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Simplicity In the Age Of The GUI

evenprime writes: "Wired is running a story on Mark Hurst's extremely retro GoodEasy computing environment, and how it's old fashioned *nix approach to computing -- flat text, small simple programs that can be chained together -- increases user productivity" It's an interesting, hyper-simple approach, though any user outside of Mark's agency would have to apply some creative adaption. Every few months, I try to re-organize and simplify the documents and programs on my system, this looks like a good experiment for the next time.

8 of 238 comments (clear)

  1. Clear the desktop??? by zephc · · Score: 5, Funny

    But thats where i keep all my STUFF!!

    *tip of the hat to The Tick*

    --
    "I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
    1. Re:Clear the desktop??? by Ghoser777 · · Score: 3, Funny

      So do I, but you really shouldn't. It would be like taking all your bills, letters, homework assignments (or real work), picturers, porn, etc and threw them into a big pile on your desk. It's a lot faster to find them all if they're not all on the desk top and sorted in some meaningful fashion. Hey, I hate it when I can't find my porn fast... err... nevermind.

      F-bacher

      --
      James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
    2. Re:Clear the desktop??? by sharkey · · Score: 4, Funny

      Really? On the Desktop? I never thought about that. I've been saving my stuff in the filing bucket named Recycle Bin. It keeps my files together, and I am protecting Mother Earth by recycling.

      --

      --
      "Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
  2. Re:I guess... by weslocke · · Score: 2, Funny

    Actually they probably spent their money getting out of their parents' basements.

    You might want to start saving.

    (Aren't AC's wonderful?)

    --

    'Life is like a spoonful of Drain-O, it feels good on the way down but leaves you feeling hollow inside'
  3. Re:To make your computer efficient, think like one by pthisis · · Score: 5, Funny

    My wife uses our Mac at home. She clutters her desktop with icons, rarely empties the trash can unless I tell her it's essential

    Wow. My wife gets mad at me because I clutter my desktop with papers and rarely empty the trash unless she yells at me to do it.

    Sumner

    --
    rage, rage against the dying of the light
  4. Re:To make your computer efficient, think like one by Chundra · · Score: 5, Funny
    I used to be like you. But I just gave up. Now I use a perl script to convert my plain text messages to prismatic, bold, italic, underlined, visually obscene messages littered with random mispelings and profuse punctuation!!!?!!!??

    And you know what? I have lots of friends now, and I regularly sleep with two beautiful women at once. I've got another perl script that filters their cruft into my own vanilla format. You might say I've developed my own private babelfish. Things are good for me. They could be good for you too.

    Embrace and extend, grasshopper.

  5. Re:To make your computer efficient, think like one by cmstremi · · Score: 2, Funny

    So, then, there are two types of people in this world. Those who occasionally empty their desktop trash and those who don't.

  6. Funny Mac Tech Support story by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    The part in goodeasy where he says "your first job is to clear off the desktop" reminds me of two funny calls I had when I did Mac tech support (which by the way, is 10x easier than the Windows tech support I do now but only 1/10 as easy as the VM/CMS support I did years ago)...

    In the first call I determined the cause of their problem was that their hard drive was full. Caller disagreed so I Timbuktu'd in and examined their hard drive and showed them it was full. Caller said I was still wrong as "All of my documents are kept in this folder on the desktop". They took the mouse and opened a folder on their desktop... sure enough it contained hundreds of (MS Office) files. "See, all of my files are on the desktop, not on my hard drive." Of course I had explained that what is on the desktop is really on the hard drive too. The user says "You mean they are not stored in the monitor?"

    The second caller was a person who kept all of their files in their trash (recycle bin for you Win people). When I asked them why they said "That way they won't take any disk space!". I explained that they actually do and in addition to it being rather awkward to keep all their files in the trash they ran the risk that somebody else using their computer would empty the trash and wipe out their files. User says "Yes, that has happened several times already".

    UGGHHHHH!