OK... I see I've heard of the Bourne shell. I do vaguely remember something
about a Norton Commander.
It's not unsual for the guy next to you at the bar to know precisely what
Excel and spreadsheet mean, BTW.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Pat Finnegan" <pat_at_purdueriots.com>
To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Monday, May 06, 2002 7:17 PM
Subject: Re: APPLEVISION Monitor, Anything !Windows = Cryptic ?
> 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.
>
It's a monopoly on what? It owns the rights to the only really popular OS on
the market, but a small, nimble software company could put a stop to that.
If only folks would quite trying to impress everyone with their clever
cryptics. I know the Mac isn't cryptic. It's not Windows. It doesn't
support the other needs I have, though, so I'm still struggling.
>
> 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.
>
I didn't know the man, but by the time that CP/M 86 was being worked, MS had
the entire computer world by the short and curly because they had the "real"
basic interpreter and compiler and had Cobol, Fortran, and a handful of other
useful tools. True, if Kildall had delivered CP/M 86 to big blue, DEC would
still be turning gigabucks and microcomputers would still be pretty limited.
Unix would, probably, still be the OS for MANLY men. I'm not at all sure that
would be a better world.
>
> > >
> > 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.
>
But why, when you can just point and click in order to do the simple things
most folks want to do?
>
> > 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.)
>
Does that apply to spelling and grammar as well? I see that you're an
adherent to the premise that there's no need to do a thing except by the most
painful way possible.
>
> "If you're not going to do it right, don't bother doing it at all."
>
RIGHT!
Received on Mon May 06 2002 - 22:58:39 BST