A rather good set of readings showed up on Slashdot today; I was especially interested in this one concerning Apathy, Lies and Fear.

In the articles listed above, the issues arise when teachers do not have the knowledge of what something does.  It's a situation of brand loyalty taken much too far.

Because places have minimal technical knowledge for teachers, and the IT administrators at many schools are in the same frame of mind, there's one way to do things that is right, and in many cases, claimed the only legal way.  Unfortunately, that's Microsoft's way.

People need to start having the ability to see a piece of software not for what it's called, but for what it has capability to do.  Consider your web browser.  Generally, there is 3 different options that someone would be using, which take up a vast majority of the browsers used - namely, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Apple Safari.  Each program does the same thing, and has the same capabilities, but there are people who will disallow or even reprimand if a specific browser isn't used.

Why?  Why is it that there's so much reliance on this software, on this system?   On top of that, there are even more browsers available out there, that even less people use.  Take the chance to go find out about Opera, Google's Chrome, or any other browser listed on Wikipedia's "Comparison of Web Browsers" page.  What makes these browsers less usable, not as "good" as the other one chosen?  It's a learned trait.

People don't say "make a digital presentation," they say "make a Powerpoint."  You don't hear "find this on the Internet," instead, it's "Google this."  The product is given more credence than the action, and so that hurts the rest of the software community in what they're trying to accomplish.  It's not "use this computer to find out the information you need," it's "use this computer to find out the information you need."

Just a minute, you might have said.  That last one says the same thing!  While that's true, and I did that on purpose, the meanings are different, depending on who says them.  When I've asked someone, "Who makes your computer?", over half the time they have said "Windows."  Not Acer, HP, Dell... those are just companies.

Again, we have the product getting more credence than the action.  Something has the market so tight, that people don't realize that there's another set of options.  Computing then means using Microsoft Windows, not using the computer.

I want this message to get out around the world - that's why I'm displaying it on the internet.  Hopefully people will get the chance to read it, read the points that I've made, and see that there has been a spark of interest in possibly understanding things further.  And please, don't tie products with processes.

Woman Claims Ubuntu Kept Her From Online Classes
stonedcat writes "A Wisconsin woman has claimed that Dell computers and Ubuntu have kept her from going back to school via online classes. She says she has called Dell to request Windows instead however was talked out of it. Her current claim is that she was unaware that she couldn't install her Verizon online disk to access the Internet, nor could she use Microsoft Word to type up her papers."
(pulled from http://entertainment.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/15/158216)

So here we have a prototypical case where a computer user who is unfamiliar with a new operating system has trouble with her computer because it's not what she's used to.  I can accept that.  Then, I proceed to read the article (Something rarely heard of on Slashdot...)

"Schubert says she ordered her laptop online at Dell.com expecting to buy your classic bread-and-butter computer. She didn't realize until the next morning her laptop defaulted to the Ubuntu operating system."

Now, it has been a long time since I've graced the front page of the dell.com website, but I took this as an opportunity to see just how uncannily difficult it is for a normal user to just happen to not realize what they were getting as an operating system.  Go ahead and try for yourself: http://www.dell.com

But she says Dell discouraged her. "The person I was talking to said Ubuntu was great, college students loved it, it was compatible with everything I needed," said Schubert. So she stuck with it.

I would take this to be not exactly face value either.  I can understand the point of view of her at this point - she has something she's not used to, and she wants it traded for something she understands.  It's not the "magic box," (more on that in a bit) so she's trying to get something she can use.  This is the only point in this story where I can see that Dell, the business, screwed up.  If you have a customer replacing something for a reason, don't try to persuade them otherwise. However, something sits at the back of my head thinking, "I wonder if the phone tech was merely letting her know that what she has can work, and that there was probably a fee required to send her current laptop back to replace it. Not wanting to pay the fee, she just went with it." Purely speculation, but if I was a general consumer, I wouldn't want to have to pay more to get the right thing on my laptop, and since I was told it can work, I'd go ahead with that.

But wait, the story continues to get better:

Later, she discovered Ubuntu might look like Windows, but it doesn't always act like it.
Her Verizon High-Speed Internet CD won't load, so she can't access the internet. She also can't install Microsoft Word, which she says is a requirement for MATC's online classes.
As a result, with no internet and no Microsoft Word, Schubert dropped out of MATC's fall and spring semesters.

Again, some understandable issues due to the "magic box" effect. This effect is the belief of the general population that without any type of training ahead of time, a person can automatically pick up and use a heavily technical device, and have no knowledge of the inner workings of that device. Example: she thought that by throwing in the cd and clicking the "exe" file, it would make her network work, with no real understanding of what's executing and being ran. It is my personal belief that there are certain things that someone should know about operating a computer before they get the chance to - and this should be happening in the school system. I don't have time for that discussion now, but I'll knock it out at a later point.

Anyway, we've reached "well, duh!" moment number 2. Because she wasn't able to use what was prescribed, she dropped out of classes? There are other alternatives here, like contacting the school's tech support - I could find it, and it didn't take that long.

Another thing caught my eye reading through this. Earlier in the article, it states that "She called Dell the very next day and says the representative told her there was still time to change back to Windows." Later in the article, it says different: "She also says Dell claimed it was now too late to get Windows and any changes she made herself would void her warranty."

So, how much time really passed between these two statements? Or is the return time different between a very short amount of time? Something doesn't quite add up here.