No more "me too" posts.

[Bart Silverstrim]

Dotan Cohen wrote:

>>> There exists a way to make themselves happy.
>> Forcing them to follow the developer's will?
>>
> 
> Everything that you do in *buntu or anything else is as per the
> developer's will. Do you know why the Porsche Tiptronic gearshift is
> pushed forward to go up a gear, but the Ford Focus is pushed back?
> Because that is how the developers made it. Go complain on a Ford
> forum and see how the quickly engineers show up to fix the
> incompatibility.

Or don't buy the product. See how long an employer pays developers when 
the products don't sell. Or see how long an application sticks around 
when no one uses it.

>> Consumer-oriented service isn't your forte, is it? :-)
>>
> 
> No. Efficient usage of limited resources isn't you forte, is it? :)
> (I will let the audience guess which one of us is an engineer)

Oh, I'll send the honor to you with a basket of fruit, a big bow on top 
and a smile. The fact of the matter is that if products don't sell (and 
yes, this doesn't *directly* apply to FOSS products, but it does still 
have an impact when the programmers want food on the plate and a roof 
under which to live, unless everyone on the Internet is living in a 
self-sustaining commune, I'll concede) a business can't afford to pay 
their engineers and developers.

In an ideal world, your view would be just the bee's knees. I agree. I'd 
love to see people actually follow an efficient system put in place to 
help them.

Realistically...I'd have better luck finding a unicorn that grants magic 
wishes than finding consumers who will cooperate with what *other 
people* impose on them for these standards of user-friendliness. 
Consumer-centric cultures means catering to the lazy and the 
self-centered needs...well, desires...of the consumer, and that means 
making concessions to doing what the CUSTOMER wants, not the developer, 
whether it's going to streamline efficiency or be in their best interest 
or not. There's plenty of information on topics that relate to this; I 
named one already, and there are books like "Don't make me think!", etc. 
etc.

Engineers are a weird group. If you understand what I'm talking about, 
then you probably understand that what you want is an ideal for your 
workflow but is really not achievable no matter how much you fight it. 
Ideally computers would be used for getting work done, as a tool to 
expand arts and literature and create new drugs and etc. etc, instead 
they're used mostly for texting teenagers, viewing porn, and playing 
video games. Computer technology wasn't "driven" in advancements for 
noble reasons. Advancements in affordable video graphics and network 
bandwidth was driven by first person shooters and b00b13s.

So...catering to the lowest common denominators is a concession 
companies have to make to make a profit.

So are you arguing because of what you *want* to see, or because of what 
you honestly think you're going to see as a transformation in a mailing 
list culture? Either way I think it's been a nice conversation. Unless 
you're getting offended, which I didn't mean to do.