RE: Keys. (derives from Re: Sequences of combining characters.)

From: Marco Cimarosti (marco.cimarosti@essetre.it)
Date: Fri Sep 27 2002 - 15:01:18 EDT

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    Tex Texin wrote:
    > What's funny to me about this message, is a product message catalog I
    > was responsible for localizing had messages created by software
    > developers, such as (paraphrasing from memory):
    >
    > The client is dead.
    > The client has been killed.
    > You killed the client.
    >
    > Some of the translators were horrified. We had to explain that the
    > "client" was software used by the user, and that to "kill it"
    > meant the software was no longer operating, not that the
    > product caused
    > the death of the user. And then we had to get the developers to change
    > the message, since even in english they were not the most effective
    > messages.
    >
    > Lucky too, that support couldn't cause someone on the phone to give a
    > command that could kill the client...

    Years ago, I was in charge of supporting software system composed of a main
    module, called the "parent (task)", and of a number of secondary modules,
    called "child (tasks)". Each child was identified with a name and a "(task)
    address".

    One day, the IT manager reported that the system started having problems
    after a child had turned off the computer.

    I explained that, according to my knowledge, that was impossible: children
    ran in a protected area, so the parent would have stopped them before they
    had any chance of "turning off the computer". But he replied that he saw the
    child turning off the system with his own eyes, and the parent could not
    stop it.

    This guy was such an idiot, and I was quite surprised to discover that he
    could use the utility called "Children Monitor". So, I asked him to let me
    know the child's name and address.

    He said that he didn't understand how this detail could help us but, anyway,
    he obtained the child's name and address from the parent:

            Daniel Zubeispiel
            Hauptkirchestrasse, 26
            Zürich, Switzerland

    (Seven years-old Daniel, the son of a system engineer, was in the laboratory
    that day because his school was closed for maintenance.)

    Ciao.
    Marco



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