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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To me, it’s a sort of miracle that a 1.6 GHz general processor, running an operating system, having to perform a whole lot of little-noticed things going on under the hood, could come even close to real-time decoding of a (fill-in-your-choice type of) video stream.
That's okay. When your vroom-vroom stops working, you probably take it to the magical cave where the sorcerer in greasy overalls recharges it with faerie dust.
And here, 40 years later, we still don't have a perfect operating system, in spite of what the worshipers say.
I’m on my second PC in fifteen years.
My first Dell started out with windows 3.1, upgraded to 98, upgraded again to Windows XP. The little trooper ran pretty much 24/7 for over 10 years. Never had a single problem with it. Added some RAM and storage space to it a couple of times, but no software problems.
Second Dell is now a couple years old and has been just as reliable, so far, started out with Windows XP and now upgraded to 7.
I always had/have some kind of antivirus, some paid for, some free, set it to automatically update both the programs and the antivirus, and it was virtually invisible and maintenance free.
I have gotten exactly one virus in life, and it was my fault for clicking it. No software can protect a person who is dead set on installing a virus. :) Never have trouble with spyware or malware either. No check has ever found any. Not sure where people get that stuff, but I don’t get it where I go... and I’m on the internet ALL DAY.
Punch line. It works pretty good, and it’s just not all that hard to keep a computer running Windows running good. Don’t try to dink with it all the time, keep it updated, and maybe stay away from porn sites, and it works really really well. :~)
Inertia is a powerful force. How many of us are typing on QWERTY keyboards when DVORAK keyboards have a more efficient and logical layout?
Until their mechanic quits, or the farmers stop producing, that is.
Hah! Not so fast....
oh, I thot this wuz an article on liberalizm
Well I am a sysadmin at a location using both Macs and Windows systems both on the desktops and server side.
Macs are reasonably compatible these days, certainly far better than in the past. They can be integrated into the networks pretty easily now, and I believe the latest Mac Office is going to be pretty solid (the last one was a stinker). You do tend to lose some functionality on the Mac versions of Office depending on the vagaries of Microsoft at the time. However a Word document will pretty much be a Word document and will be platform independent. If you are big on Macros and VB scripting, you might have issues (I know the last Mac Office was completely lacking in this regard, I am unsure if it has been addressed in the new release).
The main thing you might miss on a Mac is specialty software, but honestly not enough people use that in my experience to justify the PCs given their propensity to get nailed with malware. Also if you are a gamer, the selection available on Macs is much, much smaller.
And stay away from freeware.
I suspect most of the problems with crashes and malware comes from freeware people install. Including, btw, free antivirus tools.
Don’t try to get by on the cheap installing free crap someone wrote in their basement and funded with adware, and most people will be fine. :~)
The problem here is that the author assumes most people want to, or should want to, be computer geeks and tune up and maintain the OS. This is similar to thinking that everyone should want to be knowledgeable enough about their car’s inner workings to rebuild the engine.
Most people, including me, just want to use their computer to do stuff (or their car to go places), they don’t want to have to become experts at what makes them go. They want to operate the programs that do stuff.
Personally, I would prefer it if I were unaware my computer had an operating system. The ideal OS would be quite invisible.
>And here, 40 years later, we still don’t have a perfect operating system, in spite of what the worshipers say.
Well heck, it’s over 200 years later and we don’t have even close to a perfect government. I’d cut the computer geeks some slack.
Too bad they can’t come up with Ultra-High-Quality programming.
A “faulty” operating system is the fault of the user and the user alone. Even Linux can be easily compromised if the end user doesn’t know what he is doing (i.e., runs as root, etc.).
Then along came Bill Gates, with his "we will fix it in the next release" mentality. It is pure laziness in my opinion.
I also don't discount "the farm the code out to the cheapest programmer in India or China" mentality. I have supervised these type of programmers. While they are good, they take shortcuts and you must be ever vigilant to make sure the code is hardy enough to with stand the real world.
In addition, I look at our office where we can barely get the system backed up in 24 hours. A lot of the time it doesn't make it. The smaller systems simply can't do as much as the big old machines used to.
The problem comes when people start putting junk into the gas tank, or throwing the latest cool thing under the hood to make it go faster, or ride more comfortably, or something else they have no business doing--because they are not trained. Then they expect the local mechanic to just fix it.
Even mechanics get tired of the stupid things people do to their cars.
"Accidents" are a different matter. A little better, but not a big step up. They are always preventable.
This is why I've been going off on this thread about the users and the "appliance" mindset.
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