Hi all,
On Saturday, October 30, 1999, 2:51:35 AM (-5 GMT), Steve scribbled:
> 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.
I agree on this one. They just have to find ways of getting their
product known about by this niche group. I happened to literally
stumbled upon it at www.winfiles.com in search of a decent e-mail
client. I guess that's what happened to most of use here?
> 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.
That's a statement on foundation, which applies only at that level and
to specific developers in the linux community.
However, not even linux is escaping the market influence. Distro
makers who wish to make some money off packaging and supporting their
distros are 'enhancing' linux to make it easier to install and use.
It's all back to money again. In the case of linux, it's money made
off tech support at all levels. If you wish your customers to continue
using linux so you can give them tech support and charge for it, then
you can't ignore their cries for enhancements. The Desktop
environments KDE and Gnome are significantly driven by this open
market. This is where most of the funding is coming from isn't it?
> 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. ;)
Ah, the world of a computing professional. You know, a computer is a
unique tool. It's a complex machine which is quite polar in it's role.
A machine will be in Steve's office being used by him to make money.
He's using it for programming in Perl among other things. The funny
thing about it is that another user, myself for example, who may have
a machine, even more powerful than Steve's in their bedroom or study
at home, will be surfing the internet, writing leisure e-mail,
balancing their home financing with Quicken, creating MP3's, doing
sound sampling and other simple things alone. There are others who
just surf and write e-mail mainly. What level of learning do you
expect from users like that who happen to outnumber the professionals
by far? I can't think of any tool which is used by such polar user
types. Their demands must therefore be radically different and users
sympathetic to either group will always be fussing, especially where
their needs overlap which is on the OS level and with some software
types. Fascinating isn't it?
> 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.
Yeah, from my relatively ignorant POV, with respect to wordprocessors,
I generally switch off these second guess tools. The most annoying
being the one that automatically places a capital letter after a
period. It's infuriating.
> 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.
I installed Office 2000 just the other day and MS Photoeditor was
automatically associated with all the filetypes it could handle. Now
why does a thing like that have to happen without my permission?!!!
Going through the filetypes applet and manually redoing the
associations for some amazing reason didn't work. That was a first for
me which had me suspecting MS. Anyway, I had to reinstall my preferred
image viewer, which by the way asks what associations you'd like to
make, listing the various filetypes that could be handled, in order to
get things back to scratch.
I myself hate automation, especially those which bypass situations
where there is a choice to be made, and in so doing making the choice
for you. This is done to help the clueless but I think it does more
harm than good.
> Computers don't make mistakes, people do. The general public
> needs to learn that.
I think they already know that. This is why when they see the popup
box in win98 that says, "this program has performed an illegal action
...blah blah", they jump back wondering what they were doing wrong. :)
> Do you realize that as the "easier" computers become, the time
> of training has increased?
I don't think they are becoming easier at all. Windows applications
are becoming more and more complex because of their monolithic nature.
It's hard to find a mainstream app that does the one thing that it's
advertised to do. They usually are able to do a myriad of other tasks
(the jack of all trades syndrome) with buttons and menu items to
invoke all these tasks. They clutter the interface, complicating it
and making things harder to learn.
This is why the secretary has her hands full learning Word and
PowerPoint much less having Bash imposed on her as well. They don't
have time to be learning the finer points of the OS. The sysadmin
should simply place the shortcut on the desktop and allow her to learn
what she needs to.
It's the same sort of thing, though a bit different in the typical
home user setting. The home user has to do his own administering and
does appreciate things which help to make life easier, such as install
shields and PnP. Again, these are not perfectly implemented and ca
lead to headaches but have improves greatly over the years esp. with
the ISA bus being used less and less.
> Incorrect, they do expect to use a computer with no training at
> all.
Incorrect. But I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. They just
don't expect to have to learn what *you* expect them to.
> 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!
But it does just that doesn't it? When I got my wife's new Compaq
notebook 3 months ago, she just switched it on and started using it.
She hasn't had to install anything. It just worked. I have only
*uninstalled* a few things for her. To be pedantic, the statement that
'when you turn it on, voila, it works', doesn't mean that you don't
have to learn to use it?
> 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.
I know a *lot* of mac users who never make such a claim. They just
smugly say it's easier to use and learn to use than an equivalent PC.
> 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.
Well, a lot buy them to take them home to have fun from the very
start. That's the misconception.
--
Regards,
-=Ali=-
>>> Oxymoron: Senatorial Courtesy. <<<
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