Work hard today, or you'll work hard tomorrow trying to find a job.

photograph permission of Dr Naomi Redmore
translation courtesy of Dr Zhang Tian-Gao

This billboard, with the admonition quoted above, stands in Sekou, one of China's fast-growing Special Economic Zones, the Silicon Valley of the East.

If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant. If what is said is not what is meant, then what ought to be done remains undone. (Kong Fu Zi aka Confucius)

Although about three million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade. (Bill Gates)

We Russians don't drink any more. We now work on computers. We use computers to send viruses to the West and then we poach your money. We have the best hackers in the world. (Vladimir Zhirinovsky)

The three characteristics of Perl programmers: mundaneness, sloppiness, and fatuousness. (Xah Lee)

Experts in advanced countries underestimate by a factor of two to four the ability of people in underdeveloped countries to do anything technical. (Charles P Issawi)

When trouble is solved before it forms, who calls that clever? (Sun Tzu)

We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made. (Albert Einstein)

First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win. (Mohandas Gandhi)

Simplify and simplify, until all contamination from relative, contradictory thinking is eliminated. (Lao-Tzu)

Despite their reputa­tion for thick-headedness or stubbornness, it is important for technicians to see themselves as superior people who can easily adapt to change. (Taiichi Ohno)

In almost every programming office I've visited in India during the past 15 years, I've been surprised by the number of people standing around, and watching a smaller number of people doing the actual work. By contrast, most of the US programming offices that I've visited since the early 1990s look like they've been hit by a neutron bomb - lots of empty cubicles, very few people, and every one of the workers (and managers) madly scurrying around, like crazed rats in a maze, trying to accomplish the jobs of two or three people. (Edward Yourdon)

[Perl] is the sanctuary of dunces. The godsend for brainless coders. The means and banner of sysadmins. The lingua franca of trial-and-error hackers. The song and dance of stultified engineers. (Xah Lee)

C++ in Cantonese is pronounced "C ga ga". Need I say more? (Mark Glewwe)

Do not condemn the judgment of another because it differs from your own. You may both be wrong. (Dandemis aka Lao Kiun)

The country is accustomed to having foreign workers come here for unpleasant, low-paying jobs such as fruit picking. Why shouldn't engineering go the same way? (Richard Etter)

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is most important that you do it. (Mohandas Gandhi)

In his errors a man is true to type. Observe the errors and you will know the man. (Kong Fu Zi aka Confucius)

Our outrage at China notwithstanding, we should remember that before 1891 the copyrights of foreigners were not protected in the United States. (Lawrence Lessig)

Following the political upheavals in 1989, when the U.S. and some other Western countries imposed sanctions against China, for a time IBM withdrew all its experts from this country and discontinued services for its mainframe products installed in the Chinese banking industry. Therefore, China can by no means pin its hopes on IBM's abidance to business ethics, nor can it expect that the U.S. will refrain from interfering in China's internal affairs. (Zhong Hai)

I have to wonder why people think that when they can't manage local personnel within easy strangling and shooting distance, then they can manage personnel thousands of miles away that have different languages, cultures, and business rules. (Joe Celko)

A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it. (Rabindranath Tagore)

To understand that cleverness can lead to stupidity is to be close to the ways of Heaven. (Huang Binhong)

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