I do like Facebook. You stay in touch with nice people, share in their lives, meet long lost school mates and learn all the latest gossip about your town. Yes, there are embarrassing extroverts in gruesome poses but, in all honesty: There's an element of comedy even in their crude displays. Things take a turn for the worse when not so nice guys use Facebook to go off about anything that doesn't fit into their concept of the world. To prevent this and put an early stop to virtual mobs, Facebook has come up with community guidelines. They basically state that we should all be nice to each other and (important!) should not show too much naked skin. Too bad that doesn't work.
As children, we learn from adults. The dawn of the computer age brought a lot of change and reversed that role for many of us. Since I make a living off software and writing about software, I am a welcome guest in the homes of many elderly PC users. That's usually not a problem, they have taught me about the world some 30 years ago so I should gladly return the favor in today's world of computers. I should ...
But there are two mysterious phenomena that remain inexplicable to me. Two whimsical conditions that keep intelligent human beings from sending off an email or burning a CD...
We merely sought to purchase a small laptop computer in an electronics outlet but now we were critically eyed by the sales clerk. His vest, bearing the logo of his company, was way too big but he wore it proudly like a suit of armor.
Many of us gravely underestimate the system requirements of modern software. The laptop was supposed to be cheap, small, silent and with decent battery life, that much we figured out for ourselves. Now struck the hour of the salesman.
