What a difference 1 character can make

One of the fundamental problems with computing is that it requires us humans to be less than human. 'Course, that true in life as well, oftentimes.

Maybe I should rephrase that - the problem is that too often to go through a day PROBLEM-FREE requires us to be less than human.

Two examples:

I've heard a story about NASA losing a Mars Lander because of a misplaced comma. Now, you would think that something that simple would either have beebn caught before the satellite was a tad out of reach, but it wasn't. (Granted, the story could be apocryphal, but let's assume it's relatively true for the purpose of illustrating my point.)

For the machine to work properly, it required the programmers to work like a machine - something that is impossible for humans to do on an extended period of time. (Humanity has some significant advantages, don't get me wrong!). This causes problems for both the machine and for the humans trying to get work done. Work gets lost, machines lock up because of human error, etc. etc.

Second example:

I sold the 8500 on ebay. The website - the machines - everything required me to work like a machine and not make a mistake for the transaction to go smoothly. Unfortunately, the 8500 was advertised as a PowerMac 8600 - related to the 8500, but different!

....and in all my proofreading I never caught the error.

Unfortunately I shipped the thing off. Fortunately, the recipient let me know about it, and has given me a chance to fix the error.

**sigh** There are days I ***WISH*** I could be a machine!

Studio update - part 3

The mac 8600 died - a moment of silence, please.

Well, it didn't EXACTLY die. I had decided to simplify my setup, so I pulled the external hard drives out of the setup after copying the data and system to one of the internal drives. After getting things settled, naturally, the 700 meg drive died rather catastraophically - and with no warning, of course.

It took every app I had with it. The larger drive I had reserved for data storage (lots of audio files), so I put all the apps on the smaller dirve. Oh, well!

So, again, the setup changes. I'm trying to sell the 8600 on ebay - the machine is still good, there is just no hard drive with it. I now have a mac G3 desktop (233 MHz machine) to go with the mini. The plan is to get my old sequencing software running on it, plus some editor librarian for my synths. This will act as the master clock for Garageband / Soundtrack / Reason.

What is simply wonderful is that the modern-day machine (the Mac mini) will transfer files over to the old-style machine (first the 8600, ow the G3 running either mac OS 8.6 or 9.1).

I could even have the mini dial up the 'net, share the connection, and have the G3 on the 'net through the same connection. Gotta love it! - though that does sound like one of those things you COULD do, but ti doesn't really make sense to actually do it!

When the Human needs the Technology to tickle the funnybone.

http://www.infonegocio.com/xeron/bruno/olympics.html

A great Flash movie. Prepare to laugh - cartoon humor in the best tradition of bugs bunny!