Friday 16 January 2009

The computer

This really appeals, especially after all my computer problems since Christmas...




A Spanish teacher was explaining to her class that in Spanish, unlike English, nouns are designated as either masculine or feminine.

'House' for instance, is feminine: 'la casa.' 'Pencil,' however, is masculine: 'el lapiz.'

A student asked, 'What gender is 'computer'?' Instead of giving the answer, the teacher split the class into two groups, male and female, and asked them to decide for themselves whether computer' should be a masculine or a feminine noun.

Each group was asked to give four reasons for its recommendation. The men's group decided that 'computer' should definitely be of the feminine gender ('la computadora'), because:

1. No one but their creator understands their internal logic;

2 The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else;

3. Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for possible later retrieval; and

4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.


The women's group, however, concluded that computers should be Masculine ('el computador'), because:

1. In order to do anything with them, you have to turn them on; 2. They have a lot of data but still can't think for themselves;

3. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem; and

4. As soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you had waited a little longer, you could have gotten a better model.

The women won.

10 comments:

Gill - That British Woman said...

that was funny..oh and so very true!!!

Gill

Jess said...

I love it...it's hilarious!

Renie Burghardt said...

Ha! I agree that the computer is "masculine."

Hugs,

Renie

Clippy Mat said...

Jo:
relating to the meme on my blog. i've assigned you the letter "O".
i'm sure you're up the challenge of THAT. LOL
my computer is female i've just decided, but definitely in touch with her masucline side.
:-))

Busy Bee Suz said...

that is great!
I did not know you wanted a letter for the meme. you did not tell me...i saw it on Clippys page.
If you still want another letter, how about: H????
can you do it????
can you do 2 letters????
quite the challenge huh????
suz

Marian Dean said...

I laughed and laughed at this. All very reasonable when you look into it.. the reasoning is all there. Thanks for posting this, I shall have my husband laughing over his breakfast, when he gets up that is!

Lakeland Jo said...

Thanks for O and H- will get working on it. I am up early enough! Wanted to do some blogging before a busy day starts

Janet said...

Very funny, Jo. LOL.

Nota Bene said...

I'm not convinced...I think computer must be transgender! Anyway an excuse to repeat my favourite joke:

Girlfriend 1.0

18 months ago, I upgraded to GirlFriend 1.0 from DrinkingMates 4.2, which I had used for years without any trouble. However, there are apparently conflicts between these two products and the only solution was to try and run GirlFriend 1.0 with the sound turned off. To make matters worse, GirlFriend 1.0 is incompatible with several other applications, such as LadsNightOut 3.1, Football 4.5, and Playboy 6.9.

Successive versions of GirlFriend proved no better. I tried a shareware program, Slapper 2.1, but it had many bugs and left a virus in my system, forcing me to shut down completely for several weeks.

Eventually, I tried to run GirlFriend 1.2 and Girlfriend 1.0 at the same time, only to discover that when these two systems detected each other they caused severe damage to my hardware.

I eventually upgraded to Fiancée 1.0, only to discover that this product soon had to be upgraded further to Wife 1.0. While Wife 1.0 tends to use up all my available resources, it does come bundled with FreeSexPlus and CleanHouse2005. Shortly after this upgrade, however, I found that Wife 1.0 could be very unstable and costly to run. Any mistakes I made were automatically stored in Wife 1.0’s memory and could not be deleted. They then resurfaced months later when I had forgotten about them.

Wife 1.0 also has an automatic Diary, Explorer and E-mail filter, and can, without warning, launch TurboStrop and Multi-Whinge. These latter products have no Help files, and I have to try to guess what the problem is. Additional problems are that Wife 1.0 needs updating regularly, requiring ShoeShop Browser for new attachments and Hairstyle Express which needs to be reinstalled every other week. Also, when Wife 1.0 attaches itself to my Saab 93 Convertible hard drive, it often crashes.

Wife 1.0 also comes with an irritating pop-up called MotherInLaw, which can’t be turned off. Recently I’ve been tempted to install Mistress 2003, but there could be problems. A friend of mine has alerted me to the fact that if Wife 1.0 detects Mistress 2003, it tends to delete all of your Money before uninstalling itself.

Nota Bene said...

I'm not convinced either way, I think computers must be transgender! Anyway, an excuse to repeat my favourite joke:

Girlfriend 1.0 (Joke)

18 months ago, I upgraded to GirlFriend 1.0 from DrinkingMates 4.2, which I had used for years without any trouble. However, there are apparently conflicts between these two products and the only solution was to try and run GirlFriend 1.0 with the sound turned off. To make matters worse, GirlFriend 1.0 is incompatible with several other applications, such as LadsNightOut 3.1, Football 4.5, and Playboy 6.9.

Successive versions of GirlFriend proved no better. I tried a shareware program, Slapper 2.1, but it had many bugs and left a virus in my system, forcing me to shut down completely for several weeks.

Eventually, I tried to run GirlFriend 1.2 and Girlfriend 1.0 at the same time, only to discover that when these two systems detected each other they caused severe damage to my hardware.

I eventually upgraded to Fiancée 1.0, only to discover that this product soon had to be upgraded further to Wife 1.0. While Wife 1.0 tends to use up all my available resources, it does come bundled with FreeSexPlus and CleanHouse2005. Shortly after this upgrade, however, I found that Wife 1.0 could be very unstable and costly to run. Any mistakes I made were automatically stored in Wife 1.0’s memory and could not be deleted. They then resurfaced months later when I had forgotten about them.

Wife 1.0 also has an automatic Diary, Explorer and E-mail filter, and can, without warning, launch TurboStrop and Multi-Whinge. These latter products have no Help files, and I have to try to guess what the problem is. Additional problems are that Wife 1.0 needs updating regularly, requiring ShoeShop Browser for new attachments and Hairstyle Express which needs to be reinstalled every other week. Also, when Wife 1.0 attaches itself to my Saab 93 Convertible hard drive, it often crashes.

Wife 1.0 also comes with an irritating pop-up called MotherInLaw, which can’t be turned off. Recently I’ve been tempted to install Mistress 2003, but there could be problems. A friend of mine has alerted me to the fact that if Wife 1.0 detects Mistress 2003, it tends to delete all of your Money before uninstalling itself.