My butlers and paiges.
GATEWAY TO NET TEN -- Mark Lottor
[Original words and music by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant]
There's a hacker who's sure all that's coax is fast
and he's buying a gateway to net ten.
When he gets it he'll know if the ports are all closed
with a SYN he can get what he sent for.
Ooh ooh ooh ooh, ooh ooh ooh ooh
and he's buying a gateway to net ten.
There's an RFC on the wall but he wants to be sure
cause you know sometimes words have two meanings.
In a note on the page there's a warning that says
sometimes all of our code is broken.
[...snip...]
Yes, a server is a computer (or, well, a process running on a computer) to me as well. I’ve written servers, and I don’t mean I became pen-pals with waitrons.
I’m thinking of Rosie the Robot.
Waitress/waiter. I try to avoid thinking about computers as much as possible.
Pied Piper
A computer. If anything, the confusion in my mind was over whether it was a physical host computer, or a logical software “server” process.
I still think of wait staff as a “waiter” or “waitress”, who often introduce themselves as “I’ll be serving you tonight”; the construct “I’ll be your server tonight” sounds odd to my ear.
I said computer. Twenty years ago, I’d have said waiter. I’m surprised the first response isn’t Hillary.
I’m a programmer, so computer of course. I don’t really think of “server = waitress” anyway.
Computer was the first thing that popped in my head.
Pretty much what I was going to type, other than to add that the volleyball/tennis sense also entered my mind before I opened the thread.
Or waitron, for that matter. I always get an image of some 1960s vision of the future with the WAITRON 2000 robot serving you at the local diner when I hear or see that word. (Thankfully, I don’t see it all that often.)
That said, it’s hard to remember, but it doesn’t feel like “server” is a particularly new word in regards to waiting tables. I’d guess somewhere in the 90s it became popular, along with “flight attendant” replacing “steward” and “stewardess,” although I have a feeling “flight attendant” gained common currency a little before “server.”
As to the OP, I thought computers first.
It was common where I worked in the early 90s.
Unless you tell me the server is down, my first thought is going to be a waiter/waitress.
I’m looking at a computer right now, which skews my answer.
Presidential candidates never get flack for telling secrets to waitstaff.
When I set up the Japanese branch office of a US company, I had to deal with the server.