Re: [Bulk] Re: [opensuse] Quirks in a new v11.2 system
- From: Anton Aylward <anton.aylward@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 23 May 2010 18:03:18 -0400
Stan Goodman said the following on 05/23/2010 04:55 PM:
At 02:39:09 on Sunday Sunday 23 May 2010, Anton Aylward
That's what makes it intuitive.
You are confusing "intuitive" with "conditioned".
No I'm not. And if I am, and if Stonehenge is a computer not an
observatory, what in hell is the earthly difference? We were talking
about overwhelming many users with an unnecessarily abrupt change in
paradigm.
Let me get this right.
You're saying the devices I mentioned are for observation not
computation. No doubt you consider a GPS unit a computer because it
has knobs and dials and electronics, but the yard-staff, sextant or
chip-log used for navigation are not. The GPS has a "nice" user
interface, and the old tools don't?
A few years ago West Point gave up teaching navigation and expected its
graduates to rely on GPS units.
You have a fascinating debating style. Rather than concentrate
on the very restricted subject, which might actually open your mind a bit
to the fact that you have never thought about the effects of that change
on your users, you move off into history that is irrelevant,
You see history as KDE3 vs KDE4, or openSuse 11. vs 11.2.
I see it deeper; I see the same patterns of human behaviour and
attitude. Many people in many fields ranging from politics to medicine
to urban design to writing novels and making movies to marketing to user
interface think that studying the patterns of human behaviour though
history is important.
The fact (apparently unpleasant to you) is that the whole point of
developing KDE is to make it useful to users. To make life easy for
users. Although KDE is not a profit making organization, it exists
entirely to serve its users (I am choosing my words carefullu).
I would question the "entirely". Few OSS projects started other than a
personal matter and personal enthusiasm and personal challenges. Once
there was no Gnome or KDE - there I go, history again - and we had to
live with things written pretty raw on X. Early window managers were
pretty unsophisticated. That people adopted Gnome and KDE surely
stroked the egos of the developers and they were glad to deal with
challenges that users brought up. But this is not a commercial venture.
I'm sure those people would have worked on the code even if their WMs
hadn't been popular. I'm sure David can tell us of obscure WMs that
have a very small user base, but that doesn't mean the developers lacked
a vision they wanted to "impose" with their creation.
Personally I like the vision behind KDE4 and prefer it to the vision
behind Gnome. Was I upset at the change from KDE3? Not any more than
I'm upset when I have to drive on the "other" side of the road when I
visit England or talk in another language when I visit France or Italy
or Germany.
Many users view their computers as a means of accomplishing the tasks with
which they are confronted, and couldn't care less about bleeding edges.
Maybe they are the majority and maybe they are not, I don't know; neither
do you. And tragically, out of your own mouth, you care, because they are
recidivists -- not your kind of foks.
No, people want two things form their computer: stability and a
functionality that meets their learning curve. They tend to be vocal
about the first.
You certainly are: you've been vocal about the problems you've had with
things not working: your mouse, your boot menu and so on.
The unspoken reality is that when people get comfortable with what they
have they reach for more. That's why we aren't living in caves any
more. Opps! history :-)
If it comes down to a matter of attitude, then I think I'm ahead of you.
I have a working openSuse 11.2, have hacked at the GRUB and boot
process, have a mouse _and_ a touchpad working in parallel, and have a
wildly functionally successful KDE4 implementation. I even have an ATI
Radeon and a BroadCom Wifi working! I've been patient and open minded
about the bumps along the way and worked _with_ the developers. I don't
see it as "bleeding edge", certainly not when I look at the problems
that exist in "legacy" commercial code that I am sometimes compelled to
use. But then I'm, as you point out, looking at things in a broader,
more open perspective, and have seen how things have changed and
developed and expect them to continue to do so: change being the one
constant. I don't hark back to some "golden age" (KDE3?) or bemoan its
passing.
There are some people on this list a lot older than me and who must have
seen (and used) a lot of "history". I note that they don't talk down
KDE4 either. Perhaps the "historical perspective" that you bemoan is
important when it comes to Getting Things Done. After all, us 'old
historic fogies' have functional openSuse 11.2, mouse and KDE4.
--
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxx
For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@xxxxxxxxxxxx
- Follow-Ups:
- Re: [Bulk] Re: [opensuse] Quirks in a new v11.2 system
- From: Peter Nikolic
- Re: [Bulk] Re: [opensuse] Quirks in a new v11.2 system
- References:
- [opensuse] Quirks in a new v11.2 system
- From: Stan Goodman
- Re: [Bulk] Re: [opensuse] Quirks in a new v11.2 system
- From: Anton Aylward
- [opensuse] Quirks in a new v11.2 system
- Prev by Date: [opensuse] How to avoid using menu sections with YaST Bootloader
- Next by Date: [opensuse] Reboot to Vista does not work
- Previous by thread: Re: [Bulk] Re: [opensuse] Quirks in a new v11.2 system
- Next by thread: Re: [Bulk] Re: [opensuse] Quirks in a new v11.2 system
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
