Quality of the Internet

[Alec Empire]

If you agree that a direct action from a person is a tool. Then you must also agree that you yourselves are, in fact, a bunch of tools.

[Nokia]

Yep, Nihil is the biggest tool I know

[MrLinus]

We're getting so original in the pokes.

[Nokia]

[nihil]

Hmmm,

An interesting concept? "procreation produces tools"

I agree that a direct action is not a tool, it is a process or procedure. The problem is possibly that I am making an assumption about the precise use of the word "communication" in this context?

You know: noun, verb, adjective, adjectival pronoun, gerund, and so on.........

I made the assumption that, in this context, "communication" was being used as a verb, which implies an action or process.

If it were a noun, then it might well be a tool, on the grounds that it would be a subject or an object. However, I would then argue that the statement should have been:

"A communication is a tool" or,
"Communications are a tool"

I might sound very pedantic, nit picking and hair splitting, but IT is a science. This is an IT forum and we are discussing an IT subject, so I tend to use IT terminology and meanings, rather than those of common parlance.

Hell, if you put a comma or semi-colon in the wrong place in a program, what happens?

Having said that, I am not criticising the original author, because I do not believe that his comments were directed at an IT audience, but more at interested members of the General Public.

As an old fart myself, I am empathetic to his sentiments, and, given that my only discernible musical talents involve a hair comb and a sheet of toilet tissue, I certainly respect a Philharmonic Orchestra musician, not only for his talent, but for his courage and self-belief in choosing that career route.

[nihil]

Arrrgh! Nokia you are letting the side down,

Yep, Nihil is the biggest tool I know

A fundamental error in the English Language................ the verb "to be", and the verb "to have"?

Also, you seem to have problems with adjectives today? I mean, how could you mistype "sharpest" as "biggest"?

// off topic

Have you seen the latest Royal Navy recruitment ad on TV?

We have this Electrical Artificer who says something along the lines of:

"Out here, if the server goes down, I can't call in a guy to fix it...........sometimes I just switch it off and on"

Screen then pans to thermonuclear submarine..................

[Nokia]

Lol, nothing but the best in the Royal Navy

[IKnowNot]

Arrrgh! Nokia you are letting the side down

Perhaps a glissando in recognition the author's chosen musical instrument?

[AngelicKnight]

Ya know friends, this is kinda sad...We have a rather deep societal observation in front of us, and instead of discussing it we're arguing the difference between "tool" and "process".

I think he has some profound insight. I'm sharing this article on two other forums, including my own.

This is what I find particularly scary:

The Internet as we know it won't exist in 10 years. Information technology is changing rapidly. Once the owner of an Internet forum decides to stop managing it, he will stop paying his server and all of the forum posts will be lost. There will be no hard copy, no library, no database. When the server shuts down - and it will sometime, probably sooner than later - Google will find nothing that was written on the forum. The same goes for archives of a list-serve. When the piper is no longer paid, the music stops. Our postings and replies will evaporate like the dew in the sun, like they never happened. A thousand years from now, if there is a human race on this planet, it will not discover a virtual "Rosetta Stone" to unlock the thought of those who wrote pages and pages for the Internet in the early 21st century. A vast history is being recorded in completely disposable media. Clay tablets may have seemed crude to modern archaeologists who discovered the Phoenician alphabet but if the Ancients had written in a virtual medium, we would not know anything about them. Thank God for their clay tablets which survived for thousands of years. The same can't be said for 21st century mankind. What will document our time so those in the future will know about us?

[ShagDevil]

From UrbanDictionary.com:

Tool -
someone who tries too hard. a poser. one of those chic's who holds the sign saying "Carson Daly is Hot." the asstard who goes to a rock show because they heard one of the songs on the radio or mtv. or someone who insists on wearing velour sweat suits. Avril Lavigne.

Now that we cleared that up.

The article was a bit wordy but the guy's summations are fairly accurate.

Ask intelligent questions, give reasoned answers. Be patient. When you don't have something to say, don't say it. If you have something to say, think about it a little longer before you write. Show respect.

I couldn't agree more.