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From: taylor@hplabsc.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.comp-soc
Subject: Re: What is Computer Literacy?
Message-ID: <1595@hplabsc.HP.COM>
Date: Mon, 13-Apr-87 19:08:06 EST
Article-I.D.: hplabsc.1595
Posted: Mon Apr 13 19:08:06 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 15-Apr-87 04:58:34 EST
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Organization: UW-Madison Academic Computer Center
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Approved: taylor@hplabs

Barbara Zanzig writes:

>The first is an absence of fear - of the machine, of the software, of
>the technology, of doing something wrong, of blowing things up...  I
>would add perhaps a sense of adventure, but that may be going too far.
>Is this a teachable skill?  I'm not sure, but I don't think so.

  Absence of fear, perhaps plays some part, but only on a basic level.
  For instance, while I was a computer technician working on high 
  voltage display tubes I had a big fear of getting zapped. This fear
  was a healthy fear, because it made me make sure I took of my watch
  and any other jewelry that would attract electrons. The reason why
  I did get zapped was I was not careful. I was more careful there
  after. Things like taking the plug from the wall before I put my
  fingers in a box were also second nature because I was zapped.

  In software I really do not have the same fear. It can not zap me
  the same way. The fear thats I do have is losing hours and hours of
  work. We do back ups nightly on our machines because of this. When
  working as SU, I also have fears. Fears like I might type in the 
  wrong device name when making a new file system on a disk. This 
  causes me to be very careful, and to review each command line before
  hitting return. 

  Recently we got one of the new Vaxstation 2000s, and I put Ultrix
  on it. I found out that the floppy disk drive was called rx. So
  I wanted to back up some info on it. I said "tar cv /dev/rrx0a".
  It so happens that DEC, inspite of labeling their hard drives
  "rd", also label them "rx", so rx0a was really rd0a. Needless
  to say it destroyed the root file system. I managed to destroy 
  the root file system again when trying to boot from a floppy I
  created. The floppy had enough on it to load to a certain point.
  All I wanted to do was to see if it would work. There must have
  been something in rom that it triggered, and the computer wrote on 
  the hard drive. If we didn't have to borrow a MicroVax to build 
  the system with, I wouldn't really care. I now fear that anything
  I might do, might destroy the root file system. Thus I will limit
  the activities I will do on that machine. That is until we get 
  a better way to rebuild the OS.

  Mark

[We're moving a bit off subject here, so can we try to tie it back in 
 with the original discussion, please? -- Dave]