LUDDITES Revisited

 

 
GUEST BLOGGER: Bill Gasarch
 
This is my last day guest blogging, so I'll end where I began,
THREE points on LUDDITES
 
I) Janos Simon corrected my history of Luddites, for which I thank him.
If you are interested, go to HIS comment on MY post from Monday Jan 23
for a link to a very nice article.
 
II) My father and father-in-law offer an interesting contrast:
 
FATHER-IN-LAW (Engineering Major, career mostly in Business, now retired):
LUDDITE: Does not program his VCR. Not sure if he doesn't know how to or just
doesn't want to.  So he HAS to be home on Sunday to watch Desperate Housewives
(a show I found distasteful- My father in law is hipper than I am).
 
NON-LUDDITE: Took a course on C at a local community college when
he was 70.  Pays all his bills on line.
 
FATHER (English Major, High School English Teacher and Vice Principal, now retired)
LUDDITE: Got a computer recently and still can't get email or pay his bills on line.
 
NON-LUDDITE: Uses his VCR to tape ALOT of shows.  He needs it since he watches ALOT:
West Wing, My Name is Earl, The Sopranos, Sex in the City when it was on (a show I find
distasteful- My dad is hipper than I am), 6 feet under, Deadwood, all four Law and Orders,
and all three CSI's, Without a trace, other stuff I can't recall. This from the man
who restricted me, wisely, to no more than an hour of TV a night when I was a kid.)
 
III) Stuart Kurtz emailed me some more questions for my Luddite quiz.  I asked him if I
could post them and he suggested asking for other inputs.  No one replied, so here are his:
 
STUART BEGIN:
9) Do you write emails (or blog posts) in
    a) variable width fonts with formatting,
    b) variable width fonts without formatting,
    c) fixed width fonts,
    d) What's a blog?,
    e) What's email?, or
    f) What's writing?
 
10) Do you indicate emphasis by
    a) using italic or slanted font,
    b) using a bold faced font,
    c) metadiscourse, i.e., "I want to emphasize that... ",
    d) ALL CAPS, or
    e) Shouting and waving your arms.
 
11) Does your mouse have
    a) four buttons,
    b) three buttons,
    c) two buttons,
    d) one button,
    e) control characters are good enough for RMS, and they're good  enough for me, or
    f) four feet and a tail.
 
12) What's your favorite programming language?
    a) Ruby or Python,
    b) Java
    c) Lisp,
    d) C++,
    e) Awk,
    f) IBM-360 assembly language,
    g) C,
    h) Lisp, or
    i) graduate student.
 
[I know Lisp occurs twice, but c and h are still different answers. Note that there's no
point asking for Perl -- as Perl programmers can only write, not read.]
STUART END.
 
                                                bill g.
 
P.S. I am supposed to say ``Now that I've guest blogged for a week I'm even more
impressed with Lance getting a topic out every day'' But this is NOT TRUE.
I was SO IMPRESSED with Lance in the first place that I can't be ``more impressed''