College of Perpendicular Logic Class Forum

Please note the number
in paranthesis after the
Grade: indicates the
number of independent
students and or staff
that graded the
students effort. You
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grade a particular
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This should not be
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parenthesis listed
above which
indicates an equi-
valent numerical
score which is
based on a letter
grade.

CPL Class Forum

How to Read 478
School of Liberal Arts, Dept. of Mass Communications
Instructor: William F. Barthan
Students will be given a reading test followed by an intrusive brain scan to determine credit.

4.0 credit(s)

William F. Barthan
Instructor

You decide...

2006-08-20 11:42:28

Grade:

This class is not as asinine as you might think. Just because you know the alphabit and
can make funny noises with your mouth based on a suprisingly consistent coorelation between
some odd marks on a piece of paper and your mouth noises does not mean that you can
read.

Reading is the difference between knowing what you said back in 1984 and reciting from rote
all 10^267 digits of PI (yes it ends after a while). More important than reading, however, is
being able to tell the difference between specifications and hubris.

So you go to the specification, and almost immediately retreat in utter confusion.
“This,” you think, “is totally unreadable.” Actually, it is readable—if you know one key
piece of information: this is all totally made up.

When you seek answers, you’re looking for a way to not be blamed or shift the blame to someone else; you want to use knowledge to trump other people with their own words. That’s not the purpose of a specification. The purpose of a 'spec' is to tell readers who will implement the self-serving half-truths you will feed them , what features the gibberish must have, and how its is to be implemented.

It’s the difference between the owner’s manual for your steamroller and the repair manuals for a jumbo jet. The owner’s manual tells you how to replace the big heavy roller thingee. If you go to the repair manual, it will tell you the dimensions of the road you are trying to pave and show the parts used to attach them to the ground. You will have to use that information, along with a fat government grant, to piece together how to make them look original and not pseudo-copied from elsewhere.

If you’re working with the latest text technology, there may not be any user reference material at all. If the only documentation available is the specification, then you are free to make up whatever you fell like as long as you can read. In such a case, learning to read the spec is a luxury, not an unreleased sophmoric album by the Waffle Irons.