On the Humble Default 339
Hugh Pickens sends along Kevin Kelly's paean to the default. "One of the greatest unappreciated inventions of modern life is the default. 'Default' is a technical concept first used in computer science in the 1960s to indicate a preset standard. ... Today the notion of a default has spread beyond computer science to the culture at large. It seems such a small thing, but the idea of the default is fundamental... It's hard to remember a time when defaults were not part of life. But defaults only arose as computing spread; they are an attribute of complex technological systems. There were no defaults in the industrial age. ... The hallmark of flexible technological systems is the ease by which they can be rewired, modified, reprogrammed, adapted, and changed to suit new uses and new users. Many (not all) of their assumptions can be altered. The upside to endless flexibility and multiple defaults lies in the genuine choice that an individual now has, if one wants it. ... Choices materialize when summoned. But these abundant choices never appeared in fixed designs. ... In properly designed default system, I always have my full freedoms, yet my choices are presented to me in a way that encourages taking those choices in time — in an incremental and educated manner. Defaults are a tool that tame expanding choice."
Anonymous Coward (Score:1, Informative)
Defaults have been around for a long time. For example. When an electrician installs your light switch, the default is for up to mean ON, and down to mean OFF. To flush most toilets, push Down on the lever. etc
Pre-1950 systems with configurable defaults. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm trying to think of something prior to 1950 that had an overridable, configurable default. It's hard. Business telephone systems had some configurable defaults, but setting them up required physical wiring. The same was true of Plan 55-A Teletype message switching. IBM plugboard-wired tabulators didn't really have defaults as we think of them today. Machine tools had adjustable speeds and feeds, but no real defaults. Jacquard looms didn't have defaults. Linotypes didn't have defaults. Chain-programmed embroidery machines - no.
The closest thing I can think of was General Railway Signal's NX signaling system [nycsubway.org] for controlling railroad interlockings. This 1930s system may have been the first "user-friendly interface". An NX system controlled multiple switches and signals in an area (an "interlocking") preventing conflicts. Interlocked signal controls had been around for years, and they handled the safety issue, but before NX, it was the user's responsibility to figure out the desired path from A to B. With an NX system, you selected an "entry" point where a train was going to enter the interlocking, and all the reachable "exit" points would light up. The "reachable" logic took into account other trains that were in the interlocking area. When the operator selected an "exit", the NX system would pick a path between the entry and exit, routing around other trains or even track locked out of service.
A default "best" routing was hard-wired into the system, but the operator could override the default routing manually, by picking some intermediate point along the path as the "exit", then selecting that as an "entry" and picking the final "exit".
That's the oldest system I know of with a real "default" mechanism.
Land Area (Score:3, Informative)
Each house is almost 11,000 square feet?
Land area means the land the house sits on, not only the house. A quarter acre is not really that large.
Re:A good translation for default to other languag (Score:3, Informative)
Quite easy in Chinese. Since /. is too US-centric to tolerate Unicode, I'll just post the Unicode codepoints for these two characters: U+9ED8 and U+8BA4. Look them up in a Unicode table ;)
This Chinese word for "default", in a more literal translation, means "tacitly accepted/recognized". It has nothing to do with the financial meaning of the word "default", which translates to a completely different word in Chinese.
This is bull (Score:5, Informative)
But if you are looking for another computer word that has made it into common usage, how about "reboot"? It's now used to describe starting anything over from scratch, especially in things like movies. For instance, the new Star Trek movie has been called a reboot by several movie critics.
I can imagine a time far in the future where "reboot" is listed in the dictionary with the etymology saying "origin unclear, borrowed from computer terminology". 95% of people will not know that it comes from the REpeating the action of BOOTstrapping a computer. Bootstrapping or booting a computer comes from the term "to lift oneself up by the bootstraps", which is impossible and refers to the apparent chicken and egg problem of a computer loading itself up with software.
LS
Re:Bunch of Wank (Score:3, Informative)
It's not a default if it can't be configured.
In Icelandic (Score:2, Informative)
In Icelandic
It is "SjÃlfgefiÃ" or "Sjalfgefid"(since the special characters get fubar) which translated literally to English, would mean "Given by itself".
I think it's a very old word, since it also can mean "taking something for granted".
Re:Bollocks (Score:1, Informative)
We were using it in England back in the 1500's...
Even as soon as thou canst, for thou hast to pull at
a smack o' the contrary. If ever thou be'st bound
in thy scarf and beaten, thou shalt find what it is
to be proud of thy bondage. I have a desire to hold
my acquaintance with thee, or rather my knowledge,
that I may say in the default, he is a man I know.
William Shakespeare
Re:A good translation for default to other languag (Score:2, Informative)
Assuming we're talking about the noun "default", it translates very differently to different languages. For example, Finnish uses constructions based on "oletus-" ("assumed"), such as "oletusarvo" (default value) or "oletusselain" (default browser). In Swedish, "förvald" ("preselected") is used for default somethings (e.g. "förvalt värde" for default value) and a default in general is a "förval" ("preselection").
Spend enough time using a translated computer system or studying or practising CS in a language and you'll pick up the terminology. The problems start when translators have decided to translate things differently. For example, both Windows and Mac OS have "File" menus, but Finnish Windows calls them "Tiedosto" ("File") and Finnish Mac OS (IIRC) calls them "Arkisto" ("Archive").
Re:Bollocks (Score:3, Informative)
Exactly. The author implies that mechanical systems built before the 1960s came without built-in functionality or options. For an obvious example, take the toaster: since the dawn of the bread-toasting craze, it has included a "browning" control. This mechanical control, be it a knob, slider, or switch, had a base setting which was calibrated at the factory. This was its "default" position for optimum toasting. You could always change it up or down, as you desire, and return it back to its original setting.
"Defaults", as we know them, have always been there, though perhaps not called as such. The term "default" technically means "failure to act", and throughout its history has had negative connotations, which is why the author may not have seen it in the same context when reading pre-computer nomenclature. "Base settings", or "factory configurations" are synonymous in this context.
-dZ.
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:4, Informative)
On the right? Nonsense. They are on the side by the handle, opposite the hinges. And which way the door is hung depends on the configuration of the rooms.
Re:Slashdot defaults (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, because those things are evil, and soon result in huge piles of nested font tags and random stylesheet fragments everywhere.
Don't even ask what happens when someone pastes a word document into one, it makes me weep .
Re:In Icelandic (Score:2, Informative)
I think you mean "Sjálfgefið". HTML entities seem to work.
Re:Slashdot defaults (Score:3, Informative)
Slashdot was written in the late 90s when there were no other web forums (or at least not many) and BBcode didn't exist (ah, good times!) Back then, everyone knew that to bold something you used <b>, not [b]. And Slashdot does have a post preview -- just some people choose not to use it :)
Frankly, I don't see what's so hard about using HTML in your posts. It's not any harder than something like BBcode (mostly just use angle brackets instead of square brackets). HTML is harder on the server side since Slashdot has to parse it and figure out what's OK HTML, like <b>, and what's bad HTML, like <script> (though if /. filtered out some of its own scripts, that would be good too).
Choosing "Plain Old Text" as the posting method is usually the easiest. You don't have to use <br> or <p> to do line formatting, but you still get to use other HTML stuff. You do have to use < and >, though, which can be annoying. And to bring this post on topic, I don't know why that isn't the default option for posting. I'm pretty sure you can set it to be in your user options, because it's always what is set by default for my posts.
Re:A good translation for default to other languag (Score:3, Informative)
Don't most Indians speak English too?
About 10% of them do, which is enough to make them numerically the country with the second-most English speakers. Of those, about a third speak it as a third language. My experience tells me that about half (with a very wide margin of error) of Indian English speakers can read it well but not have a functional conversation with a native English speaker. About a third of the population is entirely illiterate.
I suspect English language skills correlate fairly well with computer literacy, since both are the product of the higher education not available to many of the population. Since it's certainly not a one-to-one correlation, I'd stick with Hindi.
Re:Bollocks (Score:3, Informative)
Close. It actually comes from the Old French word "defaute", or latin "defalta" or "defallere", meaning a deficiency or failure: de (completely) + fallere (to fault or fail).
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=default [etymonline.com]
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O27-default.html [encyclopedia.com]
-dZ.