Aucbvax.1430 fa.human-nets utzoo!duke!mhtsa!eagle!ucbvax!DERWAY@MIT-ML Thu May 28 02:52:39 1981 HUMAN-NETS Digest V3 #108 HUMAN-NETS AM Digest Thursday, 28 May 1981 Volume 3 : Issue 108 Today's Topics: Correction - Number 5 ESS, Communicating via Network - Impacts on Language, Query Replies - No Calorie Sugar ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 26 May 1981 17:20:32-PDT From: ihnss!hobs@BERKELEY(John Hobson) via Subject: #5 ESS Ian-- Yes, there is such a thing as a #5 ESS. This is a bigger and better ESS, designed to be a replacement for all others. That is, there is one basic configuration, and different versions depending on the capacity needed. This is an improvement over the #1/1A, #2, #3 and #4 ESSes, which are fundamentally different machines, each designed to cover one range of line/trunk numbers. (#1/1A is used in large, metropolitan switching offices, #4 in small, rural ones.) The #5 ESS is expected to be out in the field starting sometime next year. The term ESS means simply Electronic Switching System, and even the most ardent feminist that I know here at BTL-Indian Hill (where the main ESS work is being done) does not consider ESS to be a sexist term. She also did not think that UNIX (tm, etc) was sexist. The -ess ending to words is sexist, but ESS switching systems are not. She does think it funny that Grace Hopper was DPMA's first "Man of the Year". May you always fold your roadmaps easily, John ------------------------------ Date: 20 May 1981 1013-PDT From: Daul at OFFICE Subject: LEARNING COMPUTERESE NOW I HAVE TO LEARN COMPUTERISH - AND WHOSE DEFAULT IS IT? from the san jose news by editorial writer H. Bruce Miller (reproduced here exactly as printed -sgk) Life handed me a couple of exciting new experiences this month. First I had two impacted wisdom teeth removed. Then I underwent two and a half hours of training in how to use our new computer system. Since the computer training was done without benefit of nitrous oxide or Novocaine, I'd have to rate it as somewhat the less pleasant of the two. Some of you might infer from this that I don't like computers. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am not one of your technological Neanderthals who want to go back to cooking on an open fire instead of a microwave and using slide rules instead of pocket calculators. I love computers. It's the computer people I can't stand. The trouble with computer people is they don't know how to speak English. They speak something that sounds sort of like English, but when you listen closely, it's not. It has some English-sounding words and some structural similarities to English, but it's not English, nor is it any other known human tongue, ancient or modern. It's Computerish, which resembles English roughly and pig Latin resembles the language of Virgil and Cicero. Computerish is a language in which words and their meanings undergo bizarre and seemingly random transmogrifications. Verbs metamorphose into nouns, and nouns transform themselves into verbs at the drop of a suffix. New words magically appear from nowhere, and old words take on meanings completely unrelated to their accepted ones. The result is a form of prose that for incomprehensibility is rivaled only by the discourses of 12th century theologians and the press releases of the Environmental Protection Agency. Here, for example, is a paragraph from the manual used in my training session, in the original unexpurgated Computerish: "All forms, prompts. and template takes are treated identically with regard to cursor movement and the editing data. The appropriate message - 'FORM,' 'PROMPT' or 'TEMPLATE' - is displayed in the bright attribute on the status line. In any of these modes the cursor may be moved only within variable fields; it may not be moved into protected areas." A few definitions may further illustrate how Computerish works. First there's the word "access" used as a verb, meaning "to call up" or "to obtain," viz.: "To access your basket, press Command D." There's the word "prompt" used as a noun, meaning a group of underlined spaces that appear at the top of your computer screen and into which you type directions, viz.: "When you press Command 2, a prompt will appear on the screen." There's the word "default" used as a noun, meaning, as far as I can determine, one of the functions that an individual computer user is empowered to perform, viz.: "A list of user defaults may be accessed by pressing Command U." There's the noun "attribute," which is what we newspaper old-timers used to call a type face, such as italic, boldface, or bold italic, viz.: "Ten VDT attributes are available for use with STYL typesetting procedures. Then there's the word (this is one of my all-time favorites) "template." As we all know, in English a template is a cardboard or plastic or metal pattern used for cutting something to a particular shape or marking the correct location of something, as in installing a doorknob. But in Computerish, templates are "openings ... wherein the user may draw or, in this case, enter and edit texts. In template takes, the openings are called fields." I hope that's perfectly clear. Now, template is a very nice word. So are charabanc and quinquereme and peritoneum, any one of which would have served just as well as "template" for the particular purpose. That's the maddening thing about computer people. They use words interchangeably, like pieces of an Erector set, with blithe disregard for their individual meanings. Need a noun? Just throw one in, first one that pops into your head. "Template"? Sure, that's fine, why not. Need a verb? Stick "ize" on the end of a noun and you've got it. Computer people are like Lewis Carroll's Humpty Dumpty: When they use a word it means what they want in to mean. Newspaper people, on the other hand, regard words as precision instruments to be used as carefully and accurately as possible. It's a matter of training and, I suspect, temperament. Consequently, the relationship between newspaper people and computer people is an uneasy one, marked by chronic mistrust and occasional overt hostility. There are just two possible cures for this. One is to get the computer people to learn English. The other is to teach the newspaper people Computerish. From what I've seen of computer people, learning English is beyond the capacity of virtually all of them, so newspaper people presumably will have to take courses in Computerish. Eventually this will improve communications between computer people and newspaper people. What it will do to the quality of American journalism is, of course, another matter. But that's a template of a different attribute, and I guess we'll have to parameterize that default when we access it. ------------------------------ Date: 24 May 1981 0259-CDT From: Clyde Hoover Subject: Inflicting of hacker language upon others Thinking about the recent discussion of the linguistic miscongenation particular to the computer field, and how other non-hacker types react to it, I get the feeling that the non-hackers are right in a quizzical and/or negative reaction to such jargon. I work programming computers about 40 hrs/week, and when I finish with my work day, I really don't want to think about or talk computers until I go to work the next day (whole weekends have been known to pass sans a cybernetic thought on my part), unless of course I run into another computer person (which I do occasionally). This feeling is particullary interesting because I live in an environment that has its own pecular slang, and do find myself using that home slang at work, at times to the consternation of my colleages. My feelings about hacker jargon (and all other vocational vocabularies), is that they should be left at work, and one should talk normal English to the people around you (especially spouses and companions). In short, STOP BEING A HACKER when you aren't working and be a regular human being relating with other people on their own terms. It does take a shifting of the mental gears, but I've found that I can deal with people MUCH better when I don't bombard them with terms they don't understand, and in turn they can really relate to you as a PERSON, not as some 'computer jock.' One of my colleages stated this dichotomy that I feel one should maintain in respect to ones's vocation vs the rest of life very aptly as : "With human beings I will communicate; with computers I will interact." Cheers, Clyde Hoover (writing this at a bizzare hour of Sunday morning because it finally struck my fancy to add my 2c worth). ------------------------------ Date: 20 May 1981 (Wednesday) 1036-EDT From: SHRAGE at WHARTON-10 (Jeffrey Shrager) Subject: Etamology of FLAME I thought that this word was an attempt to verbalize (in the linguistic sense) the adjective "flambouyant". I can see how the word as such could have crept into male-gay language since the typical "tv" stereotype of a gay male includes advanced rings and flashy clothing, etc. I would not necessarily go so far as to claim that the gay community had derived the word. Also, in that sense, RAVE still seems a better word than FLAME for what we do in electronic mail. ------------------------------ Date: 05/20/81 10:47:54 From: TRB@MIT-MC Subject: Influencing Language At Worcester Tech, I think our favorite word in the hacker lexicon had to be "CUSP." In DEC parlance, or at least TOPS-10 parlance, CUSP was the acronym for Commonly Used System Program. CUSPs (usually after having been rewritten by local hackers) were excellent programs, and CUSP took on the meaning of something that was winning. The usage was almost always: "She's a CUSP of a ." She's a CUSP of a car, she was a CUSP of a movie. Anything good was a CUSP, except your girlfriend, as you didn't want to call your girlfriend commonly used. As cusp was already in the dictionary, we confused our share of dentists, astrologers, and mathematicians... Conversely, the word NUSP (Never etc.) caught on to a lesser extent, to describe DEC standard software and other losing things. "The drum is fried again? What a NUSP!" Ah, the good old days. ------------------------------ Date: 15 May 1981 0803-PDT Subject: Isomers and digestion From: WMartin at Office-3 (Will Martin) As has been mentioned, isomers and handedness reversal have been common themes in SF, usually involving some device which as a side effect (usuallly unintentional) reverses a person, so that normal foods are, to him, reverse isomers. Consequences are usually supposed to be fatal. This brings to mind an old idea I first heard many years back, regarding "heavy water", wherein the normal water hydrogen atoms are replaced instead by atoms of deuterium (hydrogen with a neutron added). It was said that this is also not usable by normal bodily processes which require water. The postulation was that, by putting someone in a closed system, where all the water was in fact deuterium oxide, they would notice no difference between that and regular water, but would die of thirst while swimming in the heavy water. (A singularily expensive method of execution...) Anyway, can anyone say if this is in fact true, or merely balderdash? One would think that the gross chemical reactions of body chemistry would handle deuterium the same as hydrogen; maybe some particularly delicate process would be fazed by the changed behavior of the atom due to its greater mass, but wouldn't most function unchanged? With regard to the sugar isomer: if this stuff is in fact natural sugar, with the isomers selected out, or processed to reverse the form, how can the FDA be involved with it as an "additive"? How could this process be legally distinguished from baking, say, which also causes chemical changes in sugar, I believe? Does the law which permits the FDA to be involved cover preparation processes in addition to ingredients? Regards, Will Martin ------------------------------ Date: 15 May 1981 1629-EDT (Friday) From: Bruce.Lucas at CMU-10A (C410BL50) Subject: reversal Of course, the problem with sending someone through a reversing device is that (presumably) not only would the molecules be mirrored, but so would the electrons, protons, etc. The mirror-image of matter is antimatter, and we all know from Star Trek what happens when matter and antimatter come into contact. -Bruce ------------------------------ End of HUMAN-NETS Digest ************************ ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.