You say "...people prefer MS Word (WYSIWYG) over console emacs over vim." when in this crowd at least, this is not true. I belabour the point because I firmly believe that the most efficient interface for many things is not necessarily the easiest to learn or the easiest to use. Familiar routes feel faster than new ones which may be faster. People may feel like they aren't making progress when in fact they are. I feel more productive in Emacs than Word -- Unfortunately I have no solid evidence that I am, as it's so damn difficult to quantify.
This is where everything breaks down. People believe that the 'real world' is somehow the optimal environment just because we grew up there. I am more mathematically inclined and see very little of the abstractions that I love so much in the 'real world'. I see more of it in code. I see no way that that would suit everyone. So where does that leave us? No 'optimal' interface.
The question is, would you also be ok with python being even slower than it is now? I am pretty sure (without having searched for it) that an 'exact' class exists for Python, where all math is handled internally, perhaps base 10 to avoid strange rounding errors. You could probably bang one out in a few hours. The problem is it would be very, very slow. Also, I am not sure how Mathematica gets around the errors you mention, but I would be very surprised if it did everything base 10. If it does most things with a binary internal representation, this means that a loop adding 0.01 to an accumulator in a loop will give strange answers due to rounding of the 0.01 if nothing else.
Wordperfect's file format is designed so that new features don't change the format. Open a new document in an old version of Wordperfect and you just get a couple of messages saying 'this file was made in a newer version of WordPerfect, and feature XXX will not work'. Then you see the document, degraded gracefully. Try that in Word. It's all about designing robust formats.
Researchers say that safes are not completely immune to attack. Some off-the-shelf "safes" can be cracked in less than 5 minutes! They advise that a cardboard box is a more cost-effective way to store valuables, as "people will get in anyway".
Re:The GPL: Intellectual Theft
on
GPLv2 Vs. GPLv3
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· Score: 1
Well, I'll bite -- you know that these people with 'vested interests' are not usually companies that make money from their software. Point in case: RMS himself, who has produced a huge volume of code with very little direct monetary benefit. I know it's hard to understand people doing something for their ideals rather than monetary gain, but in my experience most of the core FSF people truly believe in what they are doing as a noble endeavour.
You will see this misconception cropping up again and again in discussions about the GPL and the FSF. "If these guys want to compete, they'll have to play ball." Perhaps they are not driven by market share or even strict technical superiority. Perhaps they are driven by their ideals. I, for one, applaud them for sticking to their guns.
Oh, well, I might as well reply... After a pretty heavy editing session today, I got my lossage (C-h l) which shows the keys pressed during the session. I had saved a few times after major edits, but had searched far more (C-s). I think that's pretty typical. With auto-save or saving before compiles, the only time I usually explicitly save is right before exiting... Perhaps this is typical? This is the problem with 'one size fits all' find the most used operation based on hours and hours of novice usage and you may find one answer, while logging another set of users will give you a different answer. In fact, some of the things I use in emacs without thinking (like C-t to transpose mistypes) are things I have rarely seen in other editors (ok, I think it is in Textmate by virtue of the mac connection, but anyway). The thing about emacs is that it has been evolving for a very long time. The real sharp edges have been worn pretty smooth by now.
Sorry to beat a dead horse, but I wasn't really talking about menus at all -- that was a casual remark about how I don't like menus. The real point I am trying to make is not that every program should just throw an interface together without looking at what other people are doing, but rather that there are so many activities and so many users that one cannot find a universal common ground. In CAD programs, there are shortcuts for common drawing commands that are more common than cut and paste. There, it may make sense to use Control-C for Circle drawing instead of copy. In text editing, there are many commands that can be grouped together to help the user to remember them. In Emacs this is the Meta, Control, Meta-shift distinction, in vi there are similar groupings. This all works together to make you more productive in your editor, and if you spend most of your time in your editor the learning curve is worth it. Of course, for casual users, it may be better to use something more familiar, but it is not always possible to make advanced features easily accessible and retain ease of use. (quote: UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things. --Doug Gwyn)
I just have a problem with the assumption that there exists some universal common set of commands that should always be the same. There are always exceptions, and sometimes you need to break a few interface rules to come up with a really useful interface for a specific task. In the end, people choose what works for them and many people choose vi and emacs, even though they are not particularly novice-friendly. This is because their interface really works, and works well. No amount of guidelines will change that.
I know of no "universal" interface guidelines. Even nodding as affirmative is not universal. Care to elaborate on any that you know? Take into account that "almost universal" is not the same thing.
OK, I get the idea behind consistent interfaces and learning curves and all that. Why is it that I was hooked on Emacs even after trying advanced editors in Windows and Mac OS X? I would suggest it has something to do with the individual. There is no one unified set of guidelines that is going to make every programmer happy with his/her editor, just as there is no one 'good' programming language or one 'good' human language. I really like being able to issue commands to my editor without going through menus. I find menus frustrating and counter-intuitive. That may not be the norm, but it's me, and luckily emacs fits my preferences. In the end, vim and emacs have plenty of users who are actually happier in that environment that any modern one. Not just because they haven't looked around -- I look around all the time searching for something better than Emacs, and I am constantly disappointed.
Perhaps I should be speaking with an HCI expert, but you seem to know a bit about this issue, care to share?
Just a thought: you complain about "the roadblocks that have been intentionally thrown into their path by fundy free software politics". I am eager to know how these fundies are stopping you from rewriting a whole system from scratch 'the right way'. I agree that it would rock if Linux would be as well supported by the hardware vendors as other operating systems (note the object-subject relationship there), but I don't really know how this would come to be.
Now, I am a pretty ok programmer myself, and I maintain a few small private projects. I cannot even begin to imagine the time that these fundies put into their projects. The truly contribute, they give it to you to use or not. I don't think they are stopping you in any way from doing a better job. I think that you, like me, do not have the time/skills/inclination to do a better job. And here's the bottom line: until you can make a really good case that they are doing the wrong thing (which I don't think you can, as they tend not to be as pragmatic as you seem to be) you will be stuck with whatever they give you.
BTW: Don't think you're just cluing them in on your needs by ranting about how they done you wrong by not giving you (for free) something that is exactly what you wanted. I think you're just pissing them off. Perhaps focusing on the positive aspects of a working unix-like system at little cost will make you happier.
Because everybody knows that these linux distro guys are just selfish pigs that are only in it for profit. I mean, they're giving stuff away for free, spending their time on it, trying to make it the best they can, and then they have the gall not to put every other user's needs first! Honestly, I tire of these rants against projects that have no real motivation to listen to their customers. This is not a company that has to listen to your demands or lose your money. A bit of calm debate, reasoned arguments -- that may bring them over to your point of view.
Or better yet, stop whining and do something about it yourself!
I think you are confusing your internal desire for the existance of a lottery where you could strike it rich using intectual property with the universal "rightness" of having such a thing. If every single work by every single creative person on earth was instantly and costlessly beamed to everyone else, people would still create. This is one of the fundamental human needs. If the system means that one cannot make a living from purely creative activity, these people will have to work a job that pays to sustain their creative endevours, just like me.
The reality is that the vast majority of artists are not supported by their art and never will be, even if they are later seen to be the best of their time. Copyright (just like patents in this regard) is therefore more of a lottery than you may think. Like many people, you may think that the allure of riches is required to incent people to become the next Stephen King. I hope you are wrong, as there is no way to stop the system I described above from coming closer every day.
Something to ponder as a final point: Do you truly believe that sales of copyrighted works are related to "quality" of these works? If they are not, one has to ask whether the finantial benefits of the copyright system are really increasing the quality of creative works or in fact diluting the 'quality' with a vast swarm of people who are financially motivated rather than artisticly.
I think what you mean is we need better applications supporting PDF. The format has nothing to do with the applications, slimy or not. The format is actually pretty benign, well documented and open to anyone to use. Adobe Acrobat is a different thing altogether.
So don't blame Adobe for the format, blame them for the POS that is Acrobat Reader. You are basically blaming the W3C for Internet Explorer!
...I find it very hard to believe every customer you have only runs pirated Windows and Office.
Man, what world are you living in? I don't think I have seen a legal copy of Windows running outside of an office in my entire life! Of course, the same goes for Office. I suppose I should mention that I am a lecturer at a university, and that I count legal installs of software for home use as inside the office. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I live in South Africa, but come on -- who has the cash to buy Windows, Office, PhotoShop, Autocad, etc? And yet my students have all of that and more. In fact, I think most of my collegues have this kind of stuff at home too.
I am all Linux all the time except on my Mac laptop, but there is a lot of pressure to install the stuff "everyone else" is using, and the argument most often used is, I'll just lend you the CD, no problem.
I think you missed his point. Music industry people claim that each copy represents a lost sale. He was simply stating that neither of his options would result in an extra sale. Even if he "learned to sing", they would still not be selling the disc, so having a copy is doing him good but not costing them a sale as they claim. That was his point.
It seems strange to me that many people are so worried about companies, but not all that worried about themselves. Ask yourself this: why does the music industry have the right to continue to make money the way they did ten years back. Times have changed, and they need to find a business model that works with the reality of today. A large part of their plan seems to be to change people by 'educating' them about the evils of copyright enfringement, perhaps we will see a new equilibrium point where they are still making money. Or perhaps artists will start making less money off CD sales and more from live performances which can't be copied.
So get off your high horse and participate in the discussion.
I don't see how it is "more likely" that in a whole piece about not resisting evil persons, giving them your cloak as well as your tunic, walking the extra mile, Jesus is advocating standing on equal footing with your attacker. I am aware of the interpretations of each of these points, but I must say that there is a sense of loving your neighbour, not taking revenge and overcoming through love in my reading of the Bible. I know that people say this attitute is unworkable, but the 10 commandments (never lied to anyone?) are pretty unworkable, too.
It's not so wrong for people to strive for ideals they may never achieve. Those of you who run to the ultra-pragmatic 'I do what I can to survive' dogma -- we live in a luxurious time, we can afford morals.
Pascal is a very well-designed language that features some really fast compilers. It may not be ideal for lower-level coding (the kind of thing you would use C for), but as a workhorse to solve numeric problems or for useful applications, it is really quite good. Some of the newer compilers also generate very efficient code. You can say what you want about Wirth languages, but the man knew something about them.
Anyway -- I never really understood why people were so down on Pascal. It's legible (if a bit verbose) and has nice support for modules and the like. Perhaps you have no motivation to move away from the language you are currently using, but people using Pascal (or Delphi) may have no motivation to move away from them either.
Well, some records can spend 14 years on the charts. Does that mean both the 70s and the 80s guys like stasis or does it mean the record is damn good? Also, on a contradictory note: charts weren't the same then as now. There was a lot of bribing of record stations etc, so the real music scene was happening in clubs. You would have to club to know the cool bands, 'cos a lot of times they were bringing out records really fast, basing recorded material on club gigs (simon and garfunkle, for instance brought out about a record a year). If you read a few biographies (I recently read a Jim Morisson biography) you will realise that there were real lives being lived back then, and especially in the 60s, real angst and real search for enlightenment. Don't believe you live in any kind of 'special age'.
You said: You seem to have problems accepting that words can have more than one meaning.
But in my original post I actually acknowledged exactly that: by saying But, as with all language issues, the distinction is subtle, and word meaning changes to accomodate current usage
Language is defined by usage, not by dictionaries. However, there are points in the evolution of a language where one group of people are used to/accept a certain usage while another is using a different one. This leads to confusion. This is why there will always be threads like this one. It is a matter of active debate (and I don't state my point of view here) where the prescriptive training (basics like spelling and common idiom) should end and where language exploration should start. In any change of meaning, one runs the risk of coming across as uneducated rather than enlightened. This goes both ways. If I were trying to express myself in Ebonics, I would probably seem uneducated in the ways of the language just as much as a kid who grew up speaking it would seem uneducated to a college lit major.
Sorry for the monologue, but I thought that I had stayed remarkably impartial in my post and you atacked me on one point where I thought I was quite well defended.
Anyway - most of the people who believe irony is being misused lately believe that true irony has to do with incongruity and double audience. So when you need a knife when you have a lot of spoons, that's not ironic, because you don't expect for there to be knives instead of spoons. Perhaps not finding a knife in a knife shop, having told your friends you were going to the knife shop, and having them know it's gone out of business would be ironic. Alanis just lists a lot sometimes unfortunate coincidences. An unfortunate coincidence is not ironic unless one expected a different outcome and someone was in on the joke.
But, as with all language issues, the distinction is subtle, and word meaning changes to accomodate current usage.
Slashdot Mirror
You say "...people prefer MS Word (WYSIWYG) over console emacs over vim." when in this crowd at least, this is not true. I belabour the point because I firmly believe that the most efficient interface for many things is not necessarily the easiest to learn or the easiest to use. Familiar routes feel faster than new ones which may be faster. People may feel like they aren't making progress when in fact they are. I feel more productive in Emacs than Word -- Unfortunately I have no solid evidence that I am, as it's so damn difficult to quantify.
This is where everything breaks down. People believe that the 'real world' is somehow the optimal environment just because we grew up there. I am more mathematically inclined and see very little of the abstractions that I love so much in the 'real world'. I see more of it in code. I see no way that that would suit everyone. So where does that leave us? No 'optimal' interface.
The question is, would you also be ok with python being even slower than it is now? I am pretty sure (without having searched for it) that an 'exact' class exists for Python, where all math is handled internally, perhaps base 10 to avoid strange rounding errors. You could probably bang one out in a few hours. The problem is it would be very, very slow. Also, I am not sure how Mathematica gets around the errors you mention, but I would be very surprised if it did everything base 10. If it does most things with a binary internal representation, this means that a loop adding 0.01 to an accumulator in a loop will give strange answers due to rounding of the 0.01 if nothing else.
Strangely, there are some rounding methods that are random so that you don't have bias. Go figure, floating point is interesting.
Wordperfect's file format is designed so that new features don't change the format. Open a new document in an old version of Wordperfect and you just get a couple of messages saying 'this file was made in a newer version of WordPerfect, and feature XXX will not work'. Then you see the document, degraded gracefully. Try that in Word. It's all about designing robust formats.
Researchers say that safes are not completely immune to attack. Some off-the-shelf "safes" can be cracked in less than 5 minutes! They advise that a cardboard box is a more cost-effective way to store valuables, as "people will get in anyway".
Well, I'll bite -- you know that these people with 'vested interests' are not usually companies that make money from their software. Point in case: RMS himself, who has produced a huge volume of code with very little direct monetary benefit. I know it's hard to understand people doing something for their ideals rather than monetary gain, but in my experience most of the core FSF people truly believe in what they are doing as a noble endeavour.
You will see this misconception cropping up again and again in discussions about the GPL and the FSF. "If these guys want to compete, they'll have to play ball." Perhaps they are not driven by market share or even strict technical superiority. Perhaps they are driven by their ideals. I, for one, applaud them for sticking to their guns.
Oh, well, I might as well reply... After a pretty heavy editing session today, I got my lossage (C-h l) which shows the keys pressed during the session. I had saved a few times after major edits, but had searched far more (C-s). I think that's pretty typical. With auto-save or saving before compiles, the only time I usually explicitly save is right before exiting... Perhaps this is typical? This is the problem with 'one size fits all' find the most used operation based on hours and hours of novice usage and you may find one answer, while logging another set of users will give you a different answer. In fact, some of the things I use in emacs without thinking (like C-t to transpose mistypes) are things I have rarely seen in other editors (ok, I think it is in Textmate by virtue of the mac connection, but anyway). The thing about emacs is that it has been evolving for a very long time. The real sharp edges have been worn pretty smooth by now.
Sorry to beat a dead horse, but I wasn't really talking about menus at all -- that was a casual remark about how I don't like menus. The real point I am trying to make is not that every program should just throw an interface together without looking at what other people are doing, but rather that there are so many activities and so many users that one cannot find a universal common ground. In CAD programs, there are shortcuts for common drawing commands that are more common than cut and paste. There, it may make sense to use Control-C for Circle drawing instead of copy. In text editing, there are many commands that can be grouped together to help the user to remember them. In Emacs this is the Meta, Control, Meta-shift distinction, in vi there are similar groupings. This all works together to make you more productive in your editor, and if you spend most of your time in your editor the learning curve is worth it. Of course, for casual users, it may be better to use something more familiar, but it is not always possible to make advanced features easily accessible and retain ease of use. (quote: UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things. --Doug Gwyn)
I just have a problem with the assumption that there exists some universal common set of commands that should always be the same. There are always exceptions, and sometimes you need to break a few interface rules to come up with a really useful interface for a specific task. In the end, people choose what works for them and many people choose vi and emacs, even though they are not particularly novice-friendly. This is because their interface really works, and works well. No amount of guidelines will change that.
"Consistent" means "universal"
I know of no "universal" interface guidelines. Even nodding as affirmative is not universal. Care to elaborate on any that you know? Take into account that "almost universal" is not the same thing.
OK, I get the idea behind consistent interfaces and learning curves and all that. Why is it that I was hooked on Emacs even after trying advanced editors in Windows and Mac OS X? I would suggest it has something to do with the individual. There is no one unified set of guidelines that is going to make every programmer happy with his/her editor, just as there is no one 'good' programming language or one 'good' human language. I really like being able to issue commands to my editor without going through menus. I find menus frustrating and counter-intuitive. That may not be the norm, but it's me, and luckily emacs fits my preferences. In the end, vim and emacs have plenty of users who are actually happier in that environment that any modern one. Not just because they haven't looked around -- I look around all the time searching for something better than Emacs, and I am constantly disappointed.
Perhaps I should be speaking with an HCI expert, but you seem to know a bit about this issue, care to share?
So, if they are willing to give up those freedoms and pay for software, why are the not just buying Windows and getting done?
Just a thought: you complain about "the roadblocks that have been intentionally thrown into their path by fundy free software politics". I am eager to know how these fundies are stopping you from rewriting a whole system from scratch 'the right way'. I agree that it would rock if Linux would be as well supported by the hardware vendors as other operating systems (note the object-subject relationship there), but I don't really know how this would come to be.
Now, I am a pretty ok programmer myself, and I maintain a few small private projects. I cannot even begin to imagine the time that these fundies put into their projects. The truly contribute, they give it to you to use or not. I don't think they are stopping you in any way from doing a better job. I think that you, like me, do not have the time/skills/inclination to do a better job. And here's the bottom line: until you can make a really good case that they are doing the wrong thing (which I don't think you can, as they tend not to be as pragmatic as you seem to be) you will be stuck with whatever they give you.
BTW: Don't think you're just cluing them in on your needs by ranting about how they done you wrong by not giving you (for free) something that is exactly what you wanted. I think you're just pissing them off. Perhaps focusing on the positive aspects of a working unix-like system at little cost will make you happier.
Why make it harder for these users?
Because everybody knows that these linux distro guys are just selfish pigs that are only in it for profit. I mean, they're giving stuff away for free, spending their time on it, trying to make it the best they can, and then they have the gall not to put every other user's needs first! Honestly, I tire of these rants against projects that have no real motivation to listen to their customers. This is not a company that has to listen to your demands or lose your money. A bit of calm debate, reasoned arguments -- that may bring them over to your point of view.
Or better yet, stop whining and do something about it yourself!
I think you are confusing your internal desire for the existance of a lottery where you could strike it rich using intectual property with the universal "rightness" of having such a thing. If every single work by every single creative person on earth was instantly and costlessly beamed to everyone else, people would still create. This is one of the fundamental human needs. If the system means that one cannot make a living from purely creative activity, these people will have to work a job that pays to sustain their creative endevours, just like me.
The reality is that the vast majority of artists are not supported by their art and never will be, even if they are later seen to be the best of their time. Copyright (just like patents in this regard) is therefore more of a lottery than you may think. Like many people, you may think that the allure of riches is required to incent people to become the next Stephen King. I hope you are wrong, as there is no way to stop the system I described above from coming closer every day.
Something to ponder as a final point: Do you truly believe that sales of copyrighted works are related to "quality" of these works? If they are not, one has to ask whether the finantial benefits of the copyright system are really increasing the quality of creative works or in fact diluting the 'quality' with a vast swarm of people who are financially motivated rather than artisticly.
Several of my collegues spent an extra year on their degree because of active Bridge playing clubs at their dormitories.
I think what you mean is we need better applications supporting PDF. The format has nothing to do with the applications, slimy or not. The format is actually pretty benign, well documented and open to anyone to use. Adobe Acrobat is a different thing altogether.
So don't blame Adobe for the format, blame them for the POS that is Acrobat Reader. You are basically blaming the W3C for Internet Explorer!
...I find it very hard to believe every customer you have only runs pirated Windows and Office.
Man, what world are you living in? I don't think I have seen a legal copy of Windows running outside of an office in my entire life! Of course, the same goes for Office. I suppose I should mention that I am a lecturer at a university, and that I count legal installs of software for home use as inside the office. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I live in South Africa, but come on -- who has the cash to buy Windows, Office, PhotoShop, Autocad, etc? And yet my students have all of that and more. In fact, I think most of my collegues have this kind of stuff at home too.
I am all Linux all the time except on my Mac laptop, but there is a lot of pressure to install the stuff "everyone else" is using, and the argument most often used is, I'll just lend you the CD, no problem.
I think you missed his point. Music industry people claim that each copy represents a lost sale. He was simply stating that neither of his options would result in an extra sale. Even if he "learned to sing", they would still not be selling the disc, so having a copy is doing him good but not costing them a sale as they claim. That was his point.
It seems strange to me that many people are so worried about companies, but not all that worried about themselves. Ask yourself this: why does the music industry have the right to continue to make money the way they did ten years back. Times have changed, and they need to find a business model that works with the reality of today. A large part of their plan seems to be to change people by 'educating' them about the evils of copyright enfringement, perhaps we will see a new equilibrium point where they are still making money. Or perhaps artists will start making less money off CD sales and more from live performances which can't be copied.
So get off your high horse and participate in the discussion.
I don't see how it is "more likely" that in a whole piece about not resisting evil persons, giving them your cloak as well as your tunic, walking the extra mile, Jesus is advocating standing on equal footing with your attacker. I am aware of the interpretations of each of these points, but I must say that there is a sense of loving your neighbour, not taking revenge and overcoming through love in my reading of the Bible. I know that people say this attitute is unworkable, but the 10 commandments (never lied to anyone?) are pretty unworkable, too.
It's not so wrong for people to strive for ideals they may never achieve. Those of you who run to the ultra-pragmatic 'I do what I can to survive' dogma -- we live in a luxurious time, we can afford morals.
Pascal is a very well-designed language that features some really fast compilers. It may not be ideal for lower-level coding (the kind of thing you would use C for), but as a workhorse to solve numeric problems or for useful applications, it is really quite good. Some of the newer compilers also generate very efficient code. You can say what you want about Wirth languages, but the man knew something about them.
Anyway -- I never really understood why people were so down on Pascal. It's legible (if a bit verbose) and has nice support for modules and the like. Perhaps you have no motivation to move away from the language you are currently using, but people using Pascal (or Delphi) may have no motivation to move away from them either.
Well, some records can spend 14 years on the charts. Does that mean both the 70s and the 80s guys like stasis or does it mean the record is damn good? Also, on a contradictory note: charts weren't the same then as now. There was a lot of bribing of record stations etc, so the real music scene was happening in clubs. You would have to club to know the cool bands, 'cos a lot of times they were bringing out records really fast, basing recorded material on club gigs (simon and garfunkle, for instance brought out about a record a year). If you read a few biographies (I recently read a Jim Morisson biography) you will realise that there were real lives being lived back then, and especially in the 60s, real angst and real search for enlightenment. Don't believe you live in any kind of 'special age'.
You said: You seem to have problems accepting that words can have more than one meaning.
But in my original post I actually acknowledged exactly that: by saying But, as with all language issues, the distinction is subtle, and word meaning changes to accomodate current usage
Language is defined by usage, not by dictionaries. However, there are points in the evolution of a language where one group of people are used to/accept a certain usage while another is using a different one. This leads to confusion. This is why there will always be threads like this one. It is a matter of active debate (and I don't state my point of view here) where the prescriptive training (basics like spelling and common idiom) should end and where language exploration should start. In any change of meaning, one runs the risk of coming across as uneducated rather than enlightened. This goes both ways. If I were trying to express myself in Ebonics, I would probably seem uneducated in the ways of the language just as much as a kid who grew up speaking it would seem uneducated to a college lit major.
Sorry for the monologue, but I thought that I had stayed remarkably impartial in my post and you atacked me on one point where I thought I was quite well defended.
Perhaps a deeper look into irony than the dictionary can provide may explain some of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony
Anyway - most of the people who believe irony is being misused lately believe that true irony has to do with incongruity and double audience. So when you need a knife when you have a lot of spoons, that's not ironic, because you don't expect for there to be knives instead of spoons. Perhaps not finding a knife in a knife shop, having told your friends you were going to the knife shop, and having them know it's gone out of business would be ironic. Alanis just lists a lot sometimes unfortunate coincidences. An unfortunate coincidence is not ironic unless one expected a different outcome and someone was in on the joke.
But, as with all language issues, the distinction is subtle, and word meaning changes to accomodate current usage.
I would have just used xls2csv and some filter utils to get the format I need. I guess that's more of the unix way.
Automated memory mgmt via garbage collection has been a feature of Lisp and many other languages since the early 1960s http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/j-jt p10283/