Nathaniel Borenstein

Nathaniel Borenstein (born September 23, 1957) is one of the original designers of the MIME protocol for sending multimedia Internet electronic mail.

Attributed

• It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter.
  • Footnote in a paper about computational email.
  • Computational Mail as Network Infrastructure for Computer-Supported Cooperative Work
  • Collected quotes about computer languages

• As more and more good ideas come under the protection of patents, it may become increasingly unlikely that any one program can incorporate the state of the art in user-interface design without sinking into a quagmire of unending royalty payments and legal battles.
  • Borenstein, Nathaniel S. (1991). Programming as if people mattered : friendly programs, software engineering, and other noble delusions (4. print. ed.). Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. pp. 52. ISBN 9780691087528. 

• Software patents may be used as a form of outright coercion, providing protection against theft of ideas as a potentially high cost to future inventors.
  • Borenstein, Nathaniel S. (1991). Programming as if people mattered : friendly programs, software engineering, and other noble delusions (4. print. ed.). Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. pp. 53. ISBN 9780691087528. 

Unsourced

• The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in. We're computer professionals. We cause accidents.
  • Comment while teaching a Software Engineering course at CMU, circa 1985.

• Spam is bad. The amazing degree of unanimity that greets such a simple declaration is, paradoxically, the biggest impediment to progress in anti-spam standards.
  • Presentation to NIST/FCC on the spam problem, 2004.