Technology’s challenge: Easy to use! Understandable?

http://news.tbo.com/news/metro/MGBO3GM5INE.html

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Mike Palazzolo said he routinely faxes his daily special to regular customers. When a couple of them asked to be taken off his mailing list this year, the manager said he was unable to remove the numbers from his fax machine's speed dialer and instead entered a long series of identical digits in their place. He assumed those numbers would be meaningless, but they turned out to be Ebsary's fax number. 

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Now I am not sure if I believe the excuse. But it does point out that the side of technology that faces humans is often cryptic, forgettable, and the documentation stinks. I have about five cheap remotes at home whose instruction books are probably in some recycling landfill somewhere (don't distract me with that rant!). I can't program them but I can't part with them. So, I can empathize with this fellow. I see some hidden assumptions in this that make this little morality play even more interesting: (1) government "laws" that interfere; (2) free local calls; (3) Lawyers in general; (4) the fax machine maker (i.e., I sold it that end my problem. Now go ahead and use it. I dare you!); and (5)  an incomprehensible user interface. Dontcha just love it.

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