On Wed, 5 Mar 2008 16:17:14 -0800 (PST) "Edward K. Ream" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> My experience shows why Linux is not exactly taking the world by > storm. Heh, I think the reasons may be a little more various and complicated than that. You downloaded generic source code, compiled it, and as root ran make install - and version 2.5.2 of a package got tangled with 2.5.1 of the same package. Downloading, unarchiving, compiling, and then installing software is not something a newbie is likely to do by accident :-) Contrast a relative of mine, computer illiterate, who, using Vista, associated .zip files with Picasa. A mistake like that only takes a click or two. How do you undo it? It was obvious how you could change the association to something else, but not how you'd reset the .zip file opening behavior. I suggested he try opening them with IE, that caused an IE window to appear and disappear about 3 times a second, too fast to close or to catch in the Task Manager. The transparency was cool though - and it's Windows, so needing to reboot is expected :-). How do you fix the .zip association? Well, you just run regedit... When was the last time you saw an ad. for Linux? And what's the point of Linux, anyway? To be a better Windows? Why bother? OpenOffice is great, but I think the whole approach is flawed. The mainstream sells computers by telling you anything you want to do is simple, and all you need to do is point and click. This approach limits you to only doing simple things... sure you can code and create all sorts of wonderful things in Windows, but not because of anything Windows is offering, but instead by adding components which acknowledge the need for more complex interactions on your part. Who, apart from two year olds, limits their communication to pointing? You don't think I can drift any further off topic, but just watch me... What bugs me is that it would only take a little bit of learning for most people to get much more out of computers. I'm not talking about people on this list, but the general public. Think how much better people you know would do if they just understood the basic concept of a 'file', and how they're stored on disks and can be moved around with generic tools. But the mainstream tries to shield people from even this small mental effort, so various packages come up with a dozen different obtuse ways to organize people's stuff for them, costing them the opportunity to become more productive and more able to synthesize. My relative's major hurdle was working out how to move images between Picasa and 'My Pictures' - I couldn't explain the separation didn't exist - remember the expectation is that nothing is even slightly more complex than a couple of mouse clicks. I'm not knocking Picasa, I think it's cool. I don't think you should need to know all the intricacies of a major programming language to interact with computers, but I think there should be some level above mouse waving that allows people to get more done more quickly. Computers are supposed to deal with repetition for you, not present you with "repeat this action again and again to earn your cheese" type experiences. Even the simplest 'for each item in this set do this' is out of most people's reach, unless the exact thing they want to do is done by a particular application. Computers, or more specifically operating systems, could have evolved differently, not to Linux, but to some middle ground, where vendors aren't afraid to admit that doing complex things of your own devising requires some effort on your part. If you make that admission then it would be ok to provide generic, reusable tools for doing these things, but the admission isn't made, and the tools aren't provided. Hmm, perhaps I start to see why people have blogs - they give you somewhere to put this kind of stuff without other people having to read it :-) Cheers -Terry --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "leo-editor" group. To post to this group, send email to leo-editor@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/leo-editor?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
