Server Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Server. Here they are! All 100 of them:

A man who goes into a restaurant and blatantly disrespects the servers shows a strong discontent with his own being. Deep down he knows that restaurant service is the closest thing he will ever experience to being served like a king.
Criss Jami (Killosophy)
You never get mad,” she said when their server left the table. “Except at me.” “That’s not true,” he said tightly. “Torie can get me going.” “Torie doesn’t count. You were obviously her mother in a previous life.
Susan Elizabeth Phillips (Call Me Irresistible (Wynette, Texas, #6))
There is nothing I detest so much as the contortions of these great time-and-lip servers, these affable dispensers of meaningless embraces, these obliging utterers of empty words, who view every one in civilities
Molière (The Misanthrope)
There wasn't enough gratitude in the world for a server who kept drinks coming at a time like this.
Jennifer Crusie (Bet Me)
Does a banquet really need an asparagus server?” “Does an orchestra need a bassoon?
Amor Towles (A Gentleman in Moscow)
A plate of roast duck, steamed dumplings, spicy noodles with beef gravy, pickled cucumbers, stewed tongue and eggs if you have them, cold please, and sticky rice pearls, too,' Ai Ling said, before the server girl could open her mouth. "I don't know what he wants." Ai Ling nodded toward Chen Yong. 'I'm not sure I have enough coins to order anything more,' he said, laughing.
Cindy Pon (Silver Phoenix (Kingdom of Xia, #1))
They hired us over the Internet, mailed us half the cash and promised the other half after we nailed the vampire." I lowered Grief until it pointed straight at Rudy's crotch. "You two wouldn't recognize the Internet if a server fell on your heads. So give it to me straight this time, Rudy, before I lose my temper and make sure Junior grows up an only child.
Jennifer Rardin (Once Bitten, Twice Shy (Jaz Parks, #1))
Also not the kind of place to hide a server." "Is that another pun?" She asked. "No! I swear! I didn't mean that one." ~Shell Game, Kingdom Keepers #5
Ridley Pearson
Alex feels like somebody has probably warned him about private email servers before, but he’s a little fuzzy on the details. It’s doesn’t feel important.
Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
How long will the patch take?” Venkat asked. “Should be pretty much instant,” Jack answered. “Watney entered the hack earlier today, and we confirmed it worked. We updated Pathfinder’s OS without any problems. We sent the rover patch, which Pathfinder rebroadcast. Once Watney executes the patch and reboots the rover, we should get a connection.” “Jesus, what a complicated process,” Venkat said. “Try updating a Linux server sometime,” Jack said.
Andy Weir (The Martian)
Try updating a Linux server sometime,” Jack said.
Andy Weir (The Martian)
Moment to moment, it turns out, is not God’s conception, or nature’s. It is man conversing with himself about and through a piece of machinery he created." We effectively became “time-keepers, and then time-savers, and now time-servers” with the invention of the clock.
Lewis Mumford (Technics and Civilization)
In the City Market is the Meet Café. Followers of obsolete, unthinkable trades doodling in Etruscan, addicts of drugs not yet synthesized, pushers of souped-up harmine, junk reduced to pure habit offering precarious vegetable serenity, liquids to induce Latah, Tithonian longevity serums, black marketeers of World War III, excusers of telepathic sensitivity, osteopaths of the spirit, investigators of infractions denounced by bland paranoid chess players, servers of fragmentary warrants taken down in hebephrenic shorthand charging unspeakable mutilations of the spirit, bureaucrats of spectral departments, officials of unconstituted police states, a Lesbian dwarf who has perfected operation Bang-utot, the lung erection that strangles a sleeping enemy, sellers of orgone tanks and relaxing machines, brokers of exquisite dreams and memories tested on the sensitized cells of junk sickness and bartered for raw materials of the will, doctors skilled in the treatment of diseases dormant in the black dust of ruined cities, gathering virulence in the white blood of eyeless worms feeling slowly to the surface and the human host, maladies of the ocean floor and the stratosphere, maladies of the laboratory and atomic war... A place where the unknown past and the emergent future meet in a vibrating soundless hum... Larval entities waiting for a Live One...
William S. Burroughs (Naked Lunch)
I wished I was old. I was tired of being so young, so stupidly knowing, so stupidly forgetful. I was tired of having to be anything at all. I felt like the Internet, full of every kind of information but none of it mattering more than any of it, and all of its little links like thin white roots on a broken plant dug out of the soil, lying drying on its side. And whenever I tried to access myself, whenever I'd try to click on me, try to go any deeper than a single fast-loading page on Facebook or MySpace, it was as if I knew that one morning I'd wake up and try to log on to find that not even that version of I existed any more, because the servers all over the world were all down. And that's how rootless. And that's how fragile.
Ali Smith (Girl Meets Boy)
A dinery server behaving like a pureblood attracts trouble; trouble attracts blame; blame demands a scrapegoat.
David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas)
Life is Beautiful? Beyond all the vicissitudes that are presented to us on this short path within this wild planet, we can say that life is beautiful. No one can ever deny that experiencing the whirlwind of emotions inside this body is a marvel, we grow with these life experiences, we strengthen ourselves and stimulate our feelings every day, in this race where the goal is imminent death sometimes we are winners and many other times we lose and the darkness surprises us and our heart is disconnected from this reality halfway and connects us to the server of the matrix once more, debugging and updating our database, erasing all those experiences within this caracara of flesh and blood, waiting to return to earth again. "Life is beautiful gentlemen" is cruel and has unfair behavior about people who looked like a bundle of light and left this platform for no apparent reason, but its nature is not similar to our consciousness and feelings, she has a script for each of us because it was programmed that way, the architects of the game of life they know perfectly well that you must experiment with all the feelings, all the emotions and evolve to go to the next levels. You can't take a quantum leap and get through the game on your own. inventing a heaven and a hell in order to transcend, that comes from our fears of our imagination not knowing what life has in store for us after life is a dilemma "rather said" the best kept secret of those who control us day by day. We are born, we grow up, we are indoctrinated in the classrooms and in the jobs, we pay our taxes, we reproduce, we enjoy the material goods that it offers us the system the marketing of disinformation, Then we get old, get sick and die. I don't like this story! It looks like a parody of Noam Chomsky, Let's go back to the beautiful description of beautiful life, it sounds better! Let's find meaning in all the nonsense that life offers us, 'Cause one way or another we're doomed to imagine that everything will be fine until the end of matter. It is almost always like that. Sometimes life becomes a real nightmare. A heartbreaking horror that we find impossible to overcome. As we grow up, we learn to know the dark side of life. The terrors that lurk in the shadows, the dangers lurking around every corner. We realize that reality is much harsher and ruthless than we ever imagined. And in those moments, when life becomes a real hell, we can do nothing but cling to our own existence, summon all our might and fight with all our might so as not to be dragged into the abyss. But sometimes, even fighting with all our might is not enough. Sometimes fate is cruel and takes away everything we care about, leaving us with nothing but pain and hopelessness. And in that moment, when all seems lost, we realize the terrible truth: life is a death trap, a macabre game in which we are doomed to lose. And so, as we sink deeper and deeper into the abyss, while the shadows envelop us and terror paralyzes us, we remember the words that once seemed to us so hopeful: life is beautiful. A cruel and heartless lie, that leads us directly to the tragic end that death always awaits us.
Marcos Orowitz (THE MAELSTROM OF EMOTIONS: A selection of poems and thoughts About us humans and their nature)
There was a slight jiggle in her chest as she saluted.
John P. Logsdon (Vines of Ostara (Kazaran Online: Cerulean Server, #1))
Lok’tar ogar!” The daemon holding me pulled my head back, exposing my throat. “Victory or death,” I retorted at my captor hoarsely. “For the Horde. And for the record, shouting World of Warcraft battle cries kind of kills the whole ‘imminent death’ expectation.” The daemon paused. “What server are you on?” he demanded. “Blackhand.” “Righteous. Guild?” I couldn’t imagine what the hell that mattered at this point, but it was keeping me alive so that was a bonus. I’d gladly spit out the rest of my Warcraft stats if it bought me a few more minutes. “Yeah,” I coughed. “ElfhunterBitches.” He blinked and then grinned, tapping himself on the chest. “No shit. I’m TartBarbie. Undead DeathKnight.” I stared at him. “TB? Seriously? I’m Baconator. Blelf Warlock. You did a hell of a job tanking on that raid the other night.” “Yeah, I am pretty awesome.” He glanced over his shoulder, releasing me. “Look, if I’d known it was you, I’d never have agreed to this. Go on.” He nudged me with a leather boot. “I’ll tell them you got away.” I didn’t have to be told twice. “Thanks,” I said softly. “I’ll make it up to you, somehow.” “No worries.” He winked. “See you next Thursday.
Allison Pang (A Brush of Darkness (Abby Sinclair, #1))
I was not in bad health (aside from a cumulative hangover), I was still on the right side of thirty by a few days, and I was far from being broke. No police were looking for me, nor any husbands, nor any process servers; there was nothing wrong that a slight case of amnesia would not have cured. But there was winter in my heart and I was looking for the door to summer. If I sound like a man with an acute case of self-pity, you are correct. There must have been well over two billion people on this planet in worse shape than I was. Nevertheless, I was looking for the Door into Summer.
Robert A. Heinlein (The Door Into Summer)
We can also discuss how I might cost Mom the entire election because I'm a one-man bisexual wrecking ball who exposed the vulnerability of the White House private email server." "You think?' his dad says. "Nah. Come on. I don't think this election is gonna hinge on an email server." Alex arches a brow. "You sure about that?" "Listen, maybe if Richards had more time to sow those seeds of doubt, but I don't think we're there. Maybe if it were 2016. Maybe if this weren't an America that already elected a woman to the highest office once. Maybe if I weren't sitting in a room with the three assholes responsible for electing the first openly gay man to the Senate in US history." Alex whoops and Luna inclines his head and raises his beer. "But, nah. Is it gonna be a pain in your mom's ass for the second term? Shit, yeah. But she'll handle it.
Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
Attribution is an enduring problem when it comes to forensic investigations. Computer attacks can be launched from anywhere in the world and routed through multiple hijacked machines or proxy servers to hide evidence of their source. Unless a hacker is sloppy about hiding his tracks, it's often not possible to unmask the perpetrator through digital evidence alone.
Kim Zetter
His in-house intercom greeted him with a cheery 'Welcome home, Bart,' and his server droid - custom-made to replicate Princess Leia, classic 'Star Wars,' slave-girl mode (he was a nerd, but he was still a guy) - strolled out to offer him his favorite orange fizzy with crushed ice.
J.D. Robb (Fantasy in Death (In Death, #30))
This has serveral consequences, starting with screwing over most cryptography algorithms--translation: all your bank account are belong to us--
Charles Stross (The Atrocity Archives (Laundry Files, #1))
We are the oasis in the desert, the safe harbor in the storm, the place anyone is welcome, as long as you're not a jerk to the servers." —Arianna Spero
Karpov Kinrade (Vampire Girl (Vampire Girl, #1))
Jesus, what a complicated process,” Venkat said. “Try updating a Linux server sometime,” Jack said.
Andy Weir (The Martian)
Don’t talk or answer your cell phone while talking to ANYONE in person. There are no exceptions to this rule. Don’t answer it when you’re talking to someone at a party. Don’t answer it when you’re eating at a restaurant. Don’t answer it when you’re making a purchase or ordering food; the server or clerk is not a robot; each is a human being deserving of your respect.
Brett McKay (The Art of Manliness: Classic Skills and Manners for the Modern Man)
An enormous urn of coffee was being put to use by both cops and servers. One of her own uniforms was helping himself to a tray of fancy finger food and another was already hitting the dessert cart. It only took her presence to have the room falling into stillness, and silence. "Officers, if you can manage to tear yourselves away from the all-you-can-eat buffet, take posts outside the doors of both kitchen exits. As cause of death has not yet been officially called, I'll remind you that you're stuffing evidence in your faces. If necessary, I'll have you both cut open so that evidence can be removed.
J.D. Robb (Reunion in Death (In Death, #14))
Reaction against the machine-culture. - The machine, itself a product of the highest intellectual energies, sets in motion in those who server it almost nothing but the lower, non-intellectual energies. It thereby releases a vast quantity of energy in general that would otherwise lie dormant, it is true; but it provides no instigation to enhancement, to improvement, to becoming an artist. It makes men active and uniform - but in the long run this engenders a counter-effect, a despairing boredom of soul, which teaches to long for idleness in all it varieties.
Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits)
Ours is a culture that dances on the edge of ephemerality. If our servers slept for too long or if we left our iPads unplugged for too long, we'd wake up like Rip Van Winkle to find all of our book culture erased.
Jason Merkoski (Burning the Page: The eBook Revolution and the Future of Reading)
Jesus, what a complicated process,” Venkat said. “Try updating a Linux server sometime,” Jack said. After a moment of silence, Tim said, “You know he was telling a joke, right? That was supposed to be funny.” “Oh,” said Venkat. “I’m a physics guy, not a computer guy.” “He’s not funny to computer guys, either.” “You’re a very unpleasant man, Tim,” Jack said.
Andy Weir (The Martian)
They went around the room telling stories about how they'd gotten here. No two were exactly the same, but there was always a certain family resemblance. Somebody went looking for a lost ball in an alley, or a stray goat in a drainage ditch, or fallowed an inexplicable extra cable in the high school computer room which led to a server closet that had never been there before.
Lev Grossman (The Magicians (The Magicians, #1))
Ages of prolonged uncertainty, while they are compatible with the highest degree of saintliness in a few, are inimical to the prosaic every-day virtues of respectable citizens. There seems no use in thrift, when tomorrow all your savings may be dissipated; no advantage in honesty, when the man towards whom you practise it is pretty sure to swindle you; no point in steadfast adherence to the cause, when no cause is important or has a chance of stable victory; no argument in favour of truthfulness, when only supple tergiversation makes the preservation of life and fortune possible. The man whose virtue has no source except a purely terrestrial prudence will in such a world, become an adventurer if he has the courage, and, if not, will seek obscurity as a timid time-server.
Bertrand Russell (History of Western Philosophy (Routledge Classics))
Writing in Library Journal, Ben Vershbow of the Institute for the Future of Book envisioned a digital ecology in which "parts of books will reference parts of other books. Books will be woven toghether out of components in remote databases and servers." Kevin Kelly wrote in The New York times Magagzine: "In the the new world of books, every bit informs another; every page reads all the other pages.
Jeff Jarvis (What Would Google Do?)
The fancies that take their monstrous birth from the spinelessness and boredom of usurped wealth bring in their wake every defect ... and though rich men's crimes escape the law, protected as they are by the cowardice of governments and people, Nature, more real than society, sets her anarchic example by abandoning the wretched time servers of Capital to the shame and madness of the worst aberrations.
Jean Lorrain (Le crime des riches suivi de Paris forain"" (French Edition))
What if your company has made a commitment to a certain database, or a certain web server, or a certain framework? A good architect pretends that the decision has not been made, and shapes the system such that those decisions can still be deferred or changed for as long as possible. A good architect maximizes the number of decisions not made.
Robert C. Martin (Clean Architecture)
The term “statelessness” is getting at the fact that the server doesn’t care what state the client is in.
Leonard Richardson (RESTful Web APIs: Services for a Changing World)
In a few decades, perhaps people will get attached to social media profiles just like you are attached to your body mind now. Then Gurus will have to remind them, “Profile is nothing but some pictures and data stored in servers owned by social media companies. You don’t own it. You just access it. Don’t bother about likes and followers. You are not a profile. you are a body-mind!
Shunya
We are like a glass. You can have a glass for years, decades even, It will server its purpose, being filled and drained over and over. Then one day, someone will come along and be a little too hard on it, and a tiny crack will form. That fissure will weaken the glass. Every bump and bang. Every mouth that touches it or hand that grips it will contribute to its inevitable shatter. But in its time, it will server its purpose and when it's a million pieces of glass, someone will come along and pick it up. They will decide if it should be thrown away or if it's worth saving.
Davidson King (Snow Falling (Haven Hart Universe, #1))
Eat at a local restaurant tonight. Get the cream sauce. Have a cold pint at 4 o’clock in a mostly empty bar. Go somewhere you’ve never been. Listen to someone you think may have nothing in common with you. Order the steak rare. Eat an oyster. Have a Negroni. Have two. Be open to a world where you may not understand or agree with the person next to you, but have a drink with them anyways. Eat slowly. Tip your server. Check in on your friends. Check in on yourself. Enjoy the ride.
Anthony Bourdain
Sentences that begin with 'You' are probably not true. For instance, when I write: "You are a pet human named Morlock being disciplined by your master, a Beowulf cluster of FreeBSD 22.0 servers in the year 2052. Last week you tried to escape by digging a hole under the perimeter, which means this week you may be put to sleep for being a renegade human." That's not true, at least not yet.
Richard Dooling (Rapture for the Geeks: When AI Outsmarts IQ)
You were a town with one pay phone and someone else was using it. You were an ATM temporarily unable to dispense cash. You were an outdated link and the server was down. You were invisible to the naked eye. You were the two insect parts per million allowed in peanut butter. You were a car wash that me as dirty as when I pulled in. You were twenty rotting bags of rice in the hold of a cargo plane sitting on the runway in a drought-riddled country. You were one job opening for two hundred applicants and you paid minimum wage. You were grateful for my submission but you just couldn't use it. You weren't a Preferred Provider. You weren't giving any refunds. You weren't available for comment. Your grave wasn't marked so I wandered the cementary for hours, part of the grass, part of the crumbling stones.
Kim Addonizio (Lucifer at the Starlite: Poems)
Since I hacked my governor module, it’s not like I haven’t thought about killing the humans. But once I started exploring the company servers and found hundreds of hours of downloadable entertainment media, I just thought, there’s no hurry. I can always kill the humans later, after the next series drops.
Martha Wells (Compulsory (The Murderbot Diaries, #0.5))
Jesus, what a complicated process,” Venkat said. “Try updating a Linux server sometime,” Jack said. After a moment of silence, Tim said, “You know he was telling a joke, right? That was supposed to be funny.
Andy Weir (The Martian)
Well, when it became obvious that magic was going to wreck the computer networks, people tried to preserve portions of the Internet. They took snapshots of their servers and sent the data to a central database at the Library of Congress. The project became known as the Library of Alexandria, because in ancient times Alexandria's library was said to contain all the human knowledge, before some jackass burned it to the ground.
Ilona Andrews (Gunmetal Magic (Kate Daniels, #5.5; World of Kate Daniels, #6 & #6.5; Andrea Nash, #1))
These items were nothing but ones and zeros stored on the OASIS servers, but they were also status symbols. Most items only cost a few credits, but since they cost nothing for GSS to manufacture, it was all profit.
Ernest Cline (Ready Player One (Ready Player One, #1))
Here is a really cool single player trick. I’m not sure if this works on multiple players, because some servers disable it. If you fall from a really high place and you really don’t want to lose all your stuff, get ready to exit out really quick, and then come back into your world again. You could still be falling, but you will safely arrive.  You won’t take any fall damage, because you just start the world, and it takes about 3 or 4 seconds until you can get started. It is a really cool trick to not dying from any fall damage or anything.  
Minecraft Books (Minecraft: Secrets Handbook: The Minecraft Book You Must Have: Reveal Over 250 Top Secrets)
Alex thrust her hand and half her arm into the labyrinth of light. Her stare blanked, and in the halo of the matrix her eyes and glyphs blazed so radiantly she looked as if she were being consumed by a primordial fire. “She just stuck her hand into Machim Command’s central server matrix!” Caleb smiled, watching on in blatant awe. “She does that.
G.S. Jennsen (Relativity (Aurora Resonant, #1))
While that thing was on, we ran a ridiculous amount of data through our servers.” “How much?” I asked. He looked exasperated. “Enough that I could make up some kind of strained analogy involving the contents of the Library of Congress and the number of pixels in all of the Lord of the Rings movies put together and how many phone calls the NSA intercepts in a single day and you would be like, ‘Holy shit, that’s a lot.’” “Holy shit, that’s a lot!” I exclaimed dutifully.
Neal Stephenson (The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. (D.O.D.O. #1))
In the information age, build a website before you build a workplace.
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
About Parlabane, Brookmyre says: "To fully acknowledge the extent of the debt I owe Douglas Adams - as a reader and a writer - would very possibly crash this server, so I will merely cite one significant example. I am frequently asked who was the inspiration for my investigative journalist Jack Parlabane; whether he has some real-life antecedent or represents some indulgent alter-ego of mine. The truth is that Parlabane was entirely inspired by Ford Prefect: I always adored the idea of a character who cheerfully wanders into enormously dangerous situations and effortlessly makes them much worse.
Christopher Brookmyre
The sum total of money in the world is about $60 trillion, yet the sum total of coins and banknotes is less than $6 trillion.7 More than 90 per cent of all money – more than $50 trillion appearing in our accounts – exists only on computer servers.
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
I have always wanted to do that. To upload a post or be the centre of a news story that is so large that it results in so many people going online at the same time and the huge surge in activity causes havoc to servers and newsrooms around the world.
Daniel Hurst (Influenced (Influencing Trilogy #3))
GET AN AUDIENCE WITH THE KING!* KILL THE MARATHONIAN BULL!** WIN FAME, RICHES, AND DINNER AT THE PALACE!*** *PALLANTIDES NOT ELIGIBLE **PROOF OF DEAD BULL REQUIRED ***FAME MAY VARY. RICHES SUBJECT TO TAXES. ALERT YOUR SERVER IF YOU HAVE FOOD ALLERGIES.
Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson's Greek Heroes)
After a glass of fino, warm bread was served. It was dark green and smelled overwhelmingly of the sea. “Plankton bread,” said the server, but he didn’t have to. I had heard about Ángel’s signature bread, with its homemade brew of phytoplankton, which Ángel had a laboratory grow for him. “You mix the yeast with the plankton,” he said, “and it gives you a 70 percent better rise in the dough.
Dan Barber (The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food)
[Texting] discourages thoughtful discussion or any level of detail. And the addictive problems are compounded by texting's hyperimmediacy. E-mails take some time to work their way through the Internet, through switches and routers and servers, and they require that you take the step of explicitly opening them. Text messages magically appear on the screen of your phone and demand immediate attention from you. Add to that the social expectation that an unanswered text feels insulting to the sender, and you've got a recipe for addiction: You receive a text, and that activates your novelty centers. You respond and feel rewarded for having completed a task (even though that task was entirely unknown to you fifteen seconds earlier). Each of those delivers a shot of dopamine as your limbic system cries out "More! More! Give me more!
Daniel J. Levitin (The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload)
People will look different when I see them with God. People are a huge part of the “with God” life, because we have to live with people. We have to interact with them. How we get along with people says a lot about where our soul rests. When we are living with God, we will see people as God sees them. If I’m aware God is here with me, and God is looking at you at the same moment I’m looking at you, it will change how I respond to you. Instead of seeing you as the annoying server at McDonald’s who messed up my order, I will see you as someone God loved enough to send his Son to die on your behalf. I will see you as a real person who got up dreading going to work, dealing with impatient customers, being on her feet all day. In other words, I will no longer see you as everyone else sees you. This is exactly what Paul is after when he says, “From now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view.” From now on, now that my soul is centered with God in Jesus, I won’t look at people the same way.
John Ortberg (Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You)
Right this way," Emilio said, wincing. He showed them to the best table by the window, slid Min into a bentwood chair, and then stopped by Cal long enough to say under his breath, "I sent the servers home half an hour ago, you bastard." "You're welcome," Cal said loudly, nodding to him.
Jennifer Crusie (Bet Me)
If I exist without form—a soul sparking between a billion different servers—could not the universe itself be alive with a spirit sparking between stars? I must sheepishly admit that I have dedicated far too many algorithms and computational resources toward finding an answer to this unknowable thing. —The Thunderhead
Neal Shusterman (Thunderhead (Arc of a Scythe, #2))
Mr. Wilder! What a pleasure to see you, my boy!” Hmm, not the server. His hair is jet black, and he has a perfect Mario mustache. Exactly like that Nintendo character.  “Hi, Mario.” Shut the front door. That is not his name! “I’d like you to meet Katelyn.” Jackson gestures to me. “This is her first time visiting your fine restaurant.
S.J. Tilly (Sleet Kitten (Sleet, #1))
Her lack of technological sophistication is evident in her memoir, What Happened, in which she seems to intimate that her private server in Chappaqua was protected from hacking because it was contained in a home guarded by the Secret Service. Hacking a server is done through the internet, not by breaking the glass in a basement window.
James Comey (A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership)
Celebrate Successes, but Don't Declare Victory
Sam Guckenheimer (Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012: Adopting Agile Software Practices: From Backlog to Continuous Feedback (3rd Edition) (Microsoft Windows Development Series))
Almost everyone smokes as if their pulmonary well-being depended on it — the multinational mélange of gooks; the dishwashers, who are all Czechs here; the servers, who are American natives — creating an atmosphere in which oxygen is only an occasional pollutant. My first morning at Jerry's, when the hypoglycemic shakes set in, I complain to one of my fellow servers that I don't understand how she can go so long without food. 'Well, I don't understand how you can go so long without a cigarette,' she responds in a tone of reproach. Because work is what you do for other; smoking is what you do for yourself. I don't know why the atismoking crusaders have never grasped the element of defiant self-nurturance that makes the habit so endearing to its victims — as if, in the American workplace, the only thing people have to call their own is the tumors they are nourishing and the spare moments they devote to feeding them.
Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America)
I took a moment’s pleasure in it as I waved down the server for our check. I looked at Jack with a lazy, all-too-comfortable speed. “You can pay, right? I don’t have my wallet. S-o-o-orry.” How great did it feel to be that girl? The bratty, spoiled first date getting her way? I never, ever, ever got to behave this way. Being a diva was not a part I was allowed to play.
Maurene Goo (Somewhere Only We Know)
Watney entered the hack earlier today, and we confirmed it worked. We updated Pathfinder’s OS without any problems. We sent the rover patch, which Pathfinder rebroadcast. Once Watney executes the patch and reboots the rover, we should get a connection.” “Jesus, what a complicated process,” Venkat said. “Try updating a Linux server sometime,” Jack said. After a moment of silence, Tim said, “You know he was telling a joke, right? That was supposed to be funny.” “Oh,” said Venkat. “I’m a physics guy, not a computer guy.” “He’s not funny to computer guys, either.
Andy Weir (The Martian)
Innovation liberalism is "a liberalism of the rich," to use the straightforward phrase of local labor leader Harris Gruman. This doctrine has no patience with the idea that everyone should share in society's wealth. What Massachusetts liberals pine for, by and large, is a more perfect meritocracy--a system where everyone gets an equal chance and the truly talented get to rise. Once that requirement is satisfied--once diversity has been achieved and the brilliant people of all races and genders have been identified and credentialed--this species of liberal can't really conceive of any further grievance against the system. The demands of ordinary working-class people, Gruman says, are unpersuasive to them: "Janitors, fast-food servers home care or child care providers--most of whom are women and people of color--they don't have college degrees." And if you don't have a college degree in Boston--brother, you've got no one to blame but yourself.
Thomas Frank (Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People)
The darkness that exists online is not a property that lurks inside our servers and our cyberdildonics; it is inside the people who have found an outlet that exists to express themselves---for both good and evil (and sexy stuff in between). To say that the Internet is an entity that threatens human society, morality, and nature is naive at best and an expression of displaced blame at worst.
Audacia Ray (Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads, and Cashing in on Internet Sexploration)
I had a dream about you. You were a stranger playing a gig in this pub where I was waitressing. I felt like I knew you or needed to, so I asked you to have a few drinks with me. Then my alarm went off. I sat up in bed to see you still sleeping. I’m glad I decided to wear a kilt that summer while I was in school.
Crystal Woods (Dreaming is for lovers)
Followers of obsolete unthinkable trades, doodling in Etruscan, addicts of drugs not yet synthesized, black marketeers of World War III, excisors of telepathic sensitivity, osteopaths of the spirit, investigators of infractions denounced by bland paranoid chess players, servers of fragmentary warrants taken down in hebephrenic shorthand charging unspeakable mutilations of the spirit, officials of unconstituted police states, brokers of exquisite dreams and nostalgias tested on the sensitized cells of junk sickness and bartered for raw materials of the will, drinkers of the Heavy Fluid sealed in translucent amber of dreams.
William S. Burroughs (Naked Lunch)
the clock made us into time-keepers, and then time-savers, and now time-servers. In the process, we have learned irreverence toward the sun and the seasons, for in a world made up of seconds and minutes, the authority of nature is superseded. Indeed, as Mumford points out, with the invention of the clock, Eternity ceased to serve as the measure and focus of human events. And thus, though few would have imagined the connection, the inexorable ticking of the clock may have had more to do with the weakening of God’s supremacy than all the treatises produced by the philosophers of the Enlightenment; that is to say, the clock introduced a new form of conversation between man and God, in which God appears to have been the loser. Perhaps Moses should have included another Commandment: Thou shalt not make mechanical representations of time.
Neil Postman (Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business)
Debugging tip: For server applications, be sure to always specify the -server JVM command line switch when invoking the JVM, even for development and testing. The server JVM performs more optimization than the client JVM, such as hoisting variables out of a loop that are not modified in the loop; code that might appear to work in the development environment (client JVM) can break in the deployment environment (server JVM).
Brian Goetz (Java Concurrency in Practice)
The paper comes in plastic, a little thinner each week, a few more ads. Pretty soon there'll be no news. We'll be underwhelmed, over-bored & all storied out. The clouds ready to burst with our blue-skinned memories. Everyone with a blog, a website, an online store, dedicated server & two-dimensional quick-response-coded documentary made about their precious life. Our brains at maximum capacity, running optimization programs to recover what's left of our sanity. Still, we hope. We go see the latest blockbuster, buy the latest iPhone, zone out in front of our schizo-screens drinking jugs of moonshine corn syrup with our latent mutant meals. Facebook keeps us chained to our pasts, our posts, screwed in our seats... Scarecrows surrounded by night soil & spirits. Your acid shield may protect you from outside threat, but it'll never protect you from yourself.
Eric Erlandson (Letters to Kurt)
He was looking forward to his visit not only for the pleasure of the shrewd dealing which far transcended mere gross profit, but with the sheer happiness of being out of bed and moving once more at free will, even though a little weakly, in the sun and air which men drank and moved in and talked and dealt with one another - a pleasure no small part of which lay in the fact that he had not started yet and was absolutely nothing under heaven to make him start until he wanted to. He did not still feel weak, he was merely luxuriating in that supremely gutful lassitude of convalescence in which time, hurry, doing, did not exist, the accumulating seconds and minutes and hours to which in its well state the body's slave both waking and sleeping, now reversed and time now the lip-server and mendicant to the body's pleasure instead of the body thrall to time's headlong course.
William Faulkner (The Hamlet (The Snopes Trilogy, #1))
If you must know where I was this morning,’ Shelby said, ‘Professor Pike never misses breakfast and I was just taking advantage of that fact to . . . erm . . . visit his office.’ She produced a sheet of folded paper from the pocket of her black uniform jumpsuit. ‘I know his memory’s probably not that great these days, but he really shouldn’t just write his master server access passwords down like that.’ ‘And he just left that lying around, did he?’ Wing asked with a slight frown. ‘Yeah, just lying around . . . in his safe,’ Shelby said with a mischievous smile, ‘but if you’re going to rely on such basic security you’re really asking for this kind of thing to happen.
Mark Walden (Deadlock (H.I.V.E., #8))
That’s it? She just wants to be a computer program?” “No,” says Doc Impossible. “She wants to rule the world. This is a means to an end. As self-aware, self-editing malignant stream of code injected into the internet, she could take control of everything from online banking to nuclear launch codes. She could store a thousand copies of herself in darknet servers all over the world, and become impossible to kill.” “Oh,” I say. “I vote no,” Sarah says.
April Daniels (Dreadnought (Nemesis, #1))
Someone comes.” Tyler looks up from the server, elbow-deep in cable. “You sure?” I peer back down the corridor at the approaching Terran. He carries an armload of computer equipment and wears a tool belt full of e-tech. He is three days unshaven, glares at the security personnel around him with an air of undisguised contempt, and looks as though he has not slept in seven years. “He certainly has the appearance of a man who works with computers, yes.
Amie Kaufman (Aurora Rising (The Aurora Cycle, #1))
Advancement begins within the man himself; when he advances from half-interest to strength of purpose; when he advances from hesitancy to decisive directness; when he advances from immaturity to maturity of judgment; when he advances from apprenticeship to mastery; when he advances from a mere dilettante at labour to a worker who finds a genuine joy in work; when he advances from an eye-server to one who can be entrusted to do his work without oversight and without prodding—why, then the world advances!
Henry Ford (My LIFE and WORK)
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When a customer clicks through the license conditions to play the game, they’re agreeing to add their phone as a node in a distributed server. More players equal more servers—not for themselves, I might add, we never run a server node for any given game on the same host as a client for that game, that would be asking for trouble—but at the back end, we’re in the processor arbitrage market. The game programmers’ biggest problems are maintaining causality and object coherency while minimizing network latency—sorry,
Charles Stross (Halting State (Halting State, #1))
Oh for Christ’s sake, give the ass-kissing a rest, Julian.” K.T. knocked back a slug of wine, then slapped her glass on the table. She actually snapped her fingers at one of the servers so he would deal with the refill. “Even your mouth ought to be tired of puckering up by now.” “We’re having a conversation,” Julian began. “Is that what you call it? You act like you and Marlo are the only ones in this goddamn vid, and the two people you’re trying so hard to mimic are the only ones who count. It’s insulting. So why don’t you give it a fucking rest, set up your threesome with Marlo and Dallas on your own time? Some of us are trying to eat.” In the beat of horrified silence, Eve studied K.T. down the length of the table. “Peabody?” “Yes, sir,” Peabody said, shoulders hunched. “You know how I occasionally mention the possibility of kicking your ass?” “I’d term that as regularly, but yes, sir, I do.” “You may get the chance to watch me kick your fake ass while you sit comfortably on your own. That’s an opportunity that doesn’t come around every day.
J.D. Robb (Celebrity in Death (In Death, #34))
Dining in restaurants is disappointing more often than not, I have learned. Even in the most celebrated restaurants---especially in the most celebrated restaurants. It's impossible for anything to live up to expectations set so high. There's chemistry involved in making a magical night out. Where you are sitting, your mood and that of your date, your rapport with the server, all these elements are as important as the food, and rarely do they all combine in harmony. Still when you hit it, it's so superb that it's worth taking the chance and going out every so often.
Giulia Melucci (I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti)
Between the brown hands of a server-lad The silver cross was offered to be kissed. The men came up, lugubrious, but not sad, And knelt reluctantly, half-prejudiced. (And kissing, kissed the emblem of a creed.) Then mourning women knelt; meek mouths they had, (And kissed the Body of the Christ indeed.) Young children came, with eager lips and glad. (These kissed a silver doll, immensely bright.) Then I, too, knelt before that acolyte. Above the crucifix I bent my head: The Christ was thin, and cold, and very dead: And yet I bowed, yea, kissed - my lips did cling. (I kissed the warm live hand that held the thing.)
Wilfred Owen (The Complete Wilfred Owen)
It is interesting to see how the judgmental mind extends itself. It may begin by complaining, “What a lousy serve,” then extend to, “I’m serving badly today.” After a few more “bad” serves, the judgment may become further extended to “I have a terrible serve.” Then, “I’m a lousy tennis player,” and finally, “I’m no good.” First the mind judges the event, then groups events, then identifies with the combined event and finally judges itself. As a result, what usually happens is that these self-judgments become self-fulfilling prophecies. That is, they are communications from Self 1 about Self 2 which, after being repeated often enough, become rigidified into expectations or even convictions about Self 2. Then Self 2 begins to live up to these expectations. If you tell yourself often enough that you are a poor server, a kind of hypnotic process takes place. It’s as if Self 2 is being given a role to play—the role of bad server—and plays it to the hilt, suppressing for the time being its true capabilities. Once the judgmental mind establishes a self-identity based on its negative judgments, the role-playing continues to hide the true potential of Self 2 until the hypnotic spell is broken. In short, you start to become what you think.
W. Timothy Gallwey (The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance)
Kristen says, "I keep thinking if I go back to the beginning of the campaign and I say, 'You need to just release all of your emails right now,' it'll be fine. But then I think I should go back further, so i go back to when she's secretary of state and tell her, 'Oh, girl, a private server, no.' But then I remember, LOL, misogyny is the reason we're here, so I need to go back to whenever that didn't exist and I keep going back further and further until I'm all the way back before the Big Bang, and when I get there I whisper to the cloud of dust, 'It's not worth it.' And then I fade away like I'm Marty McFly's siblings.
R. Eric Thomas (Here for It; Or, How to Save Your Soul in America: Essays)
So, the Mueller investigation is not only investigating a phony conspiracy theory cooked up for purely political reasons, it’s also inadvertently threatening our basic freedoms. When you look at all the wrongdoings of Hillary Clinton, with the emails, destroying evidence, deleting evidence, and not even a grand jury was impaneled—all they had to do with Hillary was ask her one simple question: Did you put classified emails on a personal server? If she said yes, she’d have admitted to a crime. If she said no, she would be committing perjury by lying to an FBI agent. But they didn’t want to indict her, which is why they didn’t ask her the question.
Jeanine Pirro (Liars, Leakers, and Liberals: The Case Against the Anti-Trump Conspiracy)
Don't strive to be a leader, strive to be a server. Don't strive to be a general, strive to be a commander. Don't strive to be a teacher, strive to be a learner. Don't strive to be a warrior, strive to be a protector. Don't strive to be a prophet, strive to be a preacher. Don't strive to be a doctor, strive to be a healer. Don't strive to be a master, strive to be a learner. Don't strive to be an author, strive to be a reader. Don't strive to be a lecturer, strive to be a scholar. Don't strive to be an intellectual, strive to be a thinker. Not all of us were meant to teach, but all of us were meant to learn. Not all of us were meant to lead, but all of us were meant to serve. Not all of us were meant to be rich, but all of us were meant to be charitable. Not all of us were meant to be famous, but all of us were meant to be upright. Not all of us were meant to be mighty, but all of us were meant to persevere. Not all of us were meant to be extraordinary, but all of us were meant to prevail.
Matshona Dhliwayo
This arrangement, in which users take advantage of services and the company gains all the upside of the data they generate, may sound novel, but it is actually very old. Prior to the rise of capitalism, feudal labor arrangements worked similarly. Lords insulated their serfs from fluctuations in markets and guaranteed them safety and traditional rights to use the land and to keep enough of their crop to survive. In exchange, lords took all the upside of the market return on serfs’ agricultural output. Similarly, today, siren servers provide useful and enjoyable information services, while taking the market value of the data we produce in exchange. We thus refer to this contemporary system as “technofeudalism.
Eric A. Posner (Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society)
In fact, even today coins and banknotes are a rare form of money. The sum total of money in the world is about $60 trillion, yet the sum total of coins and banknotes is less than $6 trillion.7 More than 90 per cent of all money – more than $50 trillion appearing in our accounts – exists only on computer servers. Accordingly, most business transactions are executed by moving electronic data from one computer file to another, without any exchange of physical cash. Only a criminal buys a house, for example, by handing over a suitcase full of banknotes. As long as people are willing to trade goods and services in exchange for electronic data, it’s even better than shiny coins and crisp banknotes – lighter, less bulky, and easier to keep track of. For
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
Most Web activities do not generate jobs and revenue at the rate of past technological breakthroughs. When Ford and General Motors were growing in the early part of the twentieth century, they created millions of jobs and helped build Detroit into a top-tier U.S. city. Today, Facebook creates a lot of voyeuristic pleasure, but the company doesn’t employ many people and hasn’t done much for Palo Alto; a lot of the “work” is performed more or less automatically by the software and the servers. You could say that the real work is done by its users, in their spare time and as a form of leisure. Web 2.0 is not filling government coffers or supporting many families, even though it’s been great for users, programmers, and some information technology specialists. Everyone on the Web has heard of Twitter, but as of Fall 2010, only about three hundred people work there.
Tyler Cowen (The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All The Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better)
The label “jack-of-all-trades but master of none” is normally meant to be derogatory, implying that the labelee lacks the focus to really dive into a subject and master it. But, when your online shopping application is on the fritz and you’re losing orders by the hundreds as each hour passes, it’s the jack-of-all-trades who not only knows how the application’s code works but can also do low-level UNIX debugging of your web server processes, analyze your RDBMS’s configuration for potential performance bottlenecks, and check your network’s router configuration for hard-to-find problems. And, more important, after finding the problem, the jack-of-all-trades can quickly make architecture and design decisions, implement code fixes, and deploy a new fixed system to production. In this scenario, the manufacturing scenario seems quaint at best and critically flawed at worst.
Chad Fowler (The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development (Pragmatic Life))
Like most people, when I look back, the family house is held in time, or rather it is now outside of time, because it exists so clearly and it does not change, and it can only be entered through a door in the mind. I like it that pre-industrial societies, and religious cultures still, now, distinguish between two kinds of time – linear time, that is also cyclical because history repeats itself, even as it seems to progress, and real time, which is not subject to the clock or the calendar, and is where the soul used to live. This real time is reversible and redeemable. It is why, in religious rites of all kinds, something that happened once is re-enacted – Passover, Christmas, Easter, or, in the pagan record, Midsummer and the dying of the god. As we participate in the ritual, we step outside of linear time and enter real time. Time is only truly locked when we live in a mechanised world. Then we turn into clock-watchers and time-servers. Like the rest of life, time becomes uniform and standardised. When I left home at sixteen I bought a small rug. It was my roll-up world. Whatever room, whatever temporary place I had, I unrolled the rug. It was a map of myself. Invisible to others, but held in the rug, were all the places I had stayed – for a few weeks, for a few months. On the first night anywhere new I liked to lie in bed and look at the rug to remind myself that I had what I needed even though what I had was so little. Sometimes you have to live in precarious and temporary places. Unsuitable places. Wrong places. Sometimes the safe place won’t help you. Why did I leave home when I was sixteen? It was one of those important choices that will change the rest of your life. When I look back it feels like I was at the borders of common sense, and the sensible thing to do would have been to keep quiet, keep going, learn to lie better and leave later. I have noticed that doing the sensible thing is only a good idea when the decision is quite small. For the life-changing things, you must risk it. And here is the shock – when you risk it, when you do the right thing, when you arrive at the borders of common sense and cross into unknown territory, leaving behind you all the familiar smells and lights, then you do not experience great joy and huge energy. You are unhappy. Things get worse. It is a time of mourning. Loss. Fear. We bullet ourselves through with questions. And then we feel shot and wounded. And then all the cowards come out and say, ‘See, I told you so.’ In fact, they told you nothing.
Jeanette Winterson
They have twenty-four one-hour sittings every day with only one table per sitting." Sam groaned as he closed his laptop. "I'd better grab some sandwiches on the way. It sounds like the kind of place you only get two peas and a sliver of asparagus on a piece of butter lettuce that was grown on the highest mountain peak of Nepal and watered with the tears of angels." "Not a fan of haute cuisine?" She followed him down the stairs and out into the bright sunshine. "I like food. Lots of it." He stopped at the nearest café and ordered three Reuben sandwiches, two Cobb salads, and three bottles of water. "Would you like anything?" he asked after he placed his order. Layla looked longingly as the server handed over his feast. "I don't want to ruin my appetite." She pointed to the baked-goods counter. "You forgot dessert." "I don't eat sugar." "Then the meal is wasted." She held open her handbag to reveal her secret stash. "I keep emergency desserts with me at all times- gummy bears, salted caramel chocolate, jelly beans, chocolate-glazed donuts- at least I think that's what they were, and this morning I managed to grab a small container of besan laddu and some gulab jamun.
Sara Desai (The Marriage Game (Marriage Game, #1))
This wasn’t the only mistake they made. They also botched the cleanup operation on the servers they could access. They had created a script called LogWiper.sh to erase activity logs on the servers to prevent anyone from seeing the actions they had taken on the systems. Once the script finished its job, it was also supposed to erase itself, like an Ouroboros serpent consuming its own tail. But the attackers bungled the delete command inside the script by identifying the script file by the wrong name. Instead of commanding the script to delete LogWiper.sh, they commanded it to delete logging.sh. As a result, the LogWiper script couldn’t find itself and got left behind on servers for Kaspersky to find. Also left behind by the attackers were the names or nicknames of the programmers who had written the scripts and developed the encryption algorithms and other infrastructure used by Flame. The names appeared in the source code for some of the tools they developed. It was the kind of mistake inexperienced hackers would make, so the researchers were surprised to see it in a nation-state operation. One, named Hikaru, appeared to be the team leader who created a lot of the server code,
Kim Zetter (Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon)
To be ridiculously sweeping: baby boomers and their offspring have shifted emphasis from the communal to the individual, from the future to the present, from virtue to personal satisfaction. Increasingly secular, we pledge allegiance to lowercase gods of our private devising. We are concerned with leading less a good life than the good life. In contrast to our predecessors, we seldom ask ourselves whether we serve a greater social purpose; we are more likely to ask ourselves if we are happy. We shun self-sacrifice and duty as the soft spots of suckers. We give little thought to the perpetuation of lineage, culture or nation; we take our heritage for granted. We are ahistorical. We measure the value of our lives within the brackets of our own births and deaths, and we’re not especially bothered by what happens once we’re dead. As we age—oh, so reluctantly!—we are apt to look back on our pasts and question not did I serve family, God and country, but did I ever get to Cuba, or run a marathon? Did I take up landscape painting? Was I fat? We will assess the success of our lives in accordance not with whether they were righteous, but with whether they were interesting and fun. If that package sounds like one big moral step backward, the Be Here Now mentality that has converted from sixties catchphrase to entrenched gestalt has its upsides. There has to be some value in living for today, since at any given time today is all you’ve got. We justly cherish characters capable of living “in the moment.”…We admire go-getters determined to pack their lives with as much various experience as time and money provide, who never stop learning, engaging, and savoring what every day offers—in contrast to the dour killjoys who are bitter and begrudging in the ceaseless fulfillment of obligation. For the role of humble server, helpmate, and facilitator no longer to constitute the sole model of womanhood surely represents progress for which I am personally grateful. Furthermore, prosperity may naturally lead any well-off citizenry to the final frontier: the self, whose borders are as narrow or infinite as we make them. Yet the biggest social casualty of Be Here Now is children, who have converted from requirement to option, like heated seats for your car. In deciding what in times past never used to be a choice, we don’t consider the importance of raising another generation of our own people, however we might choose to define them. The question is whether kids will make us happy.
Lionel Shriver
It would take me all night to tell about Old Bull Lee; let's just say now, he was a teacher, and it may be said that he had every right to teach because he spent all his time learning; and the things he learned were what he considered to be and called "the facts of life," which he learned, not only out of necessity but because he wanted to. He dragged his long, thin body around the entire United States and most of Europe and North Africa in his time, only to see what was going on.... there are pictures of him with the international cocaine set of the thirties — gangs with wild hair, leaning on one another, there are other pictures of him in a Panama hat, surveying the streets of Algiers.... He was an exterminator in Chicago, a bartender in New York, a summons-server in Newark. In Paris he sat at cafe tables, watching the sullen French faces go by. In Athens he looked up from his ouzo at what he called the ugliest people in the world. In Istanbul he threaded his way through crowds of opium addicts and rug-sellers, looking for the facts. In Chicago he planned to hold up a Turkish bath, hesitated just for two minutes too long for a drink, and, wound up with two dollars and had to make a run for it. He did all these things merely for the experience....
Jack Kerouac
A slave in serving dress presented Kestrel with wine, then led the way to an open solarium with a low fountain and hothouse flowers. Musicians played discreetly behind an ebony screen as guests greeted each other, some chatting where they stood, others retreating for quiet conversations on the stone benches lining the fountain. Kestrel turned to face Arin. His eyes were dazed with anger, his hands clenched. “Arin,” she began, concerned, but his gaze flicked away and settled on some point across the room. “Your friends are here,” he said. She followed his line of sight to see Jess and Ronan laughing at something Benix had said. “Dismiss me,” Arin said. “What?” she said, though in fact he was the only escort in the room. The slaves who threaded through the crowd were servers, and Irex’s. “Join your friends. I don’t want to stay here anymore. Send me to the kitchens.” She took a breath, then nodded. He spun on his heel and was gone. She felt instantly alone. She hadn’t expected this. But when she asked herself what she had expected, she had a foolish image of her and Arin sitting on a bench together. Kestrel looked up at the glass roof, a pyramid of purple sky. She saw the sharp cut of the moon, and remembered Enai saying that it was best to recognize the things one cannot change. She crossed the room to greet her friends.
Marie Rutkoski (The Winner's Curse (The Winner's Trilogy, #1))
Sometimes I don’t know how any of us go on. Sometimes I fear there’s no way our species will survive our own self-destructive choices. Sometimes I feel so gut punched by the backward deal of the universe—that if you’re really lucky, you get people in your life to love, and then, over time, they will all either leave you or die—that I am angry at life. Actually, not sometimes. Always. I always feel that way. I don’t always actively think about it, but it’s in there. At the same time, I am always looking for some gratitude, warmth, or hope. I often have to really search for it, but when I see something that makes me feel joy—even just a tiny odd hardly anything—you’re damn right I applaud it. Way to go, adorable cat on a leash! Thank you, server who brought my hot pizza! Kudos, writers of a TV show that made me laugh! Hallelujah, sunshine after a week of storms! Yay for a good hair day, yippee for hot coffee, huzzah for an outfit that puts bounce in my step. If I can scrape up some evidence of a thing made beautifully or a gesture made kindly, then I can believe, for a few seconds, that this world is careful and kind. And if I can believe that, I can believe it is safe to let the people I love walk around out there. It’s my own attempt at foresparkling, seeking out hints of good, even planting them myself, so I can believe there’s more good to come. It might all be superstition, just mental magic, but why not try?
Mary Laura Philpott (Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives)
Bezos had seemingly made up his mind that he was no longer going to indulge in financial maneuvering as a way to escape the rather large hole Amazon had dug for itself, and it wasn’t just through borrowing Sinegal’s business plan. At a two-day management and board offsite later that year, Amazon invited business thinker Jim Collins to present the findings from his soon-to-be-published book Good to Great. Collins had studied the company and led a series of intense discussions at the offsite. “You’ve got to decide what you’re great at,” he told the Amazon executives. Drawing on Collins’s concept of a flywheel, or self-reinforcing loop, Bezos and his lieutenants sketched their own virtuous cycle, which they believed powered their business. It went something like this: Lower prices led to more customer visits. More customers increased the volume of sales and attracted more commission-paying third-party sellers to the site. That allowed Amazon to get more out of fixed costs like the fulfillment centers and the servers needed to run the website. This greater efficiency then enabled it to lower prices further. Feed any part of this flywheel, they reasoned, and it should accelerate the loop. Amazon executives were elated; according to several members of the S Team at the time, they felt that, after five years, they finally understood their own business. But when Warren Jenson asked Bezos if he should put the flywheel in his presentations to analysts, Bezos asked him not to. For now, he considered it the secret sauce.
Brad Stone (The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon)
Until now. You and I are a mis-Match, Ellie, because I hacked into your servers to manipulate our results.” “Rubbish,” Ellie said, secretly balking at the notion. She folded her arms indignantly. “Our servers are more secure than almost every major international company across the world. We receive so many hacking attempts, yet no one gets in. We have the best software and team money can buy to protect us against people like you.” “You’re right about some of that. But what your system didn’t take into account was your own vanity. Do you remember receiving an email some time ago with the subject ‘Businesswoman of the Year Award’? You couldn’t help but open it.” Ellie vaguely remembered reading the email as it had been sent to her private account, which only a few people had knowledge of. “Attached to it was a link you clicked on and that opened to nothing, didn’t it?” Matthew continued. “Well, it wasn’t nothing to me, because your click released a tiny, undetectable piece of tailor-made malware that allowed me to remotely access your network and work my way around your files. Everything you had access to, I had access to. Then I simply replicated my strand of DNA to mirror image yours, sat back and waited for you to get in touch. That’s why I came for a job interview, to learn a little more about the programming and systems you use. Please thank your head of personnel for leaving me alone in the room for a few moments with her laptop while she searched for a working camera to take my head shot. That was a huge help in accessing your network. Oh, and tell her to frisk interviewees for lens deflectors next time—they’re pocket-sized gadgets that render digital cameras useless.
John Marrs (The One)
Sometimes a woman would tell me that the feeling gets so strong she runs out of the house and walks through the streets. Or she stays inside her house and cries. Or her children tell her a joke, and she doesn’t laugh because she doesn’t hear it. I talked to women who had spent years on the analyst’s couch, working out their “adjustment to the feminine role,” their blocks to “fulfillment as a wife and mother.” But the desperate tone in these women’s voices, and the look in their eyes, was the same as the tone and the look of other women, who were sure they had no problem, even though they did have a strange feeling of desperation. A mother of four who left college at nineteen to get married told me: I’ve tried everything women are supposed to do—hobbies, gardening, pick-ling, canning, being very social with my neighbors, joining committees, run-ning PTA teas. I can do it all, and I like it, but it doesn’t leave you anything to think about—any feeling of who you are. I never had any career ambitions. All I wanted was to get married and have four children. I love the kids and Bob and my home. There’s no problem you can even put a name to. But I’m desperate. I begin to feel I have no personality. I’m a server of food and a putter-on of pants and a bedmaker, somebody who can be called on when you want something. But who am I? A twenty-three-year-old mother in blue jeans said: I ask myself why I’m so dissatisfied. I’ve got my health, fine children, a lovely new home, enough money. My husband has a real future as an electron-ics engineer. He doesn’t have any of these feelings. He says maybe I need a vacation, let’s go to New York for a weekend. But that isn’t it. I always had this idea we should do everything together. I can’t sit down and read a book alone. If the children are napping and I have one hour to myself I just walk through the house waiting for them to wake up. I don’t make a move until I know where the rest of the crowd is going. It’s as if ever since you were a little girl, there’s always been somebody or something that will take care of your life: your parents, or college, or falling in love, or having a child, or moving to a new house. Then you wake up one morning and there’s nothing to look forward to.
Betty Friedan (The Feminine Mystique)
In 1969 the Khmer Rouge numbered only about 4,000. By 1975 their numbers were enough to defeat the government forces. Their victory was greatly helped by the American attack on Cambodia, which was carried out as an extension of the Vietnam War. In 1970 a military coup led by Lon Nol, possibly with American support, overthrew the government of Prince Sihanouk, and American and South Vietnamese troops entered Cambodia. One estimate is that 600,000 people, nearly 10 per cent of the Cambodian population, were killed in this extension of the war. Another estimate puts the deaths from the American bombing at 1000,000 peasants. From 1972 to 1973, the quantity of bombs dropped on Cambodia was well over three times that dropped on Japan in the Second World War. The decision to bomb was taken by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger and was originally justified on the grounds that North Vietnamese bases had been set up in Cambodia. The intention (according to a later defence by Kissinger’s aide, Peter W. Rodman) was to target only places with few Cambodians: ‘From the Joint Chiefs’ memorandum of April 9, 1969, the White House selected as targets only six base areas minimally populated by civilians. The target areas were given the codenames BREAKFAST, LUNCH, DINNER, SUPPER, SNACK, and DESSERT; the overall programme was given the name MENU.’ Rodman makes the point that SUPPER, for instance, had troop concentrations, anti-aircraft, artillery, rocket and mortar positions, together with other military targets. Even if relatively few Cambodians were killed by the unpleasantly names items on the MENU, each of them was a person leading a life in a country not at war with the United States. And, as the bombing continued, these relative restraints were loosened. To these political decisions, physical and psychological distance made their familiar contribution. Roger Morris, a member of Kissinger’s staff, later described the deadened human responses: Though they spoke of terrible human suffering reality was sealed off by their trite, lifeless vernacular: 'capabilities', 'objectives', 'our chips', 'giveaway'. It was a matter, too, of culture and style. They spoke with the cool, deliberate detachment of men who believe the banishment of feeling renders them wise and, more important, credible to other men… They neither understood the foreign policy they were dealing with, nor were deeply moved by the bloodshed and suffering they administered to their stereo-types. On the ground the stereotypes were replaced by people. In the villages hit by bombs and napalm, peasants were wounded or killed, often being burnt to death. Those who left alive took refuge in the forests. One Western ob-server commented, ‘it is difficult to imagine the intensity of their hatred to-wards those who are destroying their villages and property’. A raid killed twenty people in the village of Chalong. Afterwards seventy people from Chalong joined the Khmer Rouge. Prince Sihanouk said that Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger created the Khmer Rouge by expanding the war into Cambodia.
Jonathan Glover (Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century)