Thes sort of articles really get on my goat.
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| tracyanne Mar 22, 2008 4:04 AM EDT |
I've installed Linux for people ranging in age from 9 to 90, and have yet to meet anyone as dim witted as people who write these articles make out. |
| gus3 Mar 22, 2008 7:18 AM EDT |
Maybe you have a "reality-enhancement field". Are you the anti-Steve Jobs? |
| ColonelPanik Mar 22, 2008 7:23 AM EDT |
TA, Sorry about that, but roblimo is a "trusted voice" in teh computing world.
There is no reason to worry, KDE will be there for you. And Gnome and
a bunch of other wm's that you can try. roblimo did, in the end, admit that his choice could be based mostly on habit. |
| herzeleid Mar 22, 2008 10:46 AM EDT |
> roblimo did, in the end, admit that his choice could be based mostly on habit. Perhaps his difficulty in working with kde is the result of increasingly frequent visits with uncle al... that happens a lot with old folk these days. |
| tuxchick Mar 22, 2008 11:06 AM EDT |
It's a strange article, and as a number of commenters said it should be called Ubuntu vs. Kubuntu, not KDE vs. Gnome. It's dead-easy to configure your default applications in Kubuntu- System Settings - Default Applications. KDE's own control center has the "component chooser" module, which is a sucky name but I found it in ten seconds. And yet he couldn't figure it out? Simple wireless is dead-easy too- Network Manager takes care of it, and has been included since Kubuntu Feisty. So why did he have to install it, and why was his "wireless guru" so clueless? He is right that habit and inertia are powerful forces. I don't like Macs either, and my very first ever computer was a Mac. I still don't like them, it's like trying to work handcuffed. But I wonder what version of Kubuntu he was using- Breezy? |
| tracyanne Mar 22, 2008 2:51 PM EDT |
Quoting:Maybe you have a "reality-enhancement field". Are you the anti-Steve Jobs? I simply sit down with people and try to find out what they are seeing, and then demonstrate to them that the new thing does actually meet their expectations. Admittedly it's easier with some than with others, most people are magical thinkers (as opposed to logical), and dealing with that can be difficult, but once you understand the magic they are using, it's relatively easy to guide them into a new way of thinking and doing things (incidentally it's what's called social engineering, except I'm doing it to free them not further enslave them or steal from them), and you'd be surprised how many are actually eager to learn, once they begin to understand, but have never had the incentive to do so, because they've been taught that they can't. What's important in all of this is that they understand that they can trust you, so honesty is vitally important, and glib explanations are not the best way. For example, all of the people I've set up with Linux are using strong passwords (pass phrases actually) which combine Upper and Lower case, numbers and Non alpha chars. I explain to them that passwords aren't meant to be easy, they are meant to be secure - that's a mantra I repeat to them regularly. |
| NoDough Mar 24, 2008 8:22 AM EDT |
Tracy, I just finished reading this story http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/100893/index.html#threa... and your "dim witted" comment made me think of comment #3... Quoting:...Gives new meaning to "dim witted". |
| ColonelPanik Mar 24, 2008 4:39 PM EDT |
tracyanne, Goats? I thought it was sheep downunder. |
| montezuma Mar 24, 2008 6:20 PM EDT |
Don't come the raw prawn Colonel ;-) ;-) |
| tracyanne Mar 24, 2008 6:30 PM EDT |
I don't have goats or sheep Colonel, I've got chooks. |
| ColonelPanik Mar 24, 2008 10:27 PM EDT |
http://www.ithaca.edu/staff/jhenderson/chooks/chooks.html
Strine...? Chickens and KDE, now thats a song title. When will LXer have a GTG? It would be fun, seeing as how we are divided by a common language. Back to the topic, what is the problem, all browsers do the same thing more or less, I mean who cares what color the car is that takes you to the supermarket to buy a chook? I use Gnome because the foot is cute. When KDE gets a foot then I will try it. That last sentence sounds as good as any other argument I have heard for choosing a browser. |
| jacog Mar 25, 2008 6:11 AM EDT |
I thought the expression was "* really gets my goat" ... but then I have no idea what that even means. English is a bizarre language at times. But then my first language, Afrikaans, has an expression that directly translates as "I'll show you where David buried the carrots", as a way to boast that you are about to best your opponent. (bafflement) Anyway, back(ish) on topic... NoDough, that quote leaves me entirely dumbfounded. Did the author commit murder at that point, in order to purify the gene pool? I think that could have counted as justifiable homicide. |
| NoDough Mar 25, 2008 6:22 AM EDT |
jacog, The correct expression is "gets my goad." It's been changed over the years by people who didn't understand the original expression. A goad was basically a stick used to prod an animal. I sort of agree about the justifiable homicide. OTOH, the user was already brain dead. Windows only users often ask me how difficult Linux use is. My answer is, "Can you point and click?" To which they invariably reply, "Yes." So I say, "Then you can use Linux." |
| Scott_Ruecker Mar 25, 2008 6:27 AM EDT |
It would be awesome to have a get together but we are so spread out across the planet that it would take thousands of dollars in plane fare just to get a few of us into the same room. |
| jacog Mar 25, 2008 7:15 AM EDT |
Quoting:I sort of agree about the justifiable homicide. OTOH, the user was already brain dead. Ahh, ok, so it would be more like euthanasia then. I wonder what confused that user so much. The browsers look identical in both operating systems. Perhaps he always uses it in a maximised window, but the author had it windowed? Maybe? No? Urk, my brain is dying just trying to understand how any person could be that thick. Quoting:The correct expression is "gets my goad." It's been changed over the years by people who didn't understand the original expression. A goad was basically a stick used to prod an animal. Ahh yes, thanks for that. I have a list as long as my arm of baffling expressions. |
| number6x Mar 25, 2008 7:37 AM EDT |
OFFTOPIC:
Expressions change in weird ways. Take the expression "Using the carrot and stick approach". The word haven't changed, but the meaning of the adage has. It used to describe a comical way to get a stubborn animal like a mule to move forward. Tie a stick to a mule's head, and tie a carrot to the far end of the stick, out of the mule's reach. The mule will move forward to try to get the carrot. It described an all incentive based method to motivate, but with no real reward. Over the last decade here in the US people usual use it to mean a situation where you create an incentive and a dis-incentive. Basically they use "Carrot and stick" to mean "Take the carrot or get beaten with the stick". Politicians usually make offers to foreign countries like "join and you get this food aid, don't join and you get these sanctions." Then they call that using a "carrot and stick" approach. Makes me think some of these people have sick minds. Who wants a leader that thinks beatings with sticks are a good thing? Even metaphorically? It really gets my goad when they do that. |
| number6x Mar 25, 2008 7:57 AM EDT |
Quoting:I use Gnome because the foot is cute. When KDE gets a foot then I will try it. Xfce has a cute little mouse. http://www.xfce.org/ That cute little mouse has four cute little feet! So based on the foot ranking scale, you need to use XFCE four times as much as Gnome! |
| NoDough Mar 25, 2008 8:12 AM EDT |
number6x:Quoting:It really gets my goad when they do that.Awh, I think you're telling an old wise tale (old wives tale.) Can't you see the handwriting on the wall (the hand writing on the wall?) |
| jdixon Mar 25, 2008 8:13 AM EDT |
> Xfce has a cute little mouse. My wife loves that mouse. :) But she uses KDE. :( |
| tracyanne Mar 25, 2008 1:11 PM EDT |
Quoting:My wife loves that mouse. :) Smart woman. Actually I don't think the user described is so dumb. He has just been taught that he doesn't know anything, and that he can't learn. he'a been taught that the computer is a magical black box, and that he uses it through magic - the click here, click there syndrome, move the icons and he's totally lost, because he doesn't actually understand what it is that is actually going on, he never learned. In so far as the example of teaching the bloke the new desktop, well the writer didn't. He just gave the bloke new magical spells, spells the bloke was afraid to learn, because his old magic no longer served him which made him fearful of the new magic. The bloke is not seeing the computer as a useful tool, he's seeing it as a fearsome magical instrument, a magical instrument he had tamed with the magical things he used to be able to do. As far as teaching and learning is concerned, there was an adage they taught us when I was doing train the trainer courses in new Zealand (lived there once), and that is "If the student hasn't learned, then YOU have not taught.", in other words you the trainer are at fault, not the student, and 99 times out of 100 that is absolutely true. Teaching people who want to learn is usually easy, not always, as some people begin from strange paradigms, but usually. Showing people how to learn is much harder, but it can be done, magical thinking is after all merely a way of coping with lack of proper information - magical thinking is the child of ignorance, magic is how people try to control the world around them when they lack understanding of the world around them. When this is applied to people and computers you get people who can't operate the computer unless the icons are aranged in a specifi way on the desktop, and get confused if some program rearranges them when it's installed. One of my failures, yes I have a few, couldn't use Linux because DigiKam didn't have checkboxes, so he could select the photos he wanted, he was simply unable to function, he was a failure because I failed because I failed to understand where he was coming from. But I'm rambling, I'll post this from the Nature Magazine feed I get. Quoting:Water has always been a volatile topic in Australia, the world's driest inhabited continent, but the political row that broke out last week was perhaps surprising. Protesters are complaining that a planned desalination facility outside Melbourne, Victoria, will generate too much freshwater. |
| ColonelPanik Mar 25, 2008 7:21 PM EDT |
er, maybe you could just pour the extra water into the ocean? |
| tracyanne Mar 25, 2008 7:30 PM EDT |
Or into the Murray and help clean it up. |
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