"Short Wave Sportfishing" wrote in message
news
On Mon, 09 Feb 2004 12:06:26 GMT, "Doug Kanter"
wrote:

"thunder" wrote in message
news
On Mon, 09 Feb 2004 01:41:17 +0000, Short Wave Sportfishing wrote:

I sort of agree with you on that. However, what techheads might
think
of as being a good idea, isn't always a good idea. What techheads
might think of as perfectly comprehensible and/or intuitive is
gibberish to a user. And that is the real problem with open source
because you have the same technoids messing around with what should
be
a simple concept and all have differing ideas about how stuff should
work.

Yeah, but . . . Most open source software works quite well out of the
box,
being configurable is a major plus. Open source software may not be
for
everyone, but I love it. Anytime I am forced to use a Microsoft
product,
I find it very limiting and frustrating. With open source I can set up
my
system as I want to, not as Microsoft thinks I should.

It's also a somewhat concept becuase it is "open source" only to
those
who understand the coding structure - thus the end results will be
the
same.

As the code is readily available, you can go that deeply, but it is by
no
means necessary. Open source has come a long way and allows many
choices.
It may not be your choice, but it is the choice of a growing number of
users.


It's a cool idea. But I'll venture a guess and say that 90% of users have
absolutely no knowledge of programming. They shouldn't have to. No
different
than the way most people view their cars. Most people have no interest in
customizing, and have no clue as to how they work. They just want the
things
to run. Imagine if hammers, vacuum cleaners and lawnmowers behaved like
computer software. There'd be armed uprisings.

And that's an even more interesting point.

Of course. I never lie and I'm always right. :-) :-)


I read somewhere that in Explorer (since the advent of Explorer),
people only use 30% of the functions available to them - everything
else is overhead.

The reason was explained as "too complicated".

Strange, isn't it? Have you ever done a custom installation of MS Office?
I'm still using Office 2000, and I've installed it perhaps 20 times on
various machines. There must be 50 customization options in categories such
as text/graphics converters, languages, spell checkers, and mathematical
add-ins for Excel. You can eliminate the installation of that &$#%* paper
clip beast, and completely crush Find Fast, which is an abomination.

But, MS says it's too complicated to permit a custom installation of
Explorer? :-)


Your example of "save" and "save as" is a perfect example. Why do you
need two save functions? Why not just have save? A little "window"
pops up and the default is what the file was named offering you the
opportunity to change the name or not. Why "save as"?

"Save As" is very handy when you want to save an existing file under a
second name. I do that often when I need to send a file to someone who
thinks about file names differently than I do. My outgoing product offers
are sequential, like Offer_Kroger_Feb02_04.XLS. This makes too much sense to
the monkeys at my home office, who prefer a name like
OkRg-kelLog_revisedbobsSheet-8.xls. :-) Real example. Not kidding.

Sure, you can start Windows Explorer, find the file, and copy it, but most
of the time, I'm already running 9 programs, most of which are memory pigs.
If I start one more, Windows go boom.