[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: PC World
>>>>> ri == r ibbotson <r.ibbotson [at] zetnet.co.uk> writes:
>> So it's not just the PCW people but a much more common problem.
ri> erm.. yes, I know but I don't like to mention it to anyone in
ri> the UK too much :-) Someone might think that I'm just joking ?
ri> I know that if I go to the States or South America or anywhere
ri> in Europe and mention the British approach to information
ri> technology and computers then people just roar with laughter
ri> in front of me.
Oh, I wouldn't worry about it; the Japanese are worse than anything
you've mentioned. With a vocabulary of exactly two phrases (That
will be ... yen, sir. Do you want it gift-wrapped? and I regret
that that product is not in stock, sir.), they are not competent to
convey their technical incompetence.
Many many households in Japan have a place of honor in the attic for
their PC, carefully replaced into its original Styrofoam packing after
a week's attempt to do something, anything, with it. Technical
support? I'm so ashamed, I can't face the store clerks. It's so
easy on TV!
Even Japanese geeks by and large only know one aspect of geekiness;
they're not even Perl hackers, they're WWW-in-Perl hackers. Ask 'em
for a regexp to deTeX a document, and you get blank looks.
Thank heaven for Akihabara, where at least you can speak PCI and SCSI
to the racks of motherboards and disk drives and get more than a blank
look as reaction!
ri> This is a shame for an island that originally developed COBOL
ri> and other leading programming languages ?
Ah, now you're talking _shame_! ;-) At least you didn't invent BASIC!
--
University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences Tel/fax: +81 (298) 53-5091
/- /System.old /apps /bin /boot /dev /etc /home /lib /lost+found /misc /mnt /net /proc /root /sbin /share /tmp /usr /var What's the big deal about the millennium? .............................
.... There are still 361 shopping days left until the millennial epoch! */
Start your own FREE mailing list at
© 2000 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved