Computers are wasteful of paper and time. Once, we'd get documents with a few errors. Now, people make hundreds of copies until each sheet is flawless and memos are duplicated endlessly. Managers get swamped with emails.
Our computers double in capability on time scales of only a few years. It's hardly outrageous to believe that we will successfully develop thinking machines within a handful of decades, or at most a century or two. If that happens, these artificial s...
What I was proud of was that I used very few parts to build a computer that could actually speak words on a screen and type words on a keyboard and run a programming language that could play games. And I did all this myself.
I clipped a Ferrari, hit the gravel trap at a fair old speed, which lifted the car up into the barrier, and then rolled a few times. I had no injuries or anything - I just had to wait for the marshals to right the car before I could get out.
My mother was determined to make us independent. When I was four years old, she stopped the car a few miles from our house and made me find my own way home across the fields. I got hopelessly lost.
I've never wanted to drive a car fast for the sake of it. I mean, I like nice cars. I've got the Bentley, I've had a Lotus, I've had a Rolls-Royce and a few Jaguars, including an E-type. But I'm not somebody for driving tremendously fast.
In fact, I was one of the few trusted people that Lucy allowed to play with their kids. I spent time at their summer home, rode horses at their ranch, and swam at their beach house. I even spent a Christmas with them at Palm Springs one year.
Even when my parents were together, they both had to travel and work, and it wasn't like they had nine-to-five jobs. In that way, it wasn't a normal family life. We'd go and stay for a few weeks with Dad on tour and bring a tutor with us.
I made a very concerted decision to go to drama school in the United States. But I did have the opportunity to go to Britain's Central School of Speech and Drama, and my dad and I had a few tense words about that. He wanted me to go to British drama ...
Look at our society. Everyone wants to be thin, but nobody wants to diet. Everyone wants to live long, but few will exercise. Everybody wants money, yet seldom will anyone budget or control their spending.
Actors endow the villain in fiction with a warmth and quality that makes them memorable. I think we like fictional villains because they're the Mr. Hyde of our own dreams. I've met a few real villains in my time, and they weren't the least bit sympat...
Quite a few, actually, are involved in education. They have had the same experience Hanna and I had: when they started having their own kids, they didn't want them to have a poor educational experience; they wanted them to enjoy school.
There was a time when bright people had few prospects for higher education and good jobs here. But that is changing. India is no longer seen as an undesirable place to work or pursue research.
Few nations have been so poor as to have but one god. Gods were made so easily, and the raw material cost so little, that generally the god market was fairly glutted and heaven crammed with these phantoms.
I think independent movies are actually very challenging right now, because it was this huge scene and it was great for a few years. Then, it was totally co-opted by the studios. Now, it's become very corporate, the independent scene.
It's a lot harder to get people to 'ooh' and 'aah' over beets and carrots than it is to get them to 'ooh' and 'aah' over artichokes or asparagus, and I enjoy being able to take these humble, 'lowbrow' foodstuffs up a few notches and serve them with g...
I've run into certain geniuses of individualism - they are very few and far between - who live their lives completely on their own terms; they are very powerful and have a great amount of happiness. We all should aspire to that.
There are lots of ways to make money in venture capital, and there are even more ways to be mediocre. The industry has too much money and too many smart people chasing too few great entrepreneurs.
My school friends thought I was outgoing and bubbly, but that masked a lot of insecurities, and maybe that's the reason I chose drama - to build a bit of self-confidence. I had a great teacher, and I won a few speech and drama competitions and just f...
One of the great pleasures of having children is spending one-on-one time with them. Sadly, I could do that for only a few minutes at a time. I'd never say that ADD/ADHD is a gift or a blessing. And if someone says it is a gift, I'd love to return it...
I was an optimist, a great champion of the human spirit. And I lost that for a time. I feel like I've regained a bit of that in the last few years but there was a period of my life in which I had a very low opinion of people in general.
