We ARE talking different coloured hamsters here, right?
I suppose i am a quasi-neo-luddite. I have a cell phone, because my employer provides it and pays the bill. I have no phone at home. I have a television, for playing video games--it otherwise gathers dust. I have a computer at home, again, for playing games. I have a "stereo" of the boom box variety--it's just big enough to have decent sound quality, and i can play my tapes and cd's. I'm not opposed to technology, but i'm not interested in electronic toys simply for the sake of having toys, and i'm certainly not into technological ostentation. They're tools, and i use them as such, and i still find a good book better than any of these toys.
I got Lovey a PDA (or Palm Pilot, although not that brand) fer Chrimbo--now she gets to figure it out an' become the techno whizz. Honestly, i fondly remember the days of pre-windows computers, and i truly hate the windows xp on my computer at home. I can't open a dos window in that program, and that sucks. I've never had any problem adjusting to new technology--but i think a lot of it is a rip-off, and most these days is designed on the assumption that the consumer is stupid and the machine should do your thinking for you.
Palm - a type of date.
Pie - mmmmmmmm, pie.
Lot - offered up his daughters for gang rape to spare his guests the discomfort. Whatta guy!
Now where'd I put that dead horse?
How come Lot didn't get turned into a pillar of salt for that then?
It was Lot's wife who got turned into a pillar of salt. Lot was visited by an angel (yeah, sure), and the people of the town wanted to know who he was letting in and keeping overnight (reasonable concern in those days of wall cities and marauding warriors). So he shoved his daughter outside to appease the crowd--a real prince, huh? Then God destroyed Sodom and Gemorrah, and the only reason you can find in the text of the bible is that they were rude to this soi-disant angel. So off go Lot and wife and daughters. The wife looks back in regret--poof, pure salt. Lot goes off to a cave and falls asleep. His daughters screwed him, and according to that fairy tale, he slept through it. Yeah, right, tell me another one. Them old testament boys all needed to be locked up in padded rooms.
Yes - I knew 'twas Lot's wife wot got turned into a pillar of salt - I was commenting on god's judgment in the matter.....which I regard as seriously faulty - unless he is just short-sighted...
An interesting read is "God: A Biography," by Jack Miles. A scholarly treatment of the god of the Old Testament as a literary character, complete with the requisite 20th century psychological analysis of character. Not for your average fire-and-brimstone Bible thumper, though, both because of content and the use of a number of big words.
I been thinking of getting that book - is it good?
It's worth a quick read. I wouldn't feel compelled to pore over it, but taking in the salient points is good for a bit of highbrow amusement. Not a very temperate character, this God feller, but he's not dull, either! (The writing is, at times, but there you go...)
...and, when you get there, there you are...
Setanta,
I sold my puters before I moved stateside but I was regularly using a dos prompt with Windows XP.
Tell how to get a dos window, then, Boss -- i have games i can't play because xp won't open a dos window for them.
I don't remember where it was (because it was the number 3 program I used and was in the quick launch as well) but I think it's in the accessories folder. I don't remember and am not on an XP system right now so Ican check.
But I'm certain that it's possible to use DOS I used to ping servers every day with dos.
But that doesn't mean it will run games, many of those games don't work with XP for other reaosns.
I wonder if owning a Mac qualifies as Luddite behavior? Though I suspect that using a computer is a disqualifier, regardless of the brand.
The December Harper's has a short review of "Against the Machine: The Hidden Luddite Tradition in Literature, Art, and Individual Lives" by Nicols Fox. The review (by Eric Porter) concludes thus: "...if we are dependent for our survival on one tiny aspect of industry, then we are, it stands to reason, entirely dependent on it. The married couple she write about who isolated themselves on a rugged island off the coast of Maine but kept themselves alive with canned sardines and kerosene had no more detached themselves from the machine, in a radical sense, than the cartoon suburbanite pigging out in a fast-food restaurant. The had simply become eccentrics."
Seems to me that the critic may be confusing being a Luddite with being a hermit!
There are computers and then there are computers...
I am using a Babbage loom right now...
(yeah, right)
Had a guy I was working for for a while. Can't really call him a boss 'cuz although he told me what to do, he never told me how to do it... ergo we could actually work together...
Anyway he was into serious role playing... He was a card carrying member of Society for Creative Achronism. Those are guys who put on mail and such and bash at each other with styrofoam swords for fun...
We had just had new workstations installed. He's complaining to me... 'I can find the Windows Emulator, and I can find the VAX emulator, but I can't find the Unix! Where's the Unix?'
I respond 'Head for the Harem. The Eunuchs will find you...'
Thought he was gonna wet his pants.
(Deb, write Craven... maybe he can explain this to you...)
Well, I got the harem and eunuchs - is there something I am missing....oh, no, that is the Unix...maybe I am confused....
Babbage looms
Yes, I think that qualifies!
About three months ago, the New York Times ran an article that perfectly describes my feelings about technology. I can't post a link to the article, because it's so old it's no longer available for free on the Times's website. So I'll reproduce the entire article here (with apologies for its length).
Drivers, TiVos and Other Conundrums of the Digital Age
By Andres Martinez[/b]
Technology and I are at our wits' end, our marriage on the rocks. I yearn for smarter electronic gadgets that will enable me to fulfill my potential. Meanwhile, my home is filled with gadgets yearning for a smarter master to enable them to fulfill their own potential. It's an awkward state of affairs.
Take my PC. It's a cordial enough relationship on the surface, so long as neither of us dwells on what might have been, or on our initially lofty expectations. I turn it on, do my word processing, dial up the Internet, check some sports scores, read a few e-mails and get off, much as I have been doing since the mid-1990's. I long ago gave up on trying anything too fancy, so I use only about 4 percent of the Intel chip's brain power.
For a time, my computer was muted. The speakers fell silent after I had to reboot the system (don't ask). When I called the manufacturer to seek guidance, I was asked if all the Windows drivers had been installed. There was that word again, drivers. It had been referred to in passing in the so-called manual, ever so casually and without explanation.
The Windows PC realm has a way of making me feel like a Swedish exchange student. I think I understand the language, only to discover that I really don't. I am no Luddite, mind you -- I swear by my electronic organizer and even know how to program my own VCR.
Something has gone terribly awry when educated adults can spend thousands of dollars on a consumer product yet still be forced to buy a book or hire a high school kid to figure out how to use it. My computer came with dozens of shrink-wrapped discs and CD-ROM's, with no clear instructions on what to do with them. More thought seems to go into the packaging of cereal toys.
I once prided myself on being plugged in, but I'm slipping. I don't have an MP3 player, a digital camera or a TiVo. I'm not even sure when all this stuff caught on -- where was I? I don't even "burn" anything, at least not outside the kitchen. I remain a broadband have-not. I only recently bought a DVD player, and then only after my brother boasted of having one in his minivan.
Although still in my 30's, I have already experienced the humiliation of seeing ads for electronic gadgets without being able to tell what they do exactly. I don't think that happened to my grandmother until she was in her 70's. The pace of technological change is making us age a lot quicker. It's a consumer's version of "Logan's Run."
I am not alone in my frustration. Consumer bewilderment and tech fatigue are stalling the relentless march to the digital nirvana. Economists and telecom companies bemoan the slowness with which people have embraced broadband. Can we really be faulted for wanting to take a break before crossing the next bridge?
The last time I truly felt ahead of the tech curve was in junior high, in the late 1970's, when I was the proud owner of a sleek Sound Design 8-track player. I was holding up well enough in the 1980's too, with a Mac in college, but then I got left behind in the last decade.
When I recently called my friendly computer manufacturer with a query (this one unrelated to the mute issue), I was asked if I had an ethernet card. You tell me, I said, trying hard not to sound surly.
Not long ago, I set out to buy a new TV. Now this I could do. Buying a television is a simple proposition, a question of inches. You decide how many, then you stare at the screens in the darkened showroom, and pick the one you like. Or so I thought. The advent of digital television has complicated things enormously. In fact, I discovered, we are in a bewildering transition period, somewhere between the analog age we grew up in and a digital age when, by government edict, everything will be transmitted with absolute clarity whether we want it or not.
Your choice, therefore, is to spend hundreds of dollars on an analog set that will soon be obsolete, or thousands on a high-definition set that isn't quite ready for prime time. Feeling it my patriotic duty to bet on the future, I opted for the cheapest HDTV-ready set. Someday it will be truly amazing. But for now, it has become my latest underperforming electronic marvel.
