A little surprise in the Ubuntu motd

Posted Jul 5, 2017 19:27 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333)
In reply to: A little surprise in the Ubuntu motd by sasha
Parent article: A little surprise in the Ubuntu motd

> the motd message under discussion looks completely cryptic for me.

It's cryptic for everybody.

A little surprise in the Ubuntu motd

Posted Jul 6, 2017 1:19 UTC (Thu) by zuki (subscriber, #41808) [Link] (9 responses)

"How A built B using C" is a fairly standard pattern. Even if I have no idea what A, B, and C are, I can guess that it's some off-topic bit of trivia.

A little surprise in the Ubuntu motd

Posted Jul 7, 2017 11:50 UTC (Fri) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link] (8 responses)

But Silicon Valley is a place, not a person or an organisation. So how can a place build anything?

A little surprise in the Ubuntu motd

Posted Jul 7, 2017 12:26 UTC (Fri) by laarmen (subscriber, #63948) [Link] (1 responses)

I think here they refer to a TV Series titled Silicon Valley.

A little surprise in the Ubuntu motd

Posted Jul 13, 2017 14:32 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

Which causes major comprehension problems. I speak English natively (that's English, not American), so the reference to "Silicon Valley" would completely flummox me as I would understand it as a place. I've never heard of the TV series.

That's one of the reasons foreign call centres are so unpopular - not only do foreign accents (even if the English is impeccable) make them hard to understand, but the cultural understanding is missing. I have no trouble understanding a strong Scottish accent despite it being very different from mine, but some of the worst experiences I've had have been when I've had no trouble at all understanding the words, but the meaning escaped me completely. (Or the guy at the other end had the same problem in reverse ...)

Cheers,
Wol

A little surprise in the Ubuntu motd

Posted Jul 9, 2017 23:41 UTC (Sun) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link] (5 responses)

The prefix "HBO's" may point out to a halfway attentative reader that it has something to do with TV.

Well, maybe not, if one doesn't know what "HBO" is -- but than one has different communication problems because then this is a different planet than most other IT affine persons live on.

(FTR: I do not live in the USA and have no idea what kind of HBO production this is.)

A little surprise in the Ubuntu motd

Posted Jul 13, 2017 14:36 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (4 responses)

FYI I have no idea what an HBO is ...

And acronyms - especially TLAs, often have multiple meanings. The number of times I've seen a familiar TLA in an unfamiliar setting and wondered what on earth it meant ...

To me, I'd guess an HBO was a H... Buy Out, some financial term ...

Cheers,
Wol

A little surprise in the Ubuntu motd

Posted Jul 13, 2017 14:59 UTC (Thu) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link] (3 responses)

> FYI I have no idea what an HBO is ...

HBO is the company that produces Game of Thrones, True Blood, The Sopranos, Sex and the City, Six Feet Under, The Wire and a gag of other widely acclaimed TV series.

I assume you have heard of them, even if you don't look TV. (I look TV very seldom, and still have heard of them -- in fact, for some of the series named above I have no idea about their content -- nevertheless, it's quite hard to miss any reporting about this pop-cultural phenomen.)

A little surprise in the Ubuntu motd

Posted Jul 13, 2017 15:49 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (2 responses)

Round my neck of the woods, where US TV content is often bought in by local firms, those are usually known as Sky shows, not HBO shows. If you don't watch any of them, and therefore haven't seen the HBO branding in the credits, you could well not realise that they're not Sky productions.

I'm only aware of HBO because I used to work in the broadcasting industry; had HBO never been a potential customer of my employer, I'd probably not be aware of their existence.

A little surprise in the Ubuntu motd

Posted Jul 20, 2017 0:03 UTC (Thu) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link] (1 responses)

HBO was far far more relevant in the early days of cable TV, when it was "How you watched movies that were not 8+ years old at home". Lately, it's pretty ignorable.

A little surprise in the Ubuntu motd

Posted Jul 20, 2017 8:45 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

Even back then, HBO was a non-entity over here - the equivalent was Sky Movies. To recognise HBO, you need to be attuned to American TV culture; either because you're a serious fan of shows that HBO produces (and thus are aware of fansites telling you that this is a HBO production), or because US cable TV was significant to you for other reasons (lived in the US, worked in the industry etc).