Ubuntucat

So I know Microsoft has recently been trying to counter-market Apple’s “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” campaign with the Mojave thing, the senseless Seinfeld-Gates commercials, and the “I’m a PC!” declarations. Wouldn’t a simple tactic be just to discontinue porting Microsoft Office to Mac?

After all, I know there are people who use Internet Explorer-only websites and so have not been able to switch from Windows to Mac (now that the latest version of Internet Explorer for Mac is 5). If Microsoft stopped porting Office to Mac, that’d hurt Apple even more, wouldn’t it?

Well, I suppose they know what they’re doing. Maybe they’re worried about antitrust lawsuits or something. I’m no Gates or Ballmer.

Last night, my wife called me an enabler. I guess I am. But I can’t help it. (Yes, I know—that’s what all enablers say!)

Here’s the deal (and this is not specific to the school I’m currently working at—this has happened at other schools I’ve worked at as well): When I see people doing something inefficiently. I say, “Hey, you know you can do it this way?” they get all excited, and then I show them how to do it a more efficient way. Then, even though they took notes on the process, they will still come back to me and say, “Can you show me how to do that again?” and I do. So, yes, I’m enabling those people. But I also know that if I said, “No, you took notes. You figure it out yourself,” they would just go back to doing things the inefficient way. They wouldn’t say, “Oh, yeah. I guess I should learn it myself” and then figure it out on their own based on the notes they took.

What does my wife have to say about it? “Well, let them do it the inefficient way, then. It’s their time, not yours.” I guess so. I’m busy at work, but I’m not so busy as to not have time to teach people how to do things correctly, and it pains me to see people spend hours and days doing something that can be accomplished in a matter of minutes, even if I have to show them two or three times how to do it.

I’m a classic enabler.

I’ve often heard it said that in Linux there is too much choice. There are hundreds of distros (or different Linux versions), and any new user will feel overwhelmed and not know what to choose.

I agree with the second part—yes, new users will feel overwhelmed and not know what to do. I was one of those new users back in 2004. I also felt overwhelmed. But the logical conclusion isn’t necessarily that there are too many choices and thus the choice number should be reduced.

When I first started working, I had some confusing choices to make. HMO? PPO? Flexible spending or not? Direct deposit? This retirement plan? That one? Huh? What? Am I upset that they offered me both an HMO and a PPO plan? I was confused by the choices, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t want the choice. I was confused because they gave me these thick booklets that are hard to understand instead of just a simple low-down on these are the pros and cons of an HMO plan, and these are the pros and cons of a PPO plan.

Likewise, if I had to pick a restaurant to eat at by wandering the streets of the city, I would be overwhelmed by the options. There are hundreds if not thousands of restaurants in the city I live in. Luckily, I have information about those choices. I can read Yelp reviews about those restaurants and talk to friends about recommendations. If those reviews didn’t exist, would the logical conclusion be that there should be only one restaurant serving only one type of food? No. Of course not. The logical conclusion would be that there is a need for some reviews to be written.

My wife recently got into horseback riding, and she was overwhelmed by all the options. Where do I take lessons? What equipment do I need? Are there good brands and bad brands of clothes to get? What’s the best place to shop for horse-related paraphernalia? So did she just give up and say “No, this is too confusing. Why can’t there just be one horse ranch with one type of horse and one shop to buy horse supplies at?” On the contrary, she loved being overwhelmed by the choices. She loved doing the research to find out just what to get and where to go. She knew there would be research involved, and she embraced it.

And yet many people insist there should be only one Linux distro with one desktop environment. Apart from the impracticality of forcing efforts into one project when the license encourages forking (and the license is a big part of the appeal for many Linux developers and users), in no other realm of life do people want to minimize choice. I’ve never heard anyone say “Dell, HP, Sony, Acer, Apple… there are too many choices! Why can’t there be just one computer manufacturer?” Instead, they read reviews and go to stores to try out various computers before making a purchase.

They do research.

If you feel Linux has too many choices, perhaps you should just get some more information instead of trying to eliminate choices and make one Linux distribution. I’ll help you out a little. There are literally hundreds of Linux distros, but only the top ten at DistroWatch are worth having a look at for any new user confused about which Linux distro to try. There are even online quizzes you can take to give you a hint as to which new-user-oriented distro may be a good first one for you to try.

If life is giving you too many choices, don’t get frustrated and confused. Get educated.

Whether it’s a mate, a name change, clothes to wear, software to use, or food to eat, I’ve read and heard a lot of people refer to choices in life as more or less equal. As Charlotte York proclaims in Sex and the City, “I choose my choice. I choose my choice!”

Do we choose our choices, though? The way people talk about choices, I guess they all live in a world where the choices are three or four doors that all look the same and are all equidistant from the chooser. I rarely see choices that way. The way I see choices, I’m living in a world where one choice has neon lights around it and is right next to me with a moving walkway that has millions of people going into it. All those people, as they pass me on the moving walkway say, “What’s wrong with you? Step on!” The other doors are far away, and some are even hidden unless you get close to them. Some doors are smaller and others larger.

If I choose the door with the neon lights and moving walkway that everyone else is telling me to choose, is that really my choice? Or am I doing it because it’s the easy choice, the popular choice? And if I choose an obscure door I have to seek out, is that really my choice? Or am I doing it because it’s out of the way, and I want to feel different, because I want to resist the pressure to pick the easy and popular choice?

Choices aren’t made in a vacuum. We can try to be individuals. We can try to make informed choices. In the end, we also need to recognize that there are pressures to make certain choices. If you make those choices, really put yourself through some self-examination. Are you making that choice because it’s the right choice, or the easy choice? And if you make a different choice, also ask yourself if you’re making that choice to resist the easy choice or not.

If you’ve ever worked as a teacher in a high school, you’ve probably had to play “the game” with your students. You become acutely aware of how awkward “the game” is when you start talking about school events with adult friends of yours who do not work in education. Here’s how such an exchange between adults goes. Chandra works as a teacher in a school. Gemma has a non-school-related job (investment banker, magazine editor, graphic designer, consultant, etc.).

Chandra: I can’t believe they made me chaperone that dance last night.

Gemma: Oh, did they put you on sex-and-drugs patrol?

Chandra: Yeah, it was terrible. There were students freaking in the middle of the dance floor. There were people trying to sneak off to the main building to smoke pot and make out. We didn’t have enough faculty to supervise.

Gemma: I remember my junior year in high school, Daniel and I were the only ones who were able to sneak out of our homecoming dance to hook up.

Chandra: Yeah, well…

As you can see, Chandra is playing the game, and Gemma is inadvertently calling Chandra on it. Chandra was probably once in high school as well, experimenting with drugs, fooling around sexually with other students, and trying to skirt the rules of the school. Now that she’s a teacher, though, she has to enforce the rules.

Why?

I would argue that Chandra probably does not really believe that high school students should not indulge in any risk-taking behavior at all. She probably does not regret any drug use or sex (unless she was raped) that she had as a young adult. She probably views that time in her life and all the “mistakes” she made as part of her growth into being an adult. Gemma not only feels that way but acknowledges it vocally. Gemma can do this, because she doesn’t work in education.

If Chandra started telling kids it was okay to smoke a little pot or to have sex in high school, she’d probably get a reprimand from the school administration and some parents. She might even get fired. Parents of teenagers, as a whole, don’t want to encourage their children to do illegal drugs or have sex, and they generally will not enroll their students in a school that encourages the teenagers in that way.

If a school existed (and schools like this may exist), it would quickly gain a reputation as being for “bad kids” and would attract students who don’t just casually experiment with drugs and sex but who take both quite seriously as endeavors.

I’ve been a teacher, and I’ve had to play that game. I don’t feel like a hypocrite for doing so, as I didn’t have sex or do drugs in high school. I was pretty much as straight an arrow as you could get. I didn’t drink before I was legally allowed to. I didn’t go to wild parties. I didn’t baseball bat mailboxes. I didn’t throw eggs at houses. At the same time, though, I don’t think that everyone should do what I did. I don’t think it’s healthy to force all teenagers to or to pretend all teenagers do run the straight and narrow.

I don’t know a good solution, though. I don’t want to be in a school that says to the kids, “Hey, make sure you lose your virginity some time in high school. We don’t want you doing hard drugs, but smoking the occasional joint won’t screw you up big time.” But I don’t like the other directions schools have gone, which is basically “Don’t do anything bad. We may have done bad stuff, but we’re all adults now and we’re going to pretend we never did that. You shouldn’t do it.” Who knows? Maybe the game is necessary for the sake of order. At least these days, when students go to college (university, to you non-Americans), the schools no longer demand students be squeaky clean. In terms of legal liability, they’ll play a little of the game, but not as much as secondary schools play.