Well, I can't speak to your experience, but I also have done support for family, college faculty, students, and corporate users and found the exact opposite. When explained and demonstrated clearly, people had no problem understanding the concept.
Of course, the concept of folders is different from actually using them in practice. A lot of people found them a pain to navigate, but once they were shown tricks such as pop-up paths, shortcuts, sidebar aliases, favorites, etc. they were able to navigate much more easily.
I did support one Ph.D. professor, a well-known researcher, who kept everything he created on his desktop - and I mean EVERYTHING!:)
The interfaces for navigating the file system are horribly, horribly confusing to non-technical people.
There, FTFY.
There's nothing confusing about a hierarchical list of folders. People have no problem intuitively understanding that concept. Where they run into problems is clunky "Explorer" or "Finder" browser windows that show them too many options and too much information.
The classic Mac HFS file system was clunky, but it was dead easy to understand. You could put any file or folder pretty much anywhere you wanted, as long as you left the System Folder alone.
Somewhere along the line, overcomplexity wrecked the simple file system interface and made it "horribly, horribly confusing" in the name of feature-itis.
Well, why not? The advertising industry has been using the trappings of science for decades to push their wares. Why shouldn't science do the same back to them?
A Piece of the Action is #5 on both your lists? You have a love/hate relationship with it?
You got it. It's a guilty pleasure because it's just good fun to watch. It's simultaneously one of the dumbest, most ludicrous hare-brained premises they came up with on TOS! Kirk stomps all over the Prime Directive, etc.
What about Mirror, Mirror, The Doomsday Machine, Space Seed, and Amok Time?
All good episodes. Also the Corbomite Maneuver, Miri, Errand of Mercy, All Our Yesterdays... it's hard to pick just 5. A case could be made for each of those.
Balance of Terror is a fine episode, but I wouldn't put it in the top 5. Too derivative, too obviously a remake of Das Boot.
The Enemy Below, I think you mean. Still, I think it's one of the best-written episodes and Mark Lenard's performance is top-notch. I give it a high rating for including an antagonist with real depth of character and not just being a typical shoot-em-up.
I really didn't like the scene with the listing space ship, but I suppose that's a fairly trivial problem, easy to clean up in a remastering. It's near the top of my list for worst violations of physics and sense.
Agh! No remastering, please! Keep it with its flaws intact. It's the strength of the story that makes it good, anyway, not the physics.
It's been a while since I read Pinker's The Language Instinct, but IIRC he made a pretty good argument that language acquisition is natural and innate, if not language itself.
I think Stephenson's premise owes more to Julian Jaynes than Chomsky, thoug. He was more direct about it in The Big U.
Walken's too old now to play Fisheye. Besides, Fisheye is an important character to the plot - a cameo is just a walk-on by someone famous in an inconsequential role (i.e. anyone could play it).
I always pictured Fisheye as more like Harvey Keitel or Dan Hedaya.
The 5-year-old still thinks I can make hardboiled eggs in 20 seconds with a magic bowl, but he's starting to wonder why it only works for me.
How could it take you 20 seconds to cook your eggs, when it takes the entire egg-eating world 15 minutes?
Are we to believe that boiling water soaks into an egg faster in your kitchen, than in any place on the face of the earth? Perhaps the laws of physics cease to exist on your stove!
Were these magic eggs? Did you buy them from the same guy who sold Jack his beanstalk beans??
IMO the NeXT workstations, though clearly based on the Xerox office computer from the 1970s, was far more deserving awe than anything Apple released during the 1980s, including both the Macintosh and the Lisa.
The NeXT Cube was almost an Apple product. Steve was involved in the "BigMac" project to create a "3M" workstation with a megabyte of memory, a million-pixel display, and 1 MFLOP of processing power.
A trojan is a program that gives remote access to a compromised machine.
Not quite accurate. A Trojan Horse is malware of any type that gains privilege by misrepresenting itself as something else, so the user will authorize it.
That said, can we PLEASE go back to calling them Trojan Horses and not Trojans? I don't want to keep thinking of condoms while talking about computer security.
Are you kidding, there exists huge controversy over this issue:
Did Jehovah create the world in 6 days?
Did Chaos give birth to Uranus and Gaia, who gave birth to the Titans?
Did Quetzalcoatl and Tepeu make humans from mud, then wood, then corn?
Did Tawa form the First World and humanity out of Tokpella, the Endless Space?
Did Izanagi and Izanami create the heavens and earth, followed immediately by Japan?
Did Svayambhu, self-manifested form of Brahman, impregnate the golden womb, creating Vishnu?
There are countless other theories that need to be taught. Unfortunately, there is little scientific agreement about any of them, so in order for the kids to make informed judgments about them, the theories will ALL have to be covered in great detail.
Another problem is science text publishers have been very lax about including this information. They should be required to cover the controversy as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Yep, they leave no detail of a candidate unexposed!
I'd be Part-Time Ultimate Goombah of the Known Universe.
...to singe a cat!
Well, I can't speak to your experience, but I also have done support for family, college faculty, students, and corporate users and found the exact opposite. When explained and demonstrated clearly, people had no problem understanding the concept.
Of course, the concept of folders is different from actually using them in practice. A lot of people found them a pain to navigate, but once they were shown tricks such as pop-up paths, shortcuts, sidebar aliases, favorites, etc. they were able to navigate much more easily.
I did support one Ph.D. professor, a well-known researcher, who kept everything he created on his desktop - and I mean EVERYTHING! :)
There, FTFY.
There's nothing confusing about a hierarchical list of folders. People have no problem intuitively understanding that concept. Where they run into problems is clunky "Explorer" or "Finder" browser windows that show them too many options and too much information.
The classic Mac HFS file system was clunky, but it was dead easy to understand. You could put any file or folder pretty much anywhere you wanted, as long as you left the System Folder alone.
Somewhere along the line, overcomplexity wrecked the simple file system interface and made it "horribly, horribly confusing" in the name of feature-itis.
"How do you KNOW it's a Higgs Boson?"
"It LOOKS like one!"
Well, why not? The advertising industry has been using the trappings of science for decades to push their wares. Why shouldn't science do the same back to them?
You got it. It's a guilty pleasure because it's just good fun to watch. It's simultaneously one of the dumbest, most ludicrous hare-brained premises they came up with on TOS! Kirk stomps all over the Prime Directive, etc.
All good episodes. Also the Corbomite Maneuver, Miri, Errand of Mercy, All Our Yesterdays... it's hard to pick just 5. A case could be made for each of those.
The Enemy Below, I think you mean. Still, I think it's one of the best-written episodes and Mark Lenard's performance is top-notch. I give it a high rating for including an antagonist with real depth of character and not just being a typical shoot-em-up.
Agh! No remastering, please! Keep it with its flaws intact. It's the strength of the story that makes it good, anyway, not the physics.
Best:
1. City on the Edge of Forever
2. Balance of Terror
3. The Trouble with Tribbles
4. Devil in the Dark
5. A Piece of the Action
Worst:
1. Spock's Brian
2. The Omega Glory
3. The Way to Eden
4. Patterns of Force
5. A Piece of the Action
I didn't like it. In fact, I threw my precious things across the room and broke them, then committed suicide.
It's been a while since I read Pinker's The Language Instinct, but IIRC he made a pretty good argument that language acquisition is natural and innate, if not language itself.
I think Stephenson's premise owes more to Julian Jaynes than Chomsky, thoug. He was more direct about it in The Big U.
Walken's too old now to play Fisheye. Besides, Fisheye is an important character to the plot - a cameo is just a walk-on by someone famous in an inconsequential role (i.e. anyone could play it).
I always pictured Fisheye as more like Harvey Keitel or Dan Hedaya.
Not if you're stealing a red stapler.
It better be damn big, I need leg room and head room. I should be able to tilt my seat ALL the way back, too!
You know, never mind. Forget it! I ain't going to the moon in no damned CASE!
No, I don't think giving them Asteroids will please them either. Pac-Man or Galaga, maybe.
How could it take you 20 seconds to cook your eggs, when it takes the entire egg-eating world 15 minutes?
Are we to believe that boiling water soaks into an egg faster in your kitchen, than in any place on the face of the earth? Perhaps the laws of physics cease to exist on your stove!
Were these magic eggs? Did you buy them from the same guy who sold Jack his beanstalk beans??
My mother still refers to the whole computer as "the hard drive." I don't know if that's better or worse.
Heh. Right! Next you'll be telling me Aristotle was Belgian.
"Up and at them!!"
The NeXT Cube was almost an Apple product. Steve was involved in the "BigMac" project to create a "3M" workstation with a megabyte of memory, a million-pixel display, and 1 MFLOP of processing power.
See Apple's Failed BigMac Project
Not quite accurate. A Trojan Horse is malware of any type that gains privilege by misrepresenting itself as something else, so the user will authorize it.
That said, can we PLEASE go back to calling them Trojan Horses and not Trojans? I don't want to keep thinking of condoms while talking about computer security.
Without Facebook, I'd have to e-mail all my female friends indivisually and ASK them for photos of them making peace signs and duck faces.
Like it or not, FB is inarguably much more convenient for that sort of thing!
With no kind of atmosphere?
There are countless other theories that need to be taught. Unfortunately, there is little scientific agreement about any of them, so in order for the kids to make informed judgments about them, the theories will ALL have to be covered in great detail.
Another problem is science text publishers have been very lax about including this information. They should be required to cover the controversy as well.
It's warmer at the equator than at the poles, and everybody knows things weigh less when they heat up. That's why they expand.