03-04-2003, 08:38 PM
Bringing back the XP thing, the reason there is a 'for Dummies" book on it, and I'm purely speculating here, is that it's not for 'dummies' as the name might suggest. Rather I firmly believe it holds the key to finding all those features that seem to have vanished, and is intended for the people used to win9x and it's not overly user-friendly GUI. Jeez, 3.1 was better than this. It was like a faithful dog, always accepting commands, and from time to time crapping on the rug. On the gripping hand, winXP is like a hyper puppy humping your leg.
I get lost all the time when I want to do things that used to take all of eight seconds. Maybe Microsoft® should add in a new control panel utility. One that has a sliding bar to select how much of a tech-illiterate idiot the user is. A rating of zero indicates that the user is god-like with windows, and doesn't need to be told things that are quite obvious. A rating of 255 would mean the user is barely capable of dressing or feeding themselves, let alone using a computer. And should be locked out of the whole %windir%, not be allowed to view hidden files, be barred from altering files not written by them, and especially be blocked from downloading or viewing anything from sites designated by the CAUTIOUS (Committee Aiding the Undeniably Technologically Illiterate or the Otherwise Unbelievably Stupid) to be idiot proof, and are in possession of a certificate to declare it as such.
I will grant some credit to MS for a few of the prompts. It's nice to know what each BSoD is about, and once an invalid page fault means something to me, I will be grateful for the knowledge. But those irritating messages that have no correalation to debugging, and are telling me things I already know, those would be off, and I would be happy.
Another thing. I want some qualification behind the self-granted review "most helpful". I'm thinking a utility I can use to smack politicians when they're being stupid. That would be real handy right now.
I get lost all the time when I want to do things that used to take all of eight seconds. Maybe Microsoft® should add in a new control panel utility. One that has a sliding bar to select how much of a tech-illiterate idiot the user is. A rating of zero indicates that the user is god-like with windows, and doesn't need to be told things that are quite obvious. A rating of 255 would mean the user is barely capable of dressing or feeding themselves, let alone using a computer. And should be locked out of the whole %windir%, not be allowed to view hidden files, be barred from altering files not written by them, and especially be blocked from downloading or viewing anything from sites designated by the CAUTIOUS (Committee Aiding the Undeniably Technologically Illiterate or the Otherwise Unbelievably Stupid) to be idiot proof, and are in possession of a certificate to declare it as such.
I will grant some credit to MS for a few of the prompts. It's nice to know what each BSoD is about, and once an invalid page fault means something to me, I will be grateful for the knowledge. But those irritating messages that have no correalation to debugging, and are telling me things I already know, those would be off, and I would be happy.
Another thing. I want some qualification behind the self-granted review "most helpful". I'm thinking a utility I can use to smack politicians when they're being stupid. That would be real handy right now.