Posted on 12/25/2007 5:28:49 AM PST by Kaslin
When I bought one of these small, cheap, old-fashioned cathode-ray TV sets on sale to watch while on my exercise machine, I had no idea how high-tech and computerized even these obsolete sets had become.
Nor was this a blessing. I could not even turn the set on and get a channel without reading a 60-page instruction book. If the truth be known, I could not do it even after trying to make some sense out of the instructions.
The next time my computer guru came over to help me with my computer problems, I asked him to set up the TV set so that I could turn it on.
After he went through the instruction book and waded through all the high-tech options -- none of which interested me in the slightest -- he set up the TV so that I could do something as elementary as turn on the set and choose a channel to watch.
Unfortunately, this was not an unusual experience. All kinds of computerized products -- cameras, cell phones, even car radios -- have had the same problem.
There must be some blind spot that computer engineers have which prevents them from seeing that (1) most people are not computer engineers, (2) there is no point making simple things complicated, and (3) not everyone is looking for a zillion features to have to wade through to do simple things.
Let's start at square one. What is the first thing you want to do with any computerized product? Turn it on.
Why should that be a problem when people were turning things off and on for generations before there were personal computers?Yet computer engineers seem determined to avoid the very words "off" and "on."
Apparently they feel a need to coin new terms for everything, no matter how simple or well-known those things may be. For computers, the word is "start," which you have to go to for either turning the computer off or on.
With our microwave oven, the word is "power." For my car radio and cell phone, there is no word at all.
For other things, there is the same coining of new words for things people already understand by old words. Printers can be set for "landscape" or "portrait," as if people had never heard of horizontal and vertical.
When I had to have a new radio put into my old car, I told the man who installed it, "I didn't go to M.I.T" and wanted the simplest radio to use that he had.
Yet even the simplest radio he had in stock came with over 100 pages of instructions -- and nothing on the radio that said "on" or "off." In fact, none of the buttons on the front of the radio had anything to indicate what they were for.
The man who installed the radio turned it on for me. But this was an old car that I did not use very often, and I did not always want the radio on when I was driving.
Since he had not told me how to turn it off, I just turned the volume down as low as possible, rather than go into the 100 pages of instructions.
I would probably never have learned how to turn that radio off and on if the car's battery had not gone dead one day. While I was waiting on the roof of a parking garage for the Triple-A truck to get there, I had nothing to read except the radio instruction book.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, so I read the instruction book. You might think that telling you how to turn the radio off and on would be on page 1. But you would be wrong.
That would be too obvious, and computer engineers avoid the obvious like the plague.
Eventually, I came to the place where the instruction book said to turn the radio on by pressing the "source" button.
There was of course nothing on the radio itself that said "source." By leafing through the instructions, however, I eventually found a diagram where one of the buttons was identified as the "source" button. Eureka!
My new cell phone also has nothing to give you a clue as to how to turn it off or on, much less do anything so complicated as phone somebody. The next time the car battery goes dead, I will read the thick instruction book, so that I can call Triple A.
Personally, I'm not a big fan of the guy, but it's exactly what Steve Jobs to resurrect Apple, with the iPod & the iPhone.
And, prior to that, it was what Bill Gates did at MSFT, with WINWORD.EXE & EXCEL.EXE [and beyond that, Windows 95 & Windows NT 4.0]: Simple, straightforward, dumbed-down products which any moron can get up and running in about 60 seconds flat.
Often when I use photobucket with Opera I have keep login in after I upload some pictures. It does not happen when I use Firefox
What would Thomas Sowell want to watch on TV?
The first cell phone I had was a simple cell phone by Samsung. When I upgraded, I upgraded to a Razr phone by Motorola, because I wanted a camera phone. The camera takes lousy pictures, so I don’t use the camera anymore. Besides I have a digital camera now. One of the main things I look now for is the Speaker phone, so if I have my hands full I can still talk.
Thank you, Bob.
Here are the instructions from Photobucket:
On Mac OS X:
Type lookupd -flushcache in your terminal to flush the DNS resolver cache. (ex: bash-2.05a$ lookupd -flushcache)
Once you run the command your DNS cache (in Mac OS X) will flush.
Once the above suggestions have been tried, please try logging into and using your Photobucket account again.
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I don’t even understand WHERE in my “terminal” I’m supposed to start typing.
In any event, I’m afraid my Mac which has run without ANY problem or breakdown for about 7 years will be “terminally” dead.
I meant also to say the Samsung phone was the best I had so far
It's good research for his books, articles and commentary... /grin
LOL! You could just keep having more children, so that you'll always have teenagers in the house ...
Even my teens can't figure out how to reset the clock on the car radio; we just have to subtract an hour until it's Daylight Savings Time again.
I believe he mentioned in an article that he likes the History Channel.
I’m glad he’s exercising - he needs to live another 30 years.
From months I could not retrieve my messages and had to go by my daughters office to have one of the young girls there pull them up for me. They had written down my password because I kept forgetting it until they changed it to the last for numbers of the phone number.
Is it a sign that I’m getting old when the first step is to hand the instructions to my 10yr old and tell him to program it?
“One of the main things I look now for is the Speaker phone, so if I have my hands full I can still talk.”
I tried that too but the sounds of the car and traffic made it hard to hear.
***Even my teens can’t figure out how to reset the clock on the car radio; we just have to subtract an hour until it’s Daylight Savings Time again.***
LOL! I had a car like that. I got to be very good at subtracting hours during the winter months. Then, a neighbor, for absolutely no explainable reason, set it for standard time. Who asked him? I sure didn’t. But I was confused until DST came around again.
I’ll have to defer to the Mac experts here since I’m a Windows guy. It appears, though, that they want you to bring up a ‘command prompt’ which will allow you to type in the ‘bash’ command. Sorry, I don’t know how you’d do that on a Mac.
Hi KAS!
I sure can see that, Kas. And it’s cute as can be.
My problem with photobucket is retrieving MY stuff and getting it to show up on FR.
My husband is the much-maligned computer engineer, so he could probably figure it out ... but he doesn’t use the little car. He got himself an HDTV for Christmas, and is having a wonderful time fiddling with its Features. I’d like to just turn something on and watch it, but it’s too complex!
This is some sort of generational thing.
My dad was just like this. If he needed to use the DVD player, he would call me and I would walk him through the process of pressing the red button, then hit the video in button on the TV remote until the DVD player showed up on the TV.
I’ve never had any problem with any technology. It all just clicks for me.
Technology is like a foreign language. If you understand it, it is crystal clear, but if you don’t, it is like being dropped into a foreign country with nothing but the Monty Python English-Hungarian phrasebook.
I found the information about Jitterbug.
“The world’s simplest and most hassle-free cell phone, with service as low as $10 a month. Jitterbug Dial doesn’t have all the fancy features that you don’t use anyway.”
The price is good if you only use it for phone calls, and know your limit.
I want one just for emergency calls.
1-800-383-4593
From their ad:
*Large, bright display and buttons that are easy to see
*Simple yes and no buttons—no confusing icons
also, they’ll send you a brochure if you want it.
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