6 Jun
2024
6 Jun
'24
1:11 p.m.
I refute your refutations thusly:
On Thu, Jun 6, 2024, 5:38 AM Liam Proven via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
wrote:
On Thu, 6 Jun 2024 at 05:10, Sellam Abraham via
cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
Ah! You said it: "personal". So, agreed.
Stephen Fry, the actor and writer, is quite tall. 6'5". He drives a
If you ride a bus, where multiple random people
get
on and off at various stops, it's not a "personal" conveyance.
I refute your argument thus:
If you buy a bus and start driving it yourself everywhere, for your
own exclusive use, it doesn't somehow magically stop being a bus. It's
still a bus, just a bus being used for personal transport.
London black cab as his personal car.
There it is again: "personal".
It's his car, but it's not _a_ car. It's still a taxi cab: a purpose-built
6-seat vehicle.
Agreed, and still used...personally.
(I am 6'2" but I get why. I can't see out of the windscreen of a
Citroen 2CV: its top is lower than my chin. I have
ridden NYC yellow
cabs, huge saloon cars with a partition shoved in behind the front
seats. I don't fit in the back. It's really painful. This is why
purpose-built vehicles for lots of people and a driver in their own
compartment exist, and it's very American to ignore them and try to
crowbar some other, unsuitable tool into the role because the better
device was Not Invented Here.)
Your height advantage does not an argument make.
A personal computer is not any random computer used by a single
person. It's a product category, like
"car" as opposed to "train" or
"bus".
Now you're back in the marketing camp, where booze, coke, and sales are the
controlling factors. Marketers make good slogans but bad engineers.
Some rich people can buy their own helicopter and use them to go where
they want. (Flown by a professional because flying a
helicopter is
like rubbing your stomach and patting your head while walking a
tightrope.) That does not make that helicopter into a car.
Who is trying to argue a helicopter is a car? You are.
If I own a computer that I use personally and invite my friend over to play
a game on it, does that cease to make it personal? If I buy it for my
secretary to use on my behalf, does that cease to make it personal (since
it is still just one person--her--using it)?
If I let you drive or fly me around in my personal car or helicopter
(respectively), I'm just letting you use it when I'm not. If I
occasionally use my personal bus that I drive myself around in for roving
parties involving a group of my friends (or even random strangers I invite
on, why not) then it doesn't cease to become personal, same as Stephen Fry
can occasionally take on a passenger in his taxi cab if he feels like it,
just like I can occasionally use my personal computer to perform tasks for
others.
In all cases, the primary use is still personal: one person is
driving/flying at one time. Two people trying to simultaneously drive a car
or fly a helicopter would be awkward, to say the least, especially when one
person wants to go left and the other wants to fly higher.
A workstation was, essentially, a minicomputer built to be a
single-user device, but cost as much as a room full of
terminals or
micros. It's not the same thing.
Ok, now you're back to cost. Your criteria keep changing. You cannot
give something meaning when the "something" keeps changing. This is why
you are refuted.
I refute you, sir!
Sellam