Ben Silbermann Quotes

I think that all services will have downtime. No matter how much you prepare, have redundant systems, or audit, there will periodically be a black swan event that is completely unlike whatever you've experienced before. It even happens to Google!

I wonder sometimes if manufacturers of foolproof items keep a fool or two on their payroll to test things.

One of the most feared expressions in modern times is 'The computer is down.'

A long time ago, we had to build interfaces to connect with other companies, and I thought that was a great idea. The company had to pay a lot of money to build it and basically launched it, but our whole operating system almost broke. So, we couldn't continue it. In the end, I had to go on the train to Paris to explain that I had spent millions.

The modern era of continuity planning began under President Ronald Reagan.

In a previous life I wrote the software that controlled my physics experiments. That software had to deal with all kinds of possible failures in equipment. That is probably where I learned to rely on multiple safety nets inside and around my systems.

There'll be a special place in hell for the tape back-up people.

I have read on a Kindle. But the Kindle we had only worked for about eight months then it stopped working. You don't have to get books repaired.

When you say 'I wrote a program that crashed Windows,' people just stare at you blankly and say 'Hey, I got those with the system, for free.'

W2K will be a bigger disaster than Y2K.

Hardware works best when it matters the least.

Whether it's watching a $4,000 laptop fall off the conveyor belt at airport security, contending with a software conflict that corrupted your file management system, or begging your family to stop opening those virus-carrying 'greeting cards' attached to emails, all computer owners are highly leveraged and highly vulnerable technology investors.

If you don't fix latent failures in your system, you're asking for trouble.

As a general rule, if you have a product that doesn't get the job done that a customer is needing to get done, then often you have to offer it for zero. Because if you ask for money for it - because if it doesn't do the job well, they won't pay for it.

The cloud computing model may be a wonderful system when it works, but it's a nightmare when it fails. And the more people who come to depend upon it, the bigger the nightmare.

Several highly improbable and therefore unforeseen failures.

Complex systems work until the day that they don’t work.

If this is the first attempt at the primary system, we sincerely hope it’s the last.

When computer systems cause errors, you can end up with The Dreaded NIGO - the 'not in good order' transaction.

Technically, Windows is an "operating system," which means that it supplies your computer with the basic commands that it needs to suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, stop operating.

In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.

I think it's really clear that Sony lost track of what customers and what developers wanted. I'd say, even at this late date, they should just cancel it and do a do over. Just say, 'This was a horrible disaster and we're sorry and we're going to stop selling this and stop trying to convince people to develop for it'.

Not only is UNIX dead, it's starting to smell really bad.

A company's ability to respond to an unplanned event, good or bad is a prime indicator of its ability to compete.

Database: the information you lose when your memory crashes.