2004.12_A Strip of Silver Trim.pdf

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COMMENT

Silver Trim

We pride ourselves on the origins

of our publication, which come

from the early days of the Linux

revolution.

Our sister publication in Germany,

founded in 1994, was the first Linux

magazine in Europe. Since then, our

network and expertise has grown

and expanded with the Linux com-

munity around the world.

As a reader of Linux Magazine,

you are joining an information

network that is dedicated to

distributing knowledge and

technical expertise. We’re not

simply reporting on the Linux

and Open Source movement,

we’re part of it.

Dear Linux Magazine Reader,

A couple years

ago, my chil-

dren informed

me they needed

a new com-

puter. They had

to run some

software that

required Windows, and Microsoft gets

way too much money if you buy a box

copy of Windows outright, so I quickly

convinced myself to go shopping for

hardware.

I went to a store that had just opened

in my town. It advertised low-cost PCs,

but there was nothing low-rent about

this fancy store. It looked like a Mercedes

dealership. Brilliantly colored posters

beaconed the reader within, where the

theme was Windows Windows Windows

– the latest and most brilliantly colored

Windows. Bright lights shone on little

pedestals with parts of PCs positioned to

present the most alluring shadows.

The room was crawling with sales-

men. The vast number was no doubt

intended to provide a one-to-one ratio of

employees to patrons, which reminded

me of a bar I had visited once in Tijuana,

but I didn’t share the memory. A young

man approached me. He tried to interest

me in a wall-mounted monitor with

approximately the acreage of Picasso’s

Guernica. I told him I wanted something

smaller, and he sold me a sleek, small PC

with an attractive strip of silver trim run-

ning down the center of the casing.

I took the computer home. Everyone

was impressed with the attractive silver

trim strip. We all used the system for a

while, then it started to gather dust, so I

decided to sneak it out of the house and

install Fedora on it.

The installation went flawlessly, but

then the door to the DVD player jammed

and I couldn’t get the DVD out. I could-

n’t figure out a way to eject the DVD,

and I soon discovered that I couldn’t

even find a way to open the case. It held

fast like a puzzle box.

I called the hotline number at the ven-

dor’s website.

“Sir,” a voice told me, “your computer

is no longer in warranty.”

“You can’t even tell me how to open

the DVD drawer?”

“I’m not supposed to.”

I convinced him he should tell me

rather than listening to me get mad.

“Oh, just stick a pin into the little hole

under the DVD drawer,” he said.

“I know the trick with the little hole,” I

told him, “but there is no little hole.”

“There’s always a little hole, sir,” he

said, speaking as one who was overly

accustomed to being polite.

Now I really was angry. I started prod-

ding and yanking at the computer case.

Soon I had yanked off the attractive sil-

ver trim strip, and I quickly discovered

that, beneath it, utterly inaccessible to

anyone who didn’t know the secret, was

the little hole that opened the DVD

player.

“What a bad design!” I shouted. The

superfluous trim strip actually prevented

users from performing necessary service

operations. I drove to the fancy computer

store to tell them what I thought about

their product, and I discovered that the

store had suddenly and unexpectedly

gone out of business. So the moral is that

bad design really does sometimes lose.

I emailed the vendor and asked if I

could have one of the brilliantly colored

posters as a souvenir of the store. They

did not respond, and presumably they

were not amused.

Joe Casad

Editor in Chief

www.linux-magazine.com December 2004

A Strip of

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