off topic

Tue May 2 10:59:20 UTC 2006

On Mon, 2006-01-05 at 10:51 -0300, Derek Broughton wrote:

> >> Reminds me of a story of /. a while back - some linguist had spent
> >> 2000 man hours writing a Windows program that would count how many
> >> English words could be properly spelled using full element names in
> >> the periodic table as letters. 2000 hours! It was all terribly
> >> complicated and confusing, and took several hours to run

> >> Then some /. fanboy used /usr/share/dict/words and a perl one-liner to
> >> do the same thing in 3.5 seconds

> > And, naturally, Perl isn't available under Windows.  And the words file
> > is in such a bizarre and obscure format that it can't be used under
> > Windows.  And certainly isn't available from about a billion different
> > places.

> > If you're going to critique a platform, how about not making shit up?

> It's not about "making shit up", or even that the same thing couldn't be
> done with Windows.  It's about a mental attitude.  

It is not the fault of Windows that its users don't think of Perl, et al
when solving problems.  It may, in fact, be the fault of the Perl
community which routinely dismisses Windows users when asked questions.

The fact is that the anecdote related above tells us absolutely nothing.
I could relate an anecdote about someone in a UNIX system trying to
rename all .c files as .c.old.  On a Windows system that's a "ren *.c
*.c.old".  Under UNIX its... more complicated.  That anecdote, too,
relates nothing.

Each platform has its strengths.  Each platform has its weaknesses.  And
the story above (as well as my story) tells us nothing about either --
no matter how much hand-waving and wild gesticulation you choose to
employ.  Hate windows as much as you like, Derek (and anybody else), but
stop making shit up about it to explain it.  Hate it irrationally or
rationally.  Nobody actually gives a shit either way.  But you start
making shit up about it?  People start giving a shit.

--
Michael T. Richter
Email: ttmrichter at gmail.com, mtr1966 at hotpop.com
MSN: ttmrichter at hotmail.com, mtr1966 at hotmail.com; YIM:
michael_richter_1966; AIM: YanJiahua1966; ICQ: 241960658; Jabber:
mtr1966 at jabber.cn

"[Blacks] secrete less by the kidneys, and more by the glands of the
skin, which gives them a very strong and disagreeable odour." --Thomas
Jefferson
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