by Laser Quasar Absolutely

(That's not really  my real name ... but does it really matter? I mean, really?)

FOR ALL THEIR VAUNTED COMPUTING POWER AND FEATURES, YOU HAVE TO ADMIT THAT computers are basically quite dumb.

Not just dumb: make that dumber.

I mean, most computers are even dumber than dogs. You tell Fido "go fetch" a few times -- and bribe him with a MilkBone to do so -- and in the end he'll get the idea. But you can tell a Mac a gazillion times "Save all my Word 98 files in Word 6.0 format", yet it will keep asking every time "Are you sure? You're going to lose some formatting, you know".

Cheese. If I weren't sure, would I have repeated myself so many times?

Is it too much to ask, in this day and age -- what with the next millennium almost upon us -- for a computer that f#$%ing understands?

Maybe it won't understand as well as Jeeves, Bertie Wooster's incomparable valet -- or even as well as his Aunt Dahlia's English butler. But at least as much as a footman ... or even a horse or a dog?

Mind you, to some extent this is happening. In MS Word 98, for instance, if I type at the head of a document the words "Dear Sir", up pops a balloon saying "Looks as if you're writing a letter. Would you like some help?"

But that's as far as Word 98's understanding goes. Whether I reply "No" five, ten, a hundred or ten thousand times, it won't make any difference: next time it sees the words "Dear Sir", it will again ask "Would you like some help?"

Heck: one would think after a few times it would get the hint. But No-o-o-o!

Come on guys and gals. I mean you programmers. You can surely do better.

Is it too hard to program an OS to count the number of times I did something over and over in the recent past, and if I already did it five times in a row, the next time ask "Would you like me to do it automatically in the future?"

And is it too hard to program the OS to shut the hell up after that and just do it, if I answer "Yes"?

No, it's not too hard. Even the boys at Redmond could do it, if they put their minds to it. I'm no techie, but even I can see that.

And if that's the case, isn't it about time the boys at Cupertino also put their minds to it? We don't want Windows users giggling "Your Mac can't even understand as well as my dog", now do we.

Come on now. Surely the Mac, with its vaunted ease of use, should be aheadof Windows in this field. Otherwise PC users may say -- and this time, sadly, with some justification -- that a Windows OS which understands is even easier to use than a MacOS which doesn't.

What we want from the next MacOS is a system-wide level of understanding at least as good as what's exhibited by Fido. At least, not at most.

Actually, the Mac doesn't even have to really understand us (after all, we don't even know if Fido really understands us: maybe he just appears to do so! Shades of Pavlov, and all that.) To satisfy us, all the Mac has to do is exhibit patterns which mimic understanding. And searching for such patterns can't be all that hard, now can it.

We already mentioned a few such patterns above. Do something x times in a row within a given time frame, and the damn machine should at least take the hint. There could even be a Control Panel which lets you specify how many times "x" should be. And the "given time frame".

And the "something" need not be restricted to correcting typos. If you back up your files five weekends in a row, why can't the Mac ask "Would you like me to back up your files every weekend?" ... and if you answer "Yes", just go ahead and do it from then on?

Or if you prefer to download all your e-mail first thing in the morning, surely the machine should understand that, and do it for you in future.

Or if you like to see all your text at a certain font size and at a certain magnification, after a dozen or so times of telling the machine that that's what you want, it ought to set that font size and zoom factor without having to be told any more.

Of course you should have the option of overriding the machine at any time -- which is no different from now. But why can't the machine do the basics without having to be told? -- and sometimes even told over and over again, and again, and again, ad infinitum? (More like ad nauseam.)

Of course, if you've been spending your days (and nights) typing love letters to your cyber-fiancée, the computer might not be able to type your next love letter for you. (But then again, why not? It could have a whole slew of appropriate love letters on DVD -- all 17 gigabytes of them -- and merely cut-and-paste between them to give you a near-infinite variety of final missives, written well enough to warm the cockles of any Juliet's heart.)

Heck, if you did all your banking over the 'Net, your machine should even know whether you could afford to send her a $60 bouquet of flowers via FTD, and charge it to your credit card. (You'd have to give your Mac spending authority, of course, within reasonable limits, if you want this sort of thing done in the background. It's your call.)

Or if you're compelled by circumstances to waste your days (and nights?) writing term papers, surely the machine could memorise the textbooks -- that is, if they are available in digital form: otherwise you'd have to scan them in and OCR them, which is a drag -- and then, when needed, cut-and-paste to give you excellent outlines of A+ quality term papers, which you'd only need to paraphrase and polish up in the final half-hour or so. (After all, my experience has been that most professors want nothing more from their students -- hasn't your experience been the same? -- and which probably explains why there are so many dumb graduates out there.) This, of course, would leave your nights free for other, more heart-warming, pursuits -- like writing and receiving love letters.

Anyway, you get my point: which is, that although true understanding (whatever that means) may be hard to attain, patterns that mimic understanding are easy to discern and to incorporate into software. Just read the Jeeves books: lots of patterns there from which you can pick and choose.

And of course, the only reason Apple should do this is because Microsoft might do it first! We don't want that happening, now do we.

Come on, Cupertino. All we're asking is a little understanding. Is that too much to ask?

... (not his real name -- but you figured that out already, right?) ... calls himself a "Thinker", especially about the future. He thinks that's where he'll be spending the rest of his life (but who's he kidding, eh?  Doesn't he realize it's always going to be now?)

Most people say to him "You can't be serious" -- and they're right, he can't. (But then, who can be serious about the future, seeing as how anything can happen in it, and usually does ... er, will?)

His best book -- indeed his only book -- is entitled The Seventh Generation, and its shareware version in Adobe Acrobat format is available for download from his alter-ego's web site (under construction right now) at http://cpu2308.adsl.bellglobal.com. It's all about the next 150 years or so, and where technology might take us in that amount of time. (Just $5.00 -- cheap! And well worth it, though he says so himself). Check it out.

And send him e-mail: he loves feedback!

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