When Longhorn release, Linux got end. 3502

Christopher Browne

You never know how people react to things. Many, many years ago my then partner and I were hired to help someone do some software that was going to run on a brand new Sun box not yet released to the public but that these folks had obtained as beta or alpha or whatever.

It had a GUI interface that was unfamiliar to all of us - cute little icons that none of us understood (me, my partner nor any of the folks who had obtained the box). We'd take a poll before we clicked on each one and there would be three or four different opinions as to what would happen - and often none of them were right! I remember the mail icon was particularly funny - I forget what we all thought it was, but I remember laughing out loud when mail came up..

It's also true that people have different abilities and preferred learning styles. I had a client way back when who wanted his computer to read his email to him - this was years before it was feasible. I was taken aback, because I couldn't imagine why - first of all, I can read much faster than any intelligible speech, but secondly I don't absorb data well aurally - I always hated listening to teachers talk; I'd rather read text. But this guy was the opposite: he needed to hear to understand well and was a very poor reader to boot.

Too often buttumptions are made about the "best" way to present information. There may be a best way for the majority of people, but there is no general best way.

-- Tony Lawrence