Configurability in other places [LWN.net]

Configurability in other places

Posted Jun 11, 2006 19:12 UTC (Sun) by smoogen (subscriber, #97)
In reply to: Questions for deployments of GNOME by nix
Parent article: Questions for deployments of GNOME

The issues with people adjusting to computers and vice versa was something that came up a lot during early car days (1890's and so). People would say that since they could build the car to whatever they wanted they could put the steering wheel etc where-ever they wanted. After a while 'customers' wanted to have things to be the same way in most cars. Accidents/problems were blamed on lack of uniformity and regulations were put in place.

However, I still remember my grandfather saying the same thing when told he couldn't change his car to being the driver on the right side. "That's ridiculous! Cars are tools, not dictators." Then he went on the usual tirade about the stupidity of people who couldnt see the superiority of having a car designed this way (or the different gear shift layout he built etc) and how their stupidity was why the world would be communist by 1980 etc.

It is a sad sign of humanity that we are little different from the people who fought over whether you were Lutheran or Catholic in the 1600's. We just call our religions how our desktops look vs how many times we need to kneel.

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Configurability in other places

Posted Jun 11, 2006 20:38 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

Cars are physical objects in which errors can be dangerous to lethal and which interact with each other and with pedestrians, so you want a centralized training scheme, mandated external signals, and enough similarity between models that buying a new model doesn't require relearning everything (and in which you can borrow someone else's car without crashing it).

*None* of these things are true of computer software, except perhaps the last, and even that fails if you provide tools to allow copying and publishing of configurations (his KDE runs differently from mine? OK, use my config). Secure global-scale distributed filesystems will provide the necessary infrastructure for this (paging Google, or perhaps <http://fs.net/>).

Configurability in other places

Posted Jun 12, 2006 3:00 UTC (Mon) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] (1 responses)

Sorry.. but a poorly planned desktop can be lethal in the right enviroment:

Hospital
Military
Aircontrol
911 dispatch room.

In the cases where time is of an importance having someone come into a different desktop can cause major problems. In other cases it can just be additional costs because everyone has decided what is best for themselves and they spend tons of time arguing over "gee my desktop design is so much superior to yours."

These are specialized environments.. and not the general case, however I am bringing them up as counter to your globalization account that it doesnt matter. If I am misunderstanding you.. sorry.. I always seem to minunderstand evangelical fundamentalists.

Configurability in other places

Posted Jun 12, 2006 11:22 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

I was overgeneralizing: obviously consistency is paramount in safety-critical environments (see virtually every issue of RISKS, for instance).

But *most environments are not safety-critical* from a software POV. Why on earth should people in non-safety-critical environments be locked down by requirements that only make sense if safety-critical software is in use?

Configurability in other places

Posted Jun 12, 2006 7:16 UTC (Mon) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

It is a sad sign of humanity that we are little different from the people who fought over whether you were Lutheran or Catholic in the 1600's. We just call our religions how our desktops look vs how many times we need to kneel.

Yeah, going to war and burning and torturing people is the same as ranting on LWN. As a KDE and GNOME user, I feel so witch-hunted by these comments.