> Something odd has happened to this list - people (including me!) have
> mysteriously disappeared. Panix staff is investigating.
>
> Doug
About 40 years ago Randall Jarrell refered to IBM as Platonic. And that does describe accurately the tacit conception we all carry in our heads of computer systems. Thus when computer systems show their actuality in such a way as to conflict with our ideal (Platonic) conception of what
a computer system is, we describe it as weird. Now in this case we can probably all agree that the variation from expectations is undesirable --
and it is that agreement (or as Thrasymachos said, the interest of the stronger) that justifies (makes sense of) a norm for the operation of the
panix computers. But it is not, in the abstract, and without an attempt to ground it historically, correct to call the situation weird.
Carrol