dmb asked about the term "booting": "How is defying gravity LIKE starting the first program?"
Ian replied: Consider this How does an object subject to gravity defy gravity by it's own will? How does a device that needs a programe to run other programs run the first program? You see the metaphor? dmb says: My three answers to these three questions would be (1) It can't. (2) I wouldn't know, but apparently it can. (3) No, not really. Not only does the metaphor refer to an invisible operation, it seems to bear only the vaguest relation to that unseen event. I get the general idea that something tricky is going on in both situations, but I still maintain that the term is unnecessary and only tends to be misleading. And of course this little problem is nothing all by itself. There must be hundreds or even thousands of similar examples. Recently, not too long after I'd pulled this computer out of the box, I was fishing around for definitions and explanations to preform some particular task. I forget what the task was. Anyway, there was one particularly crucial sentence that really seemed to address my questions but it had 3 or 4 terms that had no meaning as far as I knew and several others that weren't entirely clear. I decided that it would be worth the effort to decode this sentence. I found detailed explantions for all of the mystery terms but in each case these explanations needed explanations. In one case, the term finally became clear to me only after six generations of explanations. Some of this stuff makes Heidegger look like Hemmingway. Three hours later the sentence finally made sense to me and I could preform the task. That's three hours I could have used to preform the task or bang drums and smoke dope, you know? I don't mind learning a few new words but this is seriously cutting into my free-love schedule. Sigh. It was nearly dark by the time I made it out of my teepee and all the sledgehammers were already taken. As a result, I had to smash machines with a rock. Who wouldn't resent that? dmb _________________________________________________________________ 5.5%* 30 year fixed mortgage rate. Good credit refinance. Up to 5 free quotes - *Terms https://www2.nextag.com/goto.jsp?product=100000035&url=%2fst.jsp&tm=y&search=mortgage_text_links_88_h2a5d&s=4056&p=5117&disc=y&vers=910 moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
