Joined on Apr 14, 2004 Pilpi I like them

Last login: 5 months agoOlli Savolainen is a guy from Tampere, Finland.

I believe in Jesus Christ as my saviour. I'm also a poet, and a computer sciences/human-computer interaction student. Always trying to find focus, perspective. Hoping to confront people openly.

Computer Stupidities: Operating Systems

Jul 27, 2005 3:28am

(515 reviews) computers http://www.rinkworks.com/stupid/cs_os.sh...

For a background for this rant see stumbleupon.com/url/www.rinkworks.com/stupid/cs_os.shtml [stumbleupon.com/url/www.rinkworks.com/stupid/cs_os.shtml] if you aren't there already.

The lesson to learn here really isn't that everybody except computer scientists are stupid - they usually aren't - but that

Those who do understand something about computers ought to learn at least something about people, too
Usability research really is worth it: many problems described here are due to the poor conceptual models "computer people" have made up
Granted, there's a need for education, too - but there's no point in just teaching people how to work around problems software designers created.

I have trouble understanding where do opinions (the comment by Lumiere on this page) like "These dumb people are why all software is now made to be uber user-friendly, which is annoying." spring from, since usually when software is ACTUALLY made more usable (not just by hiding most features), it's more handy to use for me, too - as a computer scientist. Computers aren't anything valuable per se, they're valuable as tools for the creative people of the society (which doesn't - and shouldn't - always mean coders). Thus, making computers accessible to the entire society creates added value to everybody.

In my opinion, you really can't blame them for not understanding (or dedicating their lives to trying) how computer designers think. See, for instance, below: the mindset "Woman 2" has in the dialogue is actually more logical than the mindset, which would be required in order to be able to use the computer correctly.

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From the page: "I saw two older looking ladies trying to figure out the computers at a local store. I knew one of them would say something that I could send to Computer Stupidities, so I tried to listen in.

* Woman 1: "What is that little trash can on the screen?"
* Woman 2: "My son says that is call the 'recycle bin'. He tells me when I don't want a Word document anymore and I delete it, it really goes in there."
* Woman 1: "Why in the recycle thingy? Can't you just erase it?"
* Woman 2: "Oh no, Word wouldn't work for very long if I did that, I would run out of blank pages."
* Woman 1: "Why?"
* Woman 2: "Because it cleans the words off the pages, then sends the blank sheets back to Word so they can be used again. That's why it's called the recycle bin.""

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Sure is funny, though =P.

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