Re:Its not just computers. (Score 1)

I'm a big fan of the automobile / computer analogy because they're both complex systems that are or are becoming a necessity in life. Ignorance in both cases is expensive. Most people know to change the oil in their car, but most people don't know why their car is making noises or why their air-conditioning just stopped working or why their breaks suck all of a sudden. So they go and take their car to the shop where the mechanic charges them just to find out what's wrong, and then charges them again to fix all the these things that they say are wrong with their car. The driver doesn't know whether or not he's being had, but he has to trust the mechanic because... what's he going to do? People expect their car to get them from A-B without any unexpected sounds, with airconditioning/heat on full blast, music playing from all the speakers, windows that move up and down... etc. They have similar expectations with computers. When they turn it on it should boot up, have all of the perfierals recognized and working, if they plug in their digital camera the computer should see it and know what to do, if they want to go on the i-net the should press a button and a browser should welcome them immediately, sending email should be instantaneous no matter what's attached, and all links that are clicked should work.... every time. Oh, and it shouldn't get slower as time goes by either. People who don't know much about cars go to the shop to get them fixed and pay premium prices for things that would ordinarily be inexpensive. The same goes for computers in that people pay money to be told to download spybot. It's too simplistic to think that cars work for the average person a lot better than computers do. People with a drivers license can drive a car, but they can't necessarily fix it if it's broke. People can turn on a computer, send email, chat on AIM, and browse the web without even needing training (most of the time), but if it's "broke".... they dont necessarily believe they can fix it. As for not knowing the difference in file sizes.... I know it's an abstract concept. You can't see kilo,mega, or terabytes....but really, if you figured out how to attach a file to your email you ought to understand how big the file is.