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“Down” used in that sense is computer jargon. “Broken” is universally better understood, at the small cost of some accuracy which doesn’t matter to the customer
by jl6 6y ago
“Down” used in that sense is computer jargon. “Broken” is universally better understood, at the small cost of some accuracy which doesn’t matter to the customer.
- johnsillings 6y agoIt matters to me
- tenebrisalietum 6y agoWhy? What are you going to do different if you are told it is broken versus down for maintenance? You're still not getting any ice cream?
- istorical 6y agoOne implies neglect or incompetence, the other implies a limitation of a system. Some people would look down on a franchise or a restaurant or a business that had super high failure rates. Like if the comedy section of Netflix went down every 3 times you tried to visit that section. As opposed to Netflix having some system level limitation requiring them to perform some magical dance and perform some spell every few days to keep the server room from exploding. You would perhaps give Netflix more leeway and not feel as much disdain and switch to a competitor if you knew that the comedy section being down every once in a while was some legitimate limit the engineers had found and not just a shoddy organization. But if you just got some nginx 500 error page randomly you would be like 'wow this site is hot garbage'.
- asquabventured 6y agoSir, this is a McDonald's.
- kelnos 6y agoThis is McDonald's we're talking about. No one walks into one expecting spit-and-polish and Michelin-starred service.
- thenewwazoo 6y agoThe French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre was sitting in a cafe when a waitress approached him: "Can I get you something to drink, Monsieur Sartre?" Sartre replied, "Yes, I'd like a cup of coffee with sugar, but no cream". Nodding agreement, the waitress walked off to fill the order and Sartre returned to working. A few minutes later, however, the waitress returned and said, "I'm sorry, Monsieur Sartre, we are all out of cream -- how about with no milk?"
- brokenmachine 6y agoI don't get it.
- gtirloni 6y agoIn the ice cream situation, broken and down mean the same thing. In the Sartre anecdote, milk and cream mean the same thing.
- DrScump 6y agoNo, it was a logic error on the part of the server. Since he requested without cream, their lack of cream was irrelevant.
- pgcj_poster 6y agoSartre believed that it was impossible to abdicate the responsibility of making choices, because to choose to do nothing is still a choice -- in other words, "nothing" is a kind of something. So one might humorously imagine that Sartre would also think that "no cream" is a kind of something that could be different from "no milk."
- feintruled 6y agoExcellent! I once went to a local burger place - they have a menu full of the various types of burgers, all loaded with everything. My kids are super picky, so I asked for a burger, with nothing except the burger and the bun. Server looked confused - but which burger did I want? It became apparent that while I could ask for a preset item and ask for removals, I could not actually go fully off menu. So I had to ask for "the cheese burger, without the cheese" (as somehow distinct to say, the bacon burger, without the bacon). I laughed at the ludicrousness of that, but now I see they were channeling Sartre! In retrospect it would have been a truly beautiful absurdity if see had come back and said "sorry, we have no cheese, do you want no bacon?"
- nocman 6y agoNo, that's by no means originated with computers. People have said "the phone lines are down" for years, meaning landline phone service was temporarily unavailable (often when no actual physical cables were knocked down off of poles, etc, though that might be where the use of the term originated in that case). I'm sure there are plenty of other examples of using 'down' to mean the same kind of thing (all of which predated computer use being common in a regular person's life).
- noir_lord 6y agoIirc it goes back to telegraphs, the line been physically down would prevent them working and it’s hung around since. Like hang up, when was the last time I hung up a phone, that style of phone went out of fashion here 30 or more years ago.
- jacobush 6y agoAckshully it's from the even older phones with separate earpiece and fixed microphone. You'd really hang up the earpiece on these old ones.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mcphage 6y agoYou'd physically hang up wall phones, even when they had a combined microphone and speaker: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/515Mj67cq3L._SL1004_.jpg https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/515Mj67cq3L...
- jacobush 6y agoYes, but what I meant was that the expression is likely even older than from the ones which went out of style 30 years ago.