Posted on 11/01/2010 5:28:00 AM PDT by ShadowAce
Average people, the kind you see walking down the street, buying milk at the grocery store and frequenting Walmart, Kmart and other similar retail chains are a very fickle bunch. They are also very demanding. Not one of them would accept damaged goods willingly. If they buy a television and it doesn't work they take it back. If they buy an item of clothing and it is damaged in some manner it is sent back post haste. If they buy a piece of meat and two hours later it is green, that piece of meat is forcefully returned to the butcher (LLBC).
Yet, when it comes to computers. These same people who throw a raving screaming tantrum when a button on their new DVD player is loose will accept a computer with a faulty operating system.
Sure they will throw the same tantrums with a physical computer fault however, on the software side of things they will accept without a murmur and actually request to install the most bug ridden, virus infected and unstable operating systems in the history of computing. They will use these systems and not care that it is sending spam to the four corners of the world (why do people say that? The world is round) or some fifty odd viruses are siphoning off their passwords, credit card numbers and personal details for sale on the black market.
Even when these people know about spam and malicious programs they still allow those into their system, and live with it crashing and running slow for months. When asked why they allow this to happen they shrug their shoulders and say they do not know. Yet most of these people are intelligent, successful at their trade and are able to raise families. When it comes to computers however, it seems that their brain shuts down and they revert back to Neanderthal ways of thinking.
WHY?
I don't blame these people. As much as I become exasperated at uncle Pron Surfer or cousin Email Link Clicker when I have to reinstall their operating system for the n'th time I still don't blame them. They are simply a product of their environment. It is the environment which I blame.
The environment, created by software and service companies, that end (L)users don't know how to properly use a computer, is responsible for this sheeple mentality. These companies act on the premise that people are dumb and design their operating systems and programs on that principle. Throughout the years of this patronizing by the software companies, the average person has been trained like Pavlov's dog to accept sub-quality products.
The attitudes that people have in that computers crash, viruses and malware are a fact of life and programs are always buggy are brought about when these software companies release improperly tested software. When the end (L)user rings up to complain they are told that unfortunately this is how it is and things will be different in the next release. The customer has no other choice but to accept this and thus the brain washing begins.
If I remember correctly, the computers of yesteryear were of higher quality and far more reliable than the latest personal computers of today. The excuse that the code is more complex and does more does not wash with me. The real reason is that not enough quality control is exercised.
The design of these operating systems is also at fault. They are designed on the assumption that computer users are dumb and just want things to work without having to think. So these companies try to build an operating system which does all of the customers thinking for them. The computer is then turned from a useful, powerful and complex machine into a mysterious beige box which does nothing very well except chew up resources. It pains me to think that computers which were less powerful than a modern mobile phone could send people to the moon while modern computers, thousands of times more powerful, are harnessed into sending spam, propagating viruses and surfing pron.
I think it is a huge waste and a crying shame that people have this attitude about computer software. What can be done about this? I think that, as with everything, it starts with education. Educating people that they don't have to live with this computing situation. Educating people that a computer is more than a black box. Educating people that, like the family car, a computer is a complex machine which needs regular maintenance. Finally, educating people that they do not have to accept sub-standard software and that there are alternatives available.
That is the main reason people return faulty goods in stores. They know there are alternatives. The software alternatives are hidden and slandered by companies so the end users do not feel they have a choice. Once they realise they have a choice then perhaps the quality of software will return to it's previous level of excellence. Perhaps then, people will be thought of as valued customers, instead of dumb (L)users. What do you think?
"I get paid to support Windows, I use Linux to get work done."
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I gave my extended family an ultimatum — get a Mac or I drop support. They did and now my phone never rings.
Article happily read on my Linux laptop:)
Essentially--"No more support, no matter what!"
lol!
I gave a few copies of System Mechanic as Christmas presents a couple years ago to relatives, a lot of calls stopped.
Fuel burn rate and trajectory calculations - easy.
Decoding H.262 video at 30 frames per second - hard
What a steaming pile. The average person doesn't know his system is faulty. They don't know how use basic, basic html, or even understand the difference between the BIOS on the computer, windows and a program. This "borg" thinks that everyone should be as geeky as him and actually writes this piece insulting over 90% of computer users. Why? My guess is he has a huge ego.
Testing whether a ship can withstand the space environment—harder than decoding video.
We bout a Toshiba notebook and connected it to the TV but then when it was first turned on in the morning it would soon crash to the blue screen of death but then after that run good for the rest of the day. My wife said to send it in to be fixed but for a few months I was sure I could eventually fix it.
After downloading drivers and patches and surfing the internet, I started messing with startup and configure files and my wife said: you don't have a single clue what you are doing. And I said this is true but as long as you keep a backup then it will be okay.
Finally on Saturday the notebook would not start at all. So I switched it with my wife's computer. That fixed it.
Exactly.
This "borg" thinks that everyone should be as geeky as him and actually writes this piece insulting over 90% of computer users. Why?
Because, like me, he thinks computers are a complex tool that should require training to use. It's like giving a novice a TIG welder and some metal, then buying the first car he produces.
Computers are not toys, as much as most people want to see them that way.
So in other words, why do people use computers?
And please save the “if they had a Mac or a Linux PC, there wouldn’t be any issues”. That just shows the person saying it knows less about computers than the people who keep screwing up their own machines.
Well--not really. You just moved the problem away from your daily experience.
Mainly they use computers because they see them as appliances or as a game machine. It is neither.
As for myself, I would never own anything from Apple, as I started out on the old 8088 machines with DOS.
I have been hosting a visitor for the last two days.
He came with his apple laptop. While I got him connected to
the network, many things that he wanted to do would not work, such as Yahoo.
He gave up and went back to my Windows XP computer.
I know nothing about Apple, but he claims that .exe files do not work on his Apple, and thinks that is why he can not use Yahoo... I do not have a clue.
I am sure the Apple lovers are of a select esoteric group.
Piss on them. I go with what works for me and universally
the world standard.
What's a "surfing pron"?
It is scary what fundamental things people simply don’t understand. However it helps technical types like me make a few bucks when the magic box has a (usually) simple problem.
The people who designed the computers/software for Apollo had it easy. They had a well-defined set of peripheral hardware to deal with, a very limited set of tasks to perform, and plenty of money to pay for exhaustive testing.
The designers of modern operating systems don’t have these advantages.
In this case, "surfing" is a verb, not an adjective. "Pron" is a common misspelling of "porn."
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