[TUHS] UNIX as literature

[Wesley Parish]

Quoting Tim Newsham <newsham at lava.net>:

> > This reminded me of a time not so long ago when I was seated in
> Starbucks in
> > Menlo Park enjoying my Caramel Macchiato Venti and overhearing a
> heated
> > debate between 6 or 7 guys about the GUI vs. command line issue. It
> seemed
> > to start when a couple of guys in one party, seemingly unknown to the
> other
> > party, who were talking about kde, rudely butted in to their
> conversation.
> > Anyway the debate got so verbal that in the end they were all ushered
> out of
> > Starbucks in an effort to keep the peace. How funny it was.
> 
> The bandwidth of a mouse and menus is not very high. The bandwidth of a
> 
> keyboard is a lot higher. Going the other way, though, the bandwidth of
> 
> graphical data is much higher than textual data (perhaps as high
> as a thousand words per picture).

AKA, "If a face could sink/launch a thousand ships, then why can't I paint you?\
 The words will never show, the you I've come to know ..." ;)

Graphical displays of data excel in showing relationships and patterns. 
Discovering patterns in text can be much, much harder.  Hence the blink
comparator in astronomy.  And Fred Hoyle's feeble attempt to describe such a
form of data transfer in "The Black Cloud".

But a lot depends on one's familiarity with the idioms of the graphical data -
anyone can see a desolate outback, but it took an Albert Namatjira to make us
see it as beautiful.

Wesley Parish
> 
> > Berny
> 
> Tim Newsham
> http://www.lava.net/~newsham/
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"Sharpened hands are happy hands.
"Brim the tinfall with mirthful bands" 
- A Deepness in the Sky, Vernor Vinge

"I me.  Shape middled me.  I would come out into hot!" 
I from the spicy that day was overcasked mockingly - it's a symbol of the 
other horizon. - emacs : meta x dissociated-press