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What Should People Understand About Computers?
counterexample asks: "It seems to me that there aren't very many good books out there that explain to the layman what is really going on with computers. My mother cannot go to the bookstore and pick up a book that will make her understand the strange language that we IT people speak, or why her computer would be susceptible to a virus. So, I intend to write such a book. I have a fair idea of what should be in it (history of the Internet, how computers talk to each other, what a hard drive does, etc.), but I'm interested to see what you all have to say. What do you wish your users knew? What kind of questions are you so sick of answering because you hear them every week? What does the general public think they understand, but really don't?"
I'd say you have no chance in hell of writing a single book that will tell people like your grandmother and my mom how computers work. A lot of it's bound up in information theory, and if you've never thought about it before, it's a lot like swallowing the red pill and waking up outside of the Matrix, because it legitimately touches on every aspect of your life.
Having said that, I do wish you luck. Maybe you have such pedagogical skill that I will be proven completely wrong.
The less they know, the more I can charge for my services. :0)
And this is all due to Microsoft. Windows is the dominant operating system on *all* personal computers, no one can argue against that. But, MS has designed Windows to try to be both a home computer "appliance" O/S and a corporate workstation O/S both at the same time, and it fails at both in many significant areas that we are all painfully aware of. An O/S meant to be used by specially trained and highly educated corporate users should be just that, and left to the professional IT folks to install and maintain for those corporate end users, and provide job security for those highly specialized and trained IT professionals.
An O/S for the home user (Joe Sixpack) should be locked down from the factory to do only certain things and have only one way of doing each of them. It should be tightly controlled by the O/S maker and need no highly trained specialized IT gurus to "maintain and repair, etc" on a regularly recurring basis for the intended end users. Apple has pretty much achieved this with the Macintosh. It's about the closest thing to a foolproof home computer "appliance" and it excels extremely well at this role. The nicest hardware upon which to run it costs too damn much, however, and this has prevented far too many Joe Sixpacks from even considering buying a Mac.
And for the geeks and hobbiest home users, we have a wonderful blessing in Linux & the *BSD's.
Dude!!
When the words, "you and I," are the subject, or in the subject, of a sentence, then you must use "you and I." If they are the object of a preposition, or a part of the object of the preposition, then you must use, "you and me."
You have frequently put, "you and I" as the object of prepositions. This is not good grammar. "...like you or I..." is the subject of a preposition. It must be, "...like you or me."
Break this line up into to individual sentences and you'll see why: "...like you..." and, "...like I...". See? the first one is OK, but the second one is not correct. It should be, "...like me...".
Remember: If I am the subject, it's about me.
Computers are evil devil boxen hellbent on taking over the world!
How ya like dat?