I can just picture what it must have been like in the mid seventies, back when your average computer could still claim a nice chunk of a city block. In those fabled days of computing , when all it took to hose a system up was to type in anything it didn't like. And when you hosed a system, you really hosed a system, and it wouldn't take very long for everyone to know that you really hosed a system, leading to more than one hosed user. Back in those days, it seemed like actually having the GI and the GO show up on a TV screen was a pretty neat idea. The idea of a "home computer" would not be realized for a couple of years yet, and many people thought that a home computer would have to be somehow disguised as a piece of furniture due to the size. Here is what I picture to be the reception to the engineer who came up with this idea, in conversation with a skeptic, sometime way back when (I'm guessing the late fifties-early sixties, but I could be wrong. Suffice it to say that everyone who was around back then rode the proverbial dinosaurs to school:)
Engineer: Someday, everybody in the world is going to have a computer in their own home! It's going to be groovy! (or some other similar lexical atrocity)
Skeptic: Yeah sure, that big box is really going to look great in their living room. What do you plan to do, cover it with wallpaper and have it double as a coffee table?
Engineer: No, we will shrink the computers down to a size small enough that the computers will actually fit on someone's desk, but take up just enough that the desk will be useless for anything else. They will all come in a drab brown color that will clash with the decor of any room!
Skeptic: And just how do you plan to this? Where do you plan to find a punch card reader that small? And where are all of the vacuum tubes going to go?
Engineer: Vacuum tubes? Who needs those? We'll run everything through tiny little pieces of silicon so small, if something screws up there, it will be too small to do anything about it. That way, all it will take is a speck of dust to render the whole thing inoperative. As for the storage, we won't use punchcards at all. We'll have everybody put all of their data on these plates covered with a brown metal goo, and they will spin around all the time and throw data in every which-way you can think of. Best of all, if one thing happens to go in the wrong place on this thing, the user will be completely hosed!
Skeptic: Ahh.... I see. (backs away nervously) And if you put computers in everyone's house, what are you going to do for everyone that doesn't have a clue how to use these things you talk about... Won't they just screw up the things?
Engineer: Already got it covered. We will write programs with millions and millions of lines of code to put up pretty pictures on the screen. The users will then use this funny-looking thing called a "mouse" that they will move around and press buttons on to choose the pretty pictures that will delete various stuff on the computer. Just for fun, we'll make something called "safe mode", and never tell anyone about it so they complain that everything isn't working, even though the computer is telling them it is perfectly safe.
Skeptic: (nervously) and what do we do when they get mad when the computers we make for them turn them into raving lunatics?
Engineer: Well, we're assuming that most of them will at this point just keep them around to make it look like they have some sort of important purpose, since most of the users will fear their computers. For the few that actually do use the things, we'll move some of out more gullible employees into something called "technical support" where the users can blame them personally for destroying their life's work. Naturally, us engineers will get away with this whole thing because we would somehow become minor deities to these users, controlling the fates of their computers! they would be at the mercy of out every whim! MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
(At this point. the skeptic fled screaming from the room, and hasn't been seen ever since, last heard mumbling something about running off to Tibet and joining a monastery. Some people claim to have seen the skeptic levitating somewhere in the Himalayas.)
Let's face it, computers are ugly. Visitors to the den will attest to this fact rather quickly. Of course, there are the exceptions, where people have managed to successfully incorporate computers into their home or office decor. If this is true, it is also very likely that said computer is not doing anything productive. This is part of the axiom, long proven, that a clean desk is a sign of a sick mind. (I tend to be an exception to this rule, but that's a different story. I have a sick mind even though my desk IS messy.) It's really what's inside that counts, especially when you're talking about computers. If it happens to be something like Bob or another similar program inside (which includes any software bundled on a Packard Bell system,) the computer is not likely to be doing any good, and in many of these instances is incapable of doing anything worthwhile.
To prove my point, let's start with the example of a typical user's desk. Everything is neat and tidy, just the way that their mother would like it to be. All of the floppies are organized into disk holders, alphabetized by the third letter of the second most common color on their disk labels. The case to their system is kept free of dust and other such atrocities. All of the cords in back are organized and labeled. This system is most likely owned by some neat-freak who would rather learn the finer points of vacuuming an aquarium than the first thing about the computer. These are the ones who call technical support at the first sign of trouble... usually the resolution for this type of problem is a simple mouse click on the "OK" button. To these people, computers are little more than big ugly boxes that happen to be able to balance their checkbook, if they can ever figure out how to get past all of the colorful pictures on the screen.
Let's now look at another example. Now, the computer is perched precariously on top of a desk that would probably be eligible for federal disaster relief funding. The desk itself is almost completely obscured by papers and other stuff. The "F" key on the keyboard hasn't worked properly for the past 6 months when you accidentally spilled Jolt cola on it. If one cord accidentally comes loose, this unfortunate user will be down for a while trying to find the origin of the missing cord. There are people, long presumed missing, who have after 2 or 3 years emerged from this thick tangle of cords, continuing where they left off years before. These users have better things to do with their time than to think of cutesy ways to make their computers blend with the decor (I am just waiting for the call where the user has wallpapered the front of their computer... right over the power button. Floppies are strewn about all over the place (and as I have said before, in the den it has reached the point where the floppy organizers are also strewn about.) This is a computer that is actually doing something more than showing a pretty picture on screen and flashing a couple of blinkenlights. Granted, it could be doing nothing more than showing an ugly text screen, but at least that way it looks like it could actually be doing something worthwhile.
As another old adage goes, "You cannot judge a book by it's cover," but since all the techno-geeks out there are trying to render books obsolete, it seems to be a poor choice of words. I left it there anyway, so I guess I better elaborate on it a bit here. No matter how neato-looking a computer is on the outside, the inside is a complete and total mess, and I don't mean just the dust gathering on the motherboard. Your hard drive is fragmented, your directory structure is as organized as a plate of spaghetti, Your operating system is full of bloated code, and that file you spent months working on has probably vanished into the murky depths of the hard disk by now. The whole thing is probably running like a drunk snail on Prozac (I know thay all of my computers do,) and there's a fly on your shirt (just kidding about the last one, I hope... otherwise, there is a spider on your shirt.)
There is a way out of this perpetual mess, however. It is hidden in a DOS command normally considered dangerous for all practical purposes. In this case, however, it will prove to be the fastest way to make sure that you have a clean computer. This magic command? You guessed it, FDISK. The trick, however, is to leave off the reinstall part of the common "FDISK and reinstall" tactic favored by operating system tech support people such as I. This way, your system won't be of very much use, but at least you won't ever have to worry about all of that spaghetti code getting in your way. Sure, you may lose a critical file or two, but hey, you can always join the Witness Protection Plan if it was really THAT important. Just remember, the next time your computer gives you a serious headache, how do you spell relief? F-D-I-S-K!
By the way, if I happened to totally disregard the title of this column here, I can just blame the aliens who abducted me years ago and implanted chips in my brain, turning me from a normal person into a computer geek. I can find no better explanation, so remember the usual flame >/dev/null procedure for feedback on the topic of this column.