Sunday, January 14, 2007

hate

I was at a meeting and I just casually mentioned I hated some piece of software. The chairman of the meeting renormalised "hate" to mild dislike and ignored me. So I probably use the "hate" word too much. For example, I have always hated the "vi" text editor. Whenever I am trying to help someone who uses this piece of ancient crud software and they start up "vi" I know that they are going to take about an hour to enter some simple key strokes. So I pull up my chair and start to fume and rant. So imagine my surprise when I read that the vi editor was written in certain way because the developer didn't have fast net access. The MIT people who wrote emacs had fast (for the time) computers. So their editor could be more elaborate. That is your cold war tax dollars at work . So perhaps I don't hate "vi" after all. I was also amused to see a music reviewer for the online guardian complain that he didn't like Springsteen. I have to agree. I have tried to like his singing, but there is something about him that I don't like. I watched some TV program about his recent CD of Pete Seeger songs. Anyway Springsteen doing Seeger covers didn't do anything for me. I would rather hear Seeger doing Seeger. Wikipedia tells me that Pete Seeger is still alive. Have I mentioned that I hate "vi".