Post #122,871
10/26/03 5:37:27 PM
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How widespread?
Can you confirm a mindset I seem to find, often - even from much less experience than yours. I'm here assuming that many of your clients are too small to have even one full/part-time techincal person on their payroll. (Damn! are they lucky to have found you instead of ..)
It seems that, the "memorizing keystrokes" method must be common in most offices. Specifically, when I tactfully try to elicit an idea about what the questioner knows about their "file system" - asking, say, ~ "do you ever use Windows Explorer - and if so, what for?".. I'm left with the impression that few have any idea what the phrase 'hierarchical file system' might mean. New directories/ {ugh} folders, if created - are done so via some ap; often these folks would not know how to *find* that directory in any other way than via the ap being used.
ie. The concept of creating a new folder, moving or copying files singly or as a group - is alien, as is any idea of why you might wish to do this. One example: a person who began storing Everything in "Briefcase" willy-nilly and over a lengthy period. Hundreds Mbytes of intermixed graphics and other files, usually named Silly-ways.
Simply - is this also what you find? Zero awareness of even what a file manager might be for (thus similar unawareness of what "backup" might mean, how it might be done - even minimally). Is this level of ignorance about basics as widespread as it seems, and getting no better.. in '03?
Ashton
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Post #122,915
10/27/03 10:16:30 AM
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Go look in the trash
I have quite a few here that actually use the various Recycle Bins (filesystems, Outlook, ...) for storage. This despite the occasional accident and me telling them several times to put stuff anywhere but there. Even when I ask them if they keep their lunch in the dustbin as well, it simply doesn't click.
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Post #122,919
10/27/03 10:17:53 AM
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***farkinboggle***
-drl
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Post #122,920
10/27/03 10:27:35 AM
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Seconded
At the law firm, our email server was runing out of disk space. The admin discovered she could get back about 30% of that space just by auto-emptying everyone's trashcans. Next day, people started screaming for backups. They had whole directory structures built up in their trashcans. Because we didn't track that.
Two users had over 10k messages in their trash. Most with attachments. Of multi-hundred page legal docs. "Boggle" isn't the word for it.
===
Implicitly condoning stupidity since 2001.
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Post #122,921
10/27/03 10:29:24 AM
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Send that one in to Shark Tank.
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #122,924
10/27/03 10:48:00 AM
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Good call, will do
===
Implicitly condoning stupidity since 2001.
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Post #122,929
10/27/03 11:15:34 AM
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Very
I have clients who have used computers intensively since the Kaypro who have no concept of what a directory or subdirectory is.
The almost universal answer when I ask "Where do you store your documents?" is an incredulous, "Well, I store them in Word of course". Any request for more information is met by a blank stare of incomprehension and a repeat of "They're all in Word".
No, people do not use Windows Explorer (so Microsoft has moved it way down to Start / All Programs / Accessories). When I do phone support, many people on the other end have never seen Windows Explorer before.
I find most people find a tree structured directory incomprehensible - even when it's shown graphicly by ZTree or Windows Explorer. This seemd so absurd I had trouble accepting it, but the evidence was overwhelming. One such person was an employee here for over a year.
Attempting to explain how documents are stored and how they may be copied from place to place "wastes your time and annoys the pig".
I have noticed a slight improvement though. Many now understand their documents are in the "My Documents folder", not "In Word", and can point to the "My Documents" folder on the desktop. The flip side is many people no longer know how to open documents from within Word, they only know how to double click on them in the My Documents folder.
That brings me to another item. "On the desktop" is a phrase unrecognized by a large number of users. After careful explanation, they'll come up with something like "Oh, you mean my main manu!". So much for the universality of the desktop metaphor - it's still a "menu", just with pictures.
Many users cannot comprehend the Start Menu structure. If I forget to make an icon on their desktop, they're lost and call me to tell me they can't do their work. "You didn't install my programs." So much for Microsoft's "clean desktop" theory for Windows XP.
These people are not somebody's aged grandmother - I don't deal with home users - they're people who depend on using computers to do their jobs. These are not stupid people either, there's just something about the way computer systems are designed that doesn't click for a great many people.
[link|http://www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
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Post #122,933
10/27/03 11:36:29 AM
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So, given your experience, can it be fixed?
With a different design, I guess?
--
OK, George W. is deceptive to be sure. Dissembling, too. And let's not forget deceitful. He is lacking veracity and frankness, and void of sooth, though seemingly sincere in his proclivity for pretense. But he did not lie.
[link|http://www.jointhebushwhackers.com/not_a_liar.cfm|Brian Wimer]
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Post #122,935
10/27/03 11:55:48 AM
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The success of the "My Documents" folder . .
. . indicates designs that work can be found. Many have even started making subdirectories within My Documents, somthing they found incomprehensible when the abstractions were less related to physical experience.
The fact that "My Documents" contained another folder, "My Pictures" finally got the point accross that other folders were possible, and that stuff could even be dragged from My Documents into them. This was something they previously could not comprehend. Many still can't comprehend it and have 790 doucument "My Documents" folders, but progress is happening.
All computer stuff is abstractions heaped on abstractions piled on abstractions. The problem is abstractions obvious to software desgners are meningless to others. Developing workable abstractions is going to be an evolutionary thing.
For my part, I'm making progress too. I'm now willing to use filenames up to 18 characters long, maybe even 20, but I doubt I'll ever allow spaces in them.
[link|http://www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
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Post #122,951
10/27/03 1:57:53 PM
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Abstractions - and *Bob*/Linux
WHOLLY SHIT that is truly Astounding! even more-so coming from you -
since I appreciate by now that you don't exaggerate about such matters. Your comments above are nothing less than a massive Sociology Goldmine.. for anybody working in this field and also capable of original thought (if there are a handful left anywhere, still with such qualifications?) An appalling state of affairs. This is PhD thesis material, I trust you realize! And from just this terse report, I envision even more appalling consequences - as always There Are.
This is 'Who' We Are,
a Rorshak of the "workforce" from PHB through commodity-worker. (With the appropriately demonstrated inverted IQ-tree, as all PHB lore demonstrates - for extra Degree-credit .. if one dares to speak starkly what the Rorshak reveals.)
Remember all the flak Billy received for Bob ??
(Was it his pre-wife's project.. or was that just wonderfully wry gossip?)
Because - I think you just made the case for Ex Pee Bob.
And no - it just may Not be "too late.." Nor certainly is it "too silly". For, thou hast said the way It Is.
(maybe call it Ex Pee Billy, Your Friendly Fluffy Bunny All-in-One Solution Provider and Entertainment Center)
But after all the fun & games, what you just outlined - indicates the source of much of the obv resentment of the (messenger) Keepers of these 'systems'; resentment.. ON ALL LEVELS! -- 'IT' as incomprehensible to the chain-ganged cubicle-pent users as is the mystery of successfully punching out chads in a ballot.
We took guys n'gals who don't ever change the oil or add battery water in their Chevy pickup, can't set a VCR or guess.. how an internal combustion engine might work - and told em to fly this here Space Shuttle, without even a cartoon manual: as clearly befits the actual need / the dumbth-level.
And [link|http://www.nclug.org/pipermail/nclug/2001-November/002278.html| this Gem], linked by Karsten in the M$ forum, and dated 12 Nov 2001:
Appears to indicate != "what the title suggests" (Why Linux will win and Micro$oft will lose). My very own tinylittlebrain informs me that:
Even were *nix installed in its Highest current form - with those essential Policies and QC of {what else} Debian, and by Karsten or Greg or Peter et al;
even-if a new KDE [or whatever] Doze-friendly GUI were rock-solid and the Main-aps 99.x% Billy-compatible;
even if installing a modem were Not an exercise in "find the right config files / BTW - how Many do I Need to find?"
even if CUPS self-started and auto-configured to any old printing-thing within 100 meters;
even if - _____
You just described a Bob-World, and prolly not just for Muricans.
Forget Linux. (except as a hobby for Chess players: it's a Checkers world)
{sigh}
SHIT - Dubya, Faith-Based Invasions\ufffd, Neoconman hordes shoutin BS everywhere, general language murder, RIAA Beast-apitalists, 'depression' rampant in the psyches of the Bob-crowd - despite billions of expensive pills AND Depression-not-recession re. gettin the fish heads and rice into the hovel . . .
Think I'll fire up some Wagner and open the '61 d'Yqem.
(I'm sure glad that none of this stuff actualy matters)
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Post #122,952
10/27/03 2:02:07 PM
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Not just a rumor...
[link|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob|http://en.wikipedia....iki/Microsoft_Bob] Microsoft Bob was a project managed by Melinda French, who later married Bill Gates to become Melinda Gates. Now, how much nepotism had to do with the project is a matter of debate... In that final hour, when each breath is a struggle to take, and you are looking back over your life's accomplishments, which memories would you treasure? The empires you built, or the joy you spread to others?
Therin lies the true measure of a man.
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Post #122,958
10/27/03 3:56:19 PM
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Re: Not just a rumor...
Hmm, coulda married that Apple guy - Ms. French Jobs. OK.
-drl
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Post #122,934
10/27/03 11:41:29 AM
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Related article on security . .
. . where the problem is much worse, [link|http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/56/33599.html|Joe Average User Is In Trouble].
[link|http://www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
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Post #122,953
10/27/03 2:47:40 PM
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This isn't a computer-only issue
Imagine asking the typical office worker to come up with a way to categorize random books. Don't let them use the Dewey Decimal System[tm]. In fact look at DDS itself: no hierarchy. And the only way librarys could index anything pre-computers was to maintain multiple indices.
But current computer filesystems add another problem. You can only have one system. You can't file things by customer and vendor. One or the other has to be the top of the hierarchy. Mail clients are solving this proelm with virtual folders, but there is no (common) current support at the filesystem level for multiple topolgies.
I don't think it should be too surprising that most people don't know how to create their own topolgies. It's not something most people ever have to do. It is also why the people who do have to do it spend so much effort getting it "right".
===
Implicitly condoning stupidity since 2001.
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