In response to certain people whinging that I don't post enough, and in order to steal Grahame's thunder give you a taste of what you can expect from Lore, it is reproduced here.
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Can you believe it? I thought this had to be a welcome-to-Lore, thanks-to-all-those-who-worked-so-hard boilerplate. Grahame (perhaps mistakenly) referred to it as a rant, and a rant he is going to get. As I am so fond of saying, the voice of reason will not be permitted in this column.
So we've got this club, right? It's been around for a while. It was started to, I don't know, share software over serial lines, or something. Play games? (We should totally get Murphy playing games. Have the freshers to write a pong implementation, you only need about eight brain cells to do that.)
These days, everyone has a computer on their desk, the Internet is so pervasive that people who don't know or care about TCP are running online shopping stores, not just buying from them, and this sentence feels like it needs a third point like my toaster now makes CDs and burns toast, though I wish it was the other way round.
Here's the thing, though. We're still stuck in the 1970s. Sure, you can plug your camera in to your computer, and (if you're lucky) download your photos off it, and maybe edit them so your friends' heads are on pornstars' bodies. But if you don't have a heart attack after laughing so hard at your oh-so-original humorous efforts, you'll realise that you still had to tell your computer to do all that. You can't just wave your hands and have things happen. How is that different from typing LOAD MM11.EXE; EXECUTE; etc.? It's not. Yes, I just made up an operating system, but the point is that you're just doing everything through a different interface.
Why can't things Just Work? I'm not talking about things working in the way that Linux hackers do (ooh, look, I plugged my device in and I don't have to run MAKEDEV!), I'm talking about the way that science fiction characters ask their computer to play some music and it just happens. Wireless physiological measurements to detect mood, automated genre classification based on rhythm and chord patterns or something, and all sorts of clever things that I DON'T CARE ABOUT.
You know what? I hate computers. I'm President of the UCC, I work in IT, and I hate computers. I'm going off to become, I don't know, an astronaut. Wait - no, I'm going to be a doctor. I'm sure sick people are much easier to deal with.
4 comments
Frenchie :: Sunday, August 20th
You're off to deal with sick people instead of sick machines... hrm...
Sheeba :: Sunday, August 20th
Nicely written.
Should it be 'plug your camera into your computer'?
pfft. That wasn't anywhere near whinging.
natasqi :: Sunday, August 20th
YAY you posted!!
I wish people were more like computers. I wish I had tech knowledge and could fix my own computer...
/.Church :: Saturday, August 26th
While your busy being an astronaut can you say hello to HAL for me?
I donīt think people want invasive devices like that...me for example, if my web browser was able to read my mind and take me where I truly wanted...well how many naked bodies can one stare at before it all becomes to much?
