I was Computer Shopper's linux columnist for more than half a decade, from the late 90s onwards. Yes, I know about Linux. (My first review of a Linux distro in the press was published in late 1996.)

Back before the internet we had a name for people who bought a single copy of our books and lent them to all their friends without charging: we called them "librarians".

Idiots emit bogons, causing machinery to malfunction in their presence. System administrators absorb bogons, letting machinery work again.

The programmers have another saying: 'The question of whether a machine can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.'

Nothing stands for content-free corporate bullshit quite like PowerPoint. And that's just scratching the surface.

More often than not, piracy is a symptom of an under-provisioned market.

Steampunk is nothing more than what happens when Goths discover brown.

One ape's hallucination is another ape's religious experience - it just depends on which one’s god module is overactive at the time.

Unfortunately it's also true to say that good management is a bit like oxygen - it's invisible and you don't notice its presence until it's gone, and then you're sorry.

Any civilization where the main symbol of religious veneration is a tool of execution is a bad place to have children.

Fiction is about human beings, first and foremost. (It's not impossible to write fiction with no human protagonists, but it's very hard to keep the reader interested ...)

Art becomes art only when it’s shared with others.

Robbins had opened Gabby up. Her charred skin was peeled back, and her ribs were removed. She was pink inside, like steak that had been burned on a high heat but remained raw in the middle.

I think that being a mom has made me a better person. I'm much more patient and much more chill than I was before.

Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.

Sometimes you have to be lucky, but I always say that to be lucky, you have to fight for it.

South Dakota is a great state because of its values, not because of dependence on government.

Nothing good is ever easy. Or worth it.

Microloans enable the poor to lift themselves out of poverty through entrepreneurship.

I never talk about things that don't matter. I never talk about things that are unimportant. I always talk about things that interest me.

If we didn't live venturously, plucking the wild goat by the beard, and trembling over precipices, we should never be depressed, I've no doubt; but already should be faded, fatalistic and aged.