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Tom Brough wrote: > > Whats so "dirty" about the command line ? You make using the command > line sound like breaking the 11th commandment "THOUST SHALT NOT USE THE > COMMAND LINE!" It is fine if you've invested the time to learn to use it, which takes about a week of learning (30 to 35 hours) for Mr/Mrs average. That is rather more than most people need to learn to drive a car, which is far more useful than bash shell (unless you work in IT). Otherwise it breaks the rules about placing unnecessary "know-how" in the way of the user, if they NEED to use the command line. Heck I've used Bourne, Korn, Bash, and several others whose names escape me since University and I still have to look up stuff in the bash manual when doing more complex stuff. Take for example "broadband routers" for ADSL lines, which is my topical example of poor design, and unneeded know-how in the way. They have several configuration settings; "username", "password", and a couple of settings to describe the type of ADSL line. All BT residential ADSL lines are identical in terms of the technical settings (AFAIK), so good vendors could set these before distribution to the UK (NetGear do!). Sure they'll be odd cases, but the defaults could be right. Similarly the username/password could be made redundant by either setting it at the ISP, or (more sensibly) revising the standard so that the line identifier would connect you to the ISP of your choice, and the username and password would not be required to be set (BT happily ignore the password for BT speedtests). Thus with one or two minor changes to the way things are generally done, one could plug the ADSL router into the wall (I'll ignore microfilters for the moment), and it would "just work" (since they pretty much all ship with DHCP enabled for a network in 192.168/16), in that one would plug a PC into the router using a Cat5 (or better) cable, the PC would have default DHCP settings (all major OSes do that as a default already), and it would get sensible DNS, routing, and ideally NTP (and maybe other) settings from the router. Currently most people have to work through a manual, find the admin password in the documentation, set the username and password for the PPPoe connection (using a browser or software, many users don't know what a "browser" is, and know they don't want to install more software from yet another company), and in many (most?) cases change a few parameters they know nothing about to what it says in the section of the manual for the UK. Not saying we need to take the admin interface away from ADSL routers (no that would make it useless if you left the UK), just saying there is no reason, apart from poor design and planning, that the ordinary user should be exposed to it for the common case. Similar comments apply to bash, and almost everything else in computing.
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