Issue Seven - Conversations on Technology, Business and Society

“ “The only worse thing than being talked about is not
being talked about.”
ERIC JACKSON, managing member at Naples, tweetering about Yahoo! Inc.’s
apparent absence from news reports and the general downward trend of stocks at
company that rejected Microsoft’s takeover bid two years ago.
Quotes Did you know?
Where Did The Word Robot Come
From ?
This is a question we get asked a lot
so we thought we’d put people out
of their misery. Firstly the word robot
comes from the Czech word ‘robotnik‘
which means forced labour or even
slave. Watching movies and reading
various sci-fi novels of the past you’ll
quickly see that robots have mostly
always been portrayed as servents of
humanity.
“Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows
a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of
yourself. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon
to something larger than yourself that you realize your
true potential. ”
BARRACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America
“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like.
Design is how it works.”
STEVE JOBS, FOUNDER & CEO, Apple Inc. The company has made headlines
lately following the excellent “Design” of their products. “Design”, in his sense.
“Programming today is a race between software
engineers striving to build bigger and better idiotproof
programs, and the Universe trying to produce
bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is
winning.”
UNKNOWN
“Given the explosive growth in the use of the World
Wide Web for publishing, electronic commerce,
lifelong learning and the delivery of government
services, it is vital that the Web be accessible to
everyone.”
BILL CLINTON, The 42nd president of the United States of America in one of his
speeches as President.
“A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than
any invention in human history – with the possible
exceptions of handguns and tequila.”
UNKNOWN
“Since when has the world of computer software
design been about what people want? This is a simple
question of evolution. The day is quickly coming
when every knee will bow down to a silicon fist, and
you will all beg your binary gods for mercy.”
BILL GATES Founder and former CEO of Microsoft Corporation. The Silicon Valley
is region of western California southeast of San Francisco known for its hightechnology
design and manufacturing industries.
8 PC TECH | SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER 2010 | pctechmagazine.com
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What’s The Fastest Possible Speed ?
Well imagine going 500,000 times
faster than a concorde and you have
a speed nearing 299,792,458 meters
per second. This is the speed of
light as it travels through a vaccum
which it’s so fast that if you were
able to move at this speed you could
go around the earth 7 times in just 1
second, now that’s fast!
How Heavy Is The Earth ?
Now despite science coming forward
in leaps and bounds the simple
question of how much the Earth
weighs isn’t as straightforward as you
might think. Certainly placing the earth
onto a massive set of weighing scales
isn’t an option. So how do we measure
the total weight of the earth ?
What’s A Google ?
When you hear the word Google the
first image that comes to mind has to
be the famous internet search engine
but does the word actually mean
anything ? Well the answer is a firm
yes because it comes from the term
“Googol” which represents a number
(written as a 1 followed by 100 zeros).
FACTS ABOUT THE WEB
• In 1996, Americans spent an
average of 30 minutes a month
surfing the World Wide Web.
• The average American Spends
27 hours a month online, this
according to Nielsen’s Three
Screen Report for the 4th quarter
of 2008.
• The Web was invented in 1989
by a British physicist named Tim
Berners-Lee
• It is just one of the many services
that operate on the Internet.
Other services include e-mail,
newsgroups and FTP.