Of course most people underestimate the warrior characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon and Norman peoples anyway. It takes a heap of piety to keep a Viki… - Jerry Pournelle

I've noticed that just about every time I find a large program with known glitches that no one seems able to fix, that program is written in C and is likely written by a programming team in a remote location.

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection. (Note: This quote, although found in the 1985 sci-fi novel, 'Lucifer's Hammer', by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, may be erroneously attributed to Pournelle. As this quote can also be found in the Preface of Henri Poincare's "Science and Hypothesis" the 1952 Dover abridged edition)

One of the first things they teach stockbrokers is to stay out of the stock market. Brokers make their pile from selling advice, and from commissions on stock transactions. They can't predict the market, and few risk their own money. They, at least, only affect their clients' fortunes. Economists, though, can ruin the lot of us with their advice — yet if no science can predict a relatively closed system like the stock market, how the devil are you going to 'fine tune' something a large as the American economy? I'd think it arrogant to try; as arrogant as the man with three illiterate drug-addicted spoiled brats writing a book on parenting.