Hallo Steve,
On Saturday, October 30, 1999, 3:51:35 PM (GMT+0800), Steve Lamb wrote:
>> They have to breath, wehtehr they want to or not. They don't have to
SL> That's just it, we don't have to go to the market, either. There is
SL> enough of a "market" out there to go for a niche, not the general market. In
SL> the goo-goo eyed craze to get the large numbers one misses the very real point
SL> that the competition is too high for those numbers and that they can take a
SL> different angle make better money.
A niche market is still a market, but I agree with you in principle.
SL> Besides, the bone does walk the dog. Look at Linux. It was built the way
SL> "we" wanted it built and now the market is breaking down Linux' door.
SL> Furthermore, it was built with *NO* regard to "the market" because it is free.
SL> "The market" is not the end-all, be-all barometer of success.
Price is one of the market mechanisms. Linux is a good product (so
I've heard - I'm not using it yet), and the price is reasonable. Here
I am not talking about computer freaks who download the thing and get
going, thus not needing to pay anything. I'm thinking about those who would
buy the support to go with it, e.g. from Red Hat.
>> Well, the OS is software in my vocabulary, so you are actually saying
>> you agree with me? :-))))
SL> No, OS does not equal software. The same software on 6 different OSs could
SL> yield 6 different levels of performance based on the OS. Software runs on an
SL> OS.
I know this. I made a point of telling hardware and software apart.
Therefore, OS (in my vocabulary) is one piece of software. Or do you
define software only as "applications"? What then is the OS? Nowadays
not hardwired any more. (Is that a news flash for you? ;-))
>> Because they detect the smallest mistake I make. I missing semicolon in
>> a Pascal freaks up your programme and you look somewhere completely
>> different, for example. Unforgiving beast. ;-)
SL> Ah, well, get the authors to make a better parser, then. I miss
SL> semicolons all the time in Perl and it tells me right where to look. OTOH,
I confess, my Pascal experience is about 15 years old, so someone
might have a solution in the meantime. What you write further down
about Perl, that's neat.
>> I agree with you here. But that does not prevent me from being
>> frustrated at times. Even in Windows, a wrong click and I lost my card
>> game.
SL> It worked as expected. For me I would be frustrated at *me*. Here's a
You have a point, but being human, I try to blame the machine.
SL> Now, the
SL> command-line was as follows:
SL> cat crossed.logs.orig | perl foo.pl > realcount
SL> I just placed a -d after perl to get it to go into debug mode. While
SL> debugging I was telling it to print different variables so I could see what
SL> was going on. Each time I told it to print, however, it would print nothing.
arrrrg... yup, the problem with mistakes like this is "someone else"
(me in this case) catches it on first sight, while you (the
programmer) wastes an hour of his life. That's what I call
frustrating.
SL> Once I took off that redirection it worked fine. My frustration
SL> went from me being tweaked at the computer to me being *REALLY*
SL> tweaked at me.
I see your point. I am coming from another angle: while the computer
behaved the way it "should have" according to logic, it did not behave
he way it "should have" according to what I wanted it to do. Whilst I
(wrongly) assume I did everything correctly, I cannot find the
mistake. That's what I find frustrating. I think it's a definition of
the word "frustrating".
SL> Computers don't make mistakes, people do. The general public needs to
SL> learn that.
This is a potentially dangerous statement. Whenever "members of the
general public" tell me: "the computer said so, that's why it's
correct", I hold a lecture about why I don't like the divinity often
associated with the machine. People make mistakes yeah: and who do you
think programmes the computer? Builds the computer? My friend got a
phone bill for 13,000.-DM - "Computers don't make mistakes"? So should
he just have paid up?
SL> You're trying to bullshit someone who did technical support over the phone
I am not trying to do such a thing ;-) Maybe only the "dummies" called
you, I have no idea. Maybe it's a cultural thing, and people here in
Asia are more eager to learn. In my personal experience, dealing with
people every day that have to use computers but don't care to make
them the center of their lives, I can say that people tend to try and
understand how to work a programme, rather than sitting back and
weeping ;-)
>> computer as a tool to simplify things in the "real" world. Logging in,
>> type type, until I finally get my account balance, twenty minutes have
>> passed. Unnecessary. Waste of time.
SL> I'd love to know what you're doing. Here's my banking experience
You seem to have a faster connection than I, logging in from Asia to
Europe.... will you admit that voice control would be a simplication?
Or at least a neat luxury? I could tell you about some bedroom
computer that turned on the music upon the voice command "music" and
closed the curtains etc, but that might go too far. If you prefer your
keyboard over voice control, I don't think anybody will take it away
from you. "Darling, let me just press a few keys: clickadi-clakc,
clackerioclick..." translation: opening CD Programme, selecting
options, press "go" [whatever] - really romantic :-D
SL> Excluding loading time it would take me *longer* to say "Computer, log in
SL> and check my account balance" than it does for me to do 4 mouse clicks and 4-5
SL> characters.
Provided you have booted up your box, have the time to sit in front of
it and have logged into the internet, that sounds right. How about I'm
coning home, taking my winter coat off, walk to the kitchen and just
drop the words to the computer, followed by "turn up the heating"?
SL> News flash, VCRs *are* self-explanitory! The vast majority of people
SL> don't want to read the very simple directions. I dunno about you, but for me
SL> "menu" means bring up the menu, up and down arrows move the little pointer,
SL> date, time, duration, channel, all pretty straight forward. That was "too
SL> hard" for the general public.
Obviously. Make something easier - or say mankind is so stupid they
are not worth it. How about "VCR, tape Star Trek on Channel 12 at
8pm". What's wrong with that? Do you like these menus?
SL> Computers are *NOT* complicated. Women, now that is a complicated piece
SL> of equipment!
<g>
--
Cheers,
Thomas mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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