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Recently in Salon Technology

The agents of Silicon Valley
The new executive recruiters don't just find talent for a hefty fee -- they're players, making or breaking careers and companies.
By Janelle Brown
[02/11/00]

Column
The Net scare
The Web will survive this week's spate of site attacks. Can it get past the hysteria?
By Scott Rosenberg
[02/10/00]

Mozilla dreams
Can the open-source browser redeem Netscape's name and give Microsoft a run for its money?
By Andrew Leonard
[02/10/00]

Free the night life!
Former Netscape programmer Jamie Zawinski has spent his life making software free. Now he wants to liberate San Francisco's fading club scene.
By Andrew Leonard
[02/10/00]

Criminal code?
A judge's decision to ban a DVD-playing Linux program and all discussion about it outrages the free-software community.
By C. Scott Ananian
[02/09/00]

Complete archives for Technology

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The following pronouncements may seem patently impossible, but we've learned never to sell the future short. Given enough time, the future has a way of coming back to bite us on the ass.

THE WINNER

Nobody's toaster needs an IP address.
-- Jason Tiscione

HONORABLE MENTIONS

It would be immoral to install an ON/OFF switch in the family pet.
-- Brian E. Bradley

Given that some Machine Intelligences like to keep pets, I think there may be a galactic market for maybe 50,000 humans.
Strategic Planner, IBM (Interstellar Biological Materials)
-- Glenn D. Brown

Genetic engineering may have its uses, but who the heck would want to hear a dog talk?
-- Steve Gattuso

I really don't want my bathroom fixtures gossiping with the neighbor's doorknob.
-- Brian E. Bradley

Even if the ReAnimatizer does work on Richard Nixon, nobody'd be crazy enough to elect him president.
-- Bob Perlman

The American public will never accept an insect-human hybrid as their president.
-- Tom Faust

Why should anyone want a device that makes their dreams come true? Never heard about nightmares?
-- Juan Delmonte

Nobody with any dignity is ever going to want to have sex with a machine.
-- Josh Gibson

Artificial intelligence? Don't we have enough of that on TV already?
-- Glenn Mabbutt

What kind of moron would buy a car that ran on human waste?
-- CEO of Texaco
-- Alex Prestin

I see no market for a motorized pogo stick, though I am impressed with the placement of the cup holder.
memo from a prominent auto executive
-- Navin Vembar

OK, I can accept that your Web bot finds online contests and creates responses. But does anyone really want to demonstrate their wittiness to complete strangers?
-- ostensibly submitted by Arthur Stock

200 years is enough. Who the hell would want to live any longer?
-- Andrew Coates

People will have no interest in travel to Mars as long as they can go to Toledo.
-- Michael Joyce

Never again will people completely blow a programming shortcut out of proportion -- like leaving off two characters in a date.
-- Marc Plaisant

California is the hottest, best real estate market in the entire world, and you are a fool if you don't cash in your 401K to put 5 percent down and borrow as much as the bank will give you to buy a shack in the Oakland Public School district along the Hayward Fault.
-- Ann C. Logue (who says she is about to move to Chicago)

Thanks for taking the 21st Challenge. Check back in two weeks for another contest.
salon.com | Feb. 12, 2000

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