Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!sun-barr!newstop!sun!falk
From: falk@sun.Eng.Sun.COM (Ed Falk)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: life's one-way conversions
Message-ID: <128332@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 23 Nov 89 02:50:12 GMT
References: <1989Nov15.171212.642@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us> <2591@helios.mmsac.UUCP>
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc. - Mtn View, CA
Lines: 28

In article <2591@helios.mmsac.UUCP>, eben@mmsac.UUCP (Eben R.S. Visher) writes:
> The replies to the calculator question are confusing to me.  Life's
> one way conversions provide the answer.
> 
> If you need a calculator for supporting bookshelves, you use HP, obviously.
> 
> If you need to do lots of real work, you use RPN, obviously.
> 
> Anyone familiar with HP or RPN understands.  Anyone else won't, but so
> what?  The same is true with Unix and VMS.  Or Unix and DOS.  Or sex
> and bashing your head against a wall.  In all cases, there is
> essentially a one-way conversion process (from one state to the other)
> with very little back-flow.

Or qwerty and dvorak.  The army did a test once to see if qwerty typists
could be converted to dvorak and would that improve their effeciency.
The answers to both questions were yes, but the army abandoned the
experiment.  It seems that the converted typists refused to go back.


I liked your article.  Many truths.  Both the U.S. and Russia have
notoriously vicious border control.  In Russia it's to keep people in,
in the U.S. it's to keep people out.
-- 
	-ed falk, sun microsystems, sun!falk, falk@corp.sun.com

  "If you wrapped yourself in the flag like George Bush does, you'd
  be worried about flag-burning too"