I think you actually made the argument that they ARE mutually exclusive. At least if you accept that the majority of the herd does not want to make those choices. But in any case, I only said
almost mutually exclusive because I agree that a set of "sane" defaults is best so that even those folks have to make some decision and the rest of us can make ours. IOW, nobody gets a product that is initially ideal to them but does get the ability to make it the way they prefer.
On 1/3/07, der.hans <PLUGd@lufthans.com> wrote:
Am 03. Jan, 2007 schwätzte Dazed_75 so:
> I suspect the issue may be more related to the extensions themselves. I did
> the update before seeing this thread. But when I did see this I looked and
> the extensions window shows all 6 that I use but three of them show a button
> for an update being available.
The extensions didn't even show up. I was expecting that I might have to
update one or two, but wasn't expecting them to disappear entirely.
> Jery, I am beginning to suspect that a part of M$ success and some of the
> changing directions in Linux is because a LOT of people WANT to be stupid
> when it comes to computers. What I want is the ability to make the choices
> and that is the rub since so many people want the "freedom" not to have to
> make choices. The bad thing is that the two approaches are almost mutually
I think they aren't mutually exclusive.
> exclusive. To service the ones who want to be "stupid about computers" it
> is necessary to shield them even from the fact there is a choice to make.
> If you don't do that you will not appeal to the masses. If you do it you
> annoy the techies for whom you have made choices without their consent.
They need to sane defaults. It would also be nice if we had ways of
universally disabling certain mechanisms. The javascript preferences
are great. I'd also like to ban extensions from having network
connectivity, or at least from having network connectivity to someplace
other than the web page being viewed.
> Maybe all OS's and applications need a Smart/Dumb button the user can press
> anytime to expose/hide the option choices. Ooooh, and the
> designer/developer job just got a bunch harder. How about a SmartER/DumbER
> button? <wink>
Software needs sane defaults with a simple interface. It also needs the
ability to get to a more detailed interface if you want it.
Not everybody needs a way to disable the blink tag, but I'm betting most
of us on the list want to make sure it's dead :).
Most people don't need a complex proxy setup, so no need to have that open
by default. For those of us who need it, there could be a mechanism to
enable more details.
When it comes down to it we all need more complexity sometimes, but
generally we want it to at least work well by default. I have no interest
in getting to know the intricacies of what can be done with a word
processor, so I want OpenOffice.org to just work and to work securely.
vim, OTOH, I want to be able to customize in 3 different languages and
have automatic adjustments based on the phase of the moon...
ciao,
der.hans
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