In particular, it makes the new User Account Protection (UAP) the default user account, and provides an easy-to-use temporary-privilege elevation model.
If a user can temporarily escalate privileges, so can a program.
As a result, malware installations are reduced and more OS functionality is made safely available to non-administrators.
Translation: The reason so many of your programs must run as administrator right now is a large chunk of the functionality we currently provide demands this.
Security is further strengthened with a trust-based validation system through Mandatory Integrity Control,
Translation: Here's Trusted Computing, you don't have any choice in the matter, take it or leave it.
Windows Resource Protection (the follow-on to Windows File Protection) guarantees a stable, read-only view of a running operating system.
Translation: A lot of your existing applications won't run. You either turn off the security we provide (thus negating any point in upgrading) or you ditch those applications. Sure hope none of them were vital to your business.
Hey look at Apple -- they just introduced machines that do not run any software from as little as 5 years ago. Apple also has nearly zero corporate desktops. Connect the dots.
One word for you: Rosetta.
Any business will go for what's nice and safe and runs the software they want to use. In most, that's Windows. But in industries like media, suddenly Macs are seen a lot more.
There has always been freeware and shareware, even before RMS started preaching Open Source. The quality of it's varied hugely, though bundling a whole wodge of spyware which causes nothing but harm is a relatively new phenomenon.
Believe it or not, some people write computer programs because they want to. It's a hobby, like some people paint, some people take photographs. If they can make some money out of it, great, but that wasn't the original idea.
Granted, some of the less scrupulous authors have decided they can make some money by building an installer which installs spyware at the same time. This by no means represents the entire market, and to suggest it's endemic to free software is at best somewhat disingenuous.
I use SAV Enterprise at work and it seems to me unintrusive and easy enough to handle. Norton AV, OTOH, despite coming from the same company, is a totally different animal - it seems they interpret "Home Market" product to mean "Must interrupt the user at least every 30 seconds to demonstrate it's doing something".
I liken it more to the plumbing or building trades. You call a builder, they come around, whistle through their teeth, say "You want WHAT??!", say "It'll cost you...", and even when you think you've found someone good and reliable there's still the chance you'll wind up paying through the nose for half a job.
The only real difference is your IT contractor is more likely to wear a tie and have a shave.
I manage a whole bunch of Gentoo servers, many of which are PIII 650's.
They probably weren't much fun to install, but they run like a charm and are seldom at >5% processor use. In fact, the only real reason I've got for migrating off them is the hardware is starting to show its age in terms of reliability, not performance. I can't have a business-critical service running on a system which you only have to breathe near and something falls out of its socket.
I suspect Sony won't be too bothered if Blu-Ray does die. After all, it'll be a lot easier to ensure games for the PS3 aren't casually copied if there aren't any drives capable of reading the discs available for bolting into your PC....
DEAD PERSON: I'm not dead! MORTICIAN: What? CUSTOMER: Nothing -- here's your nine pence. DEAD PERSON: I'm not dead! MORTICIAN: Here -- he says he's not dead! CUSTOMER: Yes, he is. DEAD PERSON: I'm not! MORTICIAN: He isn't. CUSTOMER: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill. DEAD PERSON: I'm getting better! CUSTOMER: No, you're not -- you'll be stone dead in a moment. MORTICIAN: Oh, I can't take him like that -- it's against regulations. DEAD PERSON: I don't want to go on the cart! CUSTOMER: Oh, don't be such a baby. MORTICIAN: I can't take him... DEAD PERSON: I feel fine! CUSTOMER: Oh, do us a favor... MORTICIAN: I can't. CUSTOMER: Well, can you hang around a couple of minutes? He won't be long. MORTICIAN: Naaah, I got to go on to Robinson's -- they've lost nine today. CUSTOMER: Well, when is your next round? MORTICIAN: Thursday. DEAD PERSON: I think I'll go for a walk. CUSTOMER: You're not fooling anyone y'know. Look, isn't there something you can do? DEAD PERSON: I feel happy... I feel happy. [whop]
I guess that they were and still are way too expensive for mass duplication. I mean, the movie and music industry people are already poor and living in the streets because of the cost of the current media right?
You don't think they got rich by choosing the expensive option, do you?
Let me just say that I don't think it's good for anyone that there's only one serious, well-known commercial word processor. However, I do think it's brave dictating a document format in the full knowledge that doing so will eliminate the most popular (and therefore least contentious) choice.
The fact that it is not widely adopted has nopthing to do with it being MAJOR. I think the functionallity is far more important.
Maybe public sector works differently in the US, but in the UK there's a strong chance that you'd have a huge revolt on your hands as most of the staff would categorically refuse to use something they "hadn't been trained in" (the fact that it's close enough for most real work is neither here nor there).
Fine, you can train/discipline the staff who need training/are just being awkward. But when it's 75% of your staff of a few thousand, it's suddenly a major problem in that you're going to have to set aside thousands of man-hours for training and pay for someone to provide it.
I think dictating an open format for documents is great, a very laudable idea. But I still think it's unusually brave for anyone in the public sector - hence why I'm wondering if they've had a problem with incompatible files in the past.
By enforcinf [sic] the Open Document Format as the states choice, they guarantee that at any time in the future should older documents not work with current versions of software, that they as the state have the ability to modify existing open source code to ensure that older documents can either be converted to newer versions easily or will at least be accessible regardless of a corporations intelectual property, their development cycle, etc.
Not to be reading too much into all this, but I read it thus:
1. To my knowledge, there's only one major commercial word processor left - Word. This doesn't support ODF and isn't likely to until such time as Microsoft have little real choice in the matter.
1a. Though let's face it, as a governmental organisation they've got the money to have a Word plugin to support ODF written for them.
2. Nevertheless (and assuming 1a. doesn't come to pass), the current state of open source Office products, while adequate for most practical purposes, doesn't really come under the heading of "a simple choice for an easy life because you don't want half your staff refusing to use something because they 'haven't had training' or somesuch".
2a. Which makes me think - either the state government is unusually forward-thinking or they've already been burnt once before.
Point well made on "no registering OS X", though IMO a good reason for that is it's pretty well locked to Apple hardware. And many MANY people get Windows preinstalled when they buy the PC - and such OEM installs don't demand registration. If they've ever reinstalled (unlikely), chances are they used the manufacturer's emergency install CD which turns "Install Windows" from "Insert CD, click Next Next Next, register" into "Insert CD. That's it."
As regards DRM, the continued success of the Windows '95 based operating systems many years after they should have disappeared demonstrates that the general public will put up with an awful lot from Microsoft, particularly when they have no choice as they only have what the major OEMs are able to get into the store. Whether or not they still will if they can install Windows on a new Apple if Mac OS doesn't pan out for them is another question altogether... I shall not be entirely surprised if Apple make sure their first big push into x86 territory has been tested to make sure they can honestly say "Decide you don't like Mac OS? No problem, also runs Windows Vista."
The thing about Linux is historically, pretty much all the halfway-sensible end-user software that has stood the test of time in Linux has had a community (rather than just a company) behind it - and in many cases hasn't started from scratch, as a codebase was either already available or donated.
OpenOffice: check. X: check. Netscape: check. Though I dread to think what would have happened had it not been open-sourced.
Jamie Zawinski has penned a beautiful essay on how basically groupware, because it's not sexy, will never get a particularly enthusiastic community behind it. I'd extend this argument to say that any software which suffers from a similar problem will meet the same fate - and until Linux is sufficiently well-known on the desktop, you can forget about high-quality commercial offerings being made.
So, what kind of things does "suffering from a similar problem" extend to? Well, IMO one of the biggest things is polish - to usability, to functionality which has limited use outisde of a specific field. I'd argue that this is part of the reason that people still complain bitterly about the Gimp's user interface but very few actually try and do something about it.
The whole point of DTP is polish. To produce a document which isn't just useful, it's stunning. Without significant polish to a lot of things in Linux (not just a specific app - fonts immediately springs to mind), there simply will never be a particularly successful community-led DTP package. The only viable alternative is for someone like Adobe to support Linux more widely - not gonna happen, at least not until there's a wide base of people demanding it. And most of the base likely to demand it isn't going to use Linux in the first place, so there's a catch-22 right there.
Yes, but in an RPC-2 drive the software STILL needs to handle region-coding - specifically, it needs to report which region it is to the drive, which then ensures that this matches with the drive's region. The actual decryption is still done in software.
Think of it like this:
RPC-1 drive:
software : Please supply decryption keys for the DVD RPC-1 drive : OK, here you go. software: Ooh, this is a region 1 DVD, but I'm in region 2.... DVD doesn't play.
software : Please supply decryption keys for the DVD RPC-1 drive : OK, here you go. software: Good, DVD's from region 2 and I'm in region 2..... DVD plays.
RPC-2 drive:
software : Please supply decryption keys for the DVD RPC-2 drive : Which region are you? software : Region 2. RPC-2 drive: No, go away.... DVD won't play.
ALTERNATIVE SCENARIO:
software : Please supply decryption keys for the DVD RPC-2 drive : Which region are you? software : Region 2. RPC-2 drive: OK, here you go... DVD plays.
ICBW, but it looks to me like there's not much in it in terms of "amount of code required".
Realistically, bearing in mind that most Microsoft OS installs are OEM'd rather than purchased and installed by end users, I don't see it being noticed by the masses. Doesn't make it any more palatable, though.
And just as much DRM, only it's rather better implemented and rather less obvious.
Quite why Apple keep on getting touted as this bastion of consumer freedom when:
I can't skip "unskippable" bits in DVDs using the Apple software. Yes, that's DRM - I no longer have the "right" to skip past something I don't wish to see - it's just got nothing to do with copying.
I have to "register" my iPod to a specific system and need third party software or to write my own script to get music off of it (at least if I want to get reasonably sensible filenames and directory structure, which despite what the most ardent of iTunes fans will claim, is still sometimes useful).
Any music I download from the iTunes online store is not only DRM-encumbered, it only plays on Apple's MP3 player.
... is a mystery to me. Granted, the OS is sweet, but it's by no means a solution to Microsoft's DRM obsession.
You really want to avoid DRM, go the Linux route where all of this "The user cannot skip past things marked as unskippable" rubbish is generally ignored. But don't for one minute imagine you'll get the level of smoothness and integration you get with OS X.
Charging people according to how much use they make of roads, and how much of an obstruction they make to other road users (congestion) is better than flat tax and a crude fuel tax.
I disagree. The more use of the road you make, the more fuel you use. The more congested the traffic, the more fuel you use (compare your car's fuel efficiency on the motorway versus rush-hour city driving).
Seems to me that fuel tax is a very efficient way to charge according to road usage.
What they do is record everything so if they've already got an idea of what and where to look they can do so easily. This has the (theoretical) side-effect that criminals are deterred by there being a greater risk of being caught, which CCTV offers.
By adding number plate recognition, that can be computer monitored and cross-referenced very easily.
Getting on a train, taking a bus or walking will all avoid it. Using any of those methods to go from car A to car B will mean an incomplete picture.
Solution: Privatise the public transport system, granting local monopolies to private companies. Don't have any system for forcing the private company to provide reliable, or indeed any buses. Eventually even the terrorists will give up on public transport.
A car is a complicated machine. We don't expect anyone to drive on their own until they've had lessons and passed some sort of test.
Many factories use complicated machinery. Generally, even for minimum-wage factory work, you're not expected to be happy with using this machinery until you've spent some time under the wing of someone more experienced - even if it's only a couple of days.
A software project can be a huge, complicated beast. Newly-hired developers aren't expected to know every bit of it (if it's big enough, even seasoned developers aren't). Particularly for junior roles, you spend some time under the direct supervision of someone who knows what's going on.
Yet we put a PC on someone's desk (doesn't matter if they've just left school or been in the workforce for some time) and expect them to be immediately familiar and able to use any and all the software with little or no training. We treat the computer like a television ("The 'on' button turns it on. I'll let you figure out the rest for yourself") when in reality it's closer to the machinery in the factory. And people ask stupid questions? No such thing as a stupid question when your understanding of the machinery can be written on the back of a postage stamp.
Yes, most/. geeks may be OK with that. But most people aren't. If that wasn't the case, how come so many videos constantly flash 00:00 when there's a perfectly good user guide explains how to set the time?
Very often, people asking me for technical help have problems that refuse to manifest themselves when I am present.
Lots of people in IT find this. Generally, it's because most vaguely complicated electronics is sufficiently sentient to know when it's in the presence of a Higher Power, and that it Must Obey.
Fortunately, they're not that sentient. I have found an extremely good way to maintain system reliability is to place a photo of myself in the server room.
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In particular, it makes the new User Account Protection (UAP) the default user account, and provides an easy-to-use temporary-privilege elevation model.
If a user can temporarily escalate privileges, so can a program.
As a result, malware installations are reduced and more OS functionality is made safely available to non-administrators.
Translation: The reason so many of your programs must run as administrator right now is a large chunk of the functionality we currently provide demands this.
Security is further strengthened with a trust-based validation system through Mandatory Integrity Control,
Translation: Here's Trusted Computing, you don't have any choice in the matter, take it or leave it.
Windows Resource Protection (the follow-on to Windows File Protection) guarantees a stable, read-only view of a running operating system.
Translation: A lot of your existing applications won't run. You either turn off the security we provide (thus negating any point in upgrading) or you ditch those applications. Sure hope none of them were vital to your business.
Hey look at Apple -- they just introduced machines that do not run any software from as little as 5 years ago. Apple also has nearly zero corporate desktops. Connect the dots.
One word for you: Rosetta.
Any business will go for what's nice and safe and runs the software they want to use. In most, that's Windows. But in industries like media, suddenly Macs are seen a lot more.
I'm sure I won't be the first to say: Rubbish.
There has always been freeware and shareware, even before RMS started preaching Open Source. The quality of it's varied hugely, though bundling a whole wodge of spyware which causes nothing but harm is a relatively new phenomenon.
Believe it or not, some people write computer programs because they want to. It's a hobby, like some people paint, some people take photographs. If they can make some money out of it, great, but that wasn't the original idea.
Granted, some of the less scrupulous authors have decided they can make some money by building an installer which installs spyware at the same time. This by no means represents the entire market, and to suggest it's endemic to free software is at best somewhat disingenuous.
Is everyone here talking about the same product?
I use SAV Enterprise at work and it seems to me unintrusive and easy enough to handle. Norton AV, OTOH, despite coming from the same company, is a totally different animal - it seems they interpret "Home Market" product to mean "Must interrupt the user at least every 30 seconds to demonstrate it's doing something".
I liken it more to the plumbing or building trades. You call a builder, they come around, whistle through their teeth, say "You want WHAT??!", say "It'll cost you...", and even when you think you've found someone good and reliable there's still the chance you'll wind up paying through the nose for half a job.
The only real difference is your IT contractor is more likely to wear a tie and have a shave.
Eventually Jaron's company, VPL, tanked, because there weren't any useful applications for gloves-and-goggles VR.
And the fact that his company's initials stood for Visible Panty Line had nothing to do with it?
I manage a whole bunch of Gentoo servers, many of which are PIII 650's.
They probably weren't much fun to install, but they run like a charm and are seldom at >5% processor use. In fact, the only real reason I've got for migrating off them is the hardware is starting to show its age in terms of reliability, not performance. I can't have a business-critical service running on a system which you only have to breathe near and something falls out of its socket.
I suspect Sony won't be too bothered if Blu-Ray does die. After all, it'll be a lot easier to ensure games for the PS3 aren't casually copied if there aren't any drives capable of reading the discs available for bolting into your PC....
Right film, wrong reference.
DEAD PERSON: I'm not dead!
MORTICIAN: What?
CUSTOMER: Nothing -- here's your nine pence.
DEAD PERSON: I'm not dead!
MORTICIAN: Here -- he says he's not dead!
CUSTOMER: Yes, he is.
DEAD PERSON: I'm not!
MORTICIAN: He isn't.
CUSTOMER: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.
DEAD PERSON: I'm getting better!
CUSTOMER: No, you're not -- you'll be stone dead in a moment.
MORTICIAN: Oh, I can't take him like that -- it's against regulations.
DEAD PERSON: I don't want to go on the cart!
CUSTOMER: Oh, don't be such a baby.
MORTICIAN: I can't take him...
DEAD PERSON: I feel fine!
CUSTOMER: Oh, do us a favor...
MORTICIAN: I can't.
CUSTOMER: Well, can you hang around a couple of minutes? He won't be long.
MORTICIAN: Naaah, I got to go on to Robinson's -- they've lost nine today.
CUSTOMER: Well, when is your next round?
MORTICIAN: Thursday.
DEAD PERSON: I think I'll go for a walk.
CUSTOMER: You're not fooling anyone y'know. Look, isn't there something you can do?
DEAD PERSON: I feel happy... I feel happy.
[whop]
I guess that they were and still are way too expensive for mass duplication. I mean, the movie and music industry people are already poor and living in the streets because of the cost of the current media right?
You don't think they got rich by choosing the expensive option, do you?
Let me just say that I don't think it's good for anyone that there's only one serious, well-known commercial word processor. However, I do think it's brave dictating a document format in the full knowledge that doing so will eliminate the most popular (and therefore least contentious) choice.
The fact that it is not widely adopted has nopthing to do with it being MAJOR. I think the functionallity is far more important.
Maybe public sector works differently in the US, but in the UK there's a strong chance that you'd have a huge revolt on your hands as most of the staff would categorically refuse to use something they "hadn't been trained in" (the fact that it's close enough for most real work is neither here nor there).
Fine, you can train/discipline the staff who need training/are just being awkward. But when it's 75% of your staff of a few thousand, it's suddenly a major problem in that you're going to have to set aside thousands of man-hours for training and pay for someone to provide it.
I think dictating an open format for documents is great, a very laudable idea. But I still think it's unusually brave for anyone in the public sector - hence why I'm wondering if they've had a problem with incompatible files in the past.
It really was a joke to say that the site would crash, because it wouldn't - and didn't.
Until it was slashdotted.
Let's say Apple successfully gets one of Burst's patents revoked, and it was one which Microsoft was successfully sued for breach of.
Does this mean Microsoft can now go and sue Burst to get their money back?
By enforcinf [sic] the Open Document Format as the states choice, they guarantee that at any time in the future should older documents not work with current versions of software, that they as the state have the ability to modify existing open source code to ensure that older documents can either be converted to newer versions easily or will at least be accessible regardless of a corporations intelectual property, their development cycle, etc.
Not to be reading too much into all this, but I read it thus:
1. To my knowledge, there's only one major commercial word processor left - Word. This doesn't support ODF and isn't likely to until such time as Microsoft have little real choice in the matter.
1a. Though let's face it, as a governmental organisation they've got the money to have a Word plugin to support ODF written for them.
2. Nevertheless (and assuming 1a. doesn't come to pass), the current state of open source Office products, while adequate for most practical purposes, doesn't really come under the heading of "a simple choice for an easy life because you don't want half your staff refusing to use something because they 'haven't had training' or somesuch".
2a. Which makes me think - either the state government is unusually forward-thinking or they've already been burnt once before.
Since it's not copying-related, surely the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions mean, well, jack-shit?
I don't live in the USA. So the DMCA means jack shit anyway.
All that being said, I honestly think the most helpful insight into the mentality of the (RI|MP)AA has to come from South Park:
Chef: Now look, I'm trying to be cool about this. But you just can't rip people's music off. It's against the law.
Record Producer: I AM ABOVE THE LAW!
Point well made on "no registering OS X", though IMO a good reason for that is it's pretty well locked to Apple hardware. And many MANY people get Windows preinstalled when they buy the PC - and such OEM installs don't demand registration. If they've ever reinstalled (unlikely), chances are they used the manufacturer's emergency install CD which turns "Install Windows" from "Insert CD, click Next Next Next, register" into "Insert CD. That's it."
As regards DRM, the continued success of the Windows '95 based operating systems many years after they should have disappeared demonstrates that the general public will put up with an awful lot from Microsoft, particularly when they have no choice as they only have what the major OEMs are able to get into the store. Whether or not they still will if they can install Windows on a new Apple if Mac OS doesn't pan out for them is another question altogether... I shall not be entirely surprised if Apple make sure their first big push into x86 territory has been tested to make sure they can honestly say "Decide you don't like Mac OS? No problem, also runs Windows Vista."
The whole point of a magazine article is generally to draw and retain the reader's attention.
This fits in nicely with the first definition of the word "stunning" Google finds.
The thing about Linux is historically, pretty much all the halfway-sensible end-user software that has stood the test of time in Linux has had a community (rather than just a company) behind it - and in many cases hasn't started from scratch, as a codebase was either already available or donated.
OpenOffice: check.
X: check.
Netscape: check. Though I dread to think what would have happened had it not been open-sourced.
Jamie Zawinski has penned a beautiful essay on how basically groupware, because it's not sexy, will never get a particularly enthusiastic community behind it. I'd extend this argument to say that any software which suffers from a similar problem will meet the same fate - and until Linux is sufficiently well-known on the desktop, you can forget about high-quality commercial offerings being made.
So, what kind of things does "suffering from a similar problem" extend to? Well, IMO one of the biggest things is polish - to usability, to functionality which has limited use outisde of a specific field. I'd argue that this is part of the reason that people still complain bitterly about the Gimp's user interface but very few actually try and do something about it.
The whole point of DTP is polish. To produce a document which isn't just useful, it's stunning. Without significant polish to a lot of things in Linux (not just a specific app - fonts immediately springs to mind), there simply will never be a particularly successful community-led DTP package. The only viable alternative is for someone like Adobe to support Linux more widely - not gonna happen, at least not until there's a wide base of people demanding it. And most of the base likely to demand it isn't going to use Linux in the first place, so there's a catch-22 right there.
Yes, but in an RPC-2 drive the software STILL needs to handle region-coding - specifically, it needs to report which region it is to the drive, which then ensures that this matches with the drive's region. The actual decryption is still done in software.
... DVD doesn't play.
.... DVD plays.
... DVD won't play.
... DVD plays.
Think of it like this:
RPC-1 drive:
software : Please supply decryption keys for the DVD
RPC-1 drive : OK, here you go.
software: Ooh, this is a region 1 DVD, but I'm in region 2.
software : Please supply decryption keys for the DVD
RPC-1 drive : OK, here you go.
software: Good, DVD's from region 2 and I'm in region 2.
RPC-2 drive:
software : Please supply decryption keys for the DVD
RPC-2 drive : Which region are you?
software : Region 2.
RPC-2 drive: No, go away.
ALTERNATIVE SCENARIO:
software : Please supply decryption keys for the DVD
RPC-2 drive : Which region are you?
software : Region 2.
RPC-2 drive: OK, here you go
ICBW, but it looks to me like there's not much in it in terms of "amount of code required".
Realistically, bearing in mind that most Microsoft OS installs are OEM'd rather than purchased and installed by end users, I don't see it being noticed by the masses. Doesn't make it any more palatable, though.
Quite why Apple keep on getting touted as this bastion of consumer freedom when:
You really want to avoid DRM, go the Linux route where all of this "The user cannot skip past things marked as unskippable" rubbish is generally ignored. But don't for one minute imagine you'll get the level of smoothness and integration you get with OS X.
Charging people according to how much use they make of roads, and how much of an obstruction they make to other road users (congestion) is better than flat tax and a crude fuel tax.
I disagree. The more use of the road you make, the more fuel you use. The more congested the traffic, the more fuel you use (compare your car's fuel efficiency on the motorway versus rush-hour city driving).
Seems to me that fuel tax is a very efficient way to charge according to road usage.
This is just it. They don't need to.
What they do is record everything so if they've already got an idea of what and where to look they can do so easily. This has the (theoretical) side-effect that criminals are deterred by there being a greater risk of being caught, which CCTV offers.
By adding number plate recognition, that can be computer monitored and cross-referenced very easily.
Getting on a train, taking a bus or walking will all avoid it. Using any of those methods to go from car A to car B will mean an incomplete picture.
Solution: Privatise the public transport system, granting local monopolies to private companies. Don't have any system for forcing the private company to provide reliable, or indeed any buses. Eventually even the terrorists will give up on public transport.
This is being trialled in Bristol.
You jest, but consider this:
/. geeks may be OK with that. But most people aren't. If that wasn't the case, how come so many videos constantly flash 00:00 when there's a perfectly good user guide explains how to set the time?
A car is a complicated machine. We don't expect anyone to drive on their own until they've had lessons and passed some sort of test.
Many factories use complicated machinery. Generally, even for minimum-wage factory work, you're not expected to be happy with using this machinery until you've spent some time under the wing of someone more experienced - even if it's only a couple of days.
A software project can be a huge, complicated beast. Newly-hired developers aren't expected to know every bit of it (if it's big enough, even seasoned developers aren't). Particularly for junior roles, you spend some time under the direct supervision of someone who knows what's going on.
Yet we put a PC on someone's desk (doesn't matter if they've just left school or been in the workforce for some time) and expect them to be immediately familiar and able to use any and all the software with little or no training. We treat the computer like a television ("The 'on' button turns it on. I'll let you figure out the rest for yourself") when in reality it's closer to the machinery in the factory. And people ask stupid questions? No such thing as a stupid question when your understanding of the machinery can be written on the back of a postage stamp.
Yes, most
Very often, people asking me for technical help have problems that refuse to manifest themselves when I am present.
Lots of people in IT find this. Generally, it's because most vaguely complicated electronics is sufficiently sentient to know when it's in the presence of a Higher Power, and that it Must Obey.
Fortunately, they're not that sentient. I have found an extremely good way to maintain system reliability is to place a photo of myself in the server room.