We’re going to be seeing more humor like this in the next few weeks, I suppose. I like the tag line: Because Ben Stein is just as qualified to make software as he is to talk about evolutionary biology.
And if you’re confused about what this “evolutionary biology” thing might be, here’s a picture of Stein’s understanding of the subject.
If that’s too much for you, just seek solace by reciting a prayer from the Book of Bon Jovi, Chapter Wanted Dead or Alive. (via some other Canadian.)
Mandatory obvious cheap jab: MS Office is logical?
Looks like the second link may already be pharyngulated.
Your second link appears to be down. Hopefully it is only temporary.
Re #1 Yes – natural selection doesn’t produce perfection, but surely would never have come up with anything as fragile, vulnerable to parasites, and unhealthily bloated as MS Office!
Don @#2: ‘Twas only temporary. Ben Stein must have frightened it.
At least one good thing has come of this travesty of a “documentary”: It’s proved a rich source of snarky comic inspiration. I was afraid that things would die down after the release, but with the lawsuit, and knowing how the Disco & Co crowd handles themselves in court, we should be laughing for a very long time to come.
Shall we present Behe with his Golden Gun now? You just know he’s going to volunteer to be an “expert” witness, and we all know what that means for feet…
Personally, for a benediction before meals, I prefer Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar On Me”
scary part is, Stein is arguably more qualified to write software than talk about biology. you don’t need a graduate degree to be an expert in software design or implementation, after all. hence Martin’s jab at microsoft in #1, i’d say. (full disclosure: i’m a professional Perl monkey working on Linux servers. i have seen and used the source, and been disillusioned thereby.)
Is it just me, or does the guy in that comic panel look like the “I-got-marooned-on-a-desert-island” version of Bob the Builder?
As far as atheist prayers go, for succinctness you can’t beat Bart Simpson’s version of grace: “Dear God, we paid for all this stuff ourselves, so thanks for nothing.”
Personally, for a benediction before meals, I prefer Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar On Me”
Heretic.
Seriously, I support this movement, in all its minor doctrinal variations. ‘Cos let’s face it, havin’ a shrine in yer home to Bon Jovi (full-on eighties mullet version, of course) would just be totally boss.
Link No. 2 is giving me an error, apparently to be blamed on a beaver.
“If that’s too much for you, just seek solace by reciting a prayer from the Book of Bon Jovi”
Blasphemy!
Everyone knows that the Lord will only listen to the testimony of the faithful:
One should realize that people are already trying to weave computer and software glitches into their paranormal worldviews. I’ve been an IT professional all my career and even I have trouble locating the exact source of problems sometimes. I’m sure that a considerable number of novices that do not understand any of the technology will chalk up their PC problems to supernatural causes.
Example? Remember the laptop mouse pointers that were just a round button in between the rest of the letters on your keyboard? Those things always crap out due to grease, breadcrumbs and other stuff that people feed to their laptops. The problem is that your mouse pointer can actually start moving around by itself or even a little stress on the casing of a laptop (say, resting your hands on it, or moving the surface on which the laptop is resting). I’ve seen incident reports of these broken mouse pointers from end-users at big corporations, the number of people that invoked their particular paranormal ideas to describe their problems is very discouraging.
So, more to the point, it’s a matter of time before computer glitches are the work of the devil (requiring exorcisms) and new-agers will ask for money to fix the aura of your pc (after getting it repaired by an actual technician of course).
#10 Heretic.
No, that was W.A.S.P.
#13. The problem is that your mouse pointer can actually start moving around by itself or even a little stress on the casing of a laptop (say, resting your hands on it, or moving the surface on which the laptop is resting).
The phenomenon is known as “nipple creep” after one of the more polite terms for that sort of mouse. Really.
There seems to be a depressing preponderance of I.D. type views amongst writers of software–it may have partly to do with our tendency to anthropomorphise computers (although they hate it when you do that!) and/or explain things by “magic” (as mentioned above; usually tongue in cheek, though). But having read and written a lot of software, I’m coming to the opinion that it’s because most members of my profession couldn’t tell genuine intelligent design from a bodged-together organic pile of random kludges if it bit them on the arse.
Can’t be bothered to hunt it down right now, but Randall Munroe is peddling stickers bearing the legend “Magic” and “More Magic”. The full story is really quite weird, and an early example of the paranormal technological views mentioned above.
I actually expected link #2 to come up with a 404 error or just a blank page, lol.
Regarding #15: http://catb.org/esr/jargon/html/magic-story.html
I love that story (and everything else in the Jargon Files).
JIm @ 14: “our tendency to anthropomorphise computers (although they hate it when you do that!)”
LOL; love it when you talk all wonky. Nice start to the week; thanks.
My only problem with Topical Humor is that it takes forever to work into my skin.
One of the first artificial intelligence books I read (late ’70s) had a section entitled “Specification and removal of demons”. “Demons” were self-contained bits of Lisp code that tested repeatedly for a condition to be true, ran when it became so, then returned control to the Lisp function hierarchy. I always wondered if the resemblance to a book of spells was intentional.
I was hoping you would enjoy this one.
Oh my god, Jeffrey Rowland reads Pharyngula. Heh.
Symmetry! PZ Myers reads Overcompensating!
MS Office isn’t all THAT logical…
Who needs M$ Office when you’ve got vi and LaTeX, anyway?
</trollbait>
Well, I think that hardware and software suffer from the same problem as biological organisms: backward compatibility.
If you were to design a new microprocessor from scratch, you wouldn’t come up with something like the Pentium IV, the only reason it was the way it was is because of backwards compatibility going right back to the 8008 if you chain them all together.
Similarly, software releases are incremental and have to maintain backward compatibility with saved files, plugins, etc. from previous versions. If you designed and wrote an office suite from scratch, it would be a lot different to, and probably better than, Microsoft Office.
Similarly, organisms are backward compatible with their parents.
Luckily, in no case to we have to maintain backward compatibility indefinitely: I don’t fancy breeding with an amoeba :)
Somewhat tangential, but I like that the guy in the cartoon is playing with an Uglydoll. Ox, if I’m not mistaken.
Well.
LaTeX seems to be a rather complicated affair, too — and if you write a scientific paper, you don’t need to do all the layouting yourself.
However, absolutely avoid Microsoft Word versions older than 1995 for Windows or 2004 for Mac. Word X for Mac in particular richly deserves every single MS stereotype there is.
Well.
LaTeX seems to be a rather complicated affair, too — and if you write a scientific paper, you don’t need to do all the layouting yourself.
However, absolutely avoid Microsoft Word versions older than 1995 for Windows or 2004 for Mac. Word X for Mac in particular richly deserves every single MS stereotype there is.
Am I the only one reminded of the scene in Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, where the boys need to sneak into Heaven and end up reciting “Every Rose Has It’s Thorn?”
OK, thought so. :-)