I refute your refutations thusly: On Thu, Jun 6, 2024, 5:38 AM Liam Proven via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
> On Thu, 6 Jun 2024 at 05:10, Sellam Abraham via cctalk > <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > > > If you ride a bus, where multiple random people get > > on and off at various stops, it's not a "personal" conveyance. > > I refute your argument thus: > > If you buy a bus and start driving it yourself everywhere, for your > own exclusive use, it doesn't somehow magically stop being a bus. It's > still a bus, just a bus being used for personal transport. > Ah! You said it: "personal". So, agreed. Stephen Fry, the actor and writer, is quite tall. 6'5". He drives a > London black cab as his personal car. > There it is again: "personal". It's his car, but it's not _a_ car. It's still a taxi cab: a purpose-built > 6-seat vehicle. Agreed, and still used...personally. (I am 6'2" but I get why. I can't see out of the windscreen of a > Citroen 2CV: its top is lower than my chin. I have ridden NYC yellow > cabs, huge saloon cars with a partition shoved in behind the front > seats. I don't fit in the back. It's really painful. This is why > purpose-built vehicles for lots of people and a driver in their own > compartment exist, and it's very American to ignore them and try to > crowbar some other, unsuitable tool into the role because the better > device was Not Invented Here.) > Your height advantage does not an argument make. A personal computer is not any random computer used by a single > person. It's a product category, like "car" as opposed to "train" or > "bus". > Now you're back in the marketing camp, where booze, coke, and sales are the controlling factors. Marketers make good slogans but bad engineers. Some rich people can buy their own helicopter and use them to go where > they want. (Flown by a professional because flying a helicopter is > like rubbing your stomach and patting your head while walking a > tightrope.) That does not make that helicopter into a car. > Who is trying to argue a helicopter is a car? You are. If I own a computer that I use personally and invite my friend over to play a game on it, does that cease to make it personal? If I buy it for my secretary to use on my behalf, does that cease to make it personal (since it is still just one person--her--using it)? If I let you drive or fly me around in my personal car or helicopter (respectively), I'm just letting you use it when I'm not. If I occasionally use my personal bus that I drive myself around in for roving parties involving a group of my friends (or even random strangers I invite on, why not) then it doesn't cease to become personal, same as Stephen Fry can occasionally take on a passenger in his taxi cab if he feels like it, just like I can occasionally use my personal computer to perform tasks for others. In all cases, the primary use is still personal: one person is driving/flying at one time. Two people trying to simultaneously drive a car or fly a helicopter would be awkward, to say the least, especially when one person wants to go left and the other wants to fly higher. A workstation was, essentially, a minicomputer built to be a > single-user device, but cost as much as a room full of terminals or > micros. It's not the same thing. > Ok, now you're back to cost. Your criteria keep changing. You cannot give something meaning when the "something" keeps changing. This is why you are refuted. I refute you, sir! Sellam
