Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2001 18:57:53 -0800 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Nils Holland <nils@tisys.org> Cc: Robert Hough <rch@acidpit.org>, Paul Robinson <paul@akita.co.uk>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: EzBSD aint for me! Was: A breath of fresh air.. Message-ID: <3C16C7B1.1151FCC5@mindspring.com> References: <0112071641320B.01380@stinky.akitanet.co.uk> <01121010202100.00345@stinky.akitanet.co.uk> <20011211144049.A14693@acidpit.org> <20011211214943.A4489@tisys.org>
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Nils Holland wrote: > Well, I'd like to dig into this once again, but I have already done so > before. Anyway, let me tell you that I believe that there is no such thing > as "easy to use". I don't know who started wanting to make computers "easy > to use", but these words are really not much more than marketting phrases. SFMOMA -- The San Francisco Museum Of Modern Art -- had an excellent exhibit on industrial design. One of the examples was an emergency telephone. It was a pedestal, with wing-like protrusions on either side (to cut out road noise), a waterproof grille at an angle (covering the the microphone/speaker combination), and a very large yellow button. It was, I think, the epitome of beauty and elegance in industrial design for human factors: its use was obvious and unambiguous... you walked up, put your head inside the "wings", and pressed the big yellow button. Apparently, these units have been deployed in a number of European countries for road-side assistance. Now I'll agree that "easy to use" is bandied about in computer circles these days, in much the same way "multimedia" was, when the first CDROM and sound card machines started shipping in volume. But just because someone lies about something having been done in a product they are selling, doesn't mean that it's not possible to do that thing. So, respectfully, I will have to disagree with you, and claim that computers *can* be made easy to use, but to do it requires will and determination. As to the attracting of clueless people: they are a fact of life; you will never get governmental authorization to process them into dog food, so you might as well accept the fact that they exist, and work out some way that they can do so, with a minimum amount of annoying phone calls asking the rest of us for help because their window won't de-iconify for them. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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