Mach de Bagua    

Peter Pontifications

终于收到了我订的The NT Insider Vol 11 Issue 2 (March - April 2004). 从纽约州寄到上海来，路上慢的时候要走将近两个月的时间。大部分内容自然在网上看过了，实物的传送再也比不上互联网的速度。这一期有篇Peter Viscarola的文章说的事情和Driver或者System Development绝无关系，而是说互联网的，很是有趣，在网站上没有。我翻译了一小部分，后来觉得翻译不能传神，遂放弃，直接把原文输入了。我的部分译文和原文都在下面。我真的很佩服Steve的八卦功夫。

Peter的宣教

在《The NT Insider》的第一期里面，我宣称：总的来说，互联网，尤其是网页，基本上无聊而且无用。事实上，我抵制一切关于我们建立一个OSR网站的建议。谁要看啊？互联网在几个月内就会消失，它只不过是类似民用无线电爱好者之间的一种兴趣而已。别烦我，我只想写驱动。

我的这个预言恐怕给了新读者们一个对我的技术领域的预见能力的不可信任的感觉。显然，我还能够比较早地认清形势，把我，我的公司，和亲爱的读者朋友们联合在一起去赶互联网的大潮。

好吧，我忏悔：我也许错了。总的来说，互联网，特别是网页，被证明是有用的。

写到这里我已经才思枯竭，但不幸的是，编辑Dan指出我这篇文章还远远不够字数。别无选择，我只好继续。

网页已经变得如此的有大用，事实上，它已经改变了人们如何发现和使用知识的方式。你曾经想过这一点么？你上一次翻开书去查找什么东西是在什么时候？有了互联网，你手上就象是有了一本巨~~大（我说巨大是指monstrous在dictionary.com里面的全部四个含义）的百科全书。在有网络以前，你如果手上没有合适的书，也没有一个聪明的表哥可以向他咨询，你的好运就到头了，除非你能从图书馆或者书店弄到那本书。

比如说你想知道Hermione Gingold是30年代还是60年代的演员。那么你手上有Leonard Maltin的影片目录没有？没有？哈哈，十年前这就是你最后的希望，别无它法。现在，你只需要用google查找老好人Hermione，，马上就出来你看也看不完的页面。

让我深刻体会这一点的事是最近一次我和我家亲戚到我父母家去玩。我们在后院的甲板上（作者用的是hang out)信口大侃，讨论世界局势，结果就出了件变态的事。当时我们讨论到一个重要的问题，就是叙利亚人吃不吃蒸粗麦粉。哇！我妈马上冲向了她的百科全书（他们买了一套，是每个星期从超市买一本攒齐的），开始查找蒸粗麦粉，叙利亚或者是中东这样的词汇。

我懒洋洋地摊在沙发上说：“我们可以，嗯，上网查呀。。。”，根本就没意识到下列问题：一，我们没有无线网络基站；二，也没有可以上无线网的机器；三，没有高速上网的连接；四，他们没有耐心听我再次劝说他们去安装这些破烂东西，说起来是帮他们赶上时代的步伐，实际上是我要用它来下载MP3（RIAA不会控告我吧？）。

我妈：“我就不会用那破烂东西”，她指了指我给她买的机顶盒。“你是说google?去用吧。我一直跟你爸说。。。”

我的话似乎引起了恐慌。我叔叔开始插话：“我在教堂认识的一个人，他老婆患了互联网上瘾。

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“他们不得不把她抓住。牧师用圣水和圣物来祝福她。”Bob叔叔继续讲，根本不理会或者压根没注意到大家都在翻白眼或者摇头。

我姑妈也上场了：“天啦！别跟我说互联网！你会看到污秽的东西，我有天抓到小Stan在看这种东西。

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Peter Pontifications: Discover the Internet Part Deux

Back in one of the first issues of The NT Insider, I pontification that internet in general and the World Wide Web in particular, basically sucked and was worthless. In fact, I resisted al suggestions that we bother to create an OSR web page. Who cares? The internet will be over in few months. It’s this year’s CB radio. Leave me alone, and let me write drivers.

This prescience on my part should give you newer readers a incredible confidence in my technological foresight. Clearly, I am able to identify paradigm-shifting events early, and am able to therefore align myself, my company, and your dear readers, to properly take advantage off these emerging trends.

OK then, so let me confess to both of you that are still reading: I may have been wrong. The internet in general, and the web in particular, did indeed turn out to be useful.

This being the WinHEC issue, I thought that would be enough of a Pontification to get Dan off my desk. Sadly, however, he dared to point out that I was still about a factor of magnitude short in the required work count. So I have no choice but to continue.

The web has gotten so damn useful, in fact, that it has literally changed how people can discover and command the knowledge. Have you guys ever stooped to think about this? When’s the last time you actually went and tried to look something in a book? Having the internet at your disposal is sort of like having a monstrous (and I do mean that in terms of all 4 definitions shown on dictionary.com) encyclopedia at your fingertips. Before the web, if you didn’t have the appropriate book at hand or a smart cousin to call, you were out of luck until you could make it to the library or your local bookstore.

Say you want to know if Hermione Gingold was an actress from the 30’s or the 60’s. Got that copy of Leonard Maltin’s filmography handy? No? Well, dude, 10 years ago this was your last hope, and you’d be out of luck. Now, you just Google good old Hermione, and up pops more info on the old broad that you’ll know what to do with.

What really drove this home for me was a recent visit with my relatives at my parent’s house. We were hanging out, discussing the general state of the world, and some damn things came up. It was something really important too, like whether or not people in Syria eat couscous. Wham! Like a short, my mom was off to the encyclopedia (they own their own set, you know �C Got from the grocery store a volume a week), looking up either couscous or Syria or Middle East or something.

I moved nary a muscle from the couch where I was sunk-in for the duration. “We could just, ah, look it up on the web…” I said, before I realized that my parents have none of the following: (a) a WAP, (b) a system with which to access a WAP, (c) a high speed internet connection that’s always on that the WAP they don’t have could connect to, or (d) the patience to listen to me tell them yet again that they should let me get all this shit for them, under the guise of helping them keep pace with the information age but really so that I can use it to download MP3’s when I visit (It’s not like the RIAA is gonna prosecute them, right? I’m thinkin’ they’re probably not Linkin Park fans).

“Oh, I don’t know how to use that damn thing,” my mom said, gesticulating toward the WebTV box I hot from them to provide some, minimal, basic, internet connectivity. “You mean Google?” She said, “You can go ahead and do that. I keep telling your father …”

This is what started to get scary. “I know a man at church whose wife was addicted to the inernet,” injected my uncle. The one who’s the hairdresser. The one who, as soon as he starts to say something like this, cause everybody that’s not seated directly in his line of sight to look at each other, roll their eyes skyward while raising their eyebrows, and start shaking their heads. We explain his strangeness as exposure to too many hair chemicals and a stint in the Army during World War II (“too close to those big cannons,” another uncle told me once in confidence, looking grave. “He’s never been the same since.” This uncle should talk �C he was turned down by the Army during World War II. He always said it has something to do with fallen arches or lumbago or something. What is lumbago anyway? Remind me to Google that. Anyhow, Uncle Bob, the one who’s the hairdresser, told me many years ago that the real reason Uncle Stanley was a space alien, which I didn’t really understand. I did certainly understand, even then, that space aliens can be tricky at times. And that certainly seemed to fit Uncle Stanley. But I disgress…).

“They had to come get her. Carry her off. The priest had to bless her with holy water and stuff,” Uncle Bob continued, unaware or more likely uncaring about th eeye rolling and head shaking.

“Oh my word! Don’t tell me about the internet!” My aunt is getting into the cat now. You should see the filth, the filth, that I caught Stan Junior looking at on the internet the other day.” Ha! I make a mental note to give Stan Junior props, and exchange website address and passwords Given his father’s, ah, situation, it seems likely he’s emerged unscathed. “And, we hot that flu on our computer last month! Peter, you’re into computers, what is that thing that the kid’s get from that downloading?”

Wait.  I’m being summoned as the world’s computer expert again. “Uh, virus. Computer virus. Yup, bad stuff that. Yup. Gurgle. Cough. Mumble.” This encourages me to try to stand up and start heading for the kitchen for my forth eggnog and brandy, hold the eggnog. I’m stopped before I can leave.

“Let me ask you. This internet thing…” My aunt grabs and locks on to my upper arm, and gives me a conspiratorial look. (Why is it always an “internet thing”? I mean, it’s not a court thing, or an operating room thing when they talk to my cousins, Why isn’t it “So when you’re doing this operating thing…” But it’s always “computer thing” or “internet thing”.” It makes it sound like I work for the hand in the box on the Addams Family.)

“This internet thing… Do you really buy stuff? On the internet? You let your credit card go into the computer? Is that safe?”

I wonder if it’s the brandy, but I try to maintain my focus and bear down. I point out, nicely, that yes, I do. But only, like, two or three times a week. I then point out that every time she uses her credit card to pay for a round of “El Grande” margaritas at Chili’s, she hands her card to a total stranger who disappears with it for several minutes. Said stranger could be making copies, calling up to charge things with, or buying a lawn tractor at Home Depot next door to the restaurant.

“Oh, that never happens,” she answers, waving her hand (and thankfully removing the lobster claw from my bicep). She looks at me disapprovingly. Like I obviously know better and I’m just being an asshole, which she’s suspected ever since I recommended a computer for her to buy a little Suzy a few years back and little Suzy found out she could use it to talk to really nice boys in college in an internet chat room.

“I know a woman at church who had her identity stolen on the internet” volunteers Uncle Bob.

By now I’m in the kitchen, and I can’t hear them clearly any more. I’m looking for a really big glass.

posted 2004.07.02 Friday