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> 1. Fineman is a journalist, humorist. It perfectly adequate firewall can
> be downloaded from the Web for personal use a little or no cost. He
> probably just needed an article. I'm confident that he took a lot of
> journalistic license.
...
> Yes Michael, poor documentation and design is a perennial
> problem. It also puts bread on some of our tables. <vbg>
Fineman is a political columnist, not a humorist. But, yes,
I'm sure he permits himself the occasional hyperbole.
It was his wife (according to the article) who told him that
a software firewall was insufficient. (Myself, I use ZoneAlarm
and sleep pretty well at night -- but then what do I have to
lose? A checking account balance of a few hundred worthless
Australian pesos?)
On the other hand, I have no reason to doubt that the instructional
manual he describes was actually a load of crap -- I have seen
enough of those myself.
The point of my little attempt at humor is that there are those
frequent posters on the list who seem to believe that the users'
needs really don't matter, and that the measure of a 'good' tech-
writer is that he knows a lot of details about how the software
was designed, and why.
Problem is, that's not what the average customer needs or wants.
That's all I was getting at.
MW
> usually means adapting new machines to
> behave like old ones.
>
A landmark hotel, one of America's most beautiful cities, and
three and a half days of immersion in the state of the art:
IPCC 01, Oct. 24-27 in Santa Fe. http://ieeepcs.org/2001/
+++ Miramo -- Database/XML publishing automation. See us at +++
+++ Seybold SFO, Sept. 25-27, in the Adobe Partners Pavilion +++
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