Re: new pc finally arrived and have to make decisions-help

["Robert Holmgren" holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to message from russurquhart1@xxxxxxxx on Mon, 19 Dec 2005 16:57:36
+0000

Very nice, Russ. Good retort. Your Dad sounds like a great guy.

In the broadest terms, my dispute with your viewpoint is this: If things "just
worked", there'd be no reason for this maillist, and certainly no need to ever
ask a question.

"Just works" only applies with one-dimensional programs, which do one thing one
way. As soon as there are choices, there are questions. According to
XySearch, there have been questions sans cesse, about 27 thousand of them at
last count (or let's say 13 thousand questions and 14 thousand answers,
probably describing choices) -- and that's just *one app* with a tiny
following. Does XyWrite "just work"? No.

Would you *like* a word processor that "just worked"?

"Just works" means: acceptance. Whatever they shovel at you, you take.
Unless, fortuitously, they happen to be on your wavelength. How frequent is
that? I actually care deeply which driver I use to run my printers, my
postscript, my image-to-ps conversion, mounting virtual DVDs, the codec I
choose for decrypting MPEG-2, and all sorts of this'n'that. There are SO many
choices, with radically different characteristics and results.

Complexity means options, and v.v. You know it. Just works is self-defeating,
IMO.

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Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
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