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Specifications Quotes

Browse 45 quotes about Specifications.

Specifications Quotes

“Everyone wants rather to be pleasing to women and that desire is not altogether, though it is very largely, a manifestation of vanity. But one cannot aim to be pleasing to women any more than one can aim to have taste, or beauty of expression, or happiness; for these things are not specific aims which one may learn to attain; they are descriptions of the adequacy of one's living. To try to be happy is to try to build a machine with no other specification than that it shall run noiselessly.”

WantTryingMayRunningDesireExpressionTasteMachinesAimVanityManifestationDescriptionSpecificationsAdequacyTrying To Be Happy
Author:J. Robert Oppenheimer
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“I have come to believe that large print, thick and heavy paper, and wide margins and oversize leading is indicative of the expected intelligence of the reader. … Compare children's books and books on Web Duhsign or other X-in-21-days books. If the reading level of a specification is below college level, chances are the people behind it are morons and the result morose.”

PeopleIfsBelieveChildrenBookReadingChanceLevelsResultsBehindsCollegeReaderPaperHeavyWideExpectedComparePrintThickMarginsChances AreMoronChildren's BooksMoroseSpecifications
Author:Erik Naggum
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“You become a serious programmer by going through a stage where you are fully aware of the degree to which you know the specification, meaning both the explicit and the tacit specification of your language and of your problem. "Hey, it works most of the time" is the very antithesis of a serious programmer, and certain languages can only support code like that.”

KnowsProblemCertainLanguageSupportStageSeriousDegreesHeyCodeWhere You AreProgrammersExplicitAntithesisTacitSpecifications
Author:Erik Naggum
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“So in Jamaica it is the aim of everybody to talk English, act English and look English. And that last specification is where the greatest difficulties arise. It is not so difficult to put a coat of European culture over African culture, but it is next to impossible to lay a European face over an African face in the same generation.”

LooksLastsFacesCultureNextDifficultImpossibleGenerationsDifficultyAimLaysAriseCoatsJamaicaSpecificationsAfrican Culture
Book:I Love Myself when I Am Laughing ... and Then Again when I Am Looking Mean and Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader
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“I'm keeping everything on a human level, but essentially everything in our lives has to be on a human level. Any specification of something by art history doesn't make any sense. The point is, if you have a loving, adorable, supportive mother anywhere in the world and you tell her all of your dreams, all of your aspirations, and the reward you would like, and she understands you, then it's not worth doing.”

IfsWorldHumansArtDreamMotherLevelsOur LivesRewardsYour DreamsAspirationSupportiveAdorableArt HistorySpecifications
Author:Lawrence Weiner
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“Most clients expect experience design to be a discrete activity, solving all their problems with a single functional specification or a single research study. It must be an ongoing effort, a process of continually learning about users, responding to their behaviors, and evolving the product or service.”

ProblemProcessEffortStudyDesignProductsActivityBehaviorResearchEvolveUsersClientsOngoingRespondingDiscreteSpecificationsResearch StudyContinually Learning
Author:Dan Brown
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“Software is inherently complicated. If you say to somebody I want an airline reservation system, to really say what you want in terms of overbooking and fares, and different airlines communicating with each or schedule changes, it's immensely complex. And so you can't write a program that's any simpler than that full specification.”

IfsWantWritingDifferentTermProgramComplexesCommunicateComplicatedWhat You WantSoftwareSchedulesAirlineReservationsSpecifications
Author:Bill Gates
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“I've learned about the inflation range situation. Obviously with our footballs being inflated to the 12.5-pound range, any deflation would then take us under that specification limit. Knowing that now, in the future we will certainly inflate the footballs above that low level to account for any possible change during the game.”

GamesLevelsSituationKnowingFootballLimitsLowsAccountsRangeI've LearnedPoundsInflationLow LevelSpecificationsDeflationPossible Change
Author:Bill Belichick
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“My overall knowledge of football specifications, the overall process that happens on game day with the footballs is very limited. I would say that during the course of the game, I honestly never - it probably has happened on an incomplete pass or something - but I've never touched a game ball. It's not something I have any familiarity with on that.”

HappensCoursesGamesProcessHappenedFootballBallsHonestlyTouchedFamiliarityIncompleteSpecificationsGame Day
Author:Bill Belichick
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“Kantian ethical theory distinguishes three levels: First, that of a fundamental principle (the categorical imperative, formulated in three main ways in Kant's Groundwork); second, a set of duties, not deduced from but derived from this principle, by way of its interpretation or specification, its application to the general conditions of human life - which Kant does in the Doctrine of virtue, the second main part of the Metaphysics of Morals; and then finally an act of judgment, through which these duties are applied to particular cases.”

WayFirstsHumansDoeThreeLevelsMoralPrinciplesCasesVirtueConditionsParticularDutyTheoryJudgmentFundamentalsDoctrineHuman LifeInterpretationEthicalApplicationMetaphysicsImperativesFundamental PrinciplesGroundworkSpecificationsCategorical Imperative
Author:Allen W. Wood
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“Now death is uncool, old-fashioned. To my mind the defining characteristic of our era is spin, everything tailored to vanishing point by market research, brands and bands manufactured to precise specifications; we are so used to things transmuting into whatever we would like them to be that it comes as a profound outrage to encounter death, stubbornly unspinnable, only and immutably itself.”

MindUsedBandResearchProfoundBrandsErasCharacteristicsEncountersPreciseOld FashionedDefiningOutrageVanishingMarket ResearchTailoredUncoolSpecificationsVanishing Point
Author:Tana French
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“Isn't it true that whatever isn't determined by our genes must be determined by our environment? What else is there? There's Nature and there's Nurture. Is there also some X, some further contributor to what we are? There's Chance. Luck. This extra ingredient is important but doesn't have to come from the quantum bowels of our atoms or from some distant star. It is all around us in the causeless coin-flipping of our noisy world, automatically filling in the gaps of specification left unfixed by our genes, and unfixed by salient causes in our environment.”

WorldImportantLeftStarsCausesChanceEnvironmentLuckDeterminedExtrasGapsIngredientsAtomsGenesQuantumNurtureCoinsFillingOur EnvironmentNoisyContributorsBowelsSpecificationsFilling In
Author:Daniel Dennett
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“None of us constitutes a material whole, identical for everyone, which a person has only to go look up as though we were a book of specifications or a last testament; our social personality is a creation of the minds of others. Even the very simple act that we call "seeing a person we know" is in part an intellectual one. We fill the physical appearance of the individual we see with all the notions we have about him, and of the total picture that we form for ourselves, these notions certainly occupy the greater part.”

KnowsMindLooksPersonsBookWholeLastsFormIndividualSocialSimpleGreaterSeeingCreationMaterialsPersonalityIntellectualNotionAppearanceLook UpTestamentIdenticalPhysical AppearanceSpecifications
Author:Marcel Proust
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“I have a sense that God is unfair and preferentially punishes his weak, his dumb, his fat, his lazy. I believe he takes more pleasure in his perfect creatures, and cheers them on like a brainless dad as they run roughshod over the rest of us. He gives us a need for love, and no way to get any. He gives us a desire to be liked, and personal attributes that make us utterly unlikable. Having placed his flawed and needy children in a world of exacting specifications, he deducts the difference between what we have and what we need from our hearts and our self-esteem and our mental health.”

WorldWayNeedsGivingBelieveHeartChildrenSelfRunningDesireI BelieveDifferencesPerfectPleasureSelf EsteemDadCreaturesWeakMental HealthFatsEsteemDumbLazyCheerAttributesUnfairFlawedNeedySpecificationsBrainless
Author:George Saunders
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“That community is already in the process of dissolution where each man begins to eye his neighbor as a possible enemy, where non-conformity with the accepted creed, political as well as religious, is a mark of disaffection; where denunciation, without specification or backing, takes the place of evidence; where orthodoxy chokes freedom of dissent; where faith in the eventual supremacy of reason has become so timid that we dare not enter our convictions in the open lists, to win or lose.”

MenWellsReasonEyePoliticalWinningProcessCommunityLosesReligiousJusticeEnemyDiversityEvidenceMarkSocial JusticeDareConvictionNeighborListsAcceptedConformityCreedsDissentOrthodoxyChokeSupremacyWin Or LoseDissolutionNon ConformitySpecifications
Author:Learned Hand
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“Your film is like your children. You might want a child with certain qualities, but you are never going to get the exact specification right. The film has a privilege to live its own life and develop its own character. To suppress this is dangerous. It is an approach that works the other way too: sometimes the footage has amazing qualities that you did not expect.”

WayWantChildrenSometimesCharacterMightFilmCertainQualityDangerousLike YouApproachOur ChildrenPrivilegeYour ChildrenSpecifications
Author:Werner Herzog
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“To treat programming scientifically, it must be possible to specify the required properties of programs precisely. Formality is certainly not an end in itself. The importance of formal specifications must ultimately rest in their utility -in whether or not they are used to improve the quality of software or to reduce the cost of producing and maintaining software.”

EndsUsedQualityLearningCostProgramTreatsImportancePropertyProgrammingSoftwareFormalMaintainingUtilityComputer ProgrammingProgramming LanguagesComputer LanguageFormalitySpecifications
Author:Jim Horning
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“Our schools are, in a sense, factories, in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned into products to meet the various demands of life. The specifications for manufacturing come from the demands of twentieth-century civilization, and it is the business of the school to build its pupils according to the specifications laid down.”

ChildrenSchoolCenturyProductsCivilizationDemandVariousFactoriesTwentieth CenturyManufacturingPupilsSchooledSchools And EducationSpecifications
Book:Public School Administration: A Statement of the Fundamental Principles Underlying the Organization and Administration of Public Education
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“In fact, without a specification of a creature's goals, the very idea of intelligence is meaningless. A toadstool could be given a genius award for accomplishing with pinpoint precision and unerring reliability, the feat of sitting exactly where it is sitting. Nothing would prevent us from agreeing with the cognitive scientist Zenon Pylyshyn that rocks are smarter than cats because rocks have the sense to go away when you kick them.”

IdeasFactsGivenGoalRocksGeniusCreaturesSittingCatScientistKicksGoing AwayAwardsMeaninglessSmarterPrecisionCognitiveFeatsReliabilitySpecificationsToadstools
Author:Steven Pinker
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