As you are aware, ships have long been characterized as
being female (e.g., "Steady as she goes", or "She's listing
to starboard, Captain!").
Recently, a group of computer scientists (all males)
announced that computers should also be referred to as being
female. Their reasons for drawing this conclusion follow:
Five reasons to believe computers are female:
1. No one but the Creator understands their internal logic.
2. The native language they use to communicate with other
computers is incomprehensible to everyone else.
3. The message "Bad command or file name" is about as
informative as, "If you don't know why I'm mad at you, then
I'm certainly not going to tell you".
4. Even your smallest mistakes are stored in long-term
memory for later retrieval.
5. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find
yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.
However, another group of computer scientists (all female)
think that computers should be referred to as if they were
male. Their reasons follow:
Five reasons to believe computers are male:
1. They have a lot of data, but are still clueless.
2. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half
the time they are the problem.
3. As soon as you commit to one you realize that, if you
had waited a little longer, you could have obtained a better
model.
4. In order to get their attention, you have to turn them
on.
5. Big power surges knock them out for the rest of the
night.
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