Surprisingly, to my knowledge there is no layperson-accessible site that explains and offers downloads of the most popular open source offerings--firefox, open office, GIMP etc.
Everything I have found is either hopelessly technical or stuffed with thousands and thousands of poor quality programs.
There are lots of individual sites, but no where that you can point someone that will take care of them.
This is a good list of many things that people might not get.
But the crazy thing is that there no guarantee that a given user will or won't any one of these things - as well as no guarantee whether they will or won't other subtler things.
After all this, it actually makes me less inclined to pander to all the user's possible ignorances. Rather than worry every strange conception that users might have, we should create a UI which is self-consistent, powerful and hides as little as possible.
"Drag-and-drop" and "click versus double click" are two approaches which were created to make things "intuitive" but which are a disaster because they don't make any announcement of their presence and don't actually increase the number of options a user has. Hierarchical files and hierarchical menus may indeed not be "gotten" by some people but those people need to be educated and once they are, they use just about any standard-conformant GUI app whereas each time the latest visual-fu-metaphor is added to a given app, everyone will always need to parse it again.
Worthless list. All over the place, from "non-IT people don't understand that the screen isn't the computer" (Really? How many people are still confused about that?) to "non-IT people don't understand how to set up a network" (yep, I have trouble with that one too).
I strongly disagree. I've dealt with most of these questions at one time or another in recent years, and a Whole lot more 8 years back when I was in IT.
Some people still think shutting off the monitor means shutting off the computer - even in the case of a flat screen. I've seen this at least 5 times this year alone.
As a web developer the browser issue is the biggest and most consistent for me.
The fact that you don't think these differences still exist perfectly defines the purpose of this list.
I had an elderly lady who got a new computer, then called me about a week later because it was broken and wouldn't turn on. When I went over to check it I pushed the power button and it came on just fine.
"How did you do that?" she asked.
"I just pushed the power button. This button down here turns the computer on and off."
"But I always just pushed a button on the keyboard and it turned on."
And then I realized that she had never turned her computer off, only put it to sleep, for five years.
Actually, that works for speakers -- since most speakers for a computer are designed in a manner that is identical to a means of designing a microphone (just with some of the dimensions altered for quality of sound, et cetera). I'm not so sure a similar principle would work for, say, an LCD monitor or CRT.
It definitely does not work for an LCD monitor or a CRT, I can guarantee you that.
You're right about the loudspeaker and the microphone example though, since in the most common cases loudspeakers are electromagnetic devices that convert electricity to air pressure in front of a cone, and vice versa.
In fact, almost every piece of electronics can function as a microphone (Coils, capacitors and so on), I built transmitters a long time ago and the measures you have to take to get rid of spurious microphony are pretty draconian.
The problems mentioned are huge in the over-30, non-tech crowd. I worked IT in college, and the skills of professors and admins older than 35 were much worse than the average English major in a computer lab.
They viewed the machine as a Magic Box that let them type documents and browse the web and sometimes crashed if they angered it. Some needed help getting CDs out of the tray. Some didn't know that "check if it is plugged in" is a troubleshooting step. Some were very superstitious about crashes ("don't move the monitor!" was my favorite).
If you don't see anyone struggling with these concepts, well, I haven't since I got a programming job 3 years ago. They didn't stop having problems, I just don't see the problems anymore. Always watch out for selection bias: the set of "people you know" isn't representative of the population at large
Sometimes superstitious things like moving the monitor come to very rational causes. There can be a loose connection that tightens with monitor's pressure or an electrical leak prevented with that particular positioning of it.
The most memorable for me was the user who called everything a "macro". Called once when his mouse stopped working and said his computer had "lost its mouse macros".
I simply have to point out how awesome it is to be on a site where the two comments beginning with "Excellent list" and "Worthless list" are both equally upvoted to the top of the thread list. Thank you, HN, for letting me hold on to a sliver of faith in humanity.
It was completely genuine. I try to avoid sarcasm on the internet as much as possible, unless it's stupendously obvious, simply for reasons like this.
These days, it seems like people are increasingly uncomfortable disagreeing with each other: "I disagree" is often meant or interpreted as "You're wrong, and you should never have spoken up in the first place, you foolish whelp."
That's why I was really delighted to see a pair of contradictory opinions sharing the top of an HN comment list: it meant, cursorily, that every person who upvoted one did not automatically downvote the other, but also that the community as a whole values the disagreement itself. I know I'm making a mountain out of a molehill now, but only for the purpose of explaining why I wasn't being sarcastic.
Thanks for the clarification! Most people have learned that sarcasm doesn't work in print, hence the <sarcasm> tag, so I assumed it was genuine. It was just such a striking comment - contradictory opinions showing faith in humanity.
My girlfriend always double clicks links. She also uses a Mac at work and thought she wouldn't be able to access her webmail on my PC because I didn't have Safari.
Almost everybody I know (that isn't in IT) double-clicks on links. Even my ex-boss (who was a programmer back in the day) double-clicks on links. And no matter how many times you try to explain the concept of "single-click" to them, they don't seem to get it.
Perhaps we should get the browser makers to make double-clicking links do something else, then; as it is, no amount of IT whinging will teach people to stop doing something that works anyway, just because it's technically non-optimal.
Does it bother you that it's not optimal? It doesn't bother the people who do it. I think breaking things on purpose just to stop a behavior that's not harmful is unwise.
Doesn't bother me, but it does seem to bother the people who come up with these lists. (I am slightly bothered, though, by people who click on a a link, and then click it again when it's "loading too slowly," thinking that they're hurrying it along instead of going back to the start of a new request.) The best solution in both cases would be for the browser to simply ignore any attempts to load a GET of URL X in a given frame/window/tab when it's already attempting to load the same GET of URL X in that frame/window/tab.
I click links again if it's been more than a few seconds. I know full well it starts a new request, but often that works faster than letting the old request time out and be re-sent.
Unfortunately, double-clicking a link when submitting a form (for instance) can double-submit it, which can be especially problematic when confirming an order and ending up getting charged twice.
can we stop using IT to mean "desktop support"? It's sort of like the Visual Basic of programming. What I mean is, it's quite similar to the debate over job titles "programmer" versus "software engineer". But I guess I'm going against the grain on this one.
Or maybe it all starts here and will snowball and take over.
In my experience, IT includes desktop support. When I was in IT (sys-admin for the company I worked for and did on-site support in data centers for our server / client product for major banks on wall street), I still found myself doing an inordinate amount of desktop support. In many cases one does not exist without the other.
The best analogy I can find for RAM is short-term memory. RAM holds less stuff than long-term memory (hard disk), but is faster to access. And if you don't put an item into long-term memory (write to disk), you forget it (when the power is turned off). People seem to understand that.
I tend to liken RAM to a table, programs/data to books, and the hard drive to a bookshelf.
You can't read stuff on a bookshelf; you have to take it out and put it on the table to open it. (Sure, you can read a book on a couch, but this is the computer we're talking about - it has certain rules.)
You can take out as many books from the bookshelf as you like, as long as they fit on the open table.
If you run out of table space, you need to make more space on the table, and the only way to do that is to put books back on the shelf.
If you're trying to open too many books at once with too little table space, the only thing you can do is constantly go back and forth between the bookshelf and the table, open the book, find your place, etc., read a word, take it back, open the previous book, write it down, etc., and it's going to take you way longer to do the same work.
That's a great analogy. I like it. I've been using the short-term memory analogy, but this fits a lot better. I know that we don't entirely understand our brain, but everyone understands books and a table.
Too bad memory is divided into "pages" and not "books".
RAM is your desktop (literal desktop, as in the "top of your desk"). The more desk space you have, the more "things" you can be working on at the same time.
Disk Space is the file cabinet. Shutting down is like cleaning your desk, whatever doesn't get put back into the file cabinet gets thrown away.
I use that analogy also. It really helps users to understand how memory and hard drive space are two different things.
I can't tell you how many times I've had users tell me that they got some variety of out of memory error, then immediately start describing how they tried to delete stuff from their hard drive to fix it. :-)
> Making the problem worse is that fact that most consumer PCs are sold with the bare minimum of RAM.
Is this true still? I thought it was clever marketing to sell your laptop with 4 gigs and a 32 bit OS. Not only can the OS not address all that RAM, but it wont use all of it. To the uninformed consumer, which this article is about, they think 'Wow! 4 gigs?! This other one only has (n, where n < 4) gigs, so this 4 gig computer must be a better deal!"
Was just about to post this same comment. RAM is like telling someone to remember a 7 digit number -- they could probably repeat it to you right away, but remembering it in an hour, or a day, is a lot harder.
So a good way to look for other business ideas is to look at other issues on the list and brainstorm solutions for them, similarly to the way Dropbox solved the problem of moving files between computers for non-computer experts.
Sure it can. Where's my computer? All I can find is the monitor, but I know the computer is here somewhere because I can see my programs on the monitor.
That's inane. If you know enough about computers to say "Where's my computer? All I can find is the monitor," then you know enough to look behind it, see no cables leading to a computer, and figure out the answer.
There's no cable going to the mouse/keyboard or to the network either - if it's an office computer that you didn't buy then this seems a genuine possible point of confusion.
The only issue that I take with people that don't understand that the monitor is not the computer: What do they think that the box under the desk is for?
It's pretty easy to set up 'rules' for this:
* If there is a box attached to the monitor (under the desk or otherwise) then the box is the computer.
* If everything is plugged directly into the monitor, then the monitor is the computer.
It's pretty simple, but people either just don't care or have it stuck in their heads that 'this' is the way the world is... and some people's opinions don't turn on a dime.
Point taken. I guess what I really take issue with is when people have these concepts (i.e. 'the computer is the monitor') and then you try to tell them different, and they fight you tooth and nail to keep you from changing their 'view of the world.'
It's like someone knows that you're knowledgeable about a subject so they ask you a question, and you respond by informing them that most of what they think they know is wrong (and then telling them how things really are). Then they get pissed off and basically tell you that they know more about the subject than you do.
I like to use a desk metaphor when explaining disk vs. RAM to relatives, etc.
If the hard disk is the filing cabinet, the amount of RAM is like the size of your desk. You can take a file out of the filing cabinet and work on it at your desk. If you take out 5 files, you need a bigger desk. If you run out of room on the desk, you have to put files back in the cabinet, e.g. close the window. It's not a perfect metaphor but for some reason they usually get it much better than talking about RAM as "what your programs use."
I met a group of several people who were very persistently trying to put a floppy disk in a CD-ROM drive. They refused to listen to my polite explanations that it just doesn't go in that slot. They tried for half an hour, and I think they broke the CD-ROM drive at some point.
Ignorance is understandable. I'm ignorant about all sorts of things. But what I don't get is willful ignorance.
I've found that what concepts people understand or don't is greatly effected by personality and the way there own minds are organized.
On that note, it would be fascinating to see if there is a way to use a some sort of psychological profile and a standardized approach that would allow for programs to be customized for each individual. Yes, this is pretty pie-in-the-sky but Someday it would be a really interesting development.
I've found that people don't understand and can't do many things if they see no personal gain in understanding or doing.
Contrary to my findings I like your idea very much.
Maybe the proliferation of webapps is the first steep in this direction? Gathering massive amounts of data about using application by individual users plus tools used for behavioral analysis - maybe?
I'm thinking even simpler than that, although your approach is interesting as well. Psychologist have gotten very good at using a series of questions to figure out basic personality traits. If you could develop a test that generates values which can be shared in a standardized manner with any program, then those programs could all present data in ways that make sense to the user.
Example: Macintosh has several different options for how you interact with files (cover flow, collapsible folders, icons) If all of the programs that allow for file interaction knew that I am visual and prefer to see coverflow by default then I'd feel much more at home as an end user becasue my interactions become more consistent no matter what program I am using.
Other areas that could benefit: color usage/dialogue boxes.
Overall paradigms for file organization - I, for instance am very spatially aware, whereas many people would prefer rigid folder hierarchy as the method of choice for organizing and finding files.
I really hope these issues have not persisted into 2009. I think basic computer literacy up to introductory programming is equivalent to literacy of the written word : not difficult, but revolutionary and absolutely necessary.
I'm afraid they have. There are lots of people, especially older people, who have managed to gain just exactly the knowledge they need to do their jobs with a computer - at least, when nothing unexpected happens.
You're conflating a few different types of computer literacy. Introductory programming, especially nowadays, doesn't have much to do with knowing whether the monitor is the computer or how to transfer files over a network. Certainly if you're programming for math or science you might not need those 'general computer skills.'
I'm deliberating lumping basic hardware and software literacy together. Everybody should understand the relationship between secondary storage, ram and the CPU. Everybody should understand that a computer program takes pieces of data in RAM and manipulates them using the CPU and has to make a special effort to get them to and from secondary storage or from a network connection and every should be able to basically understand how a program is, at some level of abstraction, a set of instructions for the computer to follow. They don't have to necessarily have particular operational skills - transference files on a particular networked system for example - but the basic knowledge of what is going on should be there.
Just to clarify, are your referring to a specific group of people as "everyone" or do you actually feel that every human being should know these things? If the latter, what purpose does knowing what RAM, storage and the CPU have for anyone who merely uses a computer to email and "google"?
Yes, I feel that everyone should learn these things. Why not? It's like two weeks of work at most to understand basically what is going on in hardware. I'm pretty sure they teach these things in high school or even grade school these days. I'm not suggesting knowing low level details, but understanding the basics of computation - here is this big universe of data out there in secondary storage but I need to grab a part of it into short term memory, do something with it and then stuff it back. It turns out that computation is a fundamental part of our universe (wolfram's a new kind of science and other works talk about this) and there's a lot to be gained by understanding what data is, the different ways it can live and how it is manipulated in modern computers. The CPU/RAM/storage cycle is fundamental and understanding this informs a lot of things. It's also pretty key to learning introductory programming, which I believe impacts basic thought processes in the same way that knowing basic math does.
