Re: [Lilux-help] Inventory

Hi, On Wed, 30 Jun 2004, Patrick Kaell wrote: [MacOS X & simple install, password protection] Ouch, if that was too much... Well, there is a field named "usability". I'm no expert at all in this field, but I can assure you that people developing GNOME, KDE etc. have at a minimum read over some texts on this. Actually, yes. I think the main problem is marketing. A computer is a complex machine, much more so than most others normal people deal with. I don't think it really has to dumb down to the level of such users as you're talking about. It is absolutely normal that people have to learn how to use some machine - why shouldn't they learn a minimum about the computer they use? When there's work to do on the car, I can either do it myself (for simple stuff I'll do it), or ask someone who knows about it (i.e. I go to the garage). Same can apply to the computer. And many users will actually go to a PC shop to get some servicing done. If marketing suggests that a computer is simple to use for anybody to do anything, they're lying, they're raising the expectations a bit too high. The solution is not to make the machine dangerously "dumb" (and no, I don't mean to say that things can't be simplyfied), the solution is to better educate the users. Noone will expect anyone to drive a car without having been schooled in driving and having passed a test. IMHO a PC is more difficult to use than a car. Maybe you can't (easily) kill anyone using a computer, but still, I think it's not too much to ask that people should learn how to use such a tool correctly. As long as people make this kind of mistakes on some isolated PC without interaction, it's one thing. As soon as there is interaction, especially a connection to Internet, they become a danger to everyone around - this is the very reason why we have these floods of viruses, worms, trojans etc. At this point, really, I've got very little symphathy left for people who don't even want to learn the most basic notions. That's what I'm saying - there is no "mastering DOS or WINDOWS or OS/2 in a day", that's a bold-faced lie. I've used all of these, I've got to know them quite well (part of the reason why I like Linux so much), and I know for a fact that any of these, even DOS, are much too complex to "master" in a day. No. And if anyone believes they can become a Windows admin overnight, I've god really bad news for them. Unfortunately, too many PHBs have that kind of illusion. Greets Eric