Re: The Salon piece [was something else]

["..." yesss@xxxxxxxx]

≪ Without even meaning to, [the Salon piece] made
xyW users look like fools. ≫ --adpFisher 

≪ The key phrase there is, "without even meaning to". I
think that, to a degree, being perceived as foolish goes
with the territory when you're bucking a mass-market trend,
as we are. Wear it as a badge of honor, I say. Or, since
we can't control what others perceive, just ignore it. ≫
--Carl Distefano 

Carl--I didn't think the piece very important. That's why
I commented only in passing in a msg on another topic, not
when Salon published it. But in view of your advice I'll
add that a knowledgeable writer could have filled that space
with an entertaining piece about efficient old apps that
are used now to fill needs inconceivable when the apps were
written. Although Borland dumped Sprint after a matter of
months and no TTG rescued it, e.g., Sprint too has a mailing
list and devotees using it today as productively and variously
as we use xyW. What do Sprint users do for printer drivers?
Easy. They use PostScript hardware or software. You'd never
know from the Salon piece that the driver problem all legacy
apps share has a solution. If you nail an assignment to write
a piece about software, know little about software, and don't
think it's worth much research, you just describe users beating
their foreheads for want of a driver--or doing what you'd do,
switching.

≪ But you don't need to know anything about computers
to know what a cargo cult is, and she and her editor don't
seem to know even *that*. ≫

≪ I dunno, I thought the comparison was apt, in a way.
In terms of our choice of software, we're rather insular
and isolated. ≫

Using a non-mainstream app makes one a cultist?

≪ And, we all fervently believe that, sometime before
the millennium, a box will arrive with a shiny new
SmartWords CD. ;-) ≫

When I saw the first use of the term cargo cult, I expected
later to encounter an image of the faithful congregated
in wait for that ol' P-38 to fly over again and drop new
largess. What makes a cargo cult a cargo cult and not any
old cult is, the old blessing exhausted, cultists focus on a
new coming. It's a real 'net phenomenon, where cultists
gather to offer up collective adulation to a developer,
confabulating and reassuring each other about new releases
that the developer has told them will never be. An analogous
situation would be if xyW users against all reason were
convinced xyDos 5 is imminent and in expectation heaped
praise on TTG. I was curious to see how Virshup would
square the resentment toward TTG a few subcribers often
express here with the unfailing worshipfulness that
characterizes cargo cults. She just lost it altogether
and ascribed hostility toward TTG to all users.

You know about SmartWords, I know about SmartWords,
Virshup must know something about SmartWords. If Salon
readers know about SmartWords, they learned it elsewhere.
Virshup never mentioned SmartWords in Salon. Did a clumsy
editor cut a section on SW, leaving her central metaphor
dangling? Who knows. Omission does maintain the theme
of benighted fanatics mired in the past. If Virshup
*had* introduced SW to support the metaphor she'd've
had to bend facts--insofar as she grasped the facts,
given the stuff about 5.25" disks, etc.

I was trying to read the piece through the eyes of someone
unfamiliar with xyW or behind on xyW news. That's what
editors do. At least that's what we used to do. ... Ciao. 	--a

======================================== adpFisher  nyc
http://www.escape.com/%7Eyesss/ =======================================