You get much better graphics in your dreams. (OYCSM)
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Basically, there were two sides to the world. There was the entire computer games software industry engaged in a tremendous effort to stamp out piracy, and there was Wobbler. Currently, Wobbler was in front. (OYCSM)
Carrot was very keen on modernizing the watch, and in some strange way sending a message via the tube was so much more modern than simply opening the door and shouting, which is what Mr Vimes did. (FE)
The Patrician was not, on his own admission, a lover of technical things that spun and, indeed hummed. Nor of unidentifiable squiggles. He saw them as things with which you couldn't negotiate, or argue; you couldn't hang them either, or even creatively torture them. (JD)
'One of the advantages of horses that people often point out,' said Vetinari, after some thought, 'is that they very seldom explode.' (J)
… it is the nature of Great Big Things that if the money isn’t spent on them, it isn’t spent on smaller scientific projects either. Small projects don’t advance bureaucratic or political careers as effectively as big ones. (JD)
'The nice thing about artificial intelligence is that at least it's better than artificial stupidity.' (LW)
That was what technology was doing. It was your slave but, in a sense, it might be the other way round. (RS)
... he ventured to wonder if they ever thought back to when things were just old-fangled or not fangled at all as against the modern day when fangled had reached its apogee. Fangling was indeed, he thought, here to stay. (RS)
'How can you send a picture on the clacks?’ said Polly. ‘I know people who’ve seen them. It’s just a lot of boxes on a tower that go clack-clack!’
‘Ah, Otto explained that to me, too,’said Maladict. ‘It’s very ingenious.’ ‘How does it work, then?’ ‘Oh, I didn’t understand what he said. It was all about…numbers. But it certainly sounded very clever.' (MR) As for Wobbler…Wobbler wasn’t even a nerd. He wanted to be a nerd but they wouldn’t let him join. He had a Nerd Pride badge and he messed around with computers. What Wobbler wanted was to be a kid in milk-bottle-bottom glasses and a deformed anorak, who could write amazing software and be a millionaire by the time he was twenty, but he’d probably settle for just being someone whose computer didn’t keep smelling of burning plastic every time he touched it. (JB)
Crowley had been extremely impressed with the warranties offered by the computer industry, and had in fact sent a bundle Below to the department that drew up the Immortal Soul agreements, with a yellow memo form attached just saying:‘Learn, guys.' (GO)
It would be a very accurate historian who could pinpoint the precise day when the Japanese changed from being fiendish automatons who copied everything from the West, to becoming skilled and cunning engineers who would leave the West standing. But the Wasabi had been designed on that one confused day, and combined the traditional bad points of most Western cars with a host of innovative disasters the avoidance of which had made firms like Honda and Toyota what they are today.
Newt had never actually seen another one on the road, despite his best efforts. For years, and without much conviction, he’d enthused to his friends about its economy and efficiency in the desperate hope that one of them might buy one, because misery loves company. (GO) It is always useful for a university to have a Very Big Thing. It occupies the younger members, to the relief of their elders (especially if the VBT is based at some distance from the seat of learning itself) and it uses up a lot of money, which would otherwise only lie around causing trouble or be spent by the sociology department or, probably, both. It also helps if it pushes back boundaries, and it doesn’t much matter what boundaries these are, since as any researcher will tell you that it’s the pushing that matters, not the boundary. (DW)
The repairing of the Kite was simple enough. Although gods, on the whole, do not feel at home around mechanical things, every pantheon everywhere in the universe finds its necessary to have some minor deity – Vulcan, Wayland, Dennis, Hephaistos –who knows how bits fit together and that sort of thing.
Most large organisations, to their regret and expense, have to have someone like that. (LH) As one man, they turned in their seats to look at the Experimental Privy Mk 2. Mk 1 had worked – Leonard’s devices tended to– but since the key to its operation was that it tumbled very fast on a central axis while in use it had been abandoned after a report by its test pilot (Rincewind) that, whatever you had in mind when you went in, the only thing you wanted to do once inside was get out.
Mk 2 was as yet untried. It creaked ominously under their gaze, an open invitation to constipation and kidney stones. (LH) Lord Vetinari was not a man who delighted in the technical. There were two cultures, as far as he was concerned.
One was real, the other was occupied by people who liked machinery and ate pizza at unreasonable hours. (LH) 'I was rather thinking of problems associated with the thin air and low gravity,’ said Leonard. ‘That’s what the survivor of the Maria Pesto reported. But this afternoon I feel I can come up with a privy that, happily, utilises the thinner air of altitude to achieve the effect normally associated with gravity. Gentle suction is involved.’
Ponder nodded. He had a quick mind when it came to mechanical detail, and he’d already formed a mental picture. Now a mental eraser would be useful. (LH) He was spending more nights now watching Hex trawl the invisible writings for any hints. In theory, because of the nature of L-space, absolutely everything was available to him, but that only meant that it was more or less impossible to find whatever it was you were looking for, which is the purpose of computers. (LC)
One of the universal rules of happiness is: always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual. (J)
'Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.' (H)
'Of course, Hex doesn’t actually think. Not as such. It just appears to be thinking.’
‘Ah. Like the Dean,’ said Ridcully. ‘Any chance of fitting a brain like this into the Dean’s head?’ ‘It does weigh ten tons, Archchancellor.’ ‘Ah. Really? Oh. Quite a large crowbar would be in order, then.' (H) 'Oh, well, if you prefer, I can recognize handwriting,’ said the imp proudly. ‘I’m quite advanced.’
Vimes pulled out his notebook and held it up. ‘Like this?’ he said. The imp squinted for a moment. ‘Yep,’ it said. ‘That’s handwriting, sure enough. Curly bits, spiky bits, all joined together. Yep. Handwriting. I’d recognize it anywhere.' (FC) The senior wizards trod carefully in the High Energy Magic Building, partly because it wasn’t their natural habitat, but also because most of the students who frequented it used the floor as a filing cabinet and, distressing, a larder. Pizza is quite hard to remove from a sole, especially the cheese. (DW)
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