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Re: Reboot vs. Restart Windows


Sigh. I wasn't going to do this. But his flaming is so egregious...

Andrew DeFaria wrote:
Mike Maxwell wrote:
Most of us don't look in the dictionary to find out what computer terms--or any other words--mean. I would guesstimate that you learned 99% of your vocabulary, computer or otherwise, without looking it up. So by that count, 99% of the words we know are our own arbitrary definitions, made up by observing how words are used, or occasionally by having someone tell you what a word means (and they probably learned it the same way).
Let me get this straight, just because you're too lazy or perhaps proud to look up a word that you don't know the meaning to we should change terminology to fit your needs?!? Then you "guessitmate" (AKA pull a number out of your ass) that 99% of the population is as lazy or stupid.

That's not what I said, go back and re-read. Wait, I'll save you the trouble: I said that 99% of the words we know--not 99% of the people who know words--are our definitions that we infer from usage, rather than from looking them up.


The second thing that shows me that you can't read, is that I also did not suggest changing terminology. I suggested changing a message. And the change is away from a non-standard usage (in the Windows world) to a standard usage ("restart Windows").

As for my guesstimate, I am a linguist, and it is standard knowledge among linguists that most of the vocabulary we use (in our first language--second language learning is often different) is not from looking definitions up in dictionaries.

Said people are using computers and most likely the net too. Is it really too much trouble for you to do a google search or say search out on answers.com or wikipedia?!?

Yes. To put it bluntly: I (as a native speaker of English) should not need to look up _any_ vocabulary in an error message, nor in any other message my computer gives me, with the exception of narrow technical domains--like, say, math terms. I would expect to need to look up words in a program like Mathemetica. But when that does happen, I would also expect the program to have a hyperlink to its internal definition (or possibly to a definition out on the web).


Do you similarly campaign to have electricians or auto mechanics to change their terminology?!? This is
the field of computers (used to be called computer science). You're welcome to come into our world but like any profession you gotta learn the jargon....

Again, I am not suggesting changing the terminology of any profession. I am suggesting that it would be good for the CygWin message to use the standard vocabulary of the Windows world, since it is running under Windows. (To everyone else out there, I am not blaming the CygWin programmers; this is a minor point of clarifying a message, not a complaint. I just can't figure out why Andrew is so bent out of shape about it...)


Besides, times change, but usage changes more slowly. When I was in the Navy, the term for starting up any piece of equipment, be it a boiler or a computer, was "fire it up."
I'm willing to bet that that terminology was never allowed on a submarine!

I have no idea. Your point??


I see no clearer benefit to using restart as opposed to reboot. Indeed reboot is a commonly accepted notion by most people in the business and now a days, most people not in the business but using computers themselves.

Certainly 'reboot' is used a lot. But the standard Ms Windows message is 'restart Windows.' And I don't know the history, but I would not be surprised if the reason it started being used (around the time of Win95 or Win98, from what I can tell) is that it is less ambiguous--exactly the point I've been trying to make.
--
Mike Maxwell
maxwell@umiacs.umd.edu


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