Getting wildly off-topic (Was: Re: The future of gnome-pim - and Balsa, too?)

[Telsa Gwynne <hobbit aloss ukuu org uk>]

On Tue, Aug 14, 2001 at 09:26:54AM +0200 or thereabouts, mads randstoft tellabs com wrote:
> Hello!
>  
> > True. However, I know a lot of people that have two machines on their
> > desktop - one running Windows used only for Outlook and another running
> > GNU/Linux for development. That is, IMO, something that might not be
> > necessary once Evolution is launched.
> 
> Stupid users will always use outlook, because noone can tell them there is
> better alternatives (even on windoze) Smart users are already turning
> elsewhere, because of outlook worms...

"Stupid people will always use oil and petrol, because no-one can tell 
them there are better alternatives (even for cars). Smart people are 
already turning elsewhere, because of problems in the future..."

(Do not miss the point and respond to that recasting. Read on.)

I do not find classifying people into stupid and smart is at all
helpful here. You are not talking about "stupid" people. You are
talking about bright people who happen to know little about
computers. If you want people to change, you must not assume
they have not yet done so "because they are stupid". People do not
like being called stupid. People do not like being treated as
though they are stupid. And they will resent it. Rightly. 

> > Not all of them. But I've heard "But it doesn't work like Windows",
> > "Windows is better" and so on so many times now that I am getting fed up
> > with it. I am not saying that we should revert to Windows or mimic it -
> > but we should learn from competition.
> 
> The people saying windoze is better only says that because their friends 
> says that, and so on... you cannot revert them by emulating windoze... 

I know _plenty_ of people who think Linux is cool because their friends
told them so. How do you think Linux awareness spread? How is that in
any way different from the way you say people develop their beliefs
about Windows? 

> I friend of mine kept clearing the cache in mozilla on my machine, 
> beacuse he thoght mozilla did not check for online updates, because 
> it was so much faster than IE on his windoze box, and kept saying 
> that linux (and mozilla) was stupid, because of it....

I don't quite follow what you're saying here. Online updates? You
mean pages refreshing? 

We can all come up with examples of logic that seems dodgy to us
but which makes perfect sense to the person who thought it. That
doesn't mean the reasoner is stupid. 

Telsa