Jason Keisling Blog

"Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow. "-Agent K, Men In Black (1997 movie)

Don't Give Up.
Sometimes people are just wrong.
Taken from James Robert Watson's design blog:

"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy."
-Drillers who Edwin Drake tried to enlist in 1859

"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication."
-Western Union internal memo, 1876

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."
-President, Royal Society, 1895

"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value."
-Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
-Commissioner, US Office of Patents, 1899

"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?"
-Response to Sarnoff's urging for radio investment, 1920s

"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"
- HM Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927

"I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper."
- Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the lead role in 'Gone With The Wind.'

"The problem with television is that the people must sit and keep their eyes glued to a screen: the average American family hasn't time for it."
-New York Times, 1939

"If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this."
-Spencer Silver on the work that led to the adhesive for 3-M Post-It notepads.

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
-Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
-Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949

"You ain't goin' nowhere, son. You ought to go back to drivin' a truck."
-Manager of the Grand Ole Opry, firing Elvis Presley, 1954

"I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year."
-Editor, Prentice Hall Business Books, 1957

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
-Decca Records, rejecting the Beatles, 1962

"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C', the idea must be feasible."
-Yale professor commenting on a paper by Fred Smith (who later founded FedEx) proposing overnight delivery service

"But what . . . is it good for?"
-IBM executive commenting on the microchip, 1968

"So we went to Atari, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you.' They said, 'No.' So we went to Hewlett-Packard, they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet.'"
-Steve Jobs, trying to get Atari and HP interested in his and Steve Wozniak's Apple personal computer.

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
-President, Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977

"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
-Bill Gates, 1981

for this entry i'm going to be a rebel and refrain from capital letters.

capitalizing the first word of a sentence seems like a dumb grammatical rule. one knows a word is the beginning of a sentence because it is following a punctuation mark. the capital letter is unnecessary.

the purpose of most rules in grammar is to make a sentence or paragraph more easy to read and to limit confusion.

while i'm at it, here's another thing people do that is not only unnecessary, but also considered bad typography: double spaces after a period. here's a great article about why one should never do it.

edit: my mother brought up a possible purpose for capitalizing the first word of a paragraph. it does distinguish between punctuation marks used for things such as an abbreviation and punctuation that symbolizes the end of a thought. for example: "Meet me on Burnside St. before dark." capitalizing the beginnings of sentences does prevent one from thinking that "before dark" is a new sentence. while i'm talking about abbreviations, why in the hell is "abbreviation", which means shortening a word, such a long word?