Is your computer male
or female? ~ Jan
As you are aware, ships have long been characterized as being
female
(e.g., "Steady as she goes", or "She's listing
to starboard,
Captain!"). Recently, a group of computer scientists (all
males)
announced that computers should also be referred to as being female.
Their reasons for drawing this conclusion follow:
Five reasons to believe computers
are female:
1. No one but the Creator
understands their internal logic.
2. The native language they
use to communicate with other computers
is incomprehensible to everyone else.
3. The message "Bad command
or file name" is about as informative
as, "If you don't know why I'm mad at you, then I'm certainly
not
going to tell you".
4. Even your smallest mistakes
are stored in long-term memory for
later retrieval.
5. As soon as you make a commitment
to one, you find yourself
spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.
However, another group of
computer scientists (all female) think
that computers should be referred to as if they were male. Their
reasons follow:
Five reasons to believe computers
are male:
1. They have a lot of data,
but are still clueless.
2. They are supposed to help
you solve problems, but half the time
they are the problem.
3. As soon as you commit to
one you realize that, if you had waited
a little longer, you could have obtained a better model.
4. In order to get their attention,
you have to turn them on.
5. Big power surges knock
them out for the rest of the night.