File extensions, was: Re: [Coco] Portal-9 bug report

[Ward Griffiths]

On Tuesday 19 October 2004 02:20 pm, Andrew wrote:
> The progression should have continued, not ended. But instead, many
> people are scared or mystified as to what a computer is, what it
> does, and how it works. Many would be surprised if it was explained
> to them in simple terms - that a computer (well, a CPU at least) is
> nothing more than a very big, very fast player piano with a very long
> roll of notes. Of course, most people now don't even know how a
> player piano works anymore...
>
> It is just something that continues to bother me - we have given the
> most advanced form of machinery known to man to ordinary people, but
> they haven't the slightest clue (most of them) as to how it really
> works. The sad fact is that computers are simplistic machines, with a
> very simple architecture. But this is rapidly changing, too. We are
> already beginning to see the start of parallel processing
> architecture creep into joe user's machine...
>
> We have lost joe user - to him, the machine is magic - and we are the
> wizards controlling them. Unfortunately, we have many who practice on
> the "dark side", and don't give a care about joe's data...

The peasants have gone back to being peasants, afraid of every little 
bit of static in the atmosphere.  And the Dark Wizards have much better 
marketing skills than those of us on the Anti-Dark side.  (The same 
works in politics -- Bush and Kerry are splitting the Dark Side, 
Badnarik is going to get the fraction of a percent they leave -- 
Badnarik is One of Us).
-- 
Ward Griffiths    wdg3rd at comcast.net    http://home.comcast.net/~wdg3rd/

You had to admire the way perfectly innocent words were mugged, ravaged,
stripped of all true meaning and decency, and then sent to walk the
gutter for Reacher Gilt, although "synergistically" had probably been a
whore from the start.                 -- Terry Pratchett, _Going Postal_