oh, i understand that. i've been a big fan of text menu systems for a long time. but the insurance industry seems to have programmers that have no concepts of consistancy or sense. poor use of f-keys and enter keys, bad use of colors, really poor menu design, etc.
my guess is that they took insurance people and handed them a book on programming and said write a program (or some schmuck volunteered) and 'this' is what we got.
my personal favorate for bad dos programming was installing into the root of the c drive. and *only* into the root of the c drive. where's a whiffle ball bat when you need it.
the first is from netware. for *years* i would apply patches to netware systems that included a patch to fix: 'Richard Kiel Memorial Abend # 27'... ok...
i was finally at a novell training event in herndon and was asked if i had any questions... ok, what is 'Richard Kiel Memorial Abend # 27'? it turned out that mr kiel was debugging some code. not only did he not find the bug until after the release of the product, but he forgot to take his debug code out. about two years later i was working on a netware 3.x server and *got* this abend. when i expressed coolness in actually seeing this error, people started looking at me kinda funny. ah the joys of geekness.
the other one was an error on a pdp 11/70. there were 127 error codes. i was looking at the errors and checking what would cause them. some were easy such as file not found. one of there messages was: 'Catastrophic Failure' (or Catastrophic Failure has occurred). looking at the log after a 14in hard drive crash indicated that *that* was not Catastrophic. i later asked someone at dec what set of circumstances would cause this error to be generated and they looked and said there didn't seem to be any. they were amused also.
big picture time: this isn't about the 'financial community' getting open source religion. there are soooo many markets out there that have a) OLD dos based software and/or b) poorly written windows software.
i've done support with companies in insurance, medicine, financial, libraries, etc. mostly small, but some of them were not. they all have *Wretched* software. i'm still supporting dos programs for insurance agencies and doctors offices. there are markets out there that are just now starting to write windows software!
this is a window (pardon the pun) of opportunity to take some desktops away from microsoft.
between the licensing issues and expense of microsoft tools *and* the growing expense of the end-user environment *and* a poor track record of security, this should be an opportunity to show what open source can do. and be.
if you want to see this in action now just look at the people that believe that you can be good at a complex computer system via an exam cram book.
go find a a certified person (novell, cisco, ms, rh, etc) that *didn't* do the classes, didn't do labs, didn't do real life work. if you look at them next to nothing else you'll see someone that knows *something*. hold these people up against those that had official curriculum, labs, real life experience and you will see just how sorry these pass-your-exam books really are! they teach you facts with training on *how to solve problems*!
raise your hand if you've ever had to clean up after someone who had all the knowledge, but lacked the ability to put the pieces together! this is troubleshooting, problem solving, creative though.
computers (programs) are lousy at this. and gonna be that way for a long time. it looked like there was gonna be progress on neural networks, but i haven't much about them in recently...
so i sit here and chuck (and cry) because i know the truth: it's easy to teach someone that 2+2=4, but it's harder to teach them *when* that's important!
this is really a shame. hp was one of the technology companies that had a lot going for it.
when you are fighting in a tough market *and* trying to make a merger happen without too much bad stuff, it seems that it is counter-productive to play this game: you make people mad, you spend resources (money and man-hours that could be easily used elsewhere) and you are *not* going to achive the immediate goal of supressing bad stuff (real or imagined).
so hp gets more points in the bad pr column, they waste money, and the problem doesn't go away. i hope that they spin off the printer division before they crash and burn.
eric
p.s. i guess the worst part is that hp *didn't* learn from all the other companies that went down this path.
I think that the mad rush to 'user-friendly-ville' has made this *worse*. Every time we lower the bar to make it easier we seem to be telling people that they don't have to work as hard to do whatever it is that they're doing. We're 'facilitating' the problem by catering to their inability/unwillingness to learn.
It's an interesting contrast between Novell and Microsoft. Novell (for a long time) pretty much laid it out when describing what a CNA/CNE student was expected to start with. These were real prerequisites. And they were crystal clear on what they were expected to know when they were done. This made Novell networks *hard* for the average person. On the other hand, MS quickly forgot about prereqs and was not testing well for certification. It was indeed much easier for someone with less practical experience to get the MCSE (in less time too) than it was to get a CNE. But a CNE is/was much more ready to deal with Problems.
I have some really questions about how far userfriendly can go before stuff hits the fan.
I think that the mad rush to 'user-friendly-ville' has made this *worse*. Every time we lower the bar to make it easier we seem to be telling people that they don't have to work as hard to do whatever it is that they're doing. We're 'facilitating' the problem by catering to their inability/unwillingness to learn.
well, my perspective is that hp has built a lot of crap recently, but they seem to be doing it because people want *cheap*!
hp has to compete against lexmark which is selling some of the z-series inkjets (z31? z51?) for under $80! some of the printers sold by lexmark are cheaper than the replacement print cartridges in some places!
why is there junk (not just hp, not just printers, etc)? because we (americans) tend to think with the wallet instead of our brains.
it's alway been amusing to listen to someone that purchased a $400 laser printer and complain that it doesn't work as well as such-and-such printer, oh that's a $1200 printer...
they (ms) doesn't want donated computers because they are *not* current technology. if i have received some/several/lots/tons of not-current computers, i will not be in a hurry for the next release of software that won't run on this generation. think about all the 66-400Mhz cpus that run win98 (as nicely as 98 runs) that will not run 2000 very well or xp at all? if you're gonna push new ms operating systems you need new computers.
and donated stuff can be hard to get rid of. in some of the districts around me (central ky), they are still using ibm ps/2 model 25s that were donated as part of a kroger educational program that ran over 10 years ago!
i would take a look at the menu system that was (is) used on novell servers. monitor.nlm, install.nlm/nwconfig.nlm, and inetcfg.nlm are the big ones, and most of the extra services have a menu system also.
as a novell trainer, i've found that once people understand what they are doing, using the menus are easy. sometimes in advanced features there is a 'where was it?' problem until they get used to the function.
the greatest thing about the novell menus are consistancy. the same key strokes, same actions, etc.
there are some *nixes that have menu systems (i've used sam on hpux) but none of them have the ease of use that the blue novell menus do.
too many people wanting the latest and greatest. there are several people that i work with that use 300-400MHtz machines with no problem. how do they do it? they haven't fallen in the the MS/Corel/Intuit/'fill in the blank' propaganda trap of having the newest version.
i use quickbooks 1999!
it all comes down to understanding what you *need* to do.
there are people out there that need/deserve powerful machines and there are people that could be just fine with second or third tier equipment.
i think you are correct on the knowlege vs process idea. when i teach the novell service and support class i have a chapter on troubleshooting skills. you would not believe the blank looks i've gotten from people as i try to explain this. this is actually the scientific method.
the overall problem is a generation (or two) that doesn't want to solve problems. they want easy answers delivered. for free of course.
science and math are not just for people building rockets and brewing chemicals. it's for answering everyday questions.
good old cincinnati is a wonderfull example: 450M on brown cathedral (still counting $s, it might be more by now) and the cincinnati public school system is a mess, the police situation is a mess (riots), etc.
before you can pay a teacher what they are worth you must find the money. just the fact that you have to 'search' for this money discourages a large number of people.
Slashdot Mirror
oh, i understand that. i've been a big fan of text menu systems for a long time. but the insurance industry seems to have programmers that have no concepts of consistancy or sense. poor use of f-keys and enter keys, bad use of colors, really poor menu design, etc.
my guess is that they took insurance people and handed them a book on programming and said write a program (or some schmuck volunteered) and 'this' is what we got.
my personal favorate for bad dos programming was installing into the root of the c drive. and *only* into the root of the c drive. where's a whiffle ball bat when you need it.
eric
the first is from netware. for *years* i would apply patches to netware systems that included a patch to fix: 'Richard Kiel Memorial Abend # 27'... ok...
i was finally at a novell training event in herndon and was asked if i had any questions... ok, what is 'Richard Kiel Memorial Abend # 27'? it turned out that mr kiel was debugging some code. not only did he not find the bug until after the release of the product, but he forgot to take his debug code out. about two years later i was working on a netware 3.x server and *got* this abend. when i expressed coolness in actually seeing this error, people started looking at me kinda funny. ah the joys of geekness.
the other one was an error on a pdp 11/70. there were 127 error codes. i was looking at the errors and checking what would cause them. some were easy such as file not found. one of there messages was: 'Catastrophic Failure' (or Catastrophic Failure has occurred). looking at the log after a 14in hard drive crash indicated that *that* was not Catastrophic. i later asked someone at dec what set of circumstances would cause this error to be generated and they looked and said there didn't seem to be any. they were amused also.
eric
big picture time: this isn't about the 'financial community' getting open source religion. there are soooo many markets out there that have a) OLD dos based software and/or b) poorly written windows software.
i've done support with companies in insurance, medicine, financial, libraries, etc. mostly small, but some of them were not. they all have *Wretched* software. i'm still supporting dos programs for insurance agencies and doctors offices. there are markets out there that are just now starting to write windows software!
this is a window (pardon the pun) of opportunity to take some desktops away from microsoft.
between the licensing issues and expense of microsoft tools *and* the growing expense of the end-user environment *and* a poor track record of security, this should be an opportunity to show what open source can do. and be.
eric
it's call NetWare.
hehe...
if you want to see this in action now just look at the people that believe that you can be good at a complex computer system via an exam cram book.
go find a a certified person (novell, cisco, ms, rh, etc) that *didn't* do the classes, didn't do labs, didn't do real life work. if you look at them next to nothing else you'll see someone that knows *something*. hold these people up against those that had official curriculum, labs, real life experience and you will see just how sorry these pass-your-exam books really are! they teach you facts with training on *how to solve problems*!
raise your hand if you've ever had to clean up after someone who had all the knowledge, but lacked the ability to put the pieces together! this is troubleshooting, problem solving, creative though.
computers (programs) are lousy at this. and gonna be that way for a long time. it looked like there was gonna be progress on neural networks, but i haven't much about them in recently...
so i sit here and chuck (and cry) because i know the truth: it's easy to teach someone that 2+2=4, but it's harder to teach them *when* that's important!
eric
this is really a shame. hp was one of the technology companies that had a lot going for it.
when you are fighting in a tough market *and* trying to make a merger happen without too much bad stuff, it seems that it is counter-productive to play this game: you make people mad, you spend resources (money and man-hours that could be easily used elsewhere) and you are *not* going to achive the immediate goal of supressing bad stuff (real or imagined).
so hp gets more points in the bad pr column, they waste money, and the problem doesn't go away. i hope that they spin off the printer division before they crash and burn.
eric
p.s. i guess the worst part is that hp *didn't* learn from all the other companies that went down this path.
AMEN!
I think that the mad rush to 'user-friendly-ville' has made this *worse*. Every time we lower the bar to make it easier we seem to be telling people that they don't have to work as hard to do whatever it is that they're doing. We're 'facilitating' the problem by catering to their inability/unwillingness to learn.
It's an interesting contrast between Novell and Microsoft. Novell (for a long time) pretty much laid it out when describing what a CNA/CNE student was expected to start with. These were real prerequisites. And they were crystal clear on what they were expected to know when they were done. This made Novell networks *hard* for the average person. On the other hand, MS quickly forgot about prereqs and was not testing well for certification. It was indeed much easier for someone with less practical experience to get the MCSE (in less time too) than it was to get a CNE. But a CNE is/was much more ready to deal with Problems.
I have some really questions about how far userfriendly can go before stuff hits the fan.
eric
AMEN!
I think that the mad rush to 'user-friendly-ville' has made this *worse*. Every time we lower the bar to make it easier we seem to be telling people that they don't have to work as hard to do whatever it is that they're doing. We're 'facilitating' the problem by catering to their inability/unwillingness to learn.
eric
well, my perspective is that hp has built a lot of crap recently, but they seem to be doing it because people want *cheap*!
hp has to compete against lexmark which is selling some of the z-series inkjets (z31? z51?) for under $80! some of the printers sold by lexmark are cheaper than the replacement print cartridges in some places!
why is there junk (not just hp, not just printers, etc)? because we (americans) tend to think with the wallet instead of our brains.
it's alway been amusing to listen to someone that purchased a $400 laser printer and complain that it doesn't work as well as such-and-such printer, oh that's a $1200 printer...
eric
ah, let me paint a picture....
they (ms) doesn't want donated computers because they are *not* current technology. if i have received some/several/lots/tons of not-current computers, i will not be in a hurry for the next release of software that won't run on this generation. think about all the 66-400Mhz cpus that run win98 (as nicely as 98 runs) that will not run 2000 very well or xp at all? if you're gonna push new ms operating systems you need new computers.
and donated stuff can be hard to get rid of. in some of the districts around me (central ky), they are still using ibm ps/2 model 25s that were donated as part of a kroger educational program that ran over 10 years ago!
i would take a look at the menu system that was (is) used on novell servers. monitor.nlm, install.nlm/nwconfig.nlm, and inetcfg.nlm are the big ones, and most of the extra services have a menu system also.
as a novell trainer, i've found that once people understand what they are doing, using the menus are easy. sometimes in advanced features there is a 'where was it?' problem until they get used to the function.
the greatest thing about the novell menus are consistancy. the same key strokes, same actions, etc.
there are some *nixes that have menu systems (i've used sam on hpux) but none of them have the ease of use that the blue novell menus do.
eric
lets not forget: state of emergency
why is there less media hype? would *you* want to compete with bombings and bacteria?
*and*
if you look at the slump in retail sales and advertising and etc, etc, etc, it probably just isn't a good time in general to be pushing stuff.
*and*
the amount of noise needed to make this show up on peoples radar would attract a lot of very loud naysayers.
so we'll just see it on oems for now...
too many people wanting the latest and greatest. there are several people that i work with that use 300-400MHtz machines with no problem. how do they do it? they haven't fallen in the the MS/Corel/Intuit/'fill in the blank' propaganda trap of having the newest version.
i use quickbooks 1999!
it all comes down to understanding what you *need* to do.
there are people out there that need/deserve powerful machines and there are people that could be just fine with second or third tier equipment.
e.
i think you are correct on the knowlege vs process idea. when i teach the novell service and support class i have a chapter on troubleshooting skills. you would not believe the blank looks i've gotten from people as i try to explain this. this is actually the scientific method.
the overall problem is a generation (or two) that doesn't want to solve problems. they want easy answers delivered. for free of course.
science and math are not just for people building rockets and brewing chemicals. it's for answering everyday questions.
e.
good old cincinnati is a wonderfull example: 450M on brown cathedral (still counting $s, it might be more by now) and the cincinnati public school system is a mess, the police situation is a mess (riots), etc.
before you can pay a teacher what they are worth you must find the money. just the fact that you have to 'search' for this money discourages a large number of people.
e.