Re: 32 bit computers

(Apologies for replying to my own post, but John replied to me by email,
which I have explicitly asked him not to do so on numerous occasions.)

On 18 Jun in comp.sys.acorn.misc, Rob Kendrick <nntp@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
John Cartmell wrote:

I'm trying to work out what you're trying to say here, if anything.

1. Giving an example of something, eg a typical <whatever> isn't the >
same as defining it. You confused the two

What purpose is there to giving an example of something that's wrong?

All I can see looking back in this thread is that you've back-peddled
and defined "microcomputer" in at least three, possibly four,
different ways, using the GCSE syllabus to back up some of them.

2. I showed how the term was used. That's its definition. In English
there is no academy dictating how terms might be used.

Indeed not, even though you take care not to mention our lack of of an
Academie Anglias when it would damage your own argument, I notice.

In fact, what it appeared you were doing was grasping at straws each
time I gave a sound counter-example to your nonsense, including
references to places that say that the term is redundant and lost its
meaning 20 years ago. You may use the word like that, but you're in a
startlingly small minority.

Are you saying that FOLDOC, a dictionary specifically for computing
terms, Wikipedia, which is normally very up to date (although I admit
it's hardly definitive), and the OED (whose definition was updated
last year), are all hopelessly out-of-date, and your teachings, no
matter how often they change, are right?

To see how the term was used in the 80s and 90s one would look at
magazines, adverts, &c from the 80s and 90s - and perhaps remember
back to those days and to a time when one was being careful to get the
terms correct because one was teaching the subject without the benefit
of text books.

Or, it would appear, knowledge.

You weren't teaching - and I'll bet you haven't spent the last year
ploughing through computer magazines of the 80s and 90s. What FOLDOC,
Wikipedia, or the OED say now is irrelevant - but you might like to
follow the changing definitions of the term from say the Oxford
Dictionary of Computing or The British Computer Society.

It also agrees, and as any linguist should know, the OED tracks meaning
over time.

3. You fail to appreciate that such terms weren't laid down but were
coined anew in our lifetime. You may have come to them ready-fashioned
- but my generation invented them.

No, you're failing to appreciate that the word is meaningless now, and
was very almost meaningless then. From the point of view of
"microcomputer", the Archimedes was not the first 32-bit RISC
microcomputer. All I see here is you trying to define your way out of
this to make the Archimedes the first - perhaps for some brand loyalty.

4. Whilst my generation gave your generation inquiring minds and
skills we forgot to stress the importance of old-fashioned courtesy.
For that error I apologise.

While this may be true, obviously the generation before you didn't give
you the same gift, mentioning no piers and long walks.

B.
.

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