My recent Epiphany about operating systems

Mario Lobo mario.lobo at ipad.com.br
Wed Dec 20 10:11:01 PST 2006


On Wednesday 20 December 2006 16:52, Bart Silverstrim wrote:
> Guess what...that's the price you pay for freedom and flexibility.
> You have to learn to use it.  Don't want to do that?  Pay someone to
> configure an interface with big shiny buttons marked "INTERNET
> BROWSER", "EMAIL", "WRITE LETTERS".  Isn't that what users want,
> someone to do the work for them?
>
> That's the real epiphany.  After years of tech support, I realized I
> was totally wrong.  I thought users wanted to learn how to use that
> expensive piece of equipment.  I thought they had the curiosity I
> had, the fascination that something looking so simple was capable of
> making movies, writing stories, finding information...so much
> potential.  All they needed was the knowledge to see how the puzzle
> fit together.  I was totally wrong!  What they wanted was for someone
> to come and DO the work for them.  They wanted just an end task, and
> the computer was what someone pointed them to in order to do it.  Set
> up a printer?  How many times do I need to explain the same damned
> procedure to the same user?  Oooh....you don't mean it when you ask
> how to do it.  You want me to come over and DO it for you!  Every
> time you screw it up, I get to do that same thing over again.
>
> They don't care about OS's, licenses, legalities, IP, owners
> rights...they just want to make a brochure or look at porn or
> whatever else this magic black box can do.  They don't care how it
> works or why it works.  They can't even be bothered to craft emails
> anymore, just top post whatever crap blurps into their mind at that
> specific moment.  Email is little more than retarded IM.  Get a
> bounce message?  Internet must be down.  Fifteenth time I had to
> explain that before I just started telling them to forward the bounce
> to me and then I would magically solve the mystery by reading the
> bounce error right to them (how did you know that name doesn't have
> an email box at xyz.net?? WOW!)
>
> In the end just quit your bitching about how hard it is to learn or
> how people are out to rip you off by offering services when you're
> not willing or able to learn to do it yourself.  This obviously isn't
> a secret cabal out to get you.  You're so "results oriented", then
> continue to focus on non-computer use results and just accept that
> you will need to pay someone to do what you don't want to do or can't
> do.  I accept that if I were to dedicate my life to banking, I'd
> probably get more value in my investments and I'd understand much
> more about credit and tricks of the trade while not being able to
> know every last detail behind building a house.  If I become a master
> craftsman for home building, I could build my own mansion but
> probably won't know necessarily what money market fund is best in the
> long run.  Or, I can learn fairly easily to change my own oil...but
> it's worth fifteen bucks to me to have someone else do it faster and
> dispose of the oil for me.
>
> Deal with it.  Life sucks.
>
> Don't like the interfaces available on "free" software?  Don't use
> them.  No one is forcing you to.
>

I think no one has never, ever,  put into words (to me at least) something so 
perfectly like Bart did above.

Anyone who has worked with tech support for at least a week, can recognize the 
truth in those lines.

I think I'll have them framed ( translated to portuguese so users won't have 
to ask someone to do it for them) and hang it on my office door !

Thanks Bart !!

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mario.lobo at ipad.com.br
http://www.ipad.com.br
(FreeBSD since 2.2.8 - 100% Rwindows-free)


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