On Thu, 20 Feb 2003, Philip Hart wrote: @> > Of course they're criticizable! Criticism is part of the environment (or @> > interaction) which shapes their future behavior. If they're dangerously @> > immune to criticism we call them mentally ill and lock them up. @> @> Ok, I was trying to preserve some sort of people/non-people language @> distinction - one doesn't criticize one's computer, one reboots it or @> downloads a new RPM or tells it to kill some annoying process. Really? Speaking as someone who's worked with computers for many years, I have to say that I spend quite a bit of time and energy criticizing them. (In fact, one of the primary characteristics of hacker jargon is the blurring of the distinction between person and non-person. It is frequently said that "OpenSSH doesn't want to talk to commercial SSH", when you would probably have it as "OpenSSH and commercial SSH frequently function in incompatible ways", since programs can't want.)