On 5/9/05, Shlomi Fish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Monday 09 May 2005 11:40, Amos Shapira wrote:
> > I'm not that deep into Windows administration, I just know that, as
> > far as I noticed,
> > I never had to bother with it.
> >
>
> Well recently I heard of someone who told me MS Freecell (!!) does not start
> for him for some reason. (while almost everything else seems to be in working
> order) I said I had no idea how to resolve it, but pointed him to free
> (as-in-beer and possibly as-in-speech) alternatives.
And you think this is an example of "DLL hell"?
Do you imply that he installed some program with a DLL which
broke his freecell?
> Like I said in my reply to Shoashannah: Windows requires constant maintenance
> to keep in working in order. Even if you're a complete rookie. In Linux, if
> you are a complete rookie which an expert gave you some Linux maintenance
> 101, then your maintenance problems are over. If you're a Power User and like
> to tinker with your system, then things may temporarily break. But it
> shouldn't happen to the Aunt Tillie type people like your Mom. And when it
> does, a quick web-search/forums usually resolve it.
You are probably right that "once it's up and running", linux doesn't
require more
maintenance than Windows (probably less). I think the catch with bringing this
argument to the average Windows home user is that they don't bother doing the
required windows maintenance (and therefore might catch viruses which will
require them to re-install the entire system) and therefore don't precieve the
advantage of having a "zero maintenance" linux on their hardware as an
advantage.
Yes, I know - the re-installation of a system and its slowness and lots of other
stuff are resources wasted by windows user, but there is a problem convincing
them that it's indeed the case. At least to the kind of users I tried
to talk to
(e.g. my brother in law is totally dependend on e-mail for his
business and keeps
crying about the amount he spends sifting through the spam he gets but also
completly refuses to consider switching to Thunderbird on Windows (which I
told him time and again that will rid him off most spam automatically)).
Go figure...:(
>
> A "guru" like me, can expect a lot of breakage. But for the clueful "Aunt
> Tillie" type Linux just works and works and works.
Hmm. I'm not sure. Maybe.
Let's try to see, what set of computer uses would cover aunt tillie's:
1. Web surfing, of course (IE->Firefox)
2. E-mail (Outlook->Thunderbird)
3. Flash sites (e.g. games)
4. Win32 or maybe ActiveX bridge games? (my mom is an avid Bridge gamer,
it's an absolute requirement for her to support this)
5. Audio working out of the box.
6. Skype (works excellently).
And above all, all this has to work with a unified interface.
KDE might be there (and with a full Hebrew interface on top of it all).
You are possibly right.
I'd still have to hold her hand at least for a few weeks, and possibly
nobody in the family beside me would be able to help her with that,
which is a problem.
I'll think about it.
>
> >
> > > systems). But for example, if you browse the web with a vulnerable
> > > browser, that allows malicious sites to execute code on your machine,
> > > then all the firewalls in the world won't prevent your machine from
> > > getting infected by a trojan.
> >
> > Actually current firewalls/proxies and routing boxes DO scan for viruses
> > and melicious code while you surf as well. Dig the network for specific
> > examples, I can't remember them off the top of my head.
>
> Then let me invoke Turing's Theorem here, and claim that it's impossible to
> build a computer program that will find all such malicious codes. It can
> search for well known patterns, but once new patterns emerge, you'll be at
> risk until an update.
Yes, you are right. It's a diversion on my part this time.
>
> I heard a rumour that a research claimed an unprotected Windows box (don't
> know about XP SP2) takes less than 20 minutes of Internet connection to
> become infected with malware. Some default installations of Linux has seens
> months without a single intrusion.
Yes, I heard about this research too.
But as an analogy to security in other area - I've just seen a TV program about
flight crash investigations where they explain that there are
technologies which will
make commercial flights much more secure:
1. better luggage containers which can contain the force of explosions
of bombs in
suite cases. They are more expensive and slightly heavier than the
standard ones.
2. There is a sort of an air filter which lowers the amount of oxigen
in fuel tanks and
therefore removes the danger of explosion like the one which took down TWA 800
(it wasn't a terrorist act, for those who are out of date on this one)
It weights
100-200 kg.
Both technologies were rejected by airlines because of weight considerations
(El-Al uses the first one, but I suspect that this is helped by finance from the
government), but at the same time the same companies added private in-seat
displays and games with cabeling and extra weight of several thousands of kilos.
The point is that: "security doesn't sell".
Maybe we have to wrap "more secure" with "faster"/"nicer"/"sexier"/"easier"/
"more conveneient" in order to reach that audience.
> Let's just say that with "Open Source Software" (a definition soon to be
> defined) like all the components of a common (GNU/)Linux system everyone can
> modify it and incoroporate his changes in the distributed version, and so
> either you can find someone knowledgable to do it, or someone will do it
> eventually.
>
> I used small words here.
Small words fly higher above their heads? :-)
When AT ("Aunt Tillie") double-clicks and something doesn't work, and she'll
read or hear the paragraph above I don't expect her to think "ah, ok, great"
but more of "what the hell do I care? Just make it work."
BTW, "everyone can modify" doesn't sound appealing to most non-technical
people.
> That's a good idea. Maybe the so-called "Power Users" are our main target
> audience. Of course, the problem is that these people like to install
I think this part of the market is called "early majority" (the part
of the market
which comes after "early adopters").
Aren't "we" (mostly by means of newbie tools like Whatsup forums, for instance)
already addressing this target audience?
> software on their computer and tinker with it, and so may encounter all the
> cases where Linux problems start to surface. The same thing happens in
> Windows, though, and much worse.
Hmm. I'm not sure this is a problem. They would just be more familiar with the
quirkier parts of Linux and might be able to help users who accidentally (or
not) stepped over the line.
> Amos, I'm pretty sure most computer users are either considerably younger than
> your mother and/or more capable. The person the Original Poster described
> sounds like the "Power User" type. The person I mentioned is somewhere
> between an "Aunt Tillie" and a "Power User".
OK. I might have been too fixated on my mom as an example. I'll switch to my
brother in law. He runs an import business and a walla shop and
communicates every day with the far east over e-mail.
(and he's pretty stubborn when it comes to learning new tools, he never
feels he has time for this).
>
> And I recall an article on Newsforge that claimed that for the "Aunt Tillie"
> type, the command line is the best computer interface to be taught. Perhaps
> they were right from your description.
Maybe for an AT whos native language is English?
My mom (and brother in law) can read English quite well, but to top it with
technical terminology is too much for both of them.
"Point and click" is what people expect today from computers, just like pressing
buttons on the TV remote control or the waching machine's panel.
>
> BTW, just to dispel a few myths, I don't think it's necessary that old people
> will be "Aunt Tillie"'s. I personally correspond with a 78-years old hacker,
> who wrote two widely distributable Windows programs in ANSI C, and has a
> history of DOS, CP/M, PDP-7's, Intel 4040, Z80 and an obscure computer system
> that is even more ancient. He was programming for a living before I was even
> born, and I'm relatively old in comparison to some of the younger folks we
> can see hacking on Linux and Windows nowadays. (not older than Amos, though).
> He did not want to try Linux until he found a good reason to have to use it,
> but I'm sure he'll have no problem using it once he does.
He's certainly not an "aunt tillie", people don't just switch to "aunt
tillie mode" when
they turn 70 or something. People can be "aunt tillie" as soon as they are 20
(I've seen such poor soules, god bless them). I think the perception stems from
fact that that the older they are, the more time they spent before the computer
revolution and less used they are to the new gadgets (where "new gadgets" could
be even a VCR or CD player).
> Like I said your mother is an extreme case. The bottom end of the "Aunt
> Tillie"'s. The OP talked about a Power User (or at least 0.5*("Aunt Tillie" +
> "Power User") and he'll have no problem in adjusting to a new platform.
I don't see my brother in law, or even my uncle (who works with computers) able
or willing to go analyze his problem, go out on the net, phrase his
problem properly
on a forum and get a meaningful reply.
Not that they'll do this with Windows, but then with Windows they'll have TNDTG
(or in my uncle's case - his son).
> And BTW, I installed Thunderbird for my mother who is an Aunt Tillie to work
> on the WinXP laptop, and she got used to it pretty quickly. From time to time
> she asks me questions about what to do, and I answer, but she seems to learn.
Good to hear that. Maybe one day with my mom...
> Yes, but why would a prospective employer concsiously send it to the
> apporpriate mailing list where he knows he'll have a smaller audience. It
Because the larger audience sort of expressed its lack of interest by NOT
subscribing to the jobs mailing list?
Using the same argument, he might send job ads for Windows programmers
on linux-il - it will certainly increase his audience too, isn't it?
"-jobs" type mailing lists work in other parts of the world.
> occured at least two times when people submitted jobs to all the mailing
> lists in the lists of Israeli mailing lists that I created and maintain
> (including GNUbies-IL...) because they wanted to have the widest possible
> audience.
It doesn't mean that they are right to do so. In fact, it smells of spam.
> I think sending a mail to a mailing list address using one of the hundred or
> so CPAN modules for sending mails (some of them are present in Debian Woody
> which iglu.org.il runs), should not be a problem. I just did not get to it
> yet.
That would be great, thanks.
>
> As for the live-bookmark - maybe you should get a better RSS aggregator. I'm
> using akregator, which displays all the bookmarks in a tree, with the total
> number of unread ones in the KDE taskbar, the number of each unread item in
> every feed in bold blue on each item, and the unread items themselves
> colored. Very convenient, easy to use and intuitive. There might be something
> like that for GNOME too, but since I'm KDE-based I did not look into it.
Thanks for the pointer. I'll look into it. It would still mean that
I'll have yet another
appliction on my desktop instead of getting messages (or digests) stright to the
mailbox I watch anyway...
> <offtopic>
> Hmmm.... do you have pictures of naked chicks as wallpapers? ;-) Mine's are
> either well-groomed or at least only half-naked.
> </offtopic>
</offtopic>
No. I'm actually the romantic type with images of nice *geographical* places,
mostly photos of places I visited (thankfully I travelled a bit in my
life) or I'd like to visit.
</offtopic>
(don't apply "pornography is geography" formula on the above sentence :).
> > Yes, that's expose. And these are not just screen-shots but live, "zoomed
> > out" application windows. Extremly neat and easy to stay oriented.
> > There is skippy for X11 which tries to simulate it, works so-so.
> >
>
> I see. Well, the thing is that with a virtual workspace I can see several
> windows at one. I recall working with a 19" monitor at 1280x1024 resolution.
> 2*2 konsoles all fully visible... wonderful.
Yes, been there (I think my largest was a 21" X terminal with a higher
resolution),
currently I have 17" flat panel (equivalent to a 19" CRT).
One day I'll be able to afford a 34" wide flat monitor and maybe get
back to such
desktop setups :).
Cheers,
--Amos
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