APPLEVISION Monitor, Anything !Windows = Cryptic ?

From: Pat Finnegan <pat_at_purdueriots.com>
Date: Mon May 6 20:17:44 2002

On Mon, 6 May 2002, Richard Erlacher wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Raymond Moyers" <rmoyers_at_nop.org>
> To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
> Sent: Monday, May 06, 2002 3:02 PM
> Subject: Re: APPLEVISION Monitor, Anything !Windows = Cryptic ?
>
>
> > As for me, its savior was bash and the editor in mc
>
> What's a bash? ... and what's mc? Would the man on the street know that?

Bash is the 'borne-again shell' (a user-friendly version of the Bourne
Shell. mc == Midnight Commander. Find yourself an old copy of Norton
Utilities and look for "Norton Commander". If you can figure out what
Norton Commander is, you can figure out what mc is.

Ask a person on the street who has never used or heard of a computer what
a "Spreadsheet" or "Windows Explorer" is. It doesn't matter if it's
Winblowz or Redhat Linux, you'll pick up on whatever OS is put in front of
you, and your friends use. The only reason that Windows isn't going away
quickly is because it's a monopoly. Look up 'upward spiral' to understand
why M$ is doing well in the market.

If Gary Kindall wasn't a business moron, and actually produced CP/M-86 for
IBM to ship with its PCs, we'd be in an entirely differnt world right now,
with Micrsoft not ever getting its monopoly powers.

> >
> That may be true, but if you are sitting at computer keyboard for the first
> time in your life, how do you know what to do?

Type commands, read books, and ask other people. That's how I learned how
to use DOS and write programs in GW-BASIC when I was a kid.

> Maybe someday someone will write a DOSEMU that works like DOS, and a WINE that
> actually executes Windows App's. That would go a long way to ending the MS
> monopoly on user-friendly, and make it possible for 3rd-party application
> developers to get up some applicatons that really work.

Have you ever taken a look at some of the non-windows-only software out
there, like OpenOffice?? I find OpenOffice at least as easy to use as M$
Office, and it doesn't have all the annoying 'features' and defaults that
the M$ product does. Besides, it runs on Windows, *nix, and I think
MacOS.

> >
> > I credit these two things for its success, no longer
> > did it have two most fierce deterrents to learning.
> >
> I think the learning is, in itself, a deterrent. I think what promotes the
> learning best is making the system such that one can do something one wants to
> do right out of the box and then letting people learn what they have to along
> the way.

I'd say if you're too apathetic to learn how to use something correctly,
you should be taken outside and shot in the foot until you learn how to do
it right. (Of course, I'm a bit more severe sounding than most people I'm
sure, but brain-dead users really piss me off.)

"If you're not going to do it right, don't bother doing it at all."

-- Pat
Received on Mon May 06 2002 - 20:17:44 BST