Slashdot Mirror
The Paradox of Choice
sproketboy writes "Psychology professor Barry Schwartz has written a book which is a must read by those wanting to get Linux on the Desktop.
Dr. Schwartz examines the problem of too much choice in our society. Maybe Microsoft has it right after all?
Here's a video interview with Dr. Schwartz,
a review of the book from the New Yorker and
more info from PBS." Of course, the choice issue applies to far more than desktop computers, but is still instructive in that area. Thanks to Stefan Hudson for a SciAm story that has more information.
To post first. How Paridoxical!
Read more link goes to some site, and on this page my userinfo box is aligned to the left. wtf
is what you got...
Freedom From Choice
Is what you want.
(Are we not men?)
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
This is bullshit. Anybody who complains about having too many good choices has never been in the position of having only bad choices. It's not that the poor don't have choices. After all, poor people in India have many choices. They could walk around all night, they could steal a piece of cardboard under which they sleep, they could steal some other poor person's piece of cardboard, they could sleep under a car, they could lie down on a bit of earth devoid of any padding at all, they could commit a crime and go to jail, etc etc etc. Many choices. All of them STINK. I have no sympathy for people who have so many good choices that they have trouble choosing just one. None.
Unfortunaely, in a wealthy society like America, even stupid people get to be rich.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
to think of "May the Schwartz be with you!" when I read that name? :)
Veni, Vidi, Velcro!
This would have been an informed post, but there was a link to a video of the guy discussing the paradox of choice, a link to the article about the book, and a link to an interview with the guy in the video who wrote the book that the article was about... ...so I couldn't decide.
I for one would like a many choices thankyou.
If the dollar is an "I owe you nothing", then the Euro is a "Who owes you nothing." - Doug Casey
Should I post in this story or in the other stories? What to do? what to do? argh! I'm going crazy!!!
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
Looks like link this was going to be included in the article, but something got messed up. Sciam digital subscription required for the full article, unfortunately...
Scientific American: The Tyranny of Choice [ PSYCHOLOGY ]
Logic suggests that having options allows people
to select precisely what makes them happiest. But, as studies show, abundant choice often makes for misery
Linux (and Pizza) is like a Blowjob, no matter how bad it is, its still pretty good!
seriously, choice is bad?
Linux is powerful because of choices!
I really dont care if linux makes it on the desktop or not. I bet the devleopers dont either. Heh, well the ones doing it because they like to!
oh well, i like choice.
You can have a simple desktop that Joe Sixpack can play with, and at the same time set up a dialogue that allows the tweaker in some of us to have free reign over what each little widget and bit of desktop does.
I just don't get why it has to be such an "either or" choice here...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
For a what?! Sure, people don't usually read the articlesss, or the summaries, but now we're not even bothering to finish writing them?
So MS cares for our health, I have never thought about it in this way. One system, one browser, one Bill to rule us all! For our mental good of course...
Of course, I haven't read the article, but I'd rather have choices than Big Brother Bill spoon-feeding me what He thinks I need!
[ insert your own witty .sig here ]
Tons of choices can be annoying - going to a restaurant and being forced to select from a huge list of foods can be overwhelming. Usually, all I end up doing is finding one thing I like and then ordering that all the time, without checking out other stuff. It's too much of a hassle to try out every choice that exists in the world.
Then again, if we didn't have as many choices, I might not be able to find one thing I like in the first place, and thus probably wouldn't go back to eat there - I'll choose to go somewhere else.
But if that choice was taken away, I'd have to eat something I didn't particularly like, which never killed anyone.
Morale of the story? Having too many choices is the real reason I'm a picky eater.
But anyway, I know I enjoy my choices. I can choose linux or windows. I much prefer choice to no choice. Does anyone really believe that we are better off when we can't make decisions for ourselves?
Sure, it might be nice to be a little drone in the big hive... You don't have to put any effort into thinking for yourself, or expanding your mind, since the hive could really care less about your individuality. In fact, indivduality is discouraged.
I dunno, I think linux allows us to express our individuality through choice (i.e. we can choose numerous desktops/themes/applications and customize them to our taste). Right now I'm enamoured with XFce.
Isn't Choice something that comes along with Freedom? Without Choice, we wouldn't notice if we no longer had freedom...
Apple used to have a massive product line with dizzying list of model numbers. Not only did it confuse customers but it also brought down quality and delayed shipping of many of the models. Now you can just buy a notebook (iBook and PowerBook) and a desktop (eMac, iMac & PowerMac) from Apple. Sure you can supe up the basic model they sell but you are still buying a standardized item.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Linux on the desktop? Other industries seem to cope fine with a lot of alternatives, except the software one. The finger of blame is laid firmly on Microsoft and their illegal practises. When they start buying laws to make Linux illegal (like the DMCA and more draconian software restrictions), then their monopoly will be firmly cemented.
"Here's a video interview with Dr. Schwartz"
/.? Nobody will be able to see them anyway.
And here is a slashdot back. Why do you insist of having videos on the frontpage of
Now, freedom can never be wrong - ever. If people can't cope with it, then it is the people who are in error, not the freedom to be able to choose.
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
/disagree
The smarter people should do just as they are now, and try to persuade them what is right.
I say keep the aforementioned crap as far away from reality as possible. We don't need more elitism.
The observations are a direct consequence of a well known usability heuristic called Hick's Law. Hick's Law states (roughly) that the time an individual requires to make a decision increases with the number of alternatives available.
But the thing is that with Linux, you can always back out to Windows, which in this day and age, is just a fine choice. So if I'm gonna install Linux, then be presented with 13 web browsers, 3 desktops, and 5 office suites, I'm much more likely to throw up my hands and say "fuck it" and re-install windows, then to try to deciper everything in Linux. Each distro should just pick out the best, and leave it at that. Not only do I not need a dozen web browsers, I don't *want* a dozen web browsers. This makes total sense.
I run a retail store. I have a large number of products that cover one particular need. Without help, customers just get overwhelmed and leave. We have to ask them what they need, and help them make a decision. Same thing with Linux, except that there's no help. You install a distro, get 1000's of programs, 95% which are useless to the user, and they get overwhelmed and bail.
Unless some expertise is offered (ie: each distro picks ONE office suite, ONE browser, ONE desktop, etc.), it's just too much to deal with, and completely unnecessary.
The Paradox of Choice
From the title, I thought this was going to be a deep mathematical or philosophical piece that I would have to give a lot of thought to.
I do agree with concept that we have too much choice in our society, or rather, we are deep in information overload. Too much choice is not a problem if you can quickly whittle down what you want and what you don't want. The problem is when the choices become confusing and ambiguous - and I think that has happened for the average individual. For instance, go into an applience store and say you want a tv, then hold on to your butts, because you're going to be there for a while. Then pretend you didn't know what all the fancy jargon stuff means (like the average consumer). If that wasn't bad enough, I think marketers actually inflate the problem on purpose, making it seem that there is more choice than there actually is - since that boosts the chances that a consumer will buy your product.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
"Too many choices, not enough voices" which I interpreted as too many people willing to settle for the norm and not enough people who will demand more, go out on a limb and challenge the status quo, which I think is the main reason that microsoft has its hold.
"The stupider people think you are, the more surprised they will be when you kill them..."
She's right. Linux is bad for us. Big Brother is good for us. And I also have a PhD and publish BS.
My karma really hurts.
Linus on the Desktop...A problem? Really? It's not like we haven't used something worse for years...What about Windows 3.0 and 3.1 and 3.11 et al...My god, if people consider Linux not ready for a desktop then they should look back and see what they were using...then look at what they got now...then realise that the only real difference is what Linux has been doing all along...
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
...to take this server down (/.!)
Smarter people should find ways to get the rest to do informed choice instead of "mass-hysteria-induced" choice. Getting "smarter" people to do choices for "dumber" people will only allow them to remain "dumb", even if temporarily more productive.
.sig
Choice is a fine thing for now. Most of the world is still being introduced to desktop computing. It is not yet time to select the best technologies for any given application because we don't understand the application well enough yet.
Even something as "basic" as word processing has changed radically in the last 10 years as a wider variety of people have gained access to computers. The "outliers" in the sample set have, in some cases, become the majority of users.
Open source OSes are especially subject to this. Our systems are designed by those who have a combination of real-world-need and ability to implement. As time goes on that will be a broader and broader segment, and others will be brought in to implement for those who have the need, but not the ability (certainly already happened in some areas).
Give computing 20 or so more years to find its feet and it will be time to make hard decisions, but for now I think choice is a good thing.
Now, moving on to the officeplace (which is where most people think of desktop computing in terms of adoption strategies), I think it's key that OS vendors such as Red Hat, Mandrakesoft, SuSE/Novell and others produce a desktop with clear defaults and clear ways for admins to limit choices. This is important for large scale systems admin where you are maintaining 2,000 systems on people's desks. You need some uniformity in order to scale that support reasonably. This does NOT meant that choice should not be available, but that it should be available to the admins who install the systems and the system should behave well once those choices are made.
I think Red Hat and Mandrake do a decent job here. I'm not as familliar with SuSE, so I can't say. But, that is clearly one of the jobs of a vendor: to establish best practices and ease compatibility.
while not forcing them to constantly make them. Having a simple, functional default desktop but with the adaptability/personalization we've come to expect is the best way. For those willing/desiring to modify, their options are open. For those who have better things to do (like work), the default is there for them.
You install a Fedora Core, you get one browser, one desktop, and one office suite. Sweet!
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Ugh, with this kind of mentality the entire U.S. will be reduced to a horde of gibbering idiots...
Q: Choice is bad? A: Yes Q: Can anyone understand the issues? A: Think of how many letters there are in one word. Now multiply that by how many words are in a page, and then the book. Then by how many books there are. That's so much information! You shouldn't even try. Q: I like choice A: No you don't. You'd be happier if you didn't have them. Q: No, really, I like choice A: Well, here's some proof for you. People with cancer like having doctors treat them instead of creating their own chemo routines. Do you think you're better than people with cancer or something! THE END
Everything will be taken away from you.
Wow, that's a pretty offensive viewpoint. You clearly don't know many people.
Unfortunaely, in a wealthy society like America, even stupid people get to be rich.
Unfortunately.. it's usually the rule that stupid people get to be rich.
The gaining of wealth has nothing to do what what and how much you know.
it has everything to do with who you know, your sales ability or your ability to talk people out of their money for what you are offering..
very very few brilliant scientists or engineers are rich... it's tipically the businessmen and those good at selling that are.
and these people usually are pretty darn dumb when it comes to anything outside selling to persuading people...
Case in point... the Mercedes owner that needs the gas station attendant to explain and or show him how to use the gas pump, or the rich people that almost fall to pieces when the power in their area goes out for 3-4 hours and they do not know what to do and cannot fend for themselves without a microwave oven or resturant. (No joking, it happened here during the big blackout and we had interviews on tv from soccer mom's that could not figure out how to get food for their families when the power was out. one even complained.. "you cant even open a can of food!")
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
There's only a lot of choice in areas where there is still a lot of experimentation into the possible solutions. In areas where a suitable and economic solution has been found, choice is really rather limited.
It's a standard aspect of evolution: early forms show extraordinary variation and complexity; as time goes on the simplest and most economical solutions get standardized and the bizarre varieties get killed off.
The same happens in technology, which is why we converge on mature standards such as TCP/IP and (dare I say it) Linux.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Wow, Fidel Castro is web-active.
Is this really flamebait?
I thought that it was an attempt at humor, parroting Microsoft's approach to the market.
I agree. And even if each distribution picks, say, 1 standard software package to put in an "average Joe" version, you still have to pick a distribution, which isn't exactly the most straightforward choice when there really isn't any means of comparison (everything's so customizable that it really doesn't matter a whole lot, but it looks like it does).
The reason the average person doesn't switch to Linux is a lot like the reason the average person doesn't build their own computer; not because it's hard, but because it gives you too many choices (hard drive, motherboard, processor, case, etc.), and most people would rather just pick up a box that they can plug in and use.
This is my sig. There are many others like it, but this one is mine.
Having choices is fine, but when we have to many that is where we have a problem. Look at cable tv, or satellite. Do we really need 700,000 channels? Having to choose between 20 different products is difficult. Why do you think everyone just goes with MS? It is a universal product. No one *really* likes it, but everyone uses it.
Aunt Anne doesnt know which e-mail program to use in linux, but can cook better than most of us. She can choose a better sauce for this or that.
Joe sixpack know how to choose too. He know what the best beer is.
People want to choose when they KNOW what is to be choosen.
That's definitely good to know. If I want more, I can install more. Sounds like one worth trying.
While that's a related problem, I don't think its the root cause. The fact is the choices aren't being made easy.
First of all, your choice involves a significant investment of time. Changing your mind is a lot of work. With your programming language, your job, things like this, you are limited by the learning curve. Many PC games are suffering from this badly (although its not as bad as during the Sim era of the 90s when obtuse displays and complex missions and controls were the norm).
Combine this with the fact that your choices aren't very well explained - when I click around in many apps or application managers, I don't know whats what, what's better, what's worse. I don't know what music to download, what channels to watch. If there's a significant time investment in the wrong answer, I might just choose the safest bet. If the cost of a proper search for the rigth answer exceeds the benefits of finding the superiour solution, then I might just choose to do what everyone else does.
This is why we are stuck in a monoculture - society has made it very hard to even find the offstream material, and those in the offstream have not made it easy to know which of their offerings are meritorious for whom. I'm not pointing the finger - noone can blame independants for being disorganised - if they were organised, they wouldn't be the independants. But you see the problem. I don't like pop music, but finding good music is so much work. Solution? I'm finding every single old Depeche Mode and Collective Soul album I missed back in their heydays. When I run out of old music I like, I'll just stop listening. I've alraedy resorted to that for a while.
I ushered a wedding this weekend. People could sit wherever they wanted. So i started by offering people to sit anywhere, but they just looked like a deer in the headlights. Finally I just started telling them to "follow me" and to "sit there." They were much happier.
Most people are not dumb, they just don't want to be bothered. I happen to be one of them.
Those who do wan't to be bothered will speak up anyway.
It's just like when I'm trying to find some good porn, I've overwhelmed!
So many fetishes, so little kleenex.
Josh
Psychology professor Barry "FUD" Schwartz receives $50 million from a mysterious donor...
I can concede that 50+ operating systems with no data exchange compatibility would be a bad thing. But that is not the same as having no choice at all. The old Soviet Union had one choice state owned monopolies. Look where it got them. The addition of choice becomes less of a problem when they all follow standards. Take a look at cars, they all have a steering wheel, brakes, etc. They all use similiar motor oil, the same gas etc. Having a choice in cars is good. Being locked into one supplier or manufacturer is bad. It's the same with computers. Open standards, choice, competition spurring innovation, all good things. One supplier, added features and imcompatibilties just to force an upgrade and maintain monopoly, bad!
See what choice gets you!
and look! even YOU get to choose whether this is insightful or funny or iformative or redundant or flamebait or troll or you could even choose not to moderate or respond in any way.. you can choose to post anonymously or as your slashdot id...!
You could click your another browser button right now you could just hold your breath until your pass out!
Only *you* can choose to prevent forest fires!...or CREATE them! Do you take the one ring or destroy it!
I choose to stop now..
The problem is made worse by the rapid improvement. Rules that apply last year do not apply this year.
But on the other side of that if the manufactures were not scum, that problem can easily be dealt with.
All it takes is a classification system, similar to what we do with cars.
People know what you mean when you say:
Compact
mini-van
jeep
SUV
sports-car
station waggon
What we need are some similar terms for the newer technologies to become more common.
We need categories like: game-system (high end video/audio), word-system (low-end MS word,Excel,presentationsm with low memory, low speed etc.), net-server (designed to host a web site or other network), etc. etc. to be come common terms that everyone knows and uses.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
That sounds like fascism, to me.
Consider: how many manufacturers and models of cars do we have? Consumer electronics? Colours and styles of paint?
When you go to the grocery, do you ask for 'meat', or do you specify species and cut?
You can feel free to live in your one size fits all soylent world. Go to your car dealership, and say like a simpleton, "I WANT A CAR". I'm sure they'll be happy to oblige you, and fill you out with a nice payment plan that suits your needs without you even having to read the fine print.
Have too many choices or to have no choices at all.
Freedom from choice, it's what you want.
Mmm hmm. So this guy rips off Devo and I bet he doesn't even wear a flowerpot on his head not to mention you know he can't skate fer shit. I can't believe how people front these days.
It's a common mistake to confuse choices with decisions. Decisions are what confuse and annoy people, not choices.
Some simple illustrations of this. Choice: "these are the desktop themes you can play with". Decision: "please choose a desktop theme to continue installation.
Choice: "tired of your wife? Here are ten more girls to choose from." Decision: "you gonna marry me or what?!"
Choice: "choose from fifty different fabric colors for your car interior". Decision: "what color interior do you want your next subway car to have?"
Basically a good designer maximises choice but minimizes the decisions needed to get started.
I believe the article has made the error of confusing the two.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
In my view, the good doctor is only part right. Sure, maybe for those who don't want to, don't have the time to, or just plain aren't interested in choice, sure, no choice is great. One operating system, one people - yah that's fine for them.
However, for myself, I've stuck with the Unices because I'm interested in them. And in fact, you can make a much bigger argument for this whole thing when you look back any any significant discovery or invention in history. Some people struggle out of ideology to make things and others accidentally cause things to happen out of sheer curosity.
It's fine for the doc to have an opinion on this. And he very well can because we live in a society (somewhat) tolerant of many views and ideas. You take these away, and society will just die - there will be no point.
I mean, this was part of what the whole Matrix was about - control and choice. Some don't mind being controlled - fine, no problem. But don't take away choice for everyone, including those that might actually use it. Otherwise, your back to just a few (who probably themselves won't even care at all at some point) making decisions which, many historical lessons show, is usually a bad thing.
Choice. Good.
No choice. Bad.
Which do you take, full freedom of choice or none whatsoever?
If you have the opportunity to choose from a great deal of options, you usually find that there are a few that are the best of the bunch, and the majority will go with those options.
This is especially true with software, except when you have a monopoly using anti-competitive practices in which to 'influence' or 'force' you to use a particular product.
Choice is good, it provides competition and allows people to decide which is best, rather than being forced to use something.
At least if choice is taken away from end-users, an elected body should decide what is or is not to be used. Decisions such as these should not be made by a monopoly. Anyway, isn't this attitude one that encourages monopolies? We all know what happens where there is no competition...
Linux/Open Source/Anti Microsoft News
There is a definite tight rope that has to be walked particularly when we are trying to make a Linux Desktop more usable for your average computer user from the get go? Too much choice at the outset can be quite a challenge, how do you know whether to choose Galeon/Mozilla/Firefox/Epiphany/Konqueror when what you really care about is if you can connect to WWW right after installation.
Distributions that succeed on the desktop have to make a lot of these choices for novice users. The power of Linux, as opposed to what you get in the Windows world, is that you're not stuck with the choices your distribution makes for you. Once you get your feet wet and used to it, you can explore your options.
Plus, anyone who says that choice is a good thing has never been shoping for rings with their girlfriend.
Yeah,.. I love people thinking for me. Especially Microsoft,. Hell, why should I be permitted to think at all? I could have everything selected for me..
... I think ill deal with my options thanks. No matter how weary it is struggling over a menu at a restaurant trying to make a decision, I like the ability to make the right and wrong choices.
One number for you guy, "1984"
-caes
I saw this on a silly cable TV show and have been thinking a lot about it. Choice is nothing new, it's just that the types of choices we all have are changing. If you think about what career you should taken or where exactly you should live, the choices are absolutely staggering. These, for the most part aren't new developments, though more people have the ability to make a wider array of them.
What's interesting to me is that things that people have had to choose from for many number of years have special agents who specialize in making these choices; travel agents, real estate agents and career counselors. I expect that we'll see more and more of these agents in the future, though it's hard for me to imagine how a breakfast cereal agent would work exactly.
I understand that some people may feel overwhelmed by the breadth of choices presented to the average person, but it seems rather condescending to imply that you ought to give up your choices. The underlying attitude seems to be choice is bad for _you_, and I'll go ahead and keep reading the Economist and drinking my reserve cognac.
Concluding that choice is bad because it causes indecision is like concluding that the sun is bad because it causes sunburn.
After all, is freedom really slavery; ignorance, strength?
"Hi. I'm an I.N.T.J. !!! (Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Judging)
Hi, I'm Hao Wu and I'm gonna kick your ass because I spend 10 hour a day doing real science using difficult equation and concentration factors that makes your B.S. appear highly unfit for publication....
Can I get an Amen?
I suggest you read Slashdot
all the psycho-babblists need to do is point out a strategy for dealing with choice. the bozo with problems picking bluejeans just needs to spend the time the first time to narrow down the choice and then stick with it and never think about it again.
order 'eddie bauer relaxed fit 40 x 34' every time and you don't have to have your fragile sense of well being hammered by the choices.
do that on everything that doesn't matter to you and only spend time on the stuff you care about, like computers and software.
If you don't know where you want to go. If you have a clear goal or a good gut feeling of what/where, choice is a bonus.
nosig today
it's a blessing that we have multiple choices of course it gets complex but noone ever said that freedom was easily earned.
The editors are overwhelmed with bad choices!
that they only give us the video in .asx format
When you go to the grocery, do you ask for 'meat', or do you specify species and cut?
What the hell is this "meat"? Just give me a store full of gray boxes labelled "Food", damnit!
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
" Dr. Schwartz examines the problem of too much choice in our society. Maybe Microsoft has it right after all?"
Um, Microsoft being right or wrong doesn't really factor in here. It's the lack of effective competition that's creating a lack of choice. Apple OS has more or less limited themselves to their own platform, which is generally more expenisive than the average computer user is willing to pay, while Linux is still too obscure for the average user to screw around with. It's not that Windows is a spectacular product that by nature crushes all competition in it's path, it's the fact that what competition exists has been limiting itself in one form or another, giving MS free reign on the PC. As such, most products now cater to it, which makes it more popular.
Too much competition doesn't even begin to enter into the PC OS market, because there never has been that amount of competition. MS won by default, which has nothing to do with them being right or wrong.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Thousands of programs? 95% of which are useless?
13 web browsers? 3 desktops? What Linux Distribution are you using?
Come on man, have you tried some modern distros oriented towards the new user? (I.e. Mandrake 9.2/10, SuSE)? They give you a default desktop. In mandrake's case, that is KDE. They give you one browser (Konqueror). One email client (kmail). The alternative apps are buried in menus, but those apps are NOT immediately viewable to the user.
Most modern distros do a very good job of eliminating excessive choice for the new user. Mandrake is the easiest, and you should be using it if you are a linux newb.
Every fork, every distro is one more nail in Linux's chances on the desktop. Linux is divinding and conquering itself. Pick a distro. Name it the One True Linux. Promote the hell out of it. Then you'll see results.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
I read the article, which is about how people who will keep looking for something beyond the "good enough it works for me" stage are less happy with life in general not just linux. One lesson to be learned for linux desktop is that lots of people are happy with the "good enough" but linux isnt quite there yet, IMHO. I tried to switch my home system to mandrake 9.0 a while agin, and the "good enough" wasnt quite there yet. Yes, openoffice works, but cut/paste between that and the web browser didnt work. Reading files from my digital camera with usb took too much fiddling. The biggest PITA was that every single "top" cd burining software could not deal with the simple task of appending to a multi-session cd without lots of playing with switches etc. I read the manuals, checked the web, worked with parameters etc, and did get it working eventually. I still wound up giving it up, because getting it to do what I wanted was too hard - too much fiddling, where windows would just work. Its not the better/more features that is keeping linux off my desktop - I use it at work, and put cygwin on my pc because I cant live without ls and bash. I am comfortable with command-lines, but that doesnt mean I dont want the software to get the job done quick and easy like windows. Some people might want to buy a dvd player that lets you assemble and configure your own interfaces, but life is so much simpler if you can just open the box plug it in and watch the movie.
EIN office suite,
EIN browser,
EIN desktop!!
Neo-Nazism reaches another milestone.
On
Linux has a much better answer to the problem of excessive choice than Windows does. Look for example at the KnoppMyth project. Its aim is to produce a live CD which gives you a PVR. That's incredibly powerful! In principle, all a user needs is this CD, plug it into their PC (assuming it has the necessary hardware), and PRESTO! All the complex stuff has been figured out by someone else, and the user has a simple interface to accomplish exactly what it is they want - to record/playback their television shows.
I imagine this special-purpose live-CD phenomenon will prove to be very powerful, and will be an important channel through which Linux will eventually eclipse Windows.
I'm in the office another 5 hours today and have no access to my mega-Devo collection.
:P
Damn song'll be in my head the rest of the day...
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
I take it you've never eaten at the HP cafe?
Lunch, the HP Way
by Stephen Harrison and Noel Magee
This is the story of a different kind. No melting CPU's, no screaming disc drives, just the kind of psychological torture that scars a man for life.
I had a 9:00 meeting with my sales rep. I needed to buy an entire new series 70, the works. He said it'd take about an hour. Three hours later, we'd barely got the datacomm hardware down on paper, so he invited me downstairs for lunch.
This was my first experience in an HP cafeteria. Above the service counter was a menu which began...
MMU's (Main Menu Units)
0001A Burger. Includes sesame-seed bun.
Must order comdiments 00110A separately
001 Deletes seeds.
002 Expands burger to two patties.
00020A Double cheeseburger, preconfigured. Includes cheese,
bun and condiments.
001 Add-on bacon.
002 Delete second patty.
003 Replaces second patty with extra cheese.
00021A Burger Upgrade to Double Cheeseburger
001 From Single Burger.
002 From Double Burger.
003 Return credit for bun.
00220A Burger Bundle. Includes 00010A, 00210A and 00310A
001 Substitute root beer 00311A for cola 00310A.
My eyes glazed over. I asked for a burger and a root beer. The waitress looked at me like I was an alien.
"How would you like to order that, sir?"
"Quickly, if possible. Can't I just order a sandwich and a drink?"
"No sir. All our service is menu driven. Now what would you like?"
I scanned the menu. "How big is the 00010 burger?"
"The patty is rated at eight bites."
"Well, how about the rest of it?"
"I dont have the specs on that, sir, but I think it's a bit more."
"Eight bites is too small. Give me the Double Burger Upgrade."
My sales rep interrupted. "No, you want the Single Burger option 002 'expands burger to two patties'. The double burger upgrade would give you two burgers.
"But you could get return credit on the extra bun," the waitress chimed in, trying to be helpful, "although it isn't documented."
I looked around to see if anybody was staring at me. There was a couple in line behind us. I recognized one of them, a guy who merely mowed me down in the parking lot with his cherry-red '62 Vette. He was talking to some woman who was waving her arms around and looking very excited.
"What if... we marketed the bacon cheeseburger with the vegetable option and without the burger and cheese? It'd be a BLT!"
The woman charged off in the direction of the telephone, running steeplechases over tables and chairs. My waitress tried to get my attention again. "Have you decided, sir?"
"Yeah, give me the double burger- excuse me, I mean the 00020A with the option 001. I want everything on it." She put me down for the Condiment Expansion Kit, which included mayonnaise, mustard and pickles with a option to substitute relish.
"Ketchup." I hated to ask. "I want ketchup on that, too."
"That's not a condiment, sir, it's a Tomato Product." My sales rep butted in again. "That's not a supported configuration."
"What now?" I kept my voice steady.
"Too juicy. The bun can't handle it."
"Look. Forget the ketchup, just put some lettuce and tomatoes on it."
The waitress backed away from the counter. "I'm sorry, sir, but that's not supported either, the bun can take it but the burger won't fit in the box. The sales rep defended himself. "Just not at first release." "It is being beta-tested, sir."
I checked the overhead screen. Fries, number 000210A, option 110. French followed by option 120, English. "What the hell are English Fries?" I turned to the sales rep. "Chips they call them. We sell a lot of them."
I gave up. "OK, OK just give me a plain vanilla Burger Bundle." The confused the waitress profoundly. "Sir, Vanilla as an option is configured
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
I have no sympathy for people who have so many good choices that they have trouble choosing just one. None.
Wow. You're so heroic.
Your problem is that you think NORMAL people--i.e., people who don't visit Slashdot 10+ times a day and download the latest point release of something called "GNOME"--have the time, energy, and patience to learn which of their 8 text editors is the best. To them, the whole idea is ridiculous, and they'll ask you, "why don't they just make one good one?"
Are you going to whine at them how you have no sympathy for people who blah blah blah something about poor people in India blah blah blah, or are you just going to nod and agree like any sane person would?
The day anti-social, non-approachable nerds like you (this is not a troll but an accurate description of the mindset) stop controlling the direction of the Linux desktop community is the day it finally starts gaining real momentum outside of its current niche position.
This is a well-known phenomenon in people management. If you're trying to persuade someone to make a choice and give them 50 options they are most likely to not choose any of them (or in this case, stick with Windows). When you have so many options they get worried and confused - did I pick the right one? What if I had picked XYZ? What makes option XYZ better than option ABC?
.. N, etc..
Now, I'm not suggesting that choice is bad - but if you want someone to decide you must initially present them with a small number of options - A or B - not A or B or C or D or
Thanks,
--
Matt
How is it too much choice? If you have a PC, your main choices are relatively simple: Windows or Linux.
Windows: $100 for XP Home, $200 for XP Pro. Finds most of your hardware with ease, but is often a frequent target for exploits, worms, and other quick spreading viruses. Comes with a firewall which might not appeal to advanced users, but works just fine for all others. Can be quite unstable at times. If you're just checking email or viewing web pages and don't really care to learn much about the machine you're using then this is for you.
Linux: Free. Improvements are always being made. Quite touchy with hardware detection. Multiple choices for windows environments. Most of the software you use for everyday tasks (and security) are free. Very stable, but intimidating for a beginner to use due to lack of user friendliness. Tons of documentation and help online. Ability to customize the system to fit YOUR computer hardware (grandma won't care about this).
It's not a hard choice. You can either pay money and use an OS where you don't really have to learn the inner workings, but will sacrifice security and stability, or you can use a free OS that's harder to learn that's more solid in security and stability.
If Microsoft makes leaps and bounds regarding security and what they leave open by default, then they might have Linux beat for the time being in trying to win over the average everday computer user (like the age old example of Grandma).
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
Choice is good, it provides competition and allows people to decide which is best, rather than being forced to use something.
Precisely, and well said. Also with respect to software, at least in the OSS world, competing programs in the same area has tended to increase competition for the highest quality. Hence gaim => kopete, or the rapid pace of Apache development.
Maybe Microsoft has it right? Who wrote that? Hemos? If there is too much choice in this society, Hemos, it doesn't make Microsoft right in ANY regard.
I have often found that cell-phone (mobile) carriers have the vast array of plans which overlap and seem to not really give you feeling that you have a well-fitting plan.
Also, it's that Coke in a 1-liter bottle versus 6-cans versus 6 glass-bottles versus...
I tend to re-buy crap for this very reason: the first purchase I realize now why it was so cheap, the second purchase while more expensive I realize it's just over-hyped. The third typically is a good cost-to-quality ratio.
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
Men live in fear of getting stuck buying anything at the store for their wife in the "personal care aisle". Any attempt by wife to make this easier are confounded by a ever-shifting product placement, naming, new features, colors scents and package design.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
I have always thought that I don't care about this. Let me qualify this assertion: I do not care if company XYZ uses Linux, MS, Mac, or Whizzo-Desktop for their desktops. I also don't care what Joe Bloggs uses at home in his desktop to play games, write his papers or watch his dirty pictures.
.
What I care about is trying to access my bank over the net, only to be told that it only works with Internet Explorer. I also care about not being able to download some movie, or document, or whatever, because it is formatted in a proprietary and secret way.
I think you guys can see the pattern. If, in order not to have to suffer the aggravations above, the only way is for Linux to take over the desktop then, by all means. I would, however, prefer a variety of desktops
What paradox? I'm sorry but that is not paradoxical by any stretch of imagination!
Choices are hard for most of less intelligent people. Any choices, not necessarily those related to computer software or even the technology as a whole.
Most of people (the "unwashed masses" if you will) don't want to make choices. Remember that most of people don't even choose such fundamental matters as their religion for God's sake, but stick to what they parents had chosen (or rather had sticked to what their parents had chosen (or... ad infinitum)) let alone such---let's face it---relatively unimportant parts of their existence as an operating system.
Most of people don't want to think more than absolutely necessary. They want automatic transmission because they don't want to think about changing gears, they want Windows because they don't want to think about recompiling the kernel, they want pop music because they don't want to think about the melody and harmony.
Other important problem is that those poeple usually want everything now. So analogously they use automatic transmission because they don't have to learn about the gears, they use Windows because they don't want to learn bash and the new way of working and they listen to pop music becauce they don't want to play the Second Hungarian Rhapsody by Ferenc Liszt hundred time before they "get it"---no, they listen to Britney Speers because they "get it" after two tacts of the repetititive piece of crap it is.
We, the Slashdot community, have to understand that as an intelligent minority. We have to understand that the majority of people unlike us don't love listening to classical music, hacking software or reading Aristoteles. They don't want fine cuisine, they want Mac Donald's. They want crap. Why? Because that's the most they could possibly aspire to understand.
But please, don't look at them like they were morons. That is simply not true. They were just not created to think, unlike us, and that's fine as long as we don't alienate too much and understand our position. Remember that for them we are the ones who are abnormal. But is that a paradox? I don't think so. Great article, nonetheless.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
"Tversky and a colleague once asked subjects whether they'd prefer to be making thirty-five thousand dollars a year while those around them were making thirty-eight thousand or thirty-three thousand while those around them were making thirty thousand. They answered, in effect, that it depends on what the meaning of the word "prefer" is. Sixty-two per cent said they'd be happier in the latter case, but eighty-four per cent said they'd choose the former."
62+84 != 100.
I make the choice to not believe that. HAH!
-- -=innocent ramblings from the mind of an insomniatic programmer=-
Like choosing a spouse, having choice is very important at first.
But then once you've made a choice, then it is the commitment to your spouse which is important. Since once you've made your choice, then you will likely start making children that will not likely be compatible in another relationship unless of course you use some sort of emulation. You might also buy a home, which is where you will spend most of your time with your new spouse. If you decide to have a relationship on the side, then you will not be able to spend as much time in your home with your spouse and thus will not be able to get to know your new spouse fully and take full advantage of your Spouse's features. But if you feel like your spouse is just sucking you dry and not providing you with the rich benefits and features that you were promised it is very important that other choices remain available to you.
It is simple really.
If you want a hamburger and everybody only sells identical hamburgers then it is easy to shop - buy the cheapest hamburger.
But when you have cheeseburgers and bacon-burgers and burgers with complete meal and freeze-dried-burgers-by-mail(TM) then you are no longer buying a commodity and the price goes up.
1) Artificially de-commoditize product (creating too many choices).
2) ??????
3) Profit!
Open source development is my way of competing with the low-cost programmers in India...
The summary (as I read it)? People like choice when it's related to what they want to do. If they're making a greeting card, they want to choose what font it uses and what overused clip-art to use. They don't want to choose its orientation as it comes out of the printer, or whether it's saved in MS Word or PDF or RTF or HTML or BMP.
So when I install a linux distribution, and I want to compose a word processing document? I don't care all that much whether I'm using KOffice or StarOffice or OpenOffice.org or AbiWord or whatever, because the point is not what program I'm using. The point is to write a document, and I shouldn't have to make a needless choice just to get to that point.
That's why modularity (versus "yes" or "no" to compiling it in) in the linux kernel is such a good idea, for example. It allows me to say, "make this choice for me if I need it, and don't hassle me about it."
The problem with 'picking out the best' is that it's an individual choice as to what 'the best' is.
I, personally, prefer the Mozilla browser to Konquerer (included with KDE). And while KOffice is maturing, I still prefer OpenOffice. That preference can't be thrust onto others as there will be differing opinions of 'the best' than mine.
This is why auto manufacturers offer different colors and options. Not everyone will be satisfied with red paint, or need a 10 disc cd changer, or want the leather interior.
The best aspect of linux is that the developers have not assumed that 'one size fits all' because it doesn't. There is no reason to limit users to a single application when 7 alternatives exist. Leave it to the user to decide which is 'the best' and allow them to use it.
There is much discussion about getting Linux to the desktop. I believe that Linux isn't ready for the consumer desktop. In the corporate desktop, however, it's going to be the responsibility of a saavy admin to decide which applications are the best and provide them to the end users.
In the corporate environment, it won't be a matter of choice, and your request is granted. Like M$ environments, all of the decisions will have been made for you. Your only job will be to remain a robot.
"Lame" - Galaxar
How many user interfaces am I going to learn in my lifetime. command line, WordStar, Desqview, Windows 3 95 NT 200O XP..., Linux desktops de jour, not to mention cell phones, fax machines, copiers, Palm, Pocket PC, WordPerfect, Word, Lotus 123, Excel, PC File, Access, television, SQL, microwave, washing machine, automobile, Ecco, manual typewriter, electric typewriter, camcorder, SLR, digital camera, Lotus Agenda, PC Outline, GWBASIC, VB, & etc. Gotta stop; getting headache.
Help end the use of Sigs. Tomorrow
I run minimilistic window manager quite often. (YES THAT'S A CHOICE) But when i click to get my menu, I don't have a choice, its 'New' for another console.
*DrugCheese rants*
Actually, when you go to the dealership, they DO make decisions for you. Like you said, there are thousands of cars, and about 500 variations of any given model - more on the expensive cars with lots of options.
You don't go in there knowing what all these options are. Most of them are shit you've never heard of. What the hell is Quadromechinational Steering and why the hell does it cost $5000? They tell you that stuff, and they help you make a decision on wether you want it, or want to take the normal power steering everybody else has.
They don't make the choice for you, and the above post doesn't suggest that. But you aren't just shown a list of the fifteen engines, four steering assemblies, seven or more fucking DOOR HINGES that any given car can have installed at the factory while the salesman sits there with a blank stare waiting for you to pick which ones you want.
Most of it you just get and don't worry about.
I don't care what kind of flanges are on my trunk door, just so it opens and closes, I'm happy. But I could picked from two different flanges on that hood. I don't even know what a flange is or does, let alone how one or the other is better, but they both cost the same thing, so I don't care.
After wrecking the car I've been talking about, I also learned that the 1997 Chevy Lumnia could have had one of four different engines, each of which has two different head assemblies. I don't know what all that shit is, and I don't want to pick one or the other.
I want that white car over there. You put the shit in it that makes it drive, I don't want to worry about flanges and fittings and what kind of clips hold the radiator hose in place. Fine, ok, I have seven different fan belt choices - I DON'T CARE, just make it DRIVE.
See? That's how people are with their computers. The coice is there, but they don't know what all this shit is. Yes, they use it, but they don't know one from the next, and that's why the vast majority of people still use Windows. You get the stuff, it's there, you don't have to think about it.
I have a large number of products that cover one particular need. Without help, customers just get overwhelmed and leave.
Free Porn. Period. [ninenine.com]
Uhm.. I rather suspect they get overwhelmed physically rather than psycologically? I mean this is one area where a man can never have too much variety (as long as the choices are good, of course).
I was just about the read the New Yorker Article when I saw the words "by Christopher Caldwell". No thanks.
This is a simple, fundamental principle. Every option you give the user means that you dodged a design decision. Sometimes this is fine, but it can be tremendously overdone. In a great many cases, what you're doing is forcing the *user* to make design decisions: which fonts look good together, which icons are the clearest, which keys work best for various features, and so on. Have some spine! Keep things simple and clean!
With Linux things are worse, because the decisions forced on the user run much deeper. Now you don't just wade through pages of configuration settings in KDE, you have to choose which window manager to use in the first place. Bleah. I'm a techie, a programmer, and I don't want to mess with this stuff. Just give me something reliable and WELL THOUGHT OUT, and I'll use it.
What people seem to get confused is that reduced choices is not a bad thing.
Choice is a requirement of freedom, to be sure. But don't confuse how many car manufacturers and models are out there as freedom of choice. Freedom of choice is having at least 2 things to choose from. Ask yourself, do you really need a market with over 100 different car models (where half are a duplication of another with minor changes and a diferent name) Do you really need 50 different types of bread? Marketers want you to think so, that way they can say their model is better and they can split the market.
In reality, if the fewer choices are all of good quality, then you don't need 50 or more.
If you are choosing something, you need just a few options that suit your needs and are adaptable. One or two models of car with a menu of options is fine. It does not infringe on DEMOCRACY to have fewer options and a better involved populous than a large number of options and a populous who is confused and unable to be educated on which is better.
Overall, if you have few options, you can educate yourself on how each is good and bad and make a decision for yourself from a position of strength.
But, of course, that's the last thing marketers and politicians want...
Everyone's talking about Linux for the most part in this thread. What about other products? Ever open the door to the soda fridge at your local convenience store looking for a nice, cold bottle of Diet Coke only to discover that they are out of Diet Coke while the 8 rows next to where they should be are occupied by Lemon Diet Coke, Lime Diet Coke, Cherry Diet Coke, Vanilla Diet Coke, etc.? Enough, Coca Cola! And I deal with the same frustration with toothpaste. 25 different flavors of Crest are fighting for 6 feet of shelf space. Yes, some choice is good. Hooray for having a choice between Pepsi and Coke, Diet Pepsi and Diet Coke, etc. but once a company's own products are struggling for room on the shelves then it's time to recalculate the benefits of such product saturation.
I am the inventor of the hilarious refrigerator alarm.
It sounds like you (and probably most of your customers) have never really used Linux as a daily desktop. The distros I have used lately (Red Hat, SuSE, Fedora), have the KDE or GNOME equivalent of a "Start" button, which leads you to "Internet", which leads you to an amazing thing called a "Web Browser". The average user doesn't really need to know whether this is Mozilla, Epiphany, Konqueror, etc., just that it gets them to the internet. The sames goes for office suites. Mainstream distros have easy pointy-clicky access to OpenOffice.org through the same "Start"-like menu -- no choice required for those who might be easily overwhelmed. I teach Linux as an NOS, but invariably, my students are amazed at how easy and intuitive KDE is to use, and many of them switch to Linux as their primary desktop OS.
Mozart and Picasso and Alexander the Great probably wouldn't be able to write a Perl script or analyze a chemical reaction if they were alive today. But I think few people would call any of them unintelligent.
As for wealth vs. intelligence, here's a book for you: "Rich Dad, Poor Dad." A bit repetitive, but it talks at length about how someone can be very smart in some ways but not when it comes to money.
Being able to figure out the decay rate of a new radioactive isotope doesn't make you good at figuring out which underpriced region is going to have the next big real estate boom. But both of those things require smarts.
That said, at least one study (admittedly, performed by someone whose views on the subject are controversial) shows a pretty good correlation between high IQ and financial success. That tracks pretty well with my experience in life: most of the rich people I know are pretty sharp. All of the self-made rich people I know are pretty sharp. If you can provide a pointer to any research showing a reverse correlation, I'd be fascinated to see it.
Less choice, less questions, less confusion. So far I have had no complaints. Obviously, as he gets comfortable he will want more choices later. At the beginning, I think the overwhelming amount of choice is what turns new users away from Linux.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
You have to realize this is a collective phenomenon, and it doesn't necessarily apply to each individual. I'm not a psychologist or anything, but I have observed this phenomenon.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
What the hell is wrong with these people? Too many choices a problem? You have got to be kidding me! Life is choice, make a freaking decision and move on!
Mod parent up.
Deja vu, similar thoughts were expressed by Alvin Toffler in "Future Shock" over 25 years ago, but he called it the "Tyranny of Choice".
To err is human. To arr is pirate.
There's more than one way to do it!
Its why Perl is so damn confusing.
I've seen one professor talking about the problem
of having too much choices (I think it was the author of this book) and he was clear about
something, it only is a problem for one type of people; those who are not satisfied with their choice until they absolutly know for sure they made the best choice. Those with a "good is good enough for me" mentality do not have any problem with too many choices.
Just give me a store full of gray boxes labelled "Food", damnit!
The boxes are blue and yellow, not gray. They say 'Kraft Dinner' on the front.
This concept was driven home for me in elementary school with the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books. I could NOT read one of those without jamming my fingers between pages to mark interesting divergences in case my choice didn't work out! It drove me nuts to think that I might be missing out on something interesting somewhere else.
"Do you want to repair the damaged robot? Turn to p. 42"
"Or you want to flee with the princess? Turn to p.22"
Choices? Bah! I just gave up and went with the old "one narrative only" books. Much more satisfying.
This reminds me of the book "Generation X". It many, many terms and their definitions in the sidebars of the pages of the book. One of them, option paralysis, is the tendency, when given unlimited choices, to choose none. (paraphrasing) I can't say I disagree with the researcher's ideas. I, personally, don't need as many choices about various things in life and I tend to go with what I think works and only casually study my alternatives.
As George Carlin once said, "In this country you have the freedom to make choices. Would you like paper or plastic?"
Simply look at the upper management in most corperations..
I meet upper level managers every single day that have trouble with a simple web form that has 2 buttons on it... one says "save your information" the other says "delete everything"
they complain that it is too confusing and they click on the wrong button, yet the sales people have little trouble and the Ops people have absolutely no trouble.
If you are a genius at selling something you should have the IQ high enough to understand basic signs and information. and this is a HUGE lack in the rich ($100,000.00 a year and higher is rich BTW)
it seems that they wither do not have the basic abilities to operate as humans... or they intentionally deem themselves too important to bother with it.
> While that's a related problem, I don't think its the root cause. The fact is the choices aren't being made easy.
Yep. Think about all those editors, etc. How would someone new to a free/libre OS choose between them? The descriptions are all "This is the best text editor ever, with great powerful features!". Or worse, during an OS install, just "A good text editor" or "The GNOME/KDE text editor" with no other description. Trying to make a choice without good information is frustrating; you find out the info you need to make the choices after you've already made them.
I have no sympathy for people who have so many good choices that they have trouble choosing just one.
And no one is asking you to. This is not an appeal on the behalf of rich people with absolutely nothing wrong with them, it's an observation of a phenomenon. For those paralyzed by such indecision, it offers possible self-help techniques. For those who might have to face the consequences of said phenomenon, it offers insight in how to work around it.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
It's great to have choice - but I just don't want to accept the concequence of my decision. It's this risk I can't deal with.
I love Linux - I'm a Unix programmer and I prefer the platform to Windows. But what apps should I choose? Which window manager, which mail app, which browser?
Open source projects die off, merge, interest shifts from one product to another. I haven't time for this - I just want to be productive, and be kept up to date. It's too much.
That's why I bought a Mac. I have one browser, one mail app, one address book. My addresses are entered once, and sync with my phone, palm, mail tool etc. It just works, it's Unix, it's all supported and it all gets updated regularly.
I don't care that it costs a bit more - it saves me time and anxiety over other solutions and that's worth the price.
I do agree with concept that we have too much choice in our society, or rather, we are deep in information overload. Too much choice is not a problem if you can quickly whittle down what you want and what you don't want. The problem is when the choices become confusing and ambiguous - and I think that has happened for the average individual.
Very good points. I see the issue in terms of 4 factors:
Rising Cost of Decision Making: Excessive options and excessive information on each option drive up the cost of choice. The cost of decision making can easily exceed the marginal benefit of making the decison.
Psychological Risk of Decision Making: Some people are more comfortable without choice because it absolves them of responsibility. If you have only one choice, you get to bitch about it. If you have multiple choices and you chose incorrectly, you have only yourself to blame.
Cost of Competition: We seem to live in a competative, judgemental socitey in which people are judged by the choices they make. This increases the importance of every minor decision. Faced with a number of reasonably good options, people often spend too much time deciding. They feel compelled to do this because of the perceived social penalty of making the wrong choice. Nobody wants to pick the second-best option even if it is nearly as good as the #1 option.
Scale of Society: The bigger problem is the increasing scale of society. Many might think that have umpteen types of mustard, text editors, or cars is too much. But there is no unanimous agreement on which alternatives to remove.
This problem will only get worse. I would wager that in most industries, the number of economically viable choices scales with the log of the market-accessible population. With global trade and rising standards of living, we will only see more choices.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Congratulations, you've just invoked Godwin's Law. You lose.
why?
he had me at hello.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
I used to ask for "human, lean breast" but now they just call the cops when they see me coming. :-(
I don't get no respect.
--- Ban humanity.
Debian:
Desktop: KDE
Browser: Mozilla
Office: OpenOffice
At least, thats whats available by default. All the other distros ive used do the same. Koffice is there, but not as 'visible' to your average user, so to speak. If they want choice, they can dig, and use gnome, or icewm, or whatever, or konqueror or opera. The choice is there, its not that you HAVE to make the choice
"Something's wrong with you...and I hope we never do meet again." - Deftones When Girls Telephone Boys
While that's true, it's not true because only one desktop/browser/office suite is available. I also installed Fedora Core and got one desktop, browser, and office suite--KDE, Mozilla, and KOffice. I'm all-around pleased, and Gnome/OpenOffice isn't even an option on my machine. But it's an option in the distro. I just chose not to install it.
I'd also want to teach electronics that are much more mechanical in design, since touchy-feely hands-on seems to be one of the best way to learn things for many people, and easier to understand and visualize than a mental image of a directory structure and more complicated OS concepts. Plus, we might finally have a nation that understands how to program their VCR. ;)
I'm looking to get rich. I've got steps #2 (????) and #3 (PROFIT!) planned out, but am having trouble coming up with #1.
"Sounds like fascism"? Hardly. The average user is not buying hardware and software. The average user is buying the ability to email and play solitaire.
You want a comparison? How about going to a car dealership and having them ask you whether you want your interior molding fastened with plastic screws, snap-locks, or metal bolts.
That's really a sad approach, though. How long you take to make a decision on something should reflect how long it's going to affect your life. Little things can make a huge difference.
If you plan on spending $20,000 on your new car, and you plan on keeping for ten years, then you damn well better know the "door hinge" options and figure out which one you like the best. One little thing like a squeaky hinge (hey, you cheaped out) will annoy you for years and years.
Anyone who walks onto a car lot without knowing basically what they want, with the options they want, and knowing the price they should expect to pay, is an idiot who is going to end up paying too much money for a car they didn't really want.
Long term purchases require some actual THOUGHT be put into it.
What annoys me is people taking a half an hour to decide what they want to order off the menu when they won't even care tomorrow.
As far as computers are concerned, your choices today may impact you long after that 10 year old car is gone. Then again, it may not. Pick MP3 now and convert it to the next great format every few years. Whatever.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Agreed. His post sounded suspiciously like something Hitler would have said.
Now, there are many ways this trick is pulled off, one example is using a trick deck where every other card is the same and they are kind of stuck together so the person doesn't see it when she picks the card as the deck is face down and since the deck is sticky, the magician will often *assist* in picking, and as you might have guessed the card picked was known even before the trick start. So the rest of the trick is more pagentry to distract you from what really went down. So after the trick everyone is amazed and happy. Yet the person who picked the card had the empowerment of choice s/he believed to be picking a unique card from the deck when in fact the card was more or less imposed upon them. So did they have a choice, in terms of the trick no, the choice was made for them for the sake of entertainment.
So in other words, like everything in life there should be balance, strange that psychologists never seem to talk about living a balanced life, they appear to have mostly biased opinions, which these opinions can't justify everyone. Some choices are best left to someone else because they are more skilled/informed than you, and some decisons are best left for you to decide since it may impact you more, like a tatoo or a girl/boyfriend. The real choice is deciding which one is which ?
Because really if the magician didn't pick your card that wouldn't be much fun now would it ?
Consider: how many manufacturers and models of cars do we have? Consumer electronics? Colours and styles of paint?
How many models of cars that do things differently from every other model of car? If I buy a Ford, I don't need to take training because my last car was a Pontiac. Everything works the same. Sure, the placement of the A/C or cruise controls are a little different, but the steering wheel isn't square and in the trunk. The basics of "a car" does not change: it has four wheels, (in the States) a steering wheel on the left front side, two-three pedals, etc. Hell, even the order of the gears on an automatic are the same (P R N D 1 2 3).
Contrast that with Linux distros where some applications are present, and some are not. Some applications are placed here, and some are placed there. Some use this window manager, some use this one. Some keybindings are like this, some are like that. Some will work with hardware better than others. Some have this, some have that. Hell, I've tried 2-3 distros in the last few months, and only one that I remember contained a GUI util to change the screen resolution (an important util for noobs as most distros set your damn resolution to the absolute highest it will go, regardless of how you want it or not!)
I can climb into any car, start it up and drive it. Change your Linux distro, or just upgrade in some cases, and you spend hours just trying to figure out where everything is. THIS is why Windows is winning the desktop day in and day out. It has nothing to do with monopolies or political bullying. It never ceases to amaze me that the Linux community will stomp and scream like small children about anything that violates an open standard in any way, shape, or form, but outright REFUSES to create a single, standard, default desktop that is consistent across all distros. There's nothing stopping you or anyone else from changing it later, but start with SOMETHING.
Give 'em four tires and a steering wheel, if they want a Cartman antenna topper or a Jason Mewes window sticker, they can add it themselves. And, I know, there's gonna be tons of flames on this post..."Don't tell me what I can and can't run on my desktop!" "Who gives you the right to decide what's included in my distro?" For those contemplating such flames...get a clue. No one is suggesting locking anyone into a "one size fits all soylent world", idiot. They're suggesting giving a consistent base to build on.
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
http://www.workorspoon.com
That isn't going to solve the issue. What happens when I use Fedora, which uses one browser, and I sit down at a Mandrake machine, which uses a different browser? Even more important, what happens when Fedora uses KDE and SuSE uses Gnome? There needs to be a user interface component to the LSB (or an alternate standard) which defines what a standard commercial install looks like. All the other stuff can still be there as user choices but the default install needs to be consistent across installations. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening any time soon.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
I've been fascinated with the idea that choice can be undesirable for several years having seen a TV documentary on the subject suggesting that people living in circumstances where choice was limited were far less likely to feel stress. I found this engrossing as I've certainly have mixed feelings when presented with many options - and (to keep on a shopping note) found deciding upon which car, house or watch to buy a seriously draining experience.
I've a theory - and it differs with that of Prof. Barry. I think people find it very uncomfortable to deal with uncertainty. Making choices really is something of a "maximisation problem" - especially if you suspect you would find most of the choices you might make somewhat unsatisfactory (even if that suspicion has no basis.) Modern advertising focuses not on quality, reliability, durability, fitness for purpose or similar "oh-so-1950s quaint" ideas... but rather on style - aiming to appeal to impulses rather than reason. This makes me deeply suspicious of the potential for vendor dishonesty - which makes me all the more anxious to investigate matters thoroughly. For example, I've been looking to buy a watch for ages - I know what I want (Thin, light, clear-simple-face, analogue, perpetual calendar) but I can't find anything suitable. If I were sure that no such watch is made, then I'd just put up with something second rate happy in the knowledge that a little perseverance would not turn up just what I'm looking for. This watch situation is exacerbated by the fact that Web vendors don't offer what I consider vital details (e.g. weight, physical dimensions etc. etc.); Manufacturers offer precious little information and supply different ranges to different countries for no obvious reason; Watches in shop windows aren't clearly marked with features etc, and it all makes me hopping mad! If I were somehow artificially constrained to allow only a handful of choices I could easily fully consider my options and pick my favourite (even if it isn't exactly what I want) or resign to using a sundial forever and feel free to focus my attention on new and more interesting things.
Other posters have postured that wealthy people have only "good" options where poor people typically have only bad ones. As un-PC as it may seem, I think this misses the point entirely. A bad selection of choices isn't one where none are particularly desirable, but rather a selection in which it is difficult to discriminate between the choices a-priori. A wealthy person is more likely to be presented with bad choices as they are more likely a target for scams and will often be making decisions with longer term consequences. This combination increases the likelihood of stress considerably. I think human happiness is less about what you have than how you get there... increasing the number of ultimately trivial choices is not the key to accomplish anything worthwhile nor to happiness.
Good post.
There may be some luck involved in life (hey... someone runs a red light and disables you, it happens), but your life mainly consists of you making decisions. The series of all the decisions you've made in your life have brought you to where you are today. Intelligent or stupid - that "stupid" businessman made the right decisions to make him financially well off.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
This is a great perspective on what makes us humans tick. But I think he takes the argument one step too far. I agree that we have a tendency to get to a paralysis state as we try to find the "best" solution. It takes a disciplined, conscious effort to evaluate what we really need/want and take action by selecting one of many options that satisfy our needs.
.
The mistake he makes is his proposal that we'd be better off with fewer choices; that we'd be "more free" with fewer options. This is a slippery slope, that has led to millions of people dying early deaths in the past (i.e. USSR, Nazi Germany)
Instead I'd propose that the more options the better. We are living in a dynamic world. We have many more choices now than we had 5-10 years ago. We need to learn these tough lessons of how to make choices. I'd expect the coming generations to be better at making choices because they will have grown up in an environment that exposes them to many options.
--Brian
Better summary of the article:
Some days I can't get started Wondering which shoe to put on first
Or should I brush my teeth Before or after I put on my shirt
So many big decisions Boiled or scrambled, fried or even raw
I'm so damn open-minded Used to think I'm lucky but I'm cursed
I hate this supermarket But I have to say it makes me think
A hundred mineral waters It's fun to guess which ones are safe to drink
Two hundred brands of cookies 87 kinds of chocolate chip
They say that choice is freedom I'm so free it drives me to the brink
And you know why - it's all too much
It's all too much for me to bear What kind of shampoo suits my hair
It's all too much for me to do Especially without you
Won't you please come home Honey please come home
I read the morning paper But it all changes by the evening news
The world got so much smaller I don't know which piece of it to choose
I'd like to fight apartheid Wish that I could fight the guy upstairs
I'd solve a dozen cases If only there weren't so many clues
What shall we do this evening Send out for some sushi and champagne
Stay in and watch TV 50 channels can't all be the same
Maybe go to a movie 50 films on 50 tiny screens
They say that choice is freedom I'm so free it's driving me insane
And you know why - it's all too much
It's all too much for me to stand So much supply and no demand
There's just too much to struggle through Especially without you
Won't you please come home Honey please come home
I'd like to get to know All the many people I could be
If I just had the time I'm sure I could find out which one is me
Maybe I need religion Or meditation 'til I disappear
They say that choice is freedom I'm so free I'm stuck in therapy
And you know why - it's all too much
Joe Jackson "Laughter and Lust" 1992.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
Your reaction to being overwhelmed by choice is actually quite typical. People seem to have a problem when presented with a set of choices without a clear winner. I think we have an algorithm that works like this.
Which is fine unless, of course, there are two or more options that have the same value. Then you have an eternal loop. Wouldn't this algorithm be better?
So, you're presented with mozilla and konquerer. You try mozilla first and find that it is good enough. You stop looking. Don't click on that konquerer icon. You're done. Simple, really.
I got a 20g iPod a couple of months ago and in some ways it's made walking with music a worse experience for me than before.
My first Walkmen (dating back to 1984) were cassettes, and while you could carry extra tapes, you were largely stuck with one or two and even then skipping around wasn't much of an option (no music search on a Walkman I could afford until the mid 1990s). So you listened to bands you really liked or spent a lot of time making a few mix tapes to guarantee you'd like most of the songs.
About 6 years ago I traded up to a Minidisc player and while the selection problem wasn't much different, I did start "running out" of music, even though I could reasonably carry a half-dozen discs. The ease of skipping made me far less satisfied with what I had playing.
Same thing occured when I got a Teac CD/MP3 player. Mine only took 7cm discs, but I'd still "run out" of music due to skipping around, even when I made a mix disc with a bunch of "good" songs I "liked".
Now that I have my iPod it's far, far worse. I can't run out of music (3k songs), but I do find myself bored/irritated with what I'm listening to, skipping around. On one recent excursion I damn near stepped into a hole because I was spending so much time fucking around with my iPod (trying to find music I "wanted").
I don't know if its *entirely* due to the paradox of choice or just a vague sense of dissatisfaction with everything, but the paradox of choice sure seems to explain it well.
Or another example. I could choose Bush or I could choose Kerry. Once again only bad choices.
I think the biggest 'choice' holding back linux is which distro to use. A lot of people seem to be focusing on the choice of applications. But If someone decides to give linux a shot, they should not be faced with even 3 distributions to choose from. They should be handed one. They have to be comfortable with linux in general to even comprehend the idea of multiple distributions. Keep in mind, windows is windows. Mac is mac. Linux is mandrake, red hat, suse, gentoo, debian....
Lets not throw such terms as "facism" around too easily. I totally understand what this person is saying. While choice is great, too much choice - without explanation or direction - sucks. When I go to the store for meat - i know there is chicken, beef, fish, and pork - do I know the plethora of cuts? No I do not. I go to the butcher and say "Hey I want to make this, what do you think." The butcher then tells me which cut I should take. Maybe he is all out for himself and selling me a terrible cut so he can make an extra buck. My alternative is to go buy a book and learn the fine art of being a butcher (something I do not plan on doing). So I need to rely on this person and hope he is an honest person (and if he isn't, when he comes to me for computer service I will return the favor "oh yea you need a wizzy gadget, it will run you 2 grand". When I go to download Linux I do not have a butcher telling me what would work best for my life style. That is what this person is stating. When I go to the dealership I go there with a thought process - be it cost, look style. So if I go to the dealership and say "hey i want a family car and i want to spend 21 grand" they will offer me help. If i go to the dealership and say "I WANT A CAR" I bet you the person is going to start asking questions like "are you single or married? have kids? do you want to off road? etc." The person has a valid argument, lets not chew him down because we love linux. -A
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
I put a lot of thought into my car, and spend several weeks picking it out.
However, just looking up the options compatible with that model, there are over 74,000 different ways you can make a 1997 Chevy Lumina and not have it be called a Monte Carlo. In fact, the door hinges don't all have to be the same - the manufacture form shows that, in fact, there are three different types of door hinge on my car. Why? I don't know, it was made in Canada, ask them.
What's all these hinges? Damn if I know, they look the same, they don't squeak, and if they do, that's why the Good Lord gave us WD40 and Tylenol.
Having choices is good. What people do not like is having to make decisions.
That's Apple's secret: Apple picks a lot of things for you. They don't always make the best choices, but they usually make workable choices, and even when their choices are technically bad (as they are from time to time), at least they still make them look good.
Microsoft, on the other hand, is all about choice (within well-defined, money-making parameters): you get zillions of audio and video CODECs, lots of configuration options for the UI, preference panels with sub-panels until your eyes glaze over, dozens of classes that all do the same thing, and let's not forget an ever expanding list of third-party utilities and add-ons to make up for the choices Microsoft didn't give you and the problems Microsoft created while creating all that choice. Microsoft isn't kidding when they are saying that they are giving you choices.
UNIX, like Apple, traditionally has made choices and stuck by them. For example, the UNIX folks at Bell Labs understood that the use of "tab" in Makefiles probably was a mistake, but it wasn't a big enough mistake to create another "make" utility (at least not for a couple of decades). And, yes, the file system may not be the ideal IPC or database mechanism, but it worked well enough and provided a good, simple answer.
Linux has inherited some of the UNIX simplicity and philosophy, although, sadly, there has been a lot of uncertainty and waffling come into it, mostly from people who are trying to turn Linux into Windows.
Shopped for toothpaste? Chose a natural gas supplier or a long-distance phone company? Been down the bread aisle? There's a dozen and a half different types of kitty litter, for chrissakes.
Paper or plastic? Truth or dare? boxers or briefs? Beavis or Butthead?
It 's not that having any one of these choices is necessarily bad, but altogether, they tend to be overwhelming. I don't have time to stand in the grocery store trying to figure out which is the cheapest, most politically correct, dolphin-safe, rich in fiber choice for each and every item I buy, then go home and do the same with my utilities, cellphone plan, Internet provider, etcetera etcetera.
Which leaves me with the nagging feeling that I made the wrong choice, that I'm wasting money, killing dolphins, raising my cholestorol, whatever. It's stress our parents and grandparents didn't have. It doesn't actually make people happier to have all these choices, is the point.
Just wondering, could it have to do with a lot of the choices being high-pressure or hard to reverse ones? Things like deciding who to date and who to work for (or to start your own business) and where to live and what you consider moral and so forth. I would consider those choices fundamental to a free society, but they're not easy choices to make either.
I don't see why easily reversible and low-pressure choices like clicking "Mozilla" instead of "Konqueror" from my menu would make me unhappy. Just set a default one so that a clueless newbie doesn't get lost.
"When you go to the grocery, do you ask for 'meat', or do you specify species and cut?"
Disingenuous comparison. Most people buy meat/tofu/whatever every week, and watched a caregiver do it as a child. It's a survival skill.
Cars are, for most users, black boxes with basic controls. They don't have to know much to buy one, and to operate one is a regulated activity with minimal skills required.
Operating systems are magical. Shake rattle and dance to make it work, or put in some serious alchemical study. Do you have any concept of just how many hours are required to get a newbie up to speed on something like what tcp/ip is?
I think the best option is to have tons of configurability and modularity hiding two layers down below a stable, best-of-breed set of simple tools/interface. Something that installs itself with a few personal details, and then just keeps working securely with little need to install anything more or update, unless you're a 'power user.'
The best example of this currently is Mac OS X (panther), though Aqua isn't really configurable enough an interface and has some considerable shortcomings still. Out of the box, it is secure enough, ready to go, and productive in a variety of everyday chores for the average newbie. If you're a 'poweruser' then open up a terminal or three and tweak away. Choice is there: with virtualPC I can run any software on nearly any platform except some highly specialized hardware/dongle - specific apps, though many thousands are available natively.
That said, I'm a pluralist and like all the options: but simple, default installs are absolutely necessary as first choice for newbies.
[EG: a close relative has been a management and financier type in IT industries for 20 years, and gets lost very quickly in the desktop metaphor, moving platform to platform is hell: he can grok the technological outlines of remote sensing and laser-ID tagging diamonds, but operating two different laptops is like managing ferrets in a gunny sack. He doesn't have time to dick around with the computer's perceived innards. He's a perennial newbie--and really wants a simplified but capable interface.]
Damn those pesky terrorists
Clarica understand that all the choices modern society presents to consumer often leaves them dazed and confused. This means a marketing opportunity. Put bluntly, people will pay to simplify their lives. Look for many more companies, in many industries, to exploit this.
I recently bought two sets of tires for my SUVs. The set of brands and models were overwhelming. I got through the process by looking at reviews for the tires. Within 20 minutes I had narrowed the list to four models of tires. I checked prices locally and made purchases within the week from two different vendors.
Not only is choice of tires good, but choice of vendors. The qualification is, you have to be smart about it. I can see how choice could be bad for people with low comprehension skills. For those who negotiate prices and want the best quality, the more choice the better.
Reviews, either formal or informal, are key for high involvement purchases (choice in low involvement purchases don't matter as much, because the product is inexpensive, not critical, etc.).
"Never tell me the odds"
And that balance MUST be left to the individual; anything else is tyranny.
should I make my own choices, or continue to let smart people like you make them for me?
"That sounds like fascism, to me."
Are you stupid, idiot?
Each distro would pick what they choose, idiot.
Don't like it, idiot? Start your own distro, idiot. Choose a different distro, idiot.
The original poster was talking about making it easiest for the new user to just start using, idiot.
Are you stupid, idiot?
You sound like a facist, idiot.
I'm all for more choices. Though some people may be overwhelmed, those are usually the ones who don't have a specific preference in mind. At that point, trying what looks like it might match existing preferences but varies a little is a positive thing- it lets you categorise a new experience at the same time that it lets you have an experience likely to be one you'll enjoy.
i, on the other hand, am a walking example of why the choices might need to be there. With serious food allergy issues, it's wonderful to be able to walk into a restaurant, look at the menu, and specify that i need it to be a corn tortilla, hold the onions, thanks. I respect your point of view- which is why i think a 'default' option should exist (if you don't specify, we serve you X) and let you not worry about it. But for everyone whose needs differ widely from the middle of the bell curve, the more specialisation has to be an option.
I think that this is why people like linux; they are not your average joe sixpack user, have specific needs and wants, and want something that can be adapted to suit them. As people learn what else they can do with their computer, they start to want more than AOL, and they start looking around.
While the menu of software available may make many average users blanch, having easy-to-use interfaces helps bridge that gap and helps them inch out to the edge of the curve where the more experienced computer users live. From choice comes progress, and the point where specialisations stop being economically viable (not enough people with given preference to buy said product), adaptability takes over (people from all areas of the fringe who need X specification buy the adaptable product.)
That's where the make-your-own-recipe restaurants take over. Those who don't need the specialisation are only a part of the market.
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
GNOME pushes this pseudoscience too that choice and flexibility are bad things. I'm sure it looks great on paper and in the lab, but anyone who actually works with real live human beings knows from first-hand experience it's nonsense. Dangerous nonsense at that.
"Mozart and Picasso and Alexander the Great probably wouldn't be able to write a Perl script or analyze a chemical reaction if they were alive today."
You're joking, right?
No wonder you people think you're worth US$100/hr and your jobs are getting outsourced.
(And another thing...how is writing a perl script and analyzing a chemical reaction even in the same ballpark of "intelligence"?)
It seems like most people are saying that in order for Linux to make it to the desktop, the number of choices needs to be limited. Which is unfortunate, because the best way for choices to be limited is for Linux to make it to the desktop. Once there is a much larger user base, the choices would tend to weed themselves out.
It's quite the paradox indeed...
You don't understand. Psychology (along with economics, sociology, political science, etc.) only claims to be universal, when in fact it is a description of bourgeois consciousness alone.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
I thought the name of the professor sounded familiar, and sure enough, it was who I thought it was. His position is not agenda-free (not that anyone's is.)
Schwartz wrote a paper for the January, 2000 edition of the Journal of the America Psychological Association, American Psychologist, titled "Self-Determination, the Tyranny of Freedom."
The artical basically lays the groundwork for restricting freedom for people's own good, and to force beliefs on people for their own good. Coming from a libertarian viewpoint myself, the entire article was disturbing in a very subtle way -- and it was clear that a political or social agenda was a subtext.
It appears he is simply continuing on this theme.
People have been making this kind of complaint for a long time, but this has to be one of the best expressions of just what's wrong with typical Linux distributions.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
One caveat of this, is that your songs need proper ID3 tags. Also, you should get into the practice of rating your songs with the 5-star rating feature.
Ahhhhh a slashdot story with 4 links to choose from:
which one do I choose?
</panic>
I remember a few years ago when my parents were re-doing their living room. My mother almost broke down crying one day while trying to pick a sofa to match the wall paper. She told me that she wanted somebody to pick a handfull of the millions of sofas out there in the world and just tell her to pick one of those. I'm fairly certain, however, that if I had picked out four sofas (probably at random, because I didn't want to choose either) she would have been happy with none of them, being aware that there may be a better one out there somewhere.
It's a fine line between having too many choices and not enough. Too little and you feel as if you are missing out, that the "perfect" one isn't anywhere to be found. Too many and you become overwhelemed, knowing that the "perfect" one is in there, but not knowing which one that is.
Humans are notorious for wanting to take the easy way out of everything. It's in our nature. We walk on the grass if that path is shorter than the paved walkway. We type "u" instead of "you" because it takes less energy. And we would rather choose between five items than 15 because it takes less thought. When it comes down to it, to perform an "efficient" comparison between any number of items we need to compare each item against every other item. If we have two items, we only need one comparison. If we have five items, we need ten comparisons. Nine items require thirty six comparisons. It's exponential. Quickly it becomes more work than it's worth.
I know when I have to decide between a large number of items and I have as much time as I need I literally compare them one at a time. I take the first and second options and decide which I like better, then take the winner and compare it to the next option. At the end, I have the best of all possible options. This isn't always that easy, though. Think about cars. It's not always easy to pick between just two cars, nevermind fifteen. Car A might be better than car B at gas mileage, but car B is safer than car A. And car C looks better than both of them. I've actually solved this problem with a spreadsheet before. Each factor in the decision was given a weight (safety is most important so it gets a 3, gas mileage gets a 2, and look is least important so it gets a 1), and then each car is given a score for each factor. The car with the highest weighted result is the one you buy.Of course, this takes time and is somewhat arbitrary (who's to say that safety is three times as important as look, or that gas mileage is only twice as important?), and frankly only a geek would think of doing something so... computer-ish. The only way to really do this right is to stop trying to find the best and just find the one that's good enough. In all likelyhood you will be just as happy with the "good enough" option and you've saved yourself all that stress of chosing. [Insert your diety here] knows there's too much stress in the world already.
I'm still running Yggdrasil, you insensitive clod!
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
Fewer choices cant make everyone happier, because tweaking is critical to those whose job it is to make sure efficiency is maximized.
In computing situations where there does not need to be a lot of choice (standard 40 year old lady in payroll running accounting software), Dr. Schwartzs theories do apply. However, there should be options for customization available in case the tech support finds a problem with the system and requires a change that improves productivity. In this case, it takes the choice learning curve away from the user, and puts it in the hands of the computer administrator.
Note: Administrator can be any user, not just root. I think the goal here, is to hide the customization options enough that they dont cause the user to become obsessed with manipulating them, yet not so deep that the everyday person cant tweak his system if he or she knows what will make the experience better.
Actually it is pretty likely Mozart would be very good at Perl, if he bothered to learn it.
Multiplicity of choices was a major theme in John Barth's "The Sot-Weed Factor", published in 1964. The protagonast, one Ebenezer Cooke, was frequently paralyzed with the choices offered to him.
There is a section where two ladies of easy virtue are each calling the other a whore, the piece goes on for four full pages, and the epithets are never repeated.
This satire was extremely hilarious to me when I read it in 1965, and is probably the first book to tackle the paralyzing effect of a plethora of choices, so amply lampooned in the book.
The setting is the 1700's and covers immigration to the colonies in the New World. The book is a take-off on the peripatetic novel genre, immortalized in "Tom Jones" by Henry Fielding.
Keanu "Look At Me Act" Reeves to The "Look I Know Latin" Architect: "The problem is choice."
"Or do you work for Microsoft?"
A huge percentage of the Windows user base is people who do not have a clue how to use a computer. This forces MS to design their products so that these people do not call MS PSS eighteen times a day because they've broken something.
If you had any clue you'd realize that MS doesn't want to force people into a mold. They want to give the idiots of the world a software experience that is powerful enough to be useful and "powerless" enough so that they can't hurt themselves. Microsoft wants to give people the richest possible experience but unfortunately it has learned that doing so is often a recipe for a support distaster.
Be happy. Nothing else matters.
is the fact they want to ensure linux cannot exist anywhere.
They want to ensure no one has any choice, except to use their software.
if they dont like the heat that linux gives off, they need to get out of the market.
Linux is great for servers.. ok for desktops... makes a good developer/corporate desktop atm IMHO.
but there will be those who will use windows, and those who will use linux, at least bridge the gap between the two.. thus, no reason to hate each other, linus torvalds has said it best on the issue IMHO though.
Could someone summarize the article please,
there are too many others on Slashdot that
I wan't to read instead.
I don't see where's the problem with Linux community, or wathever else.
... or hope one day, advanve in AI will make Linux distros capable to determine which defaults will be best for you based on your customer profile.
It's been a long time that every Windows application you install has a "Quick Installation" or "Custom installtion" choice at the beginin.
It's been a long time that Linux Distro have a default package selection. (Or in some cases, as in SuSE, a menu "Console" "Graphics" "Server" "Custom". No way to hesitate).
Most of the time, once installed there's one default browser, one default office suit....
You HAVE the choice to install/run other.
But if you don't care or don't have time, you have only one quick and obvious application.
In the article's author exemple, If you look at it correctly, what he suffered more of, wasn't the TOO MANY ABUNDANT OPTION, but THE LACK OF ONE DEFAULT OPTION.
If something has 20'000 option but you have one big "USE DEFAULT" button, it's a lot less anoying than to have to go thru 20 different configuration tweaks.
The only problem with defaults, is that they aren't always what would have been the best for you.
But that's the deal accept choices somone else made for you, or spend a long time customising everything to your taste...
reminds me technology in Minority Report
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
A distro shipping with only one browser sounds like fascism to you? And 4 mods thought it insightful? Aack!!
This is quite disturbing. Please read the wikipedia article on Fascism.
Fascism is not merely a lack of choice in goods and services. Perhaps if you knew its political meaning, you might be concerned at the lack of political choices you have...
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
This is not about freedom of choice, but rather intelligence to choose. Most people are just not smart enough to make a choice, and stick with it. Most people will either jump to a quick knee-jerk reactionary choice, or they mull it over forever without deciding anything. Usually you will see both behaviors from the same person at one time or another.
Most Americans growing up make little to no real decisions before their latter teenage years. You best time for learning is before the age of 5. If you don't learn how to choose stuff until you are 18 (usually it's "what college do I want to go to"), how do you expect people to deal with multiple options?
Some people throughout history have seen this behavior, and they have set things up (gevernments especially) to avoid the opportunity for real choice while still providing something that is called "freedom of choice." A great example is the election process. Not just anybody can run for political office (in practical terms). I can only imagine the process if there was 25,000 people running for POTUS. Nothing would ever be accomplished. Of course only 2 powerful political parties for 250M+ people is a bit off too.
I have more, but not enough time (work sucks).
Fromme's 'Escape from Freedom.'
I've waited 15 years to say that.
Evil is the money of root.
but you're not forced to store all that food and whatnot on your property.
I had to strain to get RedHat to fit onto a system that XP had no problem fitting onto. It didn't help that RedHat thinks it's a good idea to copy the entire CD to the HD before installing. And there's no obvious option (if there is even one) to install directly from the CD. I also have never had to swap a CD to install Windows.
And then when it was all said and done, even with a minimal installation, it was mostly junk on the harddrive. That RedHat box is now sitting up in my closet doing nothing. I already have Windows. So "it's free" doesn't mean anything. I just has an extra system so I thought I'd give it a shot again. Not impressed.
"That sounds like fascism, to me."
Sound like an intelligent thing to do to me. Nobody is saying other choices shouldn't be available. Just that all those choices shouldn't be in one single package. How hard is it to offer cut down versions of Mandrake? KDE edition contains all the KDE stuff. Gnome edition contains all the gnome stuff. Not hard.
It's very much fascism when the only choice is to download up to a gig and a half of crap and be be forced to burn it to CD and then have it all be crammed onto your system even though 90+% of it you don't need. And good luck getting rid of it. Windows has an easy to find and use remove programs. Not Linux.
It's not fascism to give people the choice of not having a choice. A clean install of Windows is very much that: clean. No junk. There's no such thing as a clean install of Linux. The options are bloated or more bloated.
When you buy a car you get very few choices. When you buy a car you don't get a dozen steering wheels to go with it. By your analogy, imagine Linux as going to a car dealership, buying a car and getting a truck load of every option imaginable that you're expected to store in your garage.
No thanks.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
I just blow my load all over your mom's face, and have her lick me clean.
Anyone interested in Rich Dad, Poor Dad should also check out this site. Now back to your regularly scheduled discussion.
When linux rules the desktop to server market, you may just not like what you get.
I don't think you will like the continual treadmill of unsupported applications with the continual barrage of unpatched security holes.
Additionaly, I don't think you will like the eventual legacy applications more than 15 years old that you will be using. I.e., it's mature and stable therefore needs no updating.
I would be hard pressed to understand why anyone would call Picasso intelligent. Vile, petty, manipulative yes. But intelligent? Successful and Intelligent are two different things, that's why they have two different words to describe them.
As for IQ, they problem is nobody has been able to define intellegence, much less demonstrate that IQ measures it. Stephan Gould's The Mismeasure of Man covered the topic pretty well. When the IQ test was first created, it was used to prove the racial inferiority of Asians and Jews (they scored significantly lower than average).
What IQ actually measures is the ability to take standardized tests, a limited skill at best. As for the correlation to IQ and financial success, I suggest you attend a local MENSA meeting to correct that misconception. You will find an inordinate number of bitter but bright janitors, taxi drivers, and programmers.
Each Sunday, I would comb the circulars, looking for a computer (started out looking at desktops, eventually looked for laptops). I would invariably spend over an hour picking "candidate" machines meeting my CPU, disk, memory, price, etc requirements.
And, invariably, I would give up rationalizing to myself I could go yet another week without getting that machine.
The problem? So many choices, so many configurations, so many prices, so many rebates (instant, and otherwise), I would just give up in frustration in trying to get a reasonable deal while meeting my needs (NOTE: I did not say "get the BEST deal", I just wanted to be sure I was getting a good deal).
All this while also continually searching the net for machines and prices.
While I all along had a vision of my requirements, the marketing sleight of hand, with the infinite "choice" kept me from making a decision for almost 2 years! (About one month ago I finally decided.)
According to George Carlin, there are really only two choices for Americans...paper or plastic.
Tyler Durden summs it up nicely:
"You have a class of young strong men and women, and they want to give their lives to something. Advertising has these people chasing cars and clothes they don't need. Generations have been working in jobs they hate, just so they can buy what they don't really need. We have to show these men and women freedom by enslaving them, and show their courage by frightening them.
"Napolean bragged that he could train men to sacrifice their lives for a scrap of ribbon.""
Choice? I chose to wake the f*ck up.
If you don't get this joke, you are lacking information, due to either not trying hard enough to glean it from the parent post, or not knowing the appropriate information regarding HyVee. Also, I do not know whether HyVee has butchers or not!
There are also very intelligent people who are simply uninterested in money as a metric of success and choose not to make the pursuit of it a central goal in their lives. Some of them become successful anyway, and others content themselves with a more "humble" life.
I'm a facist, idiot!
I have a HP laptop here. Of course, it's impossible to install linux (distros can't partition it). It is also impossible to install windows! You must install "SPECIAL HP-WINDOWS" coming with the thing. Other windows are not ok.
In another HP computer you needed a special screw-driver to open it!
WTF is wrong with this company? If everybody agreed to use DVORAK keyboards HP would be the last on earth to say "No. We like DJASIUF keyboard".
Real shitheads I tell you....
Restricting options is kind of counter intuitive to OSS. Diversity is what makes the Free NIXes good. You get to pick and choose whatever packages suit your needs.
That being said, the choice is overwhelming to nontechnical people. That's why we have Distro's like Mandrake.
Also, if you are a company deploying Linux, you would have a technician pick the best packages to suit the companies needs.
Well, what is missing from that model is the learning bit. The probability of having to make a choice with no info about an item is not all that high as most choice are made in a social context and often they are repeated. Yes the first time you go to say China it might be difficult to choose what noodle soup you prefer but if you go with chinese friends and for several times, the issue becomes far less dounting.
...
What is a misnomer is the word freedom as it is only meaningful when is contextualised as free from
(BTW I am a psychologist)
They're all running the same basic kernel. They differ mostly with respect to the applications they include, defaults for window managers, installation programs, etc. It doesn't make a hell of a lot of difference which one you choose, really.
But you sound like someone who'll probably be happier under the Microsoft umbrella, anyway. And if your pockets are deep and you can live happily in that cage, why not?
but if you try sometimes,
you just might find,
you get what you need.
This post (and some replies to it) brings up a really interesting point. MOST computer users don't want to even know what TCP/IP is. They just want to be able to surf the internet. At the same time, a lot of users in the Linux community are power users who want to be able to configure everything in their OS. The problem is however, that Linux currently provides the functionality for the power users, but is not simple to use for the masses who don't know, and don't want to know. So those folks need to be targetted better.
So, to those of you who write Linux installs across distros - have you guys used Turbo Tax (or something similar)? Man talk about making a complex process simple. For 98% of people, it takes a complex process, a complex set of underlying laws pertaining to everything from waitressing on the side to buying a house, and boils it down to a set of simple, easy to understand, and easy to answer questions.
So why not have an install procedure that by default asks a bunch of simple questions:
Will you browse the internet?
Will you download music?
Where will you download music from?
Will you back up your CD collection?
Do you want to preserve your music in files that sound good when played back, or files that will be large but not lose ANY quality?
They answer the first question with yes, you know you need to install an anti-virus solution. With few well posed follow up questions, you could figure out how to configure their firewall, how many options they need to have access to, etc.
Anyway, not completely thought through, but you get the idea. Identify something that worked somewhere else, and tailor it to your needs....
The old MS joke comes to mind:
One world, One web, One program - Microsoft Ad
Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer
Either this guy think this is a good idea or he doesn't understand choice.
The current choice is simply:
Easy oneway to do things. (well if you don't make use of its unix background wich you never need to touch if you don't want to)
Oneway for the OS. (easy until you become an admin, the old change network settings example comes to mind)
Choice for everything else. Just check how many email programs and office suits there really are for windows.
Roll your own. Choice in everything except hardware. And even there you got choice. Just write your own.
For the necrophiliacs.
But how is this any different from choosing a car? Choosing a house? Choosing a meal?
Do I want a car I can fix myself if needed (handy if you drive in remote places) or just a little town cruiser how about no car at all? Do I want my own house I can rebuild however I want or do I want a nice rented apartment fully furnitured with a maid? Do I want a meal I can microwave and be ready or do I want to spend hours in the kitchen to create a feast fit a king?
Now some people here seem to want everyone to make the same choice they have. This applies equally to all computer OSes. These people accuse other OS users of being zealots and never realise they are a very black pot.
I for one am not scared of choice. I am scared one day I will not have a choice. Choose whatever OS you want. But let it be YOUR choice.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
just give me a self install kit of a syringe & baggie full of ATP
Yeah that, and it's hard.
Why is anything anything?
Recently I was discussing what I see to be a central conflict in human beings. It is the conflict of two desires that every human being has:
;P
1. The desire to be an individual. To be unique.
2. The desire to be part of a group. To be accepted as being the same as others.
I'm not sure of the forces driving these two desires, but it certainly has an effect on making choices. Which leads to another issue which I think this article was focusing on: who has the control?
In situations where one entity has all the control (a centralized system), there are fewer choices to make and therefore the system tends to work better. However the downside is that the system will entity will naturally impose restrictions. This is the point where the desire for individuality comes into direct conflict with a centralized system.
In a situation where the individual has control, the system they are working within must allow for a variety of choices to be made since no individual is the same. With all this choice, the system has a tendency to be very complex and break down frequently (witness Macs vs. PCs, with PCs being more complex). It also has a tendency to lead to situaitons where there is no continuity. On the PC you have a gazillion choices no matter what OS you choose. Expand that to the hardware, and you have even more choices. With a Mac, you only have a handful of choices, but they are the "best" choices based on experience. The user gives up a certain level of control for a simpler experience.
So... what's the answer? There really isn't one. It's a flaw in human design. We would be largely better off without the desire for individuality and centralized control, but we would also be a lot less interesting. However, the trains would probably run on time...
Un-news
Wouldn't this algorithm be better?
Yes, but actually the first algorithm could be improved by using simple statistics. Given N choices evaluate n (I can't recall what the fraction n/N should be at the moment), then pick the best of the subset n.
IQ tests have been a game for me ever since I encountered the first one consiously at around age 5 or 6 or so.
A game to beat the people who thought up the test, and to play with the outcome. If you know how they are made and have a decent understanding of the basic elements of the test it is possible to manipulate the outcome to be whatever you want it to be.
"I DON'T CARE, just make it DRIVE."
You're the reason we have traffic jams. You equate driving with moving a grocery cart down the cereal aisle.
Its not. Driving is an art. It takes usually 15-20 years of practice to be good, and even then, only if you want to be good.
The speed limits are set for the likes of you, who think that speed is "dangerous" and you don't understand those "crazies" who have to go around you on the RH side and shake their head at you.
Losers want white cars that drive. Drivers know what the final drive ratio they'd prefer.
So please, stay in the RH lane, and promise me you'll never complain about all those "crazies" out there anymore. Because you're the one driving them crazy.
"However, just looking up the options compatible with that model, there are over 74,000 different ways you can make a 1997 Chevy Lumina and not have it be called a Monte Carlo."
Doesn't matter. Either of those cars is high on the suck-o-meter. In fact the latest Monte Carlo is so ugly that it burns your eyes like acid when you first see it.
And the performance is almost equal to a Honda Accord coupe. Too bad that its a chevy, and so goddamned ugly that its resale will be down under $10K in 3 years.
Ouch. A loser cars for loser people. Loser.
Exercising my freedom of choice, I have just chosen to post a comment about your signature. "The Paradox of Choice" discussion finally makes it more on-topic than ever. Usually when people comment your signature they are moderated down as off-topic. This is probably the first time when such a duscussion might be actually very interesting to everyone reading this thread. Of course your signature will not be the only topic of the following text. Nevertheless, I have chosen to "comment your sig."
First of all, let me express my sincerest congratulations for the best "signature troll" I have ever seen on Slashdot: "Newton, Galileo, Kepler, Dirac, Faraday, Planck, Kelvin, Maxwell and Einstein believed in God. So do I." Truly remarkable.
Let me explain. It is a brilliant example of rhetoric because it is not a fallacy per se and is therefore irrefutable, however the most frequent ipse dixit interpretation (at least the most frequent in the numerous follow-up comments I have been reading for quite some time), is obviously fallacious in many ways and it is this very interpretation which forms a sound pro-theist argument what makes that signature as controversial as it undeniably is. Bravo. This is what I call a good sophism. (As a sidenote, I also admire the joke with Galileo in the context of science and religion. "E pur si muove" indeed!)
That unwritten conclusion is an outstanding example of argumentum ad verecundiam (argument from respect), i.e. a genetic fallacy of the appeal to misleading authority, one of the most interesting ignoratio elenchi informal fallacies. The above signature is written in such a way that most of people understand its first part (i.e. "Newton, Galileo, Kepler, Dirac, Faraday, Planck, Kelvin, Maxwell and Einstein believed in God.") as a premiss, and the second one ("So do I.") as a conclusion. It doesn't provide the argument though.
The only sound argument (which is inevitably implied) must be in the lines of: "if this particular smart people believed in something, it must be true" which is undoubtedly fallacious (and thus of course controversial) but which is never written. This is interesting because it is this unwritten implied argument, the only possible link between the premiss and the conclusion of the most popular interpretation (not the only one, mind you, supposedly not even the intended one, but the most obvious one nonetheless) of the signature text, which is causing the whole controversy. This is truly beautiful.
Now, back to your supposedly intended meaning: "My sig is meant as a counter example to those who think that only the weak-minded beleive in God." Counter-example to what assertion? That every scientist is an atheist? That every smart person is an atheist? That every genius is an atheist?
(This is not a straw man argument. You really need such a universal generalization if you want to use a counter-example to show that the argument (or the proposition, to be precise, which might be used as a premiss of arguments you are actually refuting, but which you have yet not presented to my knowledge) is non-validating by finding examples of few true premisses with false conclusions. Your specific counter-example woudn't work even against "most of smart people are atheists" so naturally I had to assume you were talking about a proposition which your counter-example is actually effective against.)
I have never seen anyone saying that all of smart people or all of scientists are atheists. Not only on Slashdot, I have never seen anyone saying that anywhere.
That doesn't make your intended meaning any less valid, though. It is perfectly valid, even if completely obvious and indisputable and thus quite pointless. And that very indisputability explains why such an interp
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
If you want to see Linux on the desktop, you need apps (read: games). If you want to see games, you need a stable, predictable platform. That means a well-known, widely-used, reasonably current yet stable distro that only installs one way, with very few options. Not many companies are in a position to make this happen. I was holding out hope that RedHat might do it, but that's not the direction they're heading with either RHEL or Fedora.
Don't talk to me about food. It's all I've had to eat every single day for as long as I can remember. I just want a little variety; something else for a change but no matter where I go, all they have is food.
Give me something else to eat.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
Why didn't anyone tell me that before I decided to get married? It was hell until I got divorced.
--jeff++
ipv6 is my vpn
..Source Mage,Soyombo,stresslinux STUX,SULIX..
I'm still running Stampede on my server, you insensitive clod!
Harald
These sound like poor analogies and FUD, to me.
Each "choice domain" is going to have varying characteristics that will make a decision process easy or difficult. These car and meat examples happen to be ones where the information available and past experience, not to mention the driving purpose of the purchase (no pun intended) such as wanting an off-roading vehicle versus a commute vehicle or throwing a BBQ versus gourmet dinner, will undoubtedly make the decision process easier.
Getting back to computers, let's take web browsers for example. There are several web browsers in existance today, each varying by several characteristics:
-support for web standards
-support for tabbed browsing
-support for skins
-anti-aliased text
-intuitive bookmark management
-support for ad blocking
-support for pop-up blocking
-support for extentions and plug-ins
How many browsers does Windows come with by default? One.
How many browsers does Mac OS X come with by default? One.
How many browsers do I have on my Windows machine at work? Two.
How many browsers do I have on my Mac OS X machine at home? Four.
Just because only one choice is available initially doesn't mean it's a static situation. These systems are set up so that out of the box, the user isn't required to make a choice. There is an inherent trust that is assumed that when you buy one of these systems, the manufacturer has set up the system in a way that will be adequate for your needs. It is also assumed that those whose needs are not met will seek out ways to meet those needs, i.e. via looking for alternatives or developing their own.
"Freedom to choose" doesn't have to mean "forced to choose".
You might argue that with Linux systems, having multiple word processing suites pre-loaded and available in the menus, for example, might make the decision process easier. However, by doing that, you're immediately forcing a decision on the user that they might not be ready to make without a better understanding of their personal needs and what each suite offers. The former can only come with experience. The latter can be addressed by providing the user with enough information to be able to make an informed decision and the means to act on their decision (e.g. a web site, package management system, etc.).
Presenting decision-making information is an artform in itself, as there are so many factors that are involved. For example, what's the best format to present the information (text, stylized text, graphics, multi-media), which information should be presented (will anyone care about feature a, will anyone be offended by mentioning feature b, will feature c be attractive enough to plunk down x dollars), and how/when should it be presented (printed documentation, online documentation, set-up wizard, tool tips, demo software, in-person demo, magazine articles, etc.)
I think this is where the real challenge (and potential pay-off) lies... in shaping the decision making process of others. Of course, this applies to more than just computers. We all do this on a daily basis, and the media, governments and corporations are all just extensions of ourselves. When put in a position to shape the decision making process of others, our different goals and motivations will also have an effect on what options are presented... sometimes so much so that the options presented are not necessarily the best for the decision maker, whether they know it or not (I like to call this the "illusion of choice").
For example, consider the cola wars. Coke vs. Pepsi: Which is better? The question is framed with the implied assumption: you want a cola and nothing else will do. No alternatives are even considered. Perhaps a glass of cold water would be just as refreshing and much more healthy but is never suggested as an option because it was previously thought it was difficult to make a profit selling water... until it was bottled, a brand identity building and marketting team was be put behind it, and
Your car has a PRND123 transmission setup ?
That is amazing!!! What manufacturer is that?
Mine's just and old fashined PRND321 You insensitive clod!!!
"Your problem is that you think NORMAL people [...] have the time, energy, and patience to learn which of their 8 text editors is the best."
How do people deal with cars, telephones (especially cell phones), televisions, radios, houses, apartments, cable TV or even a possible mate? Each has its own unique set of requirements and options, yet people manage to select what's best.
Ironic, isn't it, that congress is trying to make ordering cable television an order of magnitude more difficult. .
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
> How many models of cars that do things differently from every other model of car?
... They're suggesting giving a consistent base to build on.
Hmm, lets see... Regular, deisal, hybrid, eletric, leaded additive required, hydrogen, yup looks identical there. Mixing and matching fuels would never kill an engine. They all reload their power systems the same way.
>If I buy a Ford, I don't need to take training because my last car was a Pontiac.
Thats right, because both Ford and Pontiac have standardized on automatic transmission so there is only one way to operate the car and I don't have to learn more than one way.
>Hell, even the order of the gears on an automatic are the same (P R N D 1 2 3).
Darn right. Absolutely. All of them have low 3, and no automatic has more than one "drive" option like overdrive to choose from. Exactly the same.
>Contrast that with Linux distros where some applications are present, and some are not.
Yep, and all cars have A/C, power windows, cruze control. Yep, always there.
>Some applications are placed here, and some are placed there.
>(Your quote above) Sure, the placement of the A/C or cruise controls are a little different...
Good thing these concepts you gave don't contradict each other in your argument.
>Some will work with hardware better than others.
Isn't that anoying. Every moron knows that with cars you can replace a door on any 98 Chevy with a 2002 Ford in five minutes. They are all built to exactly the same dimensions and wireing.
>THIS is why Windows is winning the desktop day in and day out. It has nothing to do with monopolies or political bullying.
Preach it brother. Everyone knows that Apple isn't king because it offered ten times the amount of choices that Windows did.
>...create a single, standard, default desktop that is consistent across all distros.
Yes, its pathetic how the various companies can't sit down and agree to a single unified desktop regardless if they like the final decision or not. After all, look how Microsoft gave up its vision of a desktop just to create a standard with Apple.
>For those contemplating such flames...get a clue. No one is suggesting locking anyone into a "one size fits all soylent world"
Thats right. And your statements in no way assume that only Microsoft could be that base. You are very willing to accept anything, includeing any given Linux distribution, so long as everyone always starts wiuth it.
Good argument. I support you all the way.
Even if you don't consider Britney Spears and N*Sync as pop music, Depeche Mode and Collective Soul would still be pop.
So go hire a Linux geek to be your cyber-butcher.
Perhaps "cyber-tailor" is more appropriate...you can buy "off the rack" from MS and get an ill-fitting garment, or your can get a "tailor-made" solution from a Linux geek. (Even better, your tailor-made is very likely going to cost you less in the long run.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Read the interview. This guy argues that the permutations of cellphone plan, look, and type lead to ~20,000 choices.
Really???
Hmmm, since I consider these items independently my choice is among a simple linear addition of the options (e.g., 20 plans + 30 face plates + 36 phones vs. 20*30*36). Show me one human psychology study that indicates anyone would choose within the multiplicative combinatoric space of ~20,000!
With that one example I lost any respect for the credibility of this "scientist".
If you ever work on your own car, you'd love to be asked that question. (I installed my own stero in the first two cars I owned, and had to deal with removing and re-installing interior panels.) It would be fine with me if a car dealer asked, "Do you plan to work on this car yourself?", and asked me a bunch of detailed choices if I did. Just like some software has "advanced" settings that the average user doesn't need to muck about with, but I can.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Maybe there are people genetically predisposed to want to make choices, to want to choose from the widest array of options. These people would sometimes make the wrong choices and die. Then maybe there are others, people genetically predisposed to do what everyone else is doing. They would become unhappy when forced to make choices on their own (knowing, genetically speaking, that making the wrong choice may kill them.) Sheep and goats, you see. Maybe geeks tend towards the latter, and perhaps that's why most people here have a hard time grasping the fact that many people don't like to have too many choices.
Or maybe I'm just full of it. I don't know. Maybe the moderators will decide for me.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
This week's Newsweek has an op-ed article called Afflictions of Affluence that speaks on this very topic. According to it, there are 3 consequences of our rich society: obesity, time crunch and buyer's remorse.
In short the article goes on to say that because we're so rich and food is so cheap our portion sizes have been getting bigger. And that's why we're becoming fat.
We're facing a constant time crunch because we constantly view our time as more and more valuable (time is money in our capitalistic culture) ergo there's this need to cram all our activities into shorter time periods.
Lastly, ther'es buyer's remorse simply because we havfe so many choices out there. You buy one mp3 player but have time to research all 100. You're likely to find a feature in another mp3 player you wish you had.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
Slackware should close shop, Redhat should disappear, Lindows should go the way of the dodo. Who cares if they make money or how many people use thier software. And don't forget the blindingly successful Soviet Union they had no choice and they out competed the United States in every thing from econimics to space travel to health care. Choice sucks.
Or, I tried Konqueror first because it had an icon on the taskbar. Konqueror errored and took a dump at mail.yahoo.com, the first page I went to. I then used Mozilla, which doesn't suck like that. Really, how does a non-functioning product like that make it into one of the two most popular X desktops?
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
Logic suggests that having options allows people to select precisely what makes them happiest. But, as studies show, abundant choice often makes for misery
Americans today choose among more options in more parts of life than has ever been possible before. To an extent, the opportunity to choose enhances our lives. It is only logical to think that if some choice is good, more is better; people who care about having infinite options will benefit from them, and those who do not can always just ignore the 273 versions of cereal they have never tried. Yet recent research strongly suggests that, psychologically, this assumption is wrong. Although some choice is undoubtedly better than none, more is not always better than less.
This evidence is consistent with large-scale social trends. Assessments of well-being by various social scientists--among them, David G. Myers of Hope College and Robert E. Lane of Yale University--reveal that increased choice and increased affluence have, in fact, been accompanied by decreased well-being in the U.S. and most other affluent societies. As the gross domestic product more than doubled in the past 30 years, the proportion of the population describing itself as "very happy" declined by about 5 percent, or by some 14 million people. In addition, more of us than ever are clinically depressed. Of course, no one believes that a single factor explains decreased well-being, but a number of findings indicate that the explosion of choice plays an important role.
Thus, it seems that as society grows wealthier and people become fleer to do whatever they want, they get less happy. In an era of ever greater personal autonomy, choice and control, what could account for this degree of misery?
Along with several colleagues, I have recently conducted research that offers insight into why many people end up unhappy rather than pleased when their options expand. We began by making a distinction between "maximizers" (those who always aim to make the best possible choice)and "satisficers" (those who aim for "good enough," whether or not better selections might be out there). We borrowed the term "satisficers" from the late Nobel Prize-winning psychologist and economist Herbert A. Simon of Carnegie Mellon University.
In particular, we composed a set of statements--the Maximization Scale--to diagnose people's propensity to maximize. Then we had several thousand people rate themselves from 1 to 7 (from "completely disagree" to "completely agree") on such statements as "I never settle for second best." We also evaluated their sense, of satisfaction with their decisions.
We did not define a sharp cutoff to separate maximizers from satisficers, but in general, we think of individuals whose average scores are higher than 4 (the scale's midpoint) as maximizers and those whose scores are lower than the midpoint as satisficers. People who score highest on the test the greatest maximizers-engage in more product comparisons than the lowest scorers, both before and after they make purchasing decisions, and they take longer to decide what to buy. When satisficers find an item that meets their standards, they stop looking. But maximizers exert enormous effort reading labels, checking out consumer magazines and trying new products. They also spend more time comparing their purchasing decisions with those of others.
Naturally, no one can check out every option, but maximizers strive toward that goal, and so making a decision becomes increasingly daunting as the number of choices rises. Worse, after making a selection, they are nagged by the alternatives they have not had time to investigate. In the end, they are likely to make better objective choices than satisficers but more get less satisfaction from them. When reality requires maximizers to compromise--to end a search and decide on something--apprehension about what might have been takes over.
We found as well that the greatest maximizers are the least happy with the fruits of their efforts. When they compare th
Exactly, Mr Slippery. So-called fascism for average Joe with a WELL-HIDDEN capitalist feature for experts.
Try the customize PC....now see how many choices you have...the matter of choice isn't a problem its the orginization of that choice. Have a basic option for people who don't want to think about it then have multimple levels of choice for people who want it different...most Linux distros have this option in thier installers. It isn't a problem.
By the way with this whole "problem" with linux choice hurting desktop usage could someone explain to me why linux is gaining market share?
When you go to the grocery, do you ask for 'meat', or do you specify species and cut?
I'm a vegan you insensitive...
you can't get better song if all of the musicians of the world will work on just one song.
;). These days i like simple scripts done by song writers playing acoustic guitars.
;)
that's the reason why you can't do the relevant advantage with just buying big number of programmers.
some tunes/software is best done if you have 3 ppl in the process (drums, guitar and bass) and some needs more ppl (percussions, synths, effects, vocals, more vocals
having that in mind you sholdn't go and just buy everything. most of the times you can't have geniuses just because they don't want to be bought. most of them work on Free Software
with voting there is a rule/problem (I don't know its name - Condorcet is all that comes to mind) that any vote with more than two participants may yield cycles (for example, in some cases, A is prefered to B is preferred to C is preferred to A....) or other nonoptimalities; thus voting methods may not give results consistent with what everyone would want of independent of how the vote is done. The problem with runoff systems (do you want A or B? do you want B or C?...) is that they depend on the order or options chosen; thus the person selecting the choices may have more power to determine the outcomes than the people nominally choosing the outcomes.
So while this way of putting choices resolves much of the problems with overwhelming choices, it potentially puts significant power in the hands of the one choosing the choices. Under certain circumstances this could be catastrophic, such as in gov't, where the selection procedure would give the voters the appearance of power and responsibility while concentrating the actual decision-making capacity elsewhere, out of sight and responsibility. I don't know a practical method around this because any of the multiple voting systems can behave badly under certain circumstances, just that this may be flawed. I believe the same problems apply to the decision making method above.
So, I go into a store, sort by price, choose cheapest.
Take it home, sample it. If its OK, drink rest of sample, and upon visit to store, buy more.
If it tastes funny, or has other annoying side effects, try the next product up on the price sort.
So far, my algorithm stopped at WalMart's "Sam's Choice" diet cola at 50 cents per 2 liter bottle.
Incidentally, because of my aversion to playing store card games, the price I use for my evaluations is the shelf price. Businesses that use the old "rack the shelf price up really high so to encourage everyone to carry our store card" lose out on this, as their shelf price puts them at the very "least likely to purchase" location on my selection algorithm.
As you have probably guessed by now, WalMart usually is the vendor of choice for just about anything I need that is stocked by WalMart.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Man, it's like he wrote the story of my life.
Seriously, the sheer volume of choices normal, middle-class people make these days can be overwhelming. Say you want to make some basically irrelevant decision, like how to entertain yourself for an evening. Do you go to a movie? A restaurant? Maybe throw a get together for a few friends? Or give your antisocial side free rein, and stay home and test out yet another Fedora test release? Meanwhile, some little chunk of your brain is pounding on your internal monologue, demanding to know why you're anguishing over something so frivolous, while most of the world is dirt poor and the ozone layer lost another three percent last year and did you hear about the latest round of bombings and targeted assassinations in Israel you should really be doing something about that you know by the way the economy is in the crapper so you may want to hang onto the money you were planning on spending this evening [snip seventeen more pages in the same vein]
All that, and your reward is to end up watching "Along Came Polly." It's like you're better off not bothering.
The discussion I've seen so far primarily revolves around computers. Which distros strike the best balance between choice and usability, and how to get a lot of both with only one configuration. But all this discussion is over one relatively minor facet of the profession of computing (a profession which pretty much everyone here finds attractive). What happens when you start moving outside your own perceived comfort level?
For me, clothes shopping is one endeavor where I'm overwhelmed by the choices. I tried watching "Queer Eye" once, and I decided that I simply didn't want to be any better informed about food and fashion than I already am. So I generally do most of my shopping at thrift stores, look for clothes that fit well, have a lot of life left in them, and are generally stain free. I'm never going to pass a girl and have her think, "There's a guy who really knows how to dress himself." That's okay. The fewer choices and less money I spend on clothes, the happier I am.
I don't think it's just the stupid who can feel overwhelmed by choices. Rather, I think that someone who is smart and honest with himself can have it even worse. Once you stop making post-hoc rationalizations about how the choices you've already made--whether that choice is as frivolous as "which sweater to buy" or as critical as "who should I marry?" or "what should I choose as a career?"--and start recognizing that thinking for what it is, you realize that things could have gone differently. What happens when you stop repeating the "I married the most wonderful woman on Earth" mantra, and start thinking about what might have been different if you'd married ol' what's her name from high school? It's not exactly a formula for happiness.
It would be silly to say that only smart people recognize that their life could have been different had they made different choices. Instead, I'm saying that your brain has certain instinctive patterns of thought which keep you happy by keeping you from dwelling on them. An example the New Yorker review mentioned: people who buy a car are unlikely to look at ads for competing products afterwards, in order to avoid discovering that they may have made the wrong decision. If you're particularly self-aware, you can see th
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
When I was a kid, we had three brands of cereal, one school, few choices for a profession, little choice for clothes, and only one choice for religion and daaaaaagnabit, we loved it!
:)
A Theory of Choice involving Maximizers and Satisficers? It's hard to believe that physicists used to make fun of String Theory?
freedom of choice implies the freedom to choose to choose (or not).
.. *dizzy* ...
let me try that again: before i can make a choice between two or more options, i must first want (i.e. choose) to make that choice.
as an experienced computer user and programmer, i want to choose linux (or another alternative) for my desktop so that i can have the freedom of choice it offers.
as a casual user, my sister has no interest in choosing to have the kind of freedom of choice that linux offers; to her, windows 98 is still to this day "good enough" for her needs.
that one of us chose an option that leads to more choices and the other did not is immaterial; we each exercised our freedom to choose in coming to a decision that best fits our respective needs.
in my mind, there is nothing "paradoxical" (in the way that schwartz means) about not choosing in the face of myriad options, because to not choose is itself a choice.
There are only four Linux distributions: Fedora, Mandrake, SuSE, and Debian. All others are down in the noise. Three of them allow you to install RPMs, and in my experience, an RPM for one works fine on the other. Debian will come around in time.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
and started training myself to accept good enough, I found his speech to not be good enough and shut it off... See that, minimal Choices there, to listen to his garbage or not to listen to his garbage, simple choice there...... Love that Line "train yourself to accept just good enough" to me that sounds like extremely poor advice, would hate to get a Car that runs just good enough, or get some food that tastes just good enough, or how about some contraceptives that seem just good enough. I am sorry, Choices are there for everyone, if one feels pressured by the ammount of chocies, then you have the choice to choose from less ammounts of products, or you have the choice to Suffer the time consuming motion of finding the best product for yourself. Besides not everything needs to be a Life or death choice that you must get the absolute Best.
If firefighters fight fire and crime fighters fight crime, what do Freedom fighters fight?
Or you could install Gentoo, Debian, LFS, etc. Just a few of the distros out there that make a point of not cluttering your computer with stuff you don't need/want.
No hay banda
--- and real power returns to the god-like system administrator of old. This is progress?
Actually having a plethora of cable stations is a good thing. It helps adverstisers to better target their key demographics. Plus, we can probably cut that "700,000" down by a couple orders of magnitude if we realize that most of those are regional broadcasts of the same stations.
I think the real problem is having all of those stations owned by only a handful of companies.
Go out and read the Technological society, The Technological Bluff (J. Elluls) and Technopoly (N. Postman).
Most choices given by technological progress are an illusion.
Yes we today have 100's of automobiles to choose from but the choice of a mule or horse has been irrevokably removed in the name of technological progress.
This is despite the fact a mule and horse _can_ cross the Nevada desert unlike so many autonomous and piloted vehicles covered recently.
Most Payroll is now done by software and is rarely done by hand to the point I would say business has lost sight of a key process in favor of technological smoke and mirrors. Now we get into areas of how many hours the finance dept can "float" payroll offshore to avoid taxes or keep interest accruing then process it at the last moment. Only technological advances could give us such dangerous practices on a core process of business.
In effect Jacques Elluls and Neil Postman conclude in their books that technology beats you down to accepting the only choice, the one prefered is technologically the one forced upon you.
What Freedom!
There are a zillion phones (wired in this case, I'll save cell phones for a different rant). For all the choice I can't find a high quality plain old touch tone phone without extra features. The kind that is built rock solid and lasts a long time, and they used to make. I would gladly pay $50 for such a phone. I bought such a phone in 1984 and it still works great. I have bought 3 such plain phones ($15) in the last 15 years and only 1 has lasted longer than 5 years (waiting to see if it will break my observation).
Here's the trick: for the Average Joe User (tm), by the second algorithm they're more than happy to use Windows, IE, and Outlook Express. It's the first one they're likely to come across, since they're buying a box off the shelf, and it does exactly what they want it to do. By your own logic, there's no reason to go looking for a better option if the current one is sufficient.
This is my sig. There are many others like it, but this one is mine.
On average, the German/Dutch/Belgian citizen is better educated than the average citizen of the US. As well as different traditions, this is the reason we can handle more political choise.
I hope US citizens won't be offended and seperate the "insult" from the information.
Improve the average United States level of education and you will get people who can vote more intelligently.
I have to say several things:
I agree with Dr. Schwartz to some extent. Australia is seeing a huge amount of privitization throughout all industries. We are having to make a huge amount of choices for everything. I know the US have had it for years, but I get annoyed having to make too many choices every step of the way. I see it as a waste of time and energy that can be better spent elsewhere.
The other side of the coin is, though, that we need to have choices to avoid a monopoly/dictatorship. Whichever way you look at it - Microsoft is a dictator. They tell us to jump and we say 'how high?'.
This is unsatisfactory. So for this reason alone I prefer to have choices. Even if I do get annoyed, I would much prefer that I get annoyed than have some monopoly dictating my life.
The other thing to note is: Microsoft is treating the OSS movement as a THREAT to it's existance. Therefore, they are going all out to get at OSS in anyway possible. I see this study as FUD by Microsoft, (whether initially intentional or not).
-- main(s){printf(s="main(s){printf(s=%c%s%c,34,s,34
What I'm saying, is that (either, take your pick) common end users are not linux-competent enough to administer their own machines or that the administration of any given linux distribution has not achieved a level above user-hostile. I haven't installed a distro (yet) that doesn't require manually editing at least one conf file.
For me, it's great....I have 100% control over how the system performs, however, if my mother used linux....I wouldn't give her the root password.
Is linux ready for the corporate desktop (where end users frequently don't have rights to change the background image and administrators are already in control) yes. Is it ready for the general consumer, no.
"Lame" - Galaxar
--- and real power returns to the god-like system administrator of old
When one of my end users calls and says "Why can't I...", I take great satisfaction in saying "Because you can't, have a nice day." God-like system administrators aren't so bad...as long as I'm one of them.
"Lame" - Galaxar
As an example, I was looking at 80/20's site. They bill themselves as a supplier of "the industrial erector set", selling all manner of parts and services to build just about anything out of extruded T-slotted aluminum.
They claim to be able to save you money as compared to traditional steel metal work, by using an example of a small table-like structure.
Now, I believe this claim when it comes to using their products for industrial fabrication, or whereever you are going to need to hire skilled labor to build the system, or you need the time savings. A quick look would lead you to believe that "well, I should go with 80/20 for everything - it is so much cheaper!" - but what if you are building something for your home? Is it still cheaper?
Take a look at that comparison page again - notice where the cost savings are?
That's right - it is all in the labor. Provided you already own and know how to use steel welding/machining equipment (ie, the basics - a cheap welder, safety equipment, various clamps, angle grinder/cutoff saw) - suddenly the 80/20 solution becomes much, MUCH more expensive. The 80/20 solution saves you money on time expenditures - but if you remove that from the equation for the steel side (home improvement project) - you quickly see that the steel version would only cost about $35.00, whereas the 80/20 solution would still cost over $130.00!
Likely, the end result of the steel table (provided the welds are good), while being heavier, would actually by much, MUCH stronger (probably could support a vehicle), whereas the aluminum - while of lighter weight, would be less durable under extreme stress (now, if the aluminum was welded, instead of bolted together - welds will almost always be stronger than other mechanical joints).
So, the steel version takes longer to build, but is stronger and much cheaper (3-4 times), whereas the 80/20 solutions looks better and takes less time to put together, but is likely less durable and cost much more to purchase.
Most people would look at all of it, and decide to spend the money to offset the time and headache of welding by using 80/20. Others would rather not be lazy, and instead build the more durable solution out of welded steel.
Please note that I am not critical of 80/20's product - the product seems to be a great solution for many problems where you need strength, light-weight, and cheap labor to assemble - perfect for very large or complex jobs. With that said, however, it is not a cost-effective solution for do-it-yourself one-off projects, unless you like throwing money at a problem and not doing any work (in which case, it is probably cheaper to buy a comparable pre-built product, instead)...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
What a load of cock and bull.
There is already NO choice. If you know who you are and what you want, then all you do is go and inhabit the reality closest to your ideal. It's just a matter of putting your back into the task. Choice is not even on the board; its simply an exercise in being able to divine your true path.
Of course, you're going to make the 'wrong choices' now and again, and you will slip off the path and get hurt and dinged up a bit. This is how we learn. So you get back on and keep moving. Choice is simply the result of not having enough knowledge about yourself and the world around you. If you know everything about yourself and the world, then out of a thousand options, one will always stand brighter than the others.
As for those who want easy lives where they don't have to think too much; who would rather have IT tell them what to do with their bodies and minds. . . Oh, well now how very captivating and vital and alluring an attitude is that! Puh-lease! Such people are basically saying they'd be happier not existing.
Sorry. I just don't find that appealing.
-FL
Crap. Absolute ball rotting crap.
As with anything there will be people who care what door hinges there are. Mom and Dad plus junior probably don't give (and shouldn't) give a toss. If it squeaks, take it back to the dealer and get them to fix it. That's what warranty is for idiot, so people don't have to understand what hinge with extra reinforcing widgets does.
If it's out of warranty spray the squeaky sucker with WD-40 every couple of months. Mmmm do I want to spend two weeks analysing which door hinges to get or spend $40 on lubricant over 10 years. people like you shit me!!!
AC because never got into the whole logging into a website thing, like I NEED another username and passowrd combination....
Actually, Average Joe User doesn't even know that Linux is an available option.
The context of this post is that Average Joe Linux User is overwhelmed by all the seemingly duplicitous applications that come bundled with the popular Linux distros.
In response to your post, it just depends on what criteria you evaluate your options. If price is a factor, then perhaps Linux wins.
You'll probably be so confused by the differences you'll give up in disgust. I, however, will click around a little, see where the various functions are, how the keys are bound and learn to use it in a few minutes. I'd like to think that most people will do what I do in this, not what you seem to expect.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
did you learn nothing from the Matrix??
...you mean like vi or emacs?
BWAHAHAHAAAA!
*AC runs and hides*
I mean Pop, the genre. Not as in an abbreviation for popular music. As in I like classic rock. By your logic, Cobain was pop.
Besides there are variying degrees of bland popularness, ones which we've long since pushed passed the limits. There has always been music made by artists who are really just a front for a team of producers, and music made by artists who aren't. Whether or not they're nationally or internationally reknowned, the difference is in whether they are artistically responsible for the music they preform. Most pop is played by preformers, not musicians.
You'll probably be so confused by the differences you'll give up in disgust.
Exactly. And I'll go back to Windows. And Linux will fail to be competitive on the desktop. Glad you agree with me. Now, if we could just convince the rest of the world.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
Quoting out of context to twist my words. How clever. My point, which you so conveniently ignored, is that when most people find themselves using a new program, they try to learn how to use it instead of insisting that if it doesn't work exactly like their old one they can't ever learn it.
Part of the appeal of Windows is that there's One True Way to do everything and all programs must work that way; Linux is for people that don't believe this.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Alvin Toffler also discussed this in his decades-old "classic" "Future Shock". I thought it was absurd then and still do - are we truly paralyzed by the combinatoric explosion of option choices in buying, say, a car? I don't think so.
All of the self-made rich people I know are pretty sharp. If you can provide a pointer to any research showing a reverse correlation, I'd be fascinated to see it.
Your
wish
is
my
command.
Looking at this list, it's a bit blonde-heavy. It seems further research into this strange pattern formation is required.
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
I didn't quote you out of context to twist your words. Many people really will quit. You tried to imply that you're somehow superior to those people, which point I ignored because it's irrelevant. But I didn't twist your words - I merely emphasized the point you yourself stated.
Part of the appeal of Windows is that there's One True Way to do everything and all programs must work that way; Linux is for people that don't believe this.
That's exactly my point! If you want Linux to remain the exclusive purview of the technical elite, then there's no need to change it. If however, the goal is to have Linux compete with Windows (and that's the context of this thread), it needs to take into account that a significant percentage of users won't "click around" and aren't interested in devoting a great deal of time and effort into learning to use a computer. They want it simple, and they want to be able to use the same skills on their home machines, their work machines and the machine at the corner Internet Cafe.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
And with Linux?
Too much choice? Well, perhaps for some people. But a where a line must be drawn, people always crowd around and push it one way or the other. Frankly, I'd rather be befuddled by too much choice than restricted by too little choice. I do believe Dr.Schwartz can kiss my ass.
But then, some people will quit anything if it doesn't work exactly right the first time. When I did tech support for an ISP, I had a man call to cancel his account because the software didn't install exactly right. I offered to assist him, and he responded, "No, if I have to 'tech support' my way through, it isn't worth it." As this means he never let us help him get on line, he paid the full month's charge plus the setup fee for nothing.
My point is, however, that most people will at least try to learn new things. You, however, seemed to be assuming the opposite.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
With Linux installs you better choose your resolution and refresh rate correctly or your only choice will be to find a machine that still works so you can choose which HOTWO to read to get your monitor to work.
You meant "moral of the story" but you probably already knew that.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Just look at what happens when we allow people to make an infinite number of choices. You suddenly find that they can chop up a sphere and rebuild it as two. That's not right!
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
More like Opteron or P4
Can I bum a sig?
You seem to have missed this story:
Seattle Times Reviews Desktop Linux Distros Mar 08, 2004
Skip down to the table at the bottom:
A general comparison of the state of Desktop Linux today from a year ago
gewg_
Then shop at a store that gives you fewer choices. See? That's why I have no sympathy for you. The solution is in your hands, UNLIKE the situation of poor people.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
If you want people to choose A, give them choices between A,B,C and D.
With B,C, and D being lesser "choices"
(Substitute con mans for dictator, monopolies, etc)
Timang tinggi tinggi
parang sudah asah
alang alang mandi
biar sampai basah
I seriously doubt that minds really make "choices."
When we think of a choice, we generally think: "Okay: I've got A, and I've got B, and maybe I've got C, and I've got to make a decision."
These kinds of decisions fill our conscious mind, but in the background, our minds are doing all this organic stuff. You might say it's making "choices," but- that doesn't sound quite right to me.
Original thoughts just "pop" into our minds. They just appear, suddenly. We might be able to imagine what led to their being there, but we don't really know. It's these thoughts that are really interesting.
Making "choices" is just part of the mechanics of our conscious thought processes clashing, and stuff like that. But that's only the surface.
Most of the really important stuff in our life comes from a pre-choice mush of grey matter.
Choices throw themselves at us. Decide this or that. But neat things come from mush, with no clear origin, and with no real decision making attached.
People who say "our lives are made of choices," and what not- it's not really so. That's just Rationalism speaking. Far more of our lives come from imagination, or something like that.
That's how I see it, at any rate.
Your problem is that you think other people have problems. I'm not fucking anti-social, fucking non-approachable, or a fucking nerd, nor do I fucking control the fucking direction of the fucking Linux fucking deskfuckingtop fucking community.
Idiot.
Where was I? Oh, right, your problem. The thing that you fail to understand is that there are no "problems". There are only unmet business opportunities. If you think that too many choices is a problem, then create a (Fedora) Linux (Fedora) Distribution (Fedora) which installs one (Mozilla) web browser, one (gedit) text editor, one (OO) office suite.
I'm waiting, but I'm not holding my breath.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I think most people know in their heart of hearts that Microsoft is a criminal enterprise. Most people know their software is mediocre. But it is the "standard". Microsoft frees people from the pain of choice.
This is why Microsoft will dominate the desktop for a long time. If they keep their software quality at least sort of OK, and do not squeeze their customers too hard, they will keep the dekstop. It does not matter how good the alternatives are.
Religion is the main cause of atheism.
I think you had the wrong approach when learning Linux. I just recently switched almost exclusively from Windows to Fedora Core 1, and it isn't that bad! You simply can't expect to learn how to do things the "UNIX" way in a day or two. It's just different enough from MS Windows to be confusing.
In contrast to a "cold-turkey" approach, I viewed my transition as learning a new skill. I read the first three or so chapters of few books, magazines, and TLDP tutorials before even installing the operating system. That way, I had a pretty good overview of the big picture. Things like the command line, shell scripts, and configuration .files weren't unexpected or scary. (Note: that dot is not a typo.) I knew about the limitations in hardware support by googling in advance for the documentation and user experiences. Thus many of the nuances and differences - like the unusual clipboard behavior - wasn't unexpected and allowed me to determine a fix or solution in advance. I understood Linux's inability to reliably write to NTFS partitions and planned my partitions accordingly. Then I partitioned, installed, and tried to break Fedora Core. I tried corrupting configuration .files and databases. I tried manually changing settings and installing hardware. I attempted uninstalling and reinstalling software. I played with dangerous uses of the root account and command-line tools (dd, rm, fdisk, etc...). I tried mixing parts of different desktop environments. I tested examples from my books and notes. In essence, I learned Linux before switching.
Granted there were a lot of things to learn, but I planned on a long transition period. The process never ends, but in about two months I learned a heck of a lot. At least it was enough to understand both the big picture and also the little details needed to accomplish routine tasks. Proper preparation was worth it too: I previously tried changing "cold-turkey" to Linux (over a year ago) and gave up after only two days!
There's a point to my previous three paragraphs other than to document another Linux switcher's success story. Instead of a confusing array of options, I looked at the 13 web browsers, 5 desktop, 3 office suits, 30 text editors and 101 dalmatians as a chance to evaluate my preferences with this new approach. There was time to try out each one and get a feel for their strengths and weaknesses. I previously had no preferences by definition - being new to Linux. This helped me settle in with Fedora Core and enjoy its benefits compared to MS Windows rather than be annoyed by its differences.
It's all about attitude and approach!
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.
- Jerome Klapka Jerome
/me sings Too much choice? What's that mean? ...What? None of you listen to country music?
Dammit! I will have my revenge!!
Thank you very much. I think you are too kind. I will quote you, though, if you don't mind.
That is very strange, almost unbelievable. Next time you might point such an ignorant person to Perl 6 website, and ask her to read Apocalypses by Larry Wall, especially Apocalypse 4 talking about the syntax per se, Apocalypse 3 explaining the operators in details, Apocalypse 5 about regular expressions, grammar rules and pattern matching in general, Apocalypse 6 on subroutines, closures, methods, submethods, multimethods, rules and macros, and the soon-to-be-published Apocalypse 12 about objects, classes, traits and roles (and I mean really read them, not merely skim or take a look at, it is actually quite an entertaining read anyway), which together form the most smart/logical/rational fundamentals of programming language design I have seen to date, and then ask her if she still thinks that when one believes in God one is not smart/logical/rational any more.
Indeed, Larry Wall being a hacker god (pun not intended this time) and also being alive at the same time, might actually be a better candidate for your Slashdot signature than Albert Einstein himself. Besides, Einstein never wanted to be a missionary, if I recall correctly, and thus his faith might be questioned.
Speaking about faith and reason, it seems rather strange that people consider them mutually exclusive. I myself always considered faith to be completely orthogonal to reason. Furthermore, I also fail to understand any desire to prove the existance of any object of faith (be it some deity or otherwise) because as soon as it is proved (assuming that it can be proved) it is not a faith (defined as a belief beyond evidence or logical arguments) any more and becomes merely a knowledge of a simple fact. Let me quote Gary Curtis. "To believe a dogma without evidence, or even despite counter-evidence, is sometimes regarded as more admirable than to believe on good evidence."
Therefore, if any religion was provable (and subsequently proved), there would be no need for faith any more. Even more importantly, proving the validity of any particular religion or faith system, would have to inevitably disprove most of other religions as a side effect, for most of them being mutually contradictory cannot be valid simultaneously.
Now, if we assume faith and reason to be orthogonal (which I believe is the only reasonable way to consider them) then using reason to analyze faith (which by definition would be inherently unanalyzable) might lead to committing subtle fallacies, like e.g. this quite popular one:
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
You can feel free to live in your one size fits all soylent world. Go to your car dealership, and say like a simpleton, "I WANT A CAR". I'm sure they'll be happy to oblige you, and fill you out with a nice payment plan that suits your needs without you even having to read the fine print.
Wasn't it Seymour Cray or someone similar who came up with the algorithm for choosing a car which went something like:-
Go to the nearest car dealership. Choose the car nearest the entrance.
Whoever it was, it wasn't a Joe Sixpack.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
I have recalled what it was. It is a continuation of my previous thought. I wrote, I quote:
Now, please let me continue this thought. Of course such a reasoning might not be stricte what we all usually understand as a pure argumentum ad populum per se, for it is a very specific populum of the greatest scientists we are examining, as we started from argumentum ad verecundiam and this is just a quantitative examination of both sides popularity and the strenght thereof, so the "bandwagon" metaphor might be highly misleading, if not wrong.
It might not be a fallacious reasoning to examine the results of our "scientific popularity contest," so to speak, (at least not more than the democracy itself is) and actually might be considered to form a premiss of a perfectly valid inductive argument, however it is very unfavorable for anyone who tries to use it as a basis for a sound pro-God argument, because the percentage of God believers (and those who believe in any form of immortality, for that matter) in the scientific community is not only low, but also quickly decreasing:
God:
||||||||||||| _____________________________________ 1914
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Immortality:
||||||||||||||||| _________________________________ 1914
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(Source: Nature Journal: table, article)
If that trend continues, the percentage of God believers among scientists might sadly become statistically insignificant and thus irrelevant before the end of the 21st century, or during the first decades of the 22nd century.
Now, the original point I was trying to make is as follows. The most popular interpretation of your signature forms an argumentum ad verecundiam which can only result (and indeed often results, as we have seen in numerous discussions it had started) in people providing counter-arguments of the same form, showing examples of great scientists who do not believe in God. At this point we can only use statistics as a mean to examine those examples as inductive arguments, and those very statistics are strongly against God, who exists only in the minds of less than 7% of scientists, decreasing every year. One might explain it with the fact that science was very successful in explaining the world effectively rende
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Yes, but the intelligent people have much more powerful minds which help them find the way out. The problems are objectively more complex, but the problem-solving capabilities are at least proportionally higher.
Don't forget that even though those choices they make may seem laughably easy for you and me, they might actually be very hard for those poor simpletons nonetheless.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."