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From: fcrary@rintintin.Colorado.EDU (Frank Crary)
Newsgroups: alt.os.linux,comp.os.linux.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Linux or FreeBSD (or something else?)
Date: 7 Apr 1997 01:03:44 GMT
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Lines: 54
Message-ID: <5i9h5g$et4@lace.colorado.edu>
References: <slrn5kaf5t.11r.c_chaos@chaosnet.wahnapitae.on.ca> <01bc4136$20f68ec0$78c5a9c6@win95> <3345FD90.4A3@kashmir.net> <3347ce19.0@news.intercenter.net>
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NNTP-Posting-User: fcrary
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au alt.os.linux:19891 comp.os.linux.misc:168350 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:38604
In article <3347ce19.0@news.intercenter.net>,
Ron Bickers <rbickers@gemini-new.intercenter.net> wrote:
>: Yes, but you're making it sound like that's a good thing! Maybe people
>: that take things like that for granted shouldn't have one in the first
>: place. I agree with you that MS did a great job at gearing themselves
>: toward the average user, but I don't think that people _should_ take
>: their OS for granted. In my opinion, it's a good thing that setting
>: up misc. stuff in UNIX can be somewhat complicated. If you don't
>: already, maybe it will make you stop and think about how your 'puter
>: works. And that can be a really enlightening experience. Think
>: about it.
>How many of our mothers know how a car works under the hood? How many care
>how it works?
How many people are in serious trouble if their car brakes down in the
middle of nowhere? Treating something like a black box is fine, if
it always works the way it's supposed to, or even if it fails on
rare occasions with support easily available. That certainly doesn't
apply to Windows 95. Even nice and stable UNIX operating systems are
less reliable that the average car. Worse, people who use computers
without understanding them can be a problem for other people as well.
For example, a friend of mine is working on a search engine development
project. One of the people she works with (doing mostly data entry)
treats computers as black boxes, and frequently complains about the
system "eating a file". I'm not a fan of Windows (they use NT) but
even it doesn't randomly trash files with that frequency. But for
someone with this sort of black box attitude, "The computer eats
my files all the time" is a natural reaction and, "What went wrong
and how can I fix it" is not. That makes life harder on everyone
working with, or using the same system as, such a person.
>...How many don't deserve to drive a car because they don't
>know how it works?
Deserve is an entirely different matter. I think this sort of
attitude is stupid and harmful, but I'm not about to tell anyone
they don't deserve to use a computer (or a car, or any other
complex thing which they don't understand.)
>I don't like when people don't care how things work, but realize, if we
>all had to know how everything we use works, we wouldn't use much.
I disagree. There are degrees of understanding. For example, I couldn't
fix a serious hardware problem on my motherboard, but I know enough
about it to diagnose the problem. I can't think of anything I own
or use that I'm totally clueless about. I'm not an expert on any
of them, but I don't think there are little gnomes running around inside
my CPU, either. For all a Windows 95 user sees of the system, they
might as well believe in gnomes... The gnomes getting malicious or
going on strike would certainly explain alot of things...
Frank Crary
CU Boulder