On Wed, Jan 05, 2011 at 11:01:03AM -0500, Miles Fidelman wrote: > Lisi wrote: > >On Wednesday 05 January 2011 15:15:43 Camaleón wrote: > >>What would you think if a person tells you that he thought his car was > >>going to be fed "automatically"? Hey, he didn't know there were oil > >>stations that provide such facilities and he also thought that being year > >>2011 the cars do not need fuel (nor any other power source) to be started > >They know that the computer needs electricity and that the car needs petrol. > >I doubt that most people know more than that. > Well, I would hope they also know that their car needs (at least in the US): > - scheduled maintenance > - an annual inspection > - a registration sticker > - insurance > As well as: > - at some point, they took a driving test, and some of the > rules-of-the-road stuck > - they need to renew their license > - drive somewhere in the vicinity of the speed limit > - stop for red lights and stop signs > - don't drive under the influence > - don't sit in a closed garage with the motor running > - how to change a tire (or at least, how to call AAA) > > The analogy to cars is a good one. It seems reasonable to expect a > computer user to acquire a set of skills akin to what one needs to > drive and maintain a car. It's probably not reasonable to require a > computer user to acquire skills akin to obtaining a pilot's license. >
Actually, I think some of those listed car analogy givens aren't so widely remembered. Nevertheless, cars may be easier to understand for the completely inexperienced layperson. Push the one peddle, go forward, push the other, stop. Turn the wheel left, . . . Yet it remains difficult to get it through to some drivers' that they could kill somebody. I still have some faith that the majority of idiot drivers don't consciously want to kill, or at least don't want the legal ramifications. Saving data, regardless of importance, seems to pale by comparison. :) -- Regards, Freeman "Microsoft is not the answer. Microsoft is the question. NO (or Linux) is the answer." --Somebody -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20110106193541.ga5...@europa.office