The semantic desktop/web

[huggybear]

James, believe me, you can sure as hell apply that to car owners! I think you can rip off a lot of people who just bring their car in for very petty things -- but then get half of the car worked on.

[Randicus Draco Albus]

Because computers are everywhere; from cash registers to petrol pumps to expensive drip coffee machines, many people believe computers are not tools like all other tools. They are almost magical.
In a university lecture eleven or twelve years ago in Canada, students were horrified that one of the two Chinese phrases for computer is "electronic calculator." A computer is not an electronic calculator! It is an electronic brain!

[huggybear]

Why did it surprise them? The verb 'compute' is essentially the same as 'calculate'

com·pute
   
verb (used with object)
1. to determine by calculation; reckon; calculate: to compute the period of Jupiter's revolution.
2. to determine by using a computer or calculator.

verb (used without object)
3. to reckon; calculate.
4. to use a computer or calculator.
5. Informal . to make sense; add up: His reasons for doing that just don't compute.

In Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian it's "računar" or "računalo", from "računati" -> calculate.
In German it's "Rechner". from "rechnen" -> calculate, compute.

[Randicus Draco Albus]

It surprises people, because compute is merely a word, but (the) computer is a thing. And a smart, miraculous thing.
If only you could have seen the jaws drop when I explained that a computer is nothing more than a calculator. It reduces everything to 0s and 1s.

[cynwulf]

In regards to the people who simply down-load "things" without knowing where they are going, or even what they are called. Since they do not organise their files, I must wonder how those people keep their back-up copies up-to-date.
No wonder the myriad fora are awash with the question, "I lost my files. How do I get them back?"

It's a windows thing.... the majority of windows users can only deal with the desktop (barely) and right click and "send to". If they plug in USB flash, they have no idea "where it is" in file system terms. They have to wait for that "what do you want to do?" thing to pop up and even that leaves them clueless.

MS have created this mess by deliberately disabling the end user, by moving them away from organising their files. In the beginning they had DOS with a command line - too difficult so along comes the gui with the file manager - still too difficult, so next it's the "desktop" and the rest of the mess and that's what they've been building on ever since - i.e. "hiding" how files and folders are organised and replacing it with some other crap.

As someone who works in tech support, this makes my job ten times more difficult than it should be - because it's 95% teaching idiots how to use their computers and the other 5% actually fixing the problem.

[huggybear]

The support questions would not be there if MS had really made an intelligent system that really does what the user expects it to do.
Basically, ever since WinXP and MacOS X, users expect the computer to be an appliance. A really good appliance, e.g. a cooker, doesn't nag you with its electrics, its underbelly. Yes, you lose control, but control that you don't need. Because all you really want is to make scrambled egg. This is in effect what MS should have done for those users. They should have made a system that automatically tags mp3 files, puts things into subfolders based on their topics or type and then give the user a frontend where they can find said files. The same goes for hardware detection, which almost always failed under XP. I'm not sure how that works in Win 7 now.
I've seen lots of relatives who didn't want to take my advice since they really thought that, once their PC acts up, they _have_ to give it to the vendor and wait for some "magic repairs" by a proper technician.

[nadir]

It's a windows thing....

To me it looks like that too.

the majority of windows users can only deal with the desktop (barely) and right click and "send to".

Without going much into detail i assume (!) that the problem is the way Windows operarting systems (at least after 98) are organized. Not the users (cause rather smart people fail big times when it comes to computing).
They stand in your way when you want to learn about a computer (while otherwise they are rather comfortable, agreed).
In short they make it look as if the user would have to adapt to the environment, not the other way around (say those annoying pop-ups, which are barely possible to get rid of).
Better example: In Win7, if you want to add a "library" (wtf?) to the default ones: a pain in the ass. Autostart (Add or Remove). Remove the boot-screen and get the proper messages... etc.
All that is possible, sure.

As someone who works in tech support, this makes my job ten times more difficult than it should be - because it's 95% teaching idiots how to use their computers and the other 5% actually fixing the problem.

From what i said above i wouldn't do that for all the money in the world.
Sorry to hear that (well: i am very unpatient).
Story time:
I just spoke to the tech support of my ISP: He: "how did you try to connect to the internet?". I : " i pinged the google address( in words, google.de), and when that didn't work, i pinged the IP-address(in numbers, 8.8.8.8). Then i pinged all my local IP's, and local networking seems to work well." He (obviously shocked, already stopped thinking): "I will send you a new router". (Not that the new router would have ever arrived here, but i don't want one of them anyway).

But it is like it is: B.Gates is a freaking hero, and the books of the future will tell us exactly that.

[nadir]

To be clear:
I don't know a lot of things,
and some of them are basic (so basic, that i am ashamed to not know them).
But i do know that if i would try to get my head into them, i could understand them, and i could change them according to my needs. That is the difference between Windows systems and free systems of which i tried to speak.

[huggybear]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtXtIivRRKQ