Deeper Understanding

[Douglas Alan <nessus@mit.edu>]

I guess I don't understand why anyone would have problems with the
lines "I press Execute" or "I was loading a new program" or the beepy
noises in "Deeper Understanding".  Kate could have written "I press
Enter", but that wouldn't have scanned as well -- it wouldn't have had
the proper iambic rhythm, so Kate said "Execute" instead.  That is
what the "Enter" key often does, after all.  The phrase "loading a new
program" is less canonical than "installing a new program", but big
deal!  "Load" is still perfectly acceptable, as in "downloading a
program" or "uploading a file" or "the program is currently loading
from the CD-ROM".

As to the beepy noises, I don't know about your computer, but my PC
clone sure makes all kind of beepy noises.  When the computer is
powered on, it first beeps obnoxiously and then it makes a noise like
it is trying to rip apart the floppy disk drive.  Of course this is
completely normal for a PC clone.  It would have been amusing to hear
this awful noise in a song, but perhaps Kate felt that it was a bit
too harsh for the mood of this song.  All sorts of awful beepy noises
occur when I use my modem, and whenever I open or close a window or
select something from a menu, there are more annoying beepy noises to
go along with each of those actions.

Why didn't Kate chose to use the actual beepy noises that a real
computer makes?  Because she liked her own invented beepy noises
better for some reason.  What difference does it make anyway?  The
song is about a class of program (real AI with good voice recognition)
that we clearly we don't have today, and perhaps the computers of the
future beep differently.

|>oug

P.S. I've seen plenty of movies made by people who clearly know
something about computers, but where the computers type text at 110
baud, yet then have the capabilities to do incredible graphics that I
have never seen any computer do in real time.  I don't let this stop
my enjoyment of the movie.  Clearly the 110 baud output is to give the
audience time to read the output, and make it clear what you are
supposed to be reading.  Fast readers in the audience won't be bored
having read everything and then being forced to wait.  Instead they'll
be kept in a bit of suspense.  Slow readers are give time to follow
the plot.  Everyone is kept happy.  Perhaps someday they'll come up
with a more realistic method of accomplishing all this.  In the
meantime I can enjoy the story and message in Kate's song.

P.P.S. It does annoy me a bit when a computer nerd can save the Earth
by completely reverse engineering alien computer hardware in just a
few hours, then once this is done in another hour or two reverse
engineer the alien software running on this alien hardware.  Of
course, he does this without any of the hardware and software tools
that the aliens used to carefully craft their system over many
centuries.  Then it turns out that the aliens are so stupid that they
have no security whatsoever, combined with being so organized as to
use the exact same hardware and software configuration everywhere, so
that the nerd can write a computer virus in the remaining few minutes
to disable all the computers in an entire alien armada.  It's little
details like that that I *do* fine annoying.