"Specifics, Bob."  One of my favorite scenes from any movie is the scene in Phenomenon when John Travolta is being interviewed by Brent Spiner (Dr. Bob) to assess his intelligence.  

Perhaps its just my engineer-type logic that finds it so appealing and humorous.  But for me those scenarios pop up on a daily basis.  For example, today I was sending an email with a Microsoft Word document attached.  That sounds benign, except for the extension - .docx.  In case you are... uninformed, docx is Microsoft's OpenXML format available in Microsoft Office.  It's the standard format for documents created with the newest version of Microsoft Office.  Which brings me to my point.

I stated in the email that the attachment is a Microsoft Word 2008 document.  Wha?  Hold up.  I'm sending this to a person using Windows and Office 2007.  They'll likely think I'm daft if I call it that.  So, I changed the wording to say it's Word OpenXML format, which will likely trigger the "hey, that's the new office 2007 .docx format" thought.  The thing is, I created the document using Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac OS X.  So, to me it is Word 2008.  To non-Mac people - heck, to most people - it's Office 2007.  The fact is, it's neither - it's OpenXML.

This sort of thing happens all of the time, of course: Kleenex / tissue; Coke / cola; google / search; band-aid / adhesive strip; the list goes on.

The point is.... well, there is no specific point, just an observation, I suppose.  Just remember, when you're trying to explain something, no matter how trivial, to an engineer you just can _not_ be too specific.

Cheers,

Goody