On Wed, 10 Mar 1999, George Bonser wrote:
>On Thu, 11 Mar 1999, Richard Lyon wrote:
>
>> Yes I am new to linux and like dselect. Gives one a good grasp on what is
>> going on and makes installing packages a breeze. Maybe we should form the
>> dselect self-help group to try and convince ourselves that dselect is no
>> good.
>> Maybe repeating the following 500 times every morning will help:
>
>Good idea. I think people have gotten lazy when it comes to computers. If
>what they are doing is not immediately obvious then somehow they think the
>program is broken. The current mindset is that if you have to read
>instructions, it is too complicated. They are willing to sacrifice
>fine-grained control for simplicity. All one has to do is READ the
>directions and dselect becomes very easy to use ... but that is the part
>they all skip.
Re: "They are willing to sacrifice fine-grained control for simplicity"
But it shouldn't be an "exclusive or". As time has passed, I have come
to respect the people who view computers as tools. They don't want to
have to learn, they don't want to have to configure, and they don't want
fine-grained control. They just want to run mathematica, or type some
documents, etc.
Now, if we decide that we are not interested in those types of
users, that's fine. With a limited amount of resources, we might just
decide that we'd rather put the time into other things.
It is neither fair nor reasonable, though, to dismiss them as
lazy. It is just not worth the time for some people to read docs or
tweek config files when they don't have to. (And they don't with RedHat
and Windows... at least, not as much)
-Michael
Michael Stenner Office Phone: 919-660-2513
Duke University, Dept. of Physics [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Box 90305, Durham N.C. 27708-0305
