Recent quotes:
Laptops 'ain't gonna happen!' -- NYT columnist in 1985
Was the laptop dream an illusion, then? Or was the problem merely that the right combination of features for such lightweight computers had not yet materialized? The answer probably is a combination of both views. For the most part, the portable computer is a dream machine for the few. The limitations come from what people actually do with computers, as opposed to what the marketers expect them to do. On the whole, people don't want to lug a computer with them to the beach or on a train to while away hours they would rather spend reading the sports or business section of the newspaper. Somehow, the microcomputer industry has assumed that everyone would love to have a keyboard grafted on as an extension of their fingers. It just is not so.
Mr. Pincher did it all his own way. He said he never took notes, so as not to interrupt the flow of conversation. He had an unimpeachable memory, he said. He tried never to see or touch a classified document, relying instead on the summaries of people he trusted.Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story
If sources wanted him to delay printing an article, he usually agreed — knowing he would be first in line if they changed their minds. He more than once wrote a phony story at the behest of the British government. In its obituary on Wednesday, The Guardian reported that in the 1950s the government was worried that Japanese protesters would try to disrupt a planned nuclear test on Christmas Island by showing up in 1,000 boats. Mr. Pincher printed the lie that the test was being postponed. It went ahead with no hitches. “Few endeavors,” The Guardian quoted him as saying, “gave me more delight.”
Besides his memoir, Mr. Greenberg wrote “Memos From the Chairman” (1996), a collection of his good-natured, idiosyncratic notes to employees, including admonitions to conserve electricity, promptly answer calls from the boss and never throw away paper clips.“The time to stop stupidity and be tough on costs is when times are good,” he wrote. “Any schlemiel and most schlamozels try to cut costs when times are bad.”(A schlemiel is the guy who spills his soup at the big wedding; a schlamozel is the guy he spills it on.)
Though Ms. Patterson strove for historical accuracy, comparatively modern times still intruded on the fair, sometimes glaringly.“I remember a young girl running up to me a few years ago, almost crying,” Ms. Patterson told The Los Angeles Times in 1987, “saying: ‘You’ve got to do something. Someone’s back there playing Bach.’ ”