Items related to The Computer Contradictionary
"Ascertain the meaning before consulting this dictionary," warns the author of this collection of deliberately satirical misdefinitions. New computer cultures and their jargons have burgeoned since this book's progenitor, "The Devil's DP Dictionary", was published in 1981. This updated version of Stan Kelly-Bootle's romp through the data processing lexicon is a response to the "Unix pandemic" that has swept academia and government, to the endlessly hyped panaceas offered to the MIS, and to the PC explosion that has brought computer terminology to a "hugely bewildered, lay audience.' The original dictionary, a pastiche of Ambrose Bierce's famous work, parried chiefly the mainframe and mini-folklore of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. This revision adds over 550 new entries and enhances many of the original definitions. Key targets are "a host of new follies crying out for cynical lexicography including: the GUI-Phooey iconoclasts, object orienteering and the piping of BLObs down the Clinton-Gore InfoPike."
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Review:
Warning: If you aren't a true-blue geek, you won't even have a clue as to why this cracked glossary of computing terms is supposed to be funny. But if you're capable of finding humor in jokes about OO programming, TCP/IP, Bjarne Stroustrup, and operating system kernels, The Computer Contradictionary is truly hilarious. Sample: "ISAM ... One of the most successful data-security systems so far devised. Information is protected from all but the most persistent, patient, and devious." If you're even tempted to smile, you'll enormously enjoy British author Stan Kelly-Bootle's witty, urbane, and well-informed parody.
From the Back Cover:
This book is aimed at the dearth of useful data processing glossaries. It may well increase this dearth, but nevertheless I hope that it casts an amusing glare on the many linguistic opacities which bedevil the computing trade, according to the author.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherMit Pr
- Publication date1995
- ISBN 10 0262112027
- ISBN 13 9780262112024
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages256
- Rating
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