greed (was)

[Brandon J. Van Every]

> From: Heiko Wundram [mailto:heikowu at ceosg.de]
>
> Tell me, why is it that we keep hiding the complexity of some
> (computer-)system behind a masquerade of "user-friendliness"?
> People out there don't know crap about their computer,

To a newbie, Microsoft Windows is Bad.  Linux is Orders Of Magnitude
Worse.

> I always compare this to driving.

Computers are much more complicated than cars.  Computers are not
consumer technology, although Microsoft does try to push it in that
direction.  Linux people don't.  Look at a game console.  A 3 year old
can operate it.

> I could name hundreds of others of such examples where users
> didn't even
> know the most basic rules of networking and owning a computer.
>
> Maybe you can't make money with an engineering approach,

What you are advocating / grousing about is not an engineering approach.
It is a manual labor approach.  You are asking everyone to be smart,
experienced, and knowledgeable about a *lot* of details of a machine's
operation.  That is stupid.  It is not the real world.  In the real
world, once you have to know 30 things you're screwed.  That's why a lot
of engineers don't understand usability.  They think it's ok to solve
all the problems by simply knowing everything about what they're doing.
They think learning this stuff is fun.  They are wrong.


Cheers,                         www.3DProgrammer.com
Brandon Van Every               Seattle, WA

20% of the world is real.
80% is gobbledygook we make up inside our own heads.