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[Jordan Bettis]

On Thu, Jun 27, 2002 at 01:42:33AM -0500, Larry Garfield wrote:
> What Jordan fails to realize (as do many people, including RMS himself)
> is that philosophical "purity" only goes so far.  Let's face it; normal
> people use computers to perform a task, not to espouse a world view.  If
> your main use of a PC is to be an activist about it and not to actually
> DO anything, you need a reality adjustment.  

I've worked at my current job for two weeks now and have probably lost
three DAYS of productivity due to licensing issues (because the state
dosen't want to be extorted by the BSA). Free Software is about getting
things done, it's about not having to deal with bullshit artifical
barriers constructed so someone else can extract as much money as
possible from you.

> Now that we're dealing with normal people and not fit-in-the-air
> activists who are out of touch with the real world, the primary purpose

The real world isn't about playing pac-man on a pda, sorry man.

> of a computer is to make it easier for the user to complete a given
> task.  A significant component of that is the interface to the computer,
> or the application residing on the computer.  A good interface will make
> or break an otherwise useful application when it comes to ability to
> complete a given task.
>
> Most FS/OSS programs, to be blunt, suck in the interface department. 
> They are inconsistent, incomplete, non-intuitive, and otherwise sub-par

"The only 'intuitive' interface is the nipple.  After that, it's all learned."
          -- Bruce Ediger

Here's something: I once saw a girl who obviously had never had any
expierence with a mac before trying to use one at my school's library.
She sat down, and clicked on netscape. Oopse, the window didn't appear!
(It was hidden in that intuitive little bar at the top). So of course,
Steve Jobs BEAMED the KNOWLEDGE INTO HER HEAD WITH HIS AMAZING INTUITIVER
RAY, right? Nope, she gave up after about a minute and went off in search
for a windows machine, because she was used to windows' behavior. The
really ironic thing is that if that computer were running Gnome or KDE,
she likely wouldn't have had any trouble using it at all.

So unless you're talking about innate skills, intuitiveness is a non
sequitur.

> in most respects.  Now, take OS X.  Ignore for a moment the licensing
> involved.  OS X is a *nix-variant operating system (Darwin) with a
> clean, consistent, elegant, and user-friendly interface (Aqua) that
> allows the user to harness the power of a *nix architecture *without
> ever touching a command line*; without having to know what an init

"How do I type 'for i in *.dvi do xdvi $i done' in a GUI?"
          -- Anonymous        

> script is; without ever needing to understand the obscurity that is
> regular expressions (let's face it, powerful as they are they are NOT
> designed to be easily learned); 

Nether are Helocopter controls. You want to whine about all of the hours
it takes to get good at flying one of those birds? Or why they don't have
pretty GUIs designed by Apple to do it?

> without scaring people with the idea of
> "compiling" their software; 

Oh, yeah, that's going to SCARE people. God, give them some fucking
credit. 

"Computers understand instructions as ones and zeros, but
it's difficult for people to write computer programs in ones and
zeros, so people have come up with languages that are easier
to use and wrote programs to translate them into ones and zeros.
Those programs are called 'compilers' and the translation they do
is called 'compiling.'" 

See? that wasn't too hard to understand, was it? My nine year old 
sister could grasp that (feel free to read it again if you still 
don't get it).


> without, quite simply, requiring the user to
> be a developer or "geek".  By Geeks For Geeks is the fundamental
> philosophy behind most Open Source Software and almost all Free
> Software.  

Hrmm, I must have missed that part of the GNU Manifesto. Was it before
or after the bit about community and sharing?

> If GNU-esque users and developers want to get more market
> share than the 5% of the desktop it has now, that MUST change.

Great, submit a patch.

> When KDE or GNOME allow you to control your entire Linux-based machine,
> including starting and stopping servers, reconfiguring them, installing,
> configuring, and uninstalling applications, then we'll talk.  Until
> then, Yay Apple!

Configuring servers? Fuck, what about drop down menus for flying those
hilocopters? Administring computer systems is a PROFESSIONAL activity.
Do you really want your pilot calling tech support because the thingy
froze? In fact, I'm GLAD the learning curve for Unix admins is steep,
it means thats they learned how to administer the machines, they also
learned how they actually work. That's why the Unix world isn't populated
by so many brain dead MCSE's trying to point and click their way through
things they don't bother to understand.

-- 
Jordan Bettis <http://www.hafd.org/~jordanb>
When someone says "I want a programming language in which I need only say 
what I wish done," give him a lollipop.
          -- Alan J Perlis: Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN 1982