So basically we can stop blaming the victims already. Rant about the cons and frauds which are deliberately telling lies to their customers.
Fact is, "computers are easy" is a lie. "Plug and play" is one big fat lie. "Look, our wireless card is soo easy to set up! You just plug it in and it works!" takes the cake. (Yeah, it's easy if you don't mind that by default security is disabled, and you've just set up an access point not only to the internet, but also to any of _your_ data you ever use on that computer.) Etc.
Yes, computers are no longer the exclusive domain of the High Priests of Sun, deep in the sanctuary of the Holy Computer Room. But ready for Joe Average, without any further tutoring, they _aren't_.
And since we all love to tell Joe Average to RTFM, the manuals that Joe gets are most often a _sick_ joke too.
For example: I recently bought a SMC gateway, and the manual just lists the fields in the setup without any further explanations. E.g., for a combo box labelled "IGMP Proxy" with the only options being "Enable" and "Disable", the manual helpfully explains: "Enables or disables the IGMP Proxy." Unless you're a professional network admin, you're left just as clueless as to what the fsck "IGMP" is, how/why is it proxied, and what's the effect of turning it on or off.
For example, I had to discover by trial and error that the only way to make some stuff work (e.g., to be able to receive files by ICQ), was to basically tell the gateway to route all packages to my computer, regardless of ports. Basically turning the whole firewall off. (And better yet: that the way to achieve that was to declare my computer as DMZ. Err... no. DMZ does not mean "completely outside the proxy" the way I learned it.)
Is there a better way to do that? Probably. But good luck finding a doc somewhere that clearly states which ports are needed for which program. If you're a network admin and have a stack of tools for tracing and monitoring, you can find that out. But good luck expecting Joe average to do that.
So basically it's not Joe that's to blame, but the industry which deliberately lied to him. When the ads will start saying "you need 3 months training to use our computer", _then_ we can blame Joe if he buys it anyway. |
