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Subject:Imprinting (so-called) From:Daniel Strychalski <dski -at- CAMEONET -dot- CAMEO -dot- COM -dot- TW> Date:Fri, 5 May 1995 09:50:38 +0800
Regarding the phenomenon Mark Levinson called "imprinting" (May 1), RoMay
Sitze said (May 2), "I'm glad this didn't happen to me. I would still be
using an ancient word-processor that is currently incompatible with just
about everything!"
RoMay, it sounds like you're blaming the program you formerly used. If you
are, that doesn't seem logical to me.
The program that appears to be the most widely used writing tool these days
(at least among people on this list) can't handle ASCII files correctly. It
is therefore incompatible with nearly everything else BY DESIGN. Being forced
to use it, as I was for a while, felt like being sold into slavery.
Here's another word for the phenomenon we've been trying to name:
ossification. I'm sure many people on this list would call me ossified. Fine.
Newer doesn't always mean better. I would call the kind of thing I see going
on around me blind consumerism.
Just yesterday, the people I share an office with -- an MBA and an EE grad --
failed, in 15 or 20 minutes of searching with the latest tools, to find a
file the name of which the MBA had forgotten. I got out my disk of ages-old
MS-DOS utilities and found the file in five minutes or so.
Quack, quack, quack. Dan Strychalski dski -at- cameonet -dot- cameo -dot- com -dot- tw
