zeros and ones
Sometimes existing structures change themselves to work better. This is good.
MSN, for example, seems to have self-improved quite by accident. (It will surprise no one to hear that I'm not sure they could have done it on purpose). For an assortment of reasons I have been using the actual MSN client of late, and not always Trillian, a multi-service client by Cerulean Studios. I like Trillian, but some things work better in the original.
When someone is Away or Idle, MSN says, "[user's name] may not respond because he or she appears to be offline (or away from the computer or whatever)". In use, this comes out thus: "Mary may not respond because he or she appears to be offline."
I like this.
Who says Mary is female, or uses "she"? The computer doesn't know, care, or discriminate. Yay for that.
Sometimes binary code is the fairest of them all. I knew I liked computers for a reason.
MSN, for example, seems to have self-improved quite by accident. (It will surprise no one to hear that I'm not sure they could have done it on purpose). For an assortment of reasons I have been using the actual MSN client of late, and not always Trillian, a multi-service client by Cerulean Studios. I like Trillian, but some things work better in the original.
When someone is Away or Idle, MSN says, "[user's name] may not respond because he or she appears to be offline (or away from the computer or whatever)". In use, this comes out thus: "Mary may not respond because he or she appears to be offline."
I like this.
Who says Mary is female, or uses "she"? The computer doesn't know, care, or discriminate. Yay for that.
Sometimes binary code is the fairest of them all. I knew I liked computers for a reason.
posted by raj at
2:04 PM
