Murphy's Technology Laws
Conrad's Conundrum: Technologie don't
transfer.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 1. You can never tell which way the
train went by looking at the track.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 2. Logic is a systematic method of
coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 3. Whenever a system becomes
completely defined, some damn fool discovers something which
either abolishes the system or expands it beyond recognition.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 4. Technology is dominated by those
who manage what they do not understand.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 5. If builders built buildings the
way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that
came along would destroy civilization.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 6. The opulence of the front office
decor varies inversely with the fundamental solvency of the firm.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 7. The attention span of a computer
is only as long as it electrical cord.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 8. An expert is one who knows more
and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything
about nothing.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 9. Tell a man there are 300 billion
stars in the universe and he'll believe you. Tell him a bench has
wet paint on it and he'll have to touch to be sure.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 10. All great discoveries are made
by mistake.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 11. Always draw your curves, then
plot your reading.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 12. Nothing ever gets built on
schedule or within budget.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 13. All's well that ends.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 14. A meeting is an event at which
the minutes are kept and the hours are lost.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 15. The first myth of management is
that it exists.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 16. A failure will not appear till a
unit has passed final inspection.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 17. New systems generate new
problems.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 18. To err is human, but to really
foul things up requires a computer.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 19. We don't know one millionth of
one percent about anything.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 20. Any given program, when running,
is obsolete.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 21. Any sufficiently advanced
technology is indistinguishable from
magic.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 22. A computer makes as many
mistakes in two seconds as 20 men working 20 years make.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 23. Nothing motivates a man more
than to see his boss putting in an honest day's work.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 24. Some people manage by the book,
even though they don't know who wrote the book or even what book.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 25. The primary function of the
design engineer is to make things difficult for the fabricator
and impossible for the serviceman.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 26. To spot the expert, pick the one
who predicts the job will take the longest and cost the most.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 27. After all is said and done, a
hell of a lot more is said than done.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 28. Any circuit design must contain
at least one part which is obsolete, two parts which are
unobtainable and three parts which are still under development.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 29. A complex system that works is
invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 30. If mathematically you end up
with the incorrect answer, try multiplying by the page number.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 31. Computers are unreliable, but
humans are even more unreliable. Any system which depends on
human reliability is unreliable.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 32. Give all orders verbally. Never
write anything down that might go into a "Pearl Harbor
File."
Murphy's Technology Laws: 33. Under the most rigorously
controlled conditions of pressure, temperature, volume, humidity,
and other variables the organism will do as it damn well pleases.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 34. If you can't understand it, it
is intuitively obvious.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 35. The more cordial the buyer's
secretary, the greater the odds that the competition already has
the order.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 36. In designing any type of
construction, no overall dimension can be totalled correctly
after 4:30 p.m. on Friday. The correct total will become
self-evident at 8:15 a.m. on Monday.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 37. Fill what's empty. Empty what's
full. And scratch where it itches.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 38. All things are possible except
skiing through a revolving door.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 39. The only perfect science is
hind-sight.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 40. Work smarder and not harder and
be careful of yor speling.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 41. If it's not in the computer, it
doesn't exist.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 42. If an experiment works,
something has gone wrong.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 43. When all else fails, read the
instructions.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 44. If there is a possibility of
several things going wrong the one that will cause the most
damage will be the one to go wrong.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 45. Everything that goes up must
come down.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 46. Any instrument when dropped will
roll into the least accessible corner.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 47. Any simple theory will be worded
in the most complicated way.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 48. Build a system that even a fool
can use and only a fool will want to use it.
Murphy's Technology Laws: 49. The degree of technical
competence is inversely proportional to the level of management.