is there? There's Nature and there's Nurture. Is there also some X, some further contributor to what we are? There's Chance. Luck. This extra ingredient is important but doesn't have to come from the quantum bowels of our atoms or from some distant star. It is all around us in the causeless coin-flipping of our noisy world, automatically filling in the gaps of specification left unfixed by our genes, and unfixed by salient causes in our environment.

  Daniel Dennett

  Stars, Luck, Important

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• I've learned about the inflation range situation. Obviously with our footballs being inflated to the 12.5-pound range, any deflation would then take us under that specification limit. Knowing that now, in the future we will certainly inflate the footballs above that low level to account for any possible change during the game.

  Bill Belichick

  Football, Games, Knowing

  Source: hereandnow.wbur.org

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• When there are conflicts of observation, when experiments cannot be replicated, scientists may then retreat to a study of the various specific observations so as to explain the conflict, in the course of which they would make use of the concept of observation, or of some specification of that concept.

  Ernest Sosa

  Use, May, Retreat

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• I remember, as a young architect, people always talked about I. M. Pei's concrete. He had a particular specification no one else knew.

  Annabelle Selldorf

  People, Remember, Architect

  "Interview with Architect Annabelle Selldorf". Interview with Philip Nobel, www.architecturaldigest.com. March 31, 2013.

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• So in Jamaica it is the aim of everybody to talk English, act English and look English. And that last specification is where the greatest difficulties arise. It is not so difficult to put a coat of European culture over African culture, but it is next to impossible to lay a European face over an African face in the same generation.

  Zora Neale Hurston

  Jamaica, Generations, Culture

  Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker (1979). “I Love Myself when I Am Laughing ... and Then Again when I Am Looking Mean and Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader”, p.125, Feminist Press at CUNY

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• You can't exactly bake a man to your specifications. Most of all, one shouldn't alienate a candidate. A hybrid of Einstein, Tarzan and Inge Meysel doesn't exist. Besides, the images of politicians in the media aren't always accurate. I've had my share of experiences in that regard.

  Peer Steinbruck

  Men, Media, Politician

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• To try to be happy is to try to build a machine with no other specification than that it shall run noiselessly.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Happy, Running, Trying

  J. Robert Oppenheimer's letter to his brother Frank Oppenheimer (October 14, 1929), as quoted in "Robert Oppenheimer: Letters and Recollections" edited by Alice Kimball Smith (p. 136), 1995.

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• I'm keeping everything on a human level, but essentially everything in our lives has to be on a human level. Any specification of something by art history doesn't make any sense. The point is, if you have a loving, adorable, supportive mother anywhere in the world and you tell her all of your dreams, all of your aspirations, and the reward you would like, and she understands you, then it's not worth doing.

  Lawrence Weiner

  Mother, Dream, Art

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Everyone wants rather to be pleasing to women and that desire is not altogether, though it is very largely, a manifestation of vanity. But one cannot aim to be pleasing to women any more than one can aim to have taste, or beauty of expression, or happiness; for these things are not specific aims which one may learn to attain; they are descriptions of the adequacy of one's living. To try to be happy is to try to build a machine with no other specification than that it shall run noiselessly.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Running, Vanity, Expression

  J. Robert Oppenheimer's letter to his brother Frank Oppenheimer (October 14, 1929), as quoted in "Robert Oppenheimer: Letters and Recollections" edited by Alice Kimball Smith (p. 136), 1995.

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• I have come to believe that large print, thick and heavy paper, and wide margins and oversize leading is indicative of the expected intelligence of the reader. … Compare children's books and books on Web Duhsign or other X-in-21-days books. If the reading level of a specification is below college level, chances are the people behind it are morons and the result morose.

  Erik Naggum

  Children, Believe, Book

  Re: "Well, I want to switch over to replace EMACS LISP with Guile." (Usenet article), groups.google.com. September 30, 2002.

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• You become a serious programmer by going through a stage where you are fully aware of the degree to which you know the specification, meaning both the explicit and the tacit specification of your language and of your problem. "Hey, it works most of the time" is the very antithesis of a serious programmer, and certain languages can only support code like that.

  Erik Naggum

  Support, Degrees, Hey

  "Implementational Portability". Usenet discussion groups, groups.google.com. August 23, 1999.

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• There are only so many ways to experience pain. There are an almost limitless number of ways to inflict it, but the pain itself, initially vividly distinct in all its specifications, becomes, inevitably, just pain.

  China Mieville

  Pain, Numbers, Way

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• The essence of a software entity is a construct of interlocking concepts. I believe the hard part of building software to be the specification, design, and testing of this conceptual construct, not the labor of representing it and testing the fidelity of the representation.

  Fred Brooks

  Believe, Essence, Design

  "No Silver Bullet – Essence and Accident in Software Engineering". Paper by Fred Brooks, 1986.

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• There's a lot of people I know who have a lot of synthesisers and they don't really know anything about them, they know the specifications and everything, but they don't really get to know them.

  Thighpaulsandra

  People, Knows

  Source: thequietus.com

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• A commercial society whose members are essentially ascetic and indifferent in social ritual has to be provided with blueprints and specifications for evoking the right tone for every occasion.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Tone, Social, Members

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