Over Engineering Quotes & Sayings

Over-engineering can create products too complex to use. — Abhishek Ratna

Renegade scientists and totalitarian loonies are not the folks most likely to abuse genetic engineering. You and I are-not because we are bad but because we want to do good. In a world dominated by competition, parents understandably want to give their kids every advantage ... The most likely way for eugenics to enter into our lives is through the front door as nervous parents ... will fall over one another to be first to give Junior a better set of genes. — Arthur Caplan

There were endless stories locked into the silent, cool mass of the Wall, so many memories of stories of so long ago, now only to be imagined. What an incredible feat of human imagination and engineering. A real tribute to visionary and tenacious (if tyrannical) leaders who held a nation together with a common goal, from dynasty to dynasty over the many centuries. — Braam Malherbe

The same undisciplined government spending and social engineering that has undermined our economy over the past 30 years has also been tearing at the social fabric of this land. — Stockwell Day

Individuals are concerned not
with the moral issue of realizing these standards, but with
the amoral issue of engineering a convincing impression that
these standards are being realized. Our activity, then, is
largely concerned with moral matters, but as performers we
do not have a moral concern in these moral matters. As
performers we are merchants of morality. Our day is given
over to intimate contact with the goods we display and our
minds are filled with intimate understandings of them; but it
may well be that the more attention we give to these goods,
th e more d is ta n t we feel from them and from those who are
believing enough to buy them. To use a different imagery,
the very obligation and profitablility of appearing always in
a steady moral light, of being a socialized character, forces
us to be the sort of person who is practiced in the ways of
the stage. — Erving Goffman

Ren crossed his arms over his chest. "is it LoJacked?"
"Of course," Andy said indignantly. "That's my baby. I even have a kill switch on her."
"Then stop the engine."
Andy appeared downright horrified by Ren's suggestion. "Are you out of your mind? What if someone hits it for stalling? I had that thing on order for over a year. Custom hand built. The epitome of German engineering. I even paid extra for the paint on her. Ain't no way I'm going to chance someone denting my baby. Or, God forbid, totaling it."
Jess rolled his eyes at the boy's hissy fit. If he kept that up, he'd be putting Andy back in diapers.
He turned to Ren. "You take the air. I'll get a bike." Then he focused his attention on Andy again. "And you-"
Andy held his cell phone out to him. "Have an app. Track her down, get my car back, and beat the hell out of her ... in that precise order. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

My dad owns a company that lends equipment to industrial projects. I've been obsessed with taking it over since I could talk. I'd follow him and repeat conversations about how many tons of cranes were arriving. He said it was a man's world, so I studied electrical engineering because it was related. — Ruchi Sanghvi

I think people all over the institution recognize that different ways of understanding are valuable. Artists may think in a different way than biologists or chemists, but you can learn something from that. It is true that the arts at MIT don't have the same amount of funding or same status as the sciences or engineering. — Alan Lightman

Indeed, the ratio of time spent reading versus writing is well over 10 to 1. We are constantly reading old code as part of the effort to write new code. ...[Therefore,] making it easy to read makes it easier to write. — Robert C. Martin

Stephenson had large wrought-iron boiler plates available and he also had the courage of his calculations... The idea found its best-known expression in the Menai railway bridge opened in 1850. Stephenson's beams, which weighed 1,500 tons each, were built beside the Straits and were floated into position between the towers on rafts across a swirling tide. They were raised rather over a hundred feet up the towers by successive lifts with primitive hydraulic jacks. All this was not done without both apprehension and adventure; they were giants on the earth in those days. — J.E. Gordon

The apologists for space science always seem over-impressed by engineering trivia and make far too much of non-stick frying pans and perfect ball-bearings. To my mind, the outstanding spin-off from space research is not new technology. The real bonus has been that for the first time in human history we have had a chance to look at the Earth from space, and the information gained from seeing from the outside our azure-green planet in all its global beauty has given rise to a whole new set of questions and answers. — James Lovelock

Neoclassical economics has effectively insulated itself from the great advances made in science and engineering over the last 40 years. This self-imposed isolation must come to an end. For while the concepts of neoclassical economics appear difficult, they are actually quaint in comparison to the sophistication evident in today's mathematics, engineering, computing, evolutionary biology and physics. In order to advance, economics must humbly submit to learning from disciplines that it has studiously ignored for so long. Some researchers in outside fields have called for the wholesale replacement of standard economics curricula, using at least the building blocks of modern thought inherent in other disciplines. — Steve Keen

Sporting competitions seem to be what we obsess over, frankly. So if we can put engineering, science, technology into a format of healthy, fun competition, we can attract all sorts of kids that might not see the kind of activity we do as accessible or rewarding. — Dean Kamen

I still haven't heard anything from Apple about my hacks. There is a tool based on my work reverse-engineering Apple's FairPlay called jhymn that's been hosted on a U.S. server for over a year and nothing has happened. — Jon Johansen

Many textbooks point out that no animal has evolved wheels and cite the fact as an example of how evolution is often incapable of finding the optimal solution to an engineering problem. But it is not a good example at all. Even if nature could have evolved a moose on wheels, it surely would have opted not to. Wheels are good only in a world with roads and rails. They bog down in any terrain that is soft, slippery, steep, or uneven. Legs are better. Wheels have to roll along an unbroken supporting ridge, but legs can be placed on a series of separate footholds, an extreme example being a ladder. Legs can also be placed to minimize lurching and to step over obstacles. Even today, when it seems as if the world has become a parking lot, only about half of the earth's land is accessible to vehicles with wheels or tracks, but most of the earth's land is accessible to vehicles with feet: animals, the vehicles designed by natural selection. — Steven Pinker

It doesn't help to just get women's opinions and then turn them over to an all-white-male engineering team. — Anita Borg

Challenger was lost because NASA came to believe its own propaganda. The agency's deeply impacted cultural hubris had it that technology-engineering-would always triumph over random disaster if certain rules were followed. The engineers-turned-technocrats could not bring themselves to accept the psychology of machines with abandoning the core principle of their own faith: equations, geometry, and repetition-physical law, precision design, and testing-must defy chaos. — William E. Burrows

In engineering or medical science, a deep understanding of uncertainty can be a matter of life and death. In politics, over-confidence is often the norm; uncertainty is seen as weakness when really it is a vital part of decision making. In this respect, science delivers an important lesson in humility. In — Brian Cox

The science of lubrication, friction and wear is called tribology and is a branch of mechanical engineering. Tribologists are employed by lubricant companies, bearing manufacturers, vehicle brake manufacturers and just about anywhere you can expect to solve a problem of friction and wear. Tribologists agree that the best lubricant for roller chains is viscous oil, not wax, graphite, or silicone. Yet, you'll often find a new chain lubricant on the market that promises an improvement (they never say over what) and that chains will not suffer the same side effects as when lubricated with oil. Approach these products with sceptical caution. If the manufacturer uses words like "dry", "wax", and/or "clean", it is probably not a quality chain lubricant. Its sole redeeming feature may be that it doesn't turn black with use, itself a sign of poor lubrication. We'll discuss discolouration of the oil in due course. — Johan Bornman

The nuclear arms race is over, but the ethical problems raised by nonmilitary technology remain. The ethical problems arise from three "new ages" flooding over human society like tsunamis. First is the Information Age, already arrived and here to stay, driven by computers and digital memory. Second is the Biotechnology Age, due to arrive in full force early in the next century, driven by DNA sequencing and genetic engineering. Third is the Neurotechnology Age, likely to arrive later in the next century, driven by neural sensors and exposing the inner workings of human emotion and personality to manipulation. — Freeman Dyson

The flimsy things broke apart as they crashed on the sidewalk, sheets of papers fluttering off like doves released from cages.
As he turned back to Selena, he braced himself, trying to think of a way to reassure her
Au contraire.
Selena was alive with excitement, her fangs flashing thanks to a huge smile, a giggling laugh bubbling out of her as she hung on to the door.
"Faster!" she yelled at Fritz. "Let's go even faster!"
"As you wish, mistress!"
A fresh roar from that massive piece of German engineering under the hood sent them careening not just down the sidewalk, but right up to the very edge of the laws of physics.
Selena looked over at him. "This is the best night ever! — J.R. Ward

All we know about the new economic world tells us that nations which train engineers will prevail over those which train lawyers. No nation has ever sued its way to greatness. — Richard Lamm

But the 20th century suffered "two" ideologies that led to genocides. The other one, Marxism, had no use for race, didn't believe in genes and denied that human nature was a meaningful concept. Clearly, it's not an emphasis on genes or evolution that is dangerous. It's the desire to remake humanity by coercive means (eugenics or social engineering) and the belief that humanity advances through a struggle in which superior groups (race or classes) triumph over inferior ones. — Steven Pinker

First of all, try to have the highest of ethics and to be open and truthful about things, not hiding. If you have to hide something for company reasons, at least explain what you're doing. Don't mislead people. Know in your heart that you are a good person with good goals because that will carry over to your own self-confidence and your belief in your engineering abilities. Always seek excellence: make your product better than the average person would. — Jessica Livingston

The form a city assumes as it evolves over time owes more to large-scale works of civil engineering - what we now call infrastructure - than almost any other factor save topography. — Martin Filler

Wuxi Engineering Complex wasn't detailed by a team, it was detailed by one woman, using, of course, feedback from the departments that would be using the building." I gape. "Exactly," she says, smiling. "A team would not have constructed the building as a unit, but as a series of connected, but compromised and adjusted, ideas." "It can't be done. It had to have taken years." "It did take over two years, but it can be done. — Maureen F. McHugh

The Romans spent the next 200 years using their great engineering skill to construct ruins all over Europe. — Dave Barry

I'm not afraid of you. I'm not afraid of anything."
"Yes, you are, on both counts. You're afraid of everything. In England there are castles with stone walls that go up over a hundred feet, built during a time when it was the strength of your fortress that won battles. Each time I look at you, I marvel at the feat of organic engineering that's allowed you to create such a fortification within a perfect composition of female flesh. — Joey W. Hill

We got half the doggone MIT college of engineering here, and nobody who can fix a doggone /television/?" Dr. Joseph Abernathy glared accusingly at the clusters of young people scattered around his living room.
That's /electrical/ engineering, Pop," his son told him loftily. "We're all mechanical engineers. Ask a mechanical engineer to fix your color TV, that's like asking an Ob-Gyn to look at the sore on your di-ow!"
Oh, sorry," said his father, peering blandly over gold-rimmed glasses. "That your foot, Lenny? — Diana Gabaldon

EAMES: There's a man here. Yusuf. He formulates his own versions of the compound.
COBB: Let's go see him.
EAMES: Once you've lost your tail.
(Cobb reacts)
Back by the bar, blue tie. Came in about two minutes after we did.
COBB: Cobol Engineering?
EAMES: They pretty much own Mombasa.
Cobb glances over the balcony.
COBB: Run interference. We'll meet downstairs in half an hour.
EAMES: Back here?
COBB: Last place they'd expect.
Eames downs his drink. Rises. Walks over to the Businessman.
EAMES: Freddy!
The Businessman looks up, awkward.
EAMES: Freddy Simmonds, it is you!
Cobb nonchalantly SLIPS over the balcony DROPPING HARD into the midst of the crowd on the street below.
EAMES: (looks harder) Oh. No, it isn't.
The Businessman looks past Eames but Cobb has vanished. — Christopher J. Nolan

Historically, the British have always been rather wary of grand engineering projects - perhaps understandably, given that many of them have been delivered late and over budget. — Evan Davis

Today, over half of China's undergraduate degrees are in math, science technology and engineering, yet only 16 percent of America's undergraduates pursue these schools. — Cathy McMorris Rodgers

The present Luddism over genetic engineering may die a natural death as the computer-illiterate generation is superseded ... I fear that, if the green movement's high-amplitude warnings over GMOs turn out to be empty, people will be dangerously disinclined to listen to other and more serious warnings. — Richard Dawkins