Friday, October 29, 1999, 1:37:24 AM, Thomas wrote:
> They have to breath, wehtehr they want to or not. They don't have to
> use comptuers - "we" want them to. For commercial, political, or other
> reasons. The bone won't walk to the dog. (German saying, meaning if
> you want to sell something, you have to go to the market, not tell
> the market to come and see you).
That's just it, we don't have to go to the market, either. There is
enough of a "market" out there to go for a niche, not the general market. In
the goo-goo eyed craze to get the large numbers one misses the very real point
that the competition is too high for those numbers and that they can take a
different angle make better money.
Besides, the bone does walk the dog. Look at Linux. It was built the way
"we" wanted it built and now the market is breaking down Linux' door.
Furthermore, it was built with *NO* regard to "the market" because it is free.
"The market" is not the end-all, be-all barometer of success.
> Well, the OS is software in my vocabulary, so you are actually saying
> you agree with me? :-))))
No, OS does not equal software. The same software on 6 different OSs could
yield 6 different levels of performance based on the OS. Software runs on an
OS.
> Because they detect the smallest mistake I make. I missing semicolon in
> a Pascal freaks up your programme and you look somewhere completely
> different, for example. Unforgiving beast. ;-)
Ah, well, get the authors to make a better parser, then. I miss
semicolons all the time in Perl and it tells me right where to look. OTOH,
miss a closing bracket and it tells you were it is missing it, but not where
to look to find the opening one. My solution there is vim since vim has a
function (%) that will find the matching pair to any open/close icon for the
language it is in. So when I am missing a } I simply start where perl tells
me I missed one, press %, and see if it matches. When it doesn't, I know
basically where to add one. Same for those pesky ()s when you do things like
foreach $domain (sort(keys(%domains))) or some funky regexp where you have a
lot of parens for multiple keys and backreferences. ;)
> I agree with you here. But that does not prevent me from being
> frustrated at times. Even in Windows, a wrong click and I lost my card
> game.
It worked as expected. For me I would be frustrated at *me*. Here's a
fine example of me being frustrated at a computer. I was coding in perl today
on a project that had to get done. We had crossed-logs from our web server
and I needed to get a good sampling of how many hits were actually crossed.
During the course of programming this script I needed to debug it. Now, the
command-line was as follows:
cat crossed.logs.orig | perl foo.pl > realcount
I just placed a -d after perl to get it to go into debug mode. While
debugging I was telling it to print different variables so I could see what
was going on. Each time I told it to print, however, it would print nothing.
I knew the variables contained data, the flow of the program told me as much.
I spent a good hour or so on that problem, why the debugger was failing. Mind
you, I was dead tired, no sleep, had a hell of a headache and everyone was
busy being festive around me.
Answer, the debugger wasn't failing. All of the print statements I was
issuing in the debugger were going right were I told it to, into the file
named "realcount". Once I took off that redirection it worked fine. My
frustration went from me being tweaked at the computer to me being *REALLY*
tweaked at me.
Now, would I want the computer to somehow have programming to try to
second guess me in this regard? No. Never, ever, ever, EVER, would I want
that. Sure, I lost an hour of headbanging but that was because of my
stupidity. Meanwhile, if there was some second-guessing programmed in, I
would have to defeat it each time I meant to (which would be often, IMHO) and
that would get me to be frustrated at the computer.
People are frustrated at the computer when they should not be. They
should be frustrated at *themselves* for a great many things they misplace to
the computer. As a result, the computer industry has decided to try to
program "intelligence" into the computer which, guess what, frustrates people
because now the computer won't let them do what they did tell it to do.
Computers don't make mistakes, people do. The general public needs to
learn that.
> courses. However, the amount of training that is necessary can be
> "reasonably" reduced - so why insist on leaving it the way it is?
Do you realize that as the "easier" computers become, the time of training
has increased?
> That *would* be unreasonable, but people don't expect that. People
> don't expect that any new member of mankind can go to toilet without
> training.
Incorrect, they do expect to use a computer with no training at all. Just
look at the number of computer stores that boast that you can take their
computer home, plug it in and turn it on. Viola', it works!
C'mon, Thomas, Macintosh has built their meager business on the flimsy
claim that their computers need little-to-no training. People who use macs
have claimed they require no training.
You're trying to bullshit someone who did technical support over the phone
and in person (I did install internet service for people) for almost three
years before I got out of that racket. I am now only 2-3 steps removed from
the customer. I can tell you that it is my absolute experience over tens of
thousands of calls, currently reading hundreds of emails a *day* that the vast
majority of consumerville out there want to use computers with 0 training.
> computer as a tool to simplify things in the "real" world. Logging in,
> type type, until I finally get my account balance, twenty minutes have
> passed. Unnecessary. Waste of time.
I'd love to know what you're doing. Here's my banking experience
1-click to bring up my "apps" launchbar.
1-click to start Quicken.
1-click to get to on-line banking.
1-click to start the connection.
4-5 characters plus a CR for my password.
Wait <1 minute, my latest account transactions are downloaded and I can start
sorting through them.
Excluding loading time it would take me *longer* to say "Computer, log in
and check my account balance" than it does for me to do 4 mouse clicks and 4-5
characters.
> That's the current status. I'll love to see a VCR so user-friendly
> that it is self-explanatory. I don't see a reason how the status quo
> could be defendable.
News flash, VCRs *are* self-explanitory! The vast majority of people
don't want to read the very simple directions. I dunno about you, but for me
"menu" means bring up the menu, up and down arrows move the little pointer,
date, time, duration, channel, all pretty straight forward. That was "too
hard" for the general public.
OK, so now we have VCR+, enter one damned *CODE* and it sets everything
else for you. *THAT* is still too hard.
> computers are this comlicated and you are one of the select few to
Computers are *NOT* complicated. Women, now that is a complicated piece
of equipment!
--
Steve C. Lamb | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your
ICQ: 5107343 | main connection to the switchboard of souls.
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