Back to Windows...

[Eric S. Johansson]

wade at wadesmart.com wrote:
> 10252006 1155 GMT-6
> 
> I agree with the mind set. 

...

I also agree very strongly about the need for a mindset change.  But you 
need to also remember there's a difference between geek and user 
mindset.  The geek user is more likely than not to dive into difficult 
things like postfix etc. as you did in your example.  On the other hand 
you have matched users like my wife to say "give me e-mail, newsreader, 
browser, and chat (IRC).  And oh yes, I want to view videos on CNN, 
youtube, and flash animations with sound."  And if I can do all of that, 
she's happy.  No problems.  By the way, the solution was Thunderbird, 
Pan, Firefox, xchat.  Java from Sun, flash all kind mostly work, sound 
kind of mostly works but I don't hear any complaints so not going to 
ask.  ;-)

Part of the reason she is happy with what she has is because she has 
seen the absolute hair tearing, screaming to the rafters agony I have 
gone through with Windows.  And as I said before, the only reason I use 
Windows is because I need to use speech recognition.  I really need to 
get on the new accessibility mailing list to advocate for a hopefully 
easy to build tool that would make it possible to use Windows only for 
speech recognition.

interestingly, my dilemma is yet another mindset.  Is Ubuntu going to 
support real handicap accessibility based on the needs of the handicap 
community or do a token effort for things that are only useful by a 
small minority of the handicapped community?  By handicapped I mean 
mostly blind, upper extremity disabilities (my situation), hearing, 
colorblindness and the very last is tools for those who forced to use 
unicorn sticks and other cruel tricks developed by accessibility advocates.

It's one of those Catch-22 situations.  Those who need it can't build it 
(fast enough to keep up with the evolutionary changes), and those who 
can build it, don't have the experience necessary to tell them what works.

Sucks to be human.


---eric

(Oh my G*d, I stayed on topic... sort of)