SMash the Windows: An Article on Computer Language Illiterac

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-11-09 01:30pm

Neat little article from Guardian Unlimited about literacy in programming languages and why being able to program in this increasingly computerized world is not just useful but to some degree necessary if one is to remain in control of your computers. Lots of Matrix references used to good effect.

Smash the Windows

To be truly free in the 21st century, we have to ignore the flashy graphics and really get inside our computers

Dylan Evans
Thursday November 6, 2003
The Guardian

In the west, at least, illiteracy is practically a thing of the past. That's just as well, since it is difficult to survive, and virtually impossible to prosper, in today's world without the ability to read and write. There is another kind of illiteracy, however, as widespread as the old kind used to be: computer illiteracy. Even in the most advanced countries in the world, the vast majority of people are still unable to read or write any kind of computer language.

Sure, most of us can use computers these days. We know how to send email, surf the web or write a letter in Word. But would you know what to do if all those pretty little icons in your browser disappeared and, instead of Windows, you were left staring at lines of letters and numbers of HTML, the language in which web pages are written? If, like Neo in The Matrix, you could see the code behind the graphics?

If your answer is "no", then you are in the majority - one of the many millions of peasants in the technological middle ages. Like most humans in The Matrix, who believe they are living a normal life when in fact their bodies lie inert in a vast complex of pods, you are asleep, a prisoner of your ignorance. And the only way to escape is by getting to grips with the machines, by learning their language. If you don't get inside them, they will get inside you. Adapt or die.

Things can only get worse. As our society becomes ever more dependent on information technology, the gulf between those who understand computers and those who don't will get wider and wider. In 50 years, perhaps much less, the ability to read and write code will be as essential for professionals of every stripe as the ability to read and write a human language is today. If your children's children can't speak the language of the machines, they will have to get a manual job - if there are any left.

This is yet another reason why Windows is such a dangerous commodity. It lulls us into the pernicious illusion that we can deal with computers without adapting to their logic. By presenting us with colourful screens and buttons for us to click on, Microsoft encourages us to believe that we can force computers to adapt entirely to our preferences for visual images, without having to adapt ourselves to their preference for text.

But not only does this prevent people from getting inside the machine and keep them in a state of blissful ignorance, it also proves to be a deceit, for in the end the user still has to adapt to the machine anyway.

We wait, a captive audience, while the browser painstakingly loads the next image-stuffed web page, or we click through menu after menu until we eventually realise that we are not in control after all. The Windows control us.

Paradoxically, it is only by learning the language of the machines, by adapting to their logic, that we can free ourselves from their dominion. It is only by seeming to go backwards, to the way we interacted with computers before Windows came along, that we can go forwards. Remember DOS or the ZX-80, or the old BBC computer? Not much in the way of fancy graphics. Just lots of text, and strange words like DIR and CD.

Isn't this too much of a burden for the average computer user? Shouldn't we try to force computers to adapt to us as much as possible by giving them user-friendly interfaces and hiding their internal workings? Shouldn't we be able to get on with our jobs without worrying about what is going inside the black box? If that is your attitude, fine. If you want to remain inside the dream world of The Matrix, that's your choice.

It's not just laziness, of course, that prevents people from getting to grips with computers. Cowardice also plays its part. But whatever the motive may be, the result is always the same. Natural selection doesn't care whether a man in a burning building is too lazy to get out or too scared. The secretary who can't be bothered to learn more about the office computer than how to read email and the grandad who feels intimidated by the new technology are equally doomed.

Fortunately, lack of information is not an obstacle to learning about computers. In the west, most people can easily get their hands on books and their eyes on web pages that can take them all the way from complete ignorance to power-user status. But this is not enough on its own; it is also necessary to spend hundreds - no, thousands - of hours at the keyboard. This might sound like hell. But if you want to be truly free, you have no choice but to understand the machines you work with.

· The film Matrix Revolutions was in part inspired by Introducing Evolutionary Psychology, by Dylan Evans and Oscar Zarate

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-11-09 01:33pm

Also related is Neil Stephenson's article In the Beginning was the Command Line. You have to download it as a zip of stuffit, but thats ok.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-11-09 02:44pm

Ah, yes, the Guardian, purveyour of high-quality news everywhere </sarcasm>. Matrix references don't impress me either, they just sound like they're pandering to the Matrix-worshipping tech crowd.

What the article fails to address is why the average guy must intimately understand a computer. Oh, sure, it's a useful skill, but why must every person have to know how to write programming languages? Or, for that matter, is the GUI such a bad thing?

The whole point of a computer is to make our lives our lives easier. They serve us, not the other way around. I'm not staying in the dream world of the Matrix, I'm in cold, hard reality - the author's dreaming.

ClaysGhost · Post by **ClaysGhost** » 2003-11-09 03:32pm

He's quite enamoured of The Matrix, isn't he. Tragic; if only the humans had been able to write C, they'd have won the war? I don't agree with him. The example of HTML is particularly poorly chosen - what has HTML got to do with the internals of a computer? Bugger all. You can display it on anything that supports a browser, which is part of the point.

There is no one language that unlocks the whole of the computing world. I know some languages, but that doesn't mean I have the faintest idea on how computer networks operate - packages, streams and protocols do not concern me, commander (for example). Would he have everyone learn HTML, and collaborate in a conspiracy of My Pet Hamster webpages? Should everyone learn COBOL, or C, or Java, or Eiffel, or x86 machine code to process entries in a database, or should they use tools designed by professionals for people who use databases?

I think his argument mixes up several different worlds. The world of the UNIX-like command line vs. the world of the GUI, mixed in with the topmost bit of the internet (HTML) and the worlds of systems and application programming in things like C and friends. Learning more about one of these worlds doesn't necessarily give you excellent knowledge of the others. For the command-line vs. GUI stuff; computers speak neither text nor graphics natively. They are both human interfaces, each with admirers and detractors, each with advantages and disadvantages. Is he proposing that we all learn to embrace hexadecimal opcodes, on the basis that it's the true language of the machine? But then he'd be a fool, for the knowledge would be useless the instant you changed architectures.

Those are my objections assuming he's correct and that every job beyond manual work will require one to learn a programming language. I don't believe this will be the case. All the signs are that computers will become more ubiquitous, but as embedded systems rather than desktop behemoths. Who on this monkey planet would need to program their mobile phones to do their jobs, except the people who build mobile phones?

ClaysGhost · Post by **ClaysGhost** » 2003-11-09 03:36pm

phongn wrote:Ah, yes, the Guardian, purveyour of high-quality news everywhere </sarcasm>.

It's the Grauniad, actually.

The whole point of a computer is to make our lives our lives easier. They serve us, not the other way around.

This is the statement that sums up my position, better than I've managed to do.

TrailerParkJawa · Post by **TrailerParkJawa** » 2003-11-09 04:21pm

Adapt or die? Since when is not knowing code a threat to life or job? Is he really saying that if I dont understand Visual Basic Im totally screwed if the Fed Ex Shipping computer crashes? There is this thing called a pen. You fill out the manual forms. It's easy, serious.

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2003-11-09 05:40pm

I'd love to see how knowing computer programming will make me a better social studies teacher, as opposed to, say, keeping up on the current developments in the field. Then again, I'm apparently the last of the Luddites who thinks computers are good for two things in history education: writing papers and accessing academic databases.

Bill Door · Post by **Bill Door** » 2003-11-09 06:35pm

I'm going to have to learn Visual Basic. Can't remeber exactly why, but its due to taking a chemical engineering course.

NOTE: Drunk...

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2003-11-10 08:05am

Who was the retard that wrote that trash.

Windows is such a dangerous commodity

Someone actually puts that in a published article?!?

That is some of the biggest load of steaming shit I've ever read.

Please, most people have enought problems writing with a highly flexible language. Now you expect them to tack on high level computer orriented logic & design as well as write in horrible, ridged, syntaxical hell, languages?

Tribun · Post by **Tribun** » 2003-11-10 08:57am

I don't see why I have to learn programming. Isn't it the function of software to spare us the whole code-crunching? Working with code is only meant for people who can do it.
Therefore this article is useless.......

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-11-10 11:46am

ggs wrote:Someone actually puts that in a published article?!?

As I've said before, this is the Guardian. They're not exactly known for high-quality commentary; hell, it almost seems like a grab to get a subset of the 'tech' reader market.

Please, most people have enought problems writing with a highly flexible language. Now you expect them to tack on high level computer orriented logic & design as well as write in horrible, ridged, syntaxical hell, languages?

You mean Esperanto?

Companion Cube · Post by **Companion Cube** » 2003-11-10 12:45pm

Ah, I remember reading this in the paper a few days back.

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2003-11-10 12:52pm

phongn wrote:You mean Esperanto?

You mean it is not a dead language cooked up by some language professor?!?

I think the Klingon Language or Tolkien's Elven languages are more widely used than Esperanto.

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2003-11-10 02:31pm

I think the article's brilliant.

I mean how many, utterly, perfectly, truly, flawless examples of irony do you see a year?

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2003-11-10 02:35pm

ggs wrote:
Windows is such a dangerous commodity
Someone actually puts that in a published article?!?

Anyone writing an article on computer security is obliged to include it.

Windows is dangerous, it's built with an entire absence of security psychology. (Permission by default and Functionality by default)

Bill Door · Post by **Bill Door** » 2003-11-10 04:35pm

Vendetta wrote:Windows is dangerous, it's built with an entire absence of security psychology. (Permission by default and Functionality by default)

Yep. When I hooked up my computer to the halls ethernet someone was able to dump virus infected files into the shared directories. Directories which I didn't want shared with anyone on the network.

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2003-11-10 07:29pm

Vendetta wrote:
ggs wrote:
Windows is such a dangerous commodity
Someone actually puts that in a published article?!?
Anyone writing an article on computer security is obliged to include it.

Windows is dangerous, it's built with an entire absence of security psychology. (Permission by default and Functionality by default)

In its defense, it was designed as a standalone computer, and not networked like they typically are today.

Security was a feature that really wasnt in high demand went the orginal Win95 kernel rolled off the line.

Bill Door, wtf. Bit more details? You running Win98, winXP or what? It makes a big difference.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-11-10 07:45pm

Vendetta wrote:Windows is dangerous, it's built with an entire absence of security psychology. (Permission by default and Functionality by default)

With W2K3, it seems that Microsoft is finally trying to turn around, though it was bitten by the various DCOM/RPC worms earlier. Permissions are strict by default and functionality is disabled by default.

Want an AD Controller? Gotta enable and install it. Want DNS? WINS? IIS? Same thinkg, gotta install it and enable it.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-11-10 07:46pm

ggs wrote:Bill Door, wtf. Bit more details? You running Win98, winXP or what? It makes a big difference.

AFAIK, W9X does not automatically share anything. Windows NT will, but only using the administrative share. It is possible that the Administrative Shares were subject to a dictionary attack.

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2003-11-11 01:25am

phongn wrote:
ggs wrote:Bill Door, wtf. Bit more details? You running Win98, winXP or what? It makes a big difference.
AFAIK, W9X does not automatically share anything. Windows NT will, but only using the administrative share. It is possible that the Administrative Shares were subject to a dictionary attack.

If the Administrative account didnt have a password, then it wouldnt matter.

Since windows will not accept an account with no password as a valid account over a network.

So it probable was a weak password somewere.

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2003-11-11 01:32am

phongn wrote:
ggs wrote:Bill Door, wtf. Bit more details? You running Win98, winXP or what? It makes a big difference.
AFAIK, W9X does not automatically share anything. Windows NT will, but only using the administrative share. It is possible that the Administrative Shares were subject to a dictionary attack.

The fact that Samba services are enabled by default is something of a security risk. Many worms have spread through Windows' Samba implementation.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2003-11-11 03:46am

phongn wrote:
ggs wrote:Bill Door, wtf. Bit more details? You running Win98, winXP or what? It makes a big difference.
AFAIK, W9X does not automatically share anything. Windows NT will, but only using the administrative share. It is possible that the Administrative Shares were subject to a dictionary attack.

Why can't MS incorporate a delay between login attempts so that such an attack would become impractical?

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2003-11-11 09:52am

Uraniun235 wrote:
phongn wrote:
ggs wrote:Bill Door, wtf. Bit more details? You running Win98, winXP or what? It makes a big difference.
AFAIK, W9X does not automatically share anything. Windows NT will, but only using the administrative share. It is possible that the Administrative Shares were subject to a dictionary attack.
Why can't MS incorporate a delay between login attempts so that such an attack would become impractical?

They require the Control-Alt-Delete combination to be pressed before the login window comes up.

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2003-11-11 10:11am

Durandal wrote:
Uraniun235 wrote:Why can't MS incorporate a delay between login attempts so that such an attack would become impractical?
They require the Control-Alt-Delete combination to be pressed before the login window comes up.

I think he is talking about network logon attempts.

But then again, you should have a lockout count (ie x failed attempts and the account is rendered inactive). But this isnt on by default on WinXP.

And in WinXP home there isnt a GUI in which to alter the required settings.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-11-11 01:31pm

Yeah, they should enable a lockout - the functionality is there - by default.

And you crazy *nix people! It's CIFS, not Samba!