Tech – for Everyone

Tech Tips and Tricks & Advice – written in plain English.

GIGO

Garbage In, Garbage Out

One cannot venture far into the mysterious land of computers and “digital assistants” before one realizes that they have entered a land of acronyms; and that computer geeks speak these weird things like they are actual words. Let’s call this place “Techland”.

Spend any time in Techland, and you will find yourself surrounded by these acronyms, and hounded by them… and that you are expected to know all of them.

Frankly, I’m FUWA* (Fed Up With Acronyms) and I instinctively dislike them. I don’t trust them, and sometimes I think they’re there just to make me feel stupid. I’m sorry, Jack, but gooey¹ is what salt-water taffy is, and bye-ose² is not a real word. Yes, I don’t like geek acronyms one bit.
And they breed like cockroaches.

I am thinking of writing my Congressperson asking that they sponsor a Bill that would ban all acronyms (the BAA Bill). That’s how FUWA’ed I am. But I have been kind of too busy to actually do so yet. (At the moment, I’m trying to learn all the intricacies of HTML³ and CSS4 for a website ‘makeover’.)

But there’s one I like — “Gih-go” (or, “gee-go”, if said fast enough).
GIGO. Garbage in, garbage out.

In Techland, GIGO refers to “the fact that computers will unquestioningly process the most nonsensical of input data and produce nonsensical output. It was most popular in the early days of computing, but applies even more today, when powerful computers can spew out mountains of erroneous information in a short time.”

But.. I don’t much care how the computer geeks mean it. To me, that’s just a “well, duh.” I use it as an explanation of some of the human behavior I see. The “garbage in” is the messages we expose ourselves too.


Tip of the day: Reduce your garbage in.

1) There is very little on TV that will make you smarter, wiser, or better looking. Nor will it pay your bills for you. In fact, it is an idiot (making) box.

2) Some studies have suggested that classical music raises IQ points. I don’t think anyone has done a study on what Metal or Gansta Rap does.. But.
For sure, learning to read music and play an (new?) instrument will expand your mind.

3) You are not too old to go back to school. Take a course in painting, pottery, photography, landscaping, sculpting, creative writing, whatever. I bet you have a talent (a “gift”) you haven’t discovered yet !!!

4) You are important whether or not you drive a BMW or wear lots of bling bling. Why fall sucker to advertisements.. just because you’re bombarded with them?

5) Is there someone in your life constantly pointing out all your faults for you? Telling you you’re worthless and a big fat zero? That sounds like ‘garbage in’ to me..

“The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.”
~John Milton, Paradise Lost

Today’s free link(s):
Free Lifetime License for SUPERAntiSpyware Professional – 20 to Give Away

Download FREE Music – New Artists – New Music

* A Tech Paul original.
¹ GUI (Graphical User Interface), such as your desktop.
² BIOS (Basic Input/Output System), the BIOS is boot firmware, designed to be the first code run by a PC when powered on.
³ HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), is the predominant formatting language for web pages
4 CSS (Cascading Style Sheet), is designed primarily to enable the separation of document content (written in HTML) from document presentation, like font, and background color.

Copyright 2007-9 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved.jaanix post to jaanix

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July 31, 2009 Posted by | advice | 12 Comments