On Friday 05 January 2007 16:18, Les Mikesell wrote: > On Fri, 2007-01-05 at 15:15 +0000, Anne Wilson wrote: > > > > If the user does not use their brain, then all is lost. There's a > > > > number of people I've come very close to telling that they're too > > > > stupid to use a computer. No matter how many years of instructing, > > > > no matter how many years they complain about the same thing going > > > > wrong, they don't learn, they don't pay attention to the > > > > explanations, they just whinge at you while you're talking to them. > > > > > > Yes, that's the point. For a lot of things, software should work > > > like an appliance. If the thing that needs to be done can be > > > predicted, just do it without offering any choices. > > > > <scream.......> Where have I seen that idea? Oh yes, in systems that I > > won't use. > > Does your refrigerator ask you every time you are nearby if you would > like it to keep your food cool or not? Instead of prompting every > time for whether or not you'd like to save or lose all your work, > why don't programs have a default for how many revisions you'd > like it to keep and always save all changes unless explicitly told > to exit without saving? If it ends up saving work you wanted to > throw away, then you'd have an after-the-fact way to fix the > unusual case instead of being bothered every time selecting the > obvious choice. And by the way, I don't mean that programs shouldn't > have a way to select choices, I mean that they should have the > obvious defaults already set and a way that you can change the > defaults if you have some unusual need. And the rest of the time > they should know that humans are creatures of habit. This mode > also sets things up for someone else to help a user make the right > choices once or an administrator to set up a whole office without > having to make everyone memorize the meta-alt-cokebottle magic > keypresses that they might need every time to repeat the choices. > I repeat - I want to make the decisions. I do not want anyone else to make them for me. If that makes me a control freak, so be it. My disaster plan saved my company precisely because I'm a control freak. You may choose to save a few seconds of your life, save yourself some effort several times a day and take risks that are unacceptable to me. Fine. You have a right to choose that. Just do not make me do the same. Anne
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