2004.12_A Strip of Silver Trim.pdf
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Welcome
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
3
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