Dear Microsoft, please stop hiding file extensions…
Working on an IT company giving tech support to a wide range of users and dealing with fucked up pc’s everyday there is “one” little detail that really gets on my nerves about Microsoft Windows… you guessed it, the file extensions are hidden by default.
Why is this really? At what point in windows history did someone at MS went like:
“You know… why do we need these file extensions? Once the file is associated with some program then why do we need to keep showing them?”.
To which some other guy must have said something like:
“That’s brilliant, we’ll remove them right now! We’ll just make different icons and people will know what the files are by their little graffiti, or better yet, by clicking on them!”
So ok, sure I have the option of enabling them, which I do, but I would really like to know why was this decision made? Did they think it was too confusing to people? I think that file extensions are actually educational because after some time even the most moronic computer user would eventually grasp the concept of file types and be able to distinguish a file without running it. It would also be easier to explain that they should be careful of certain file types… Instead, we have them eagerly clicking away on something like “Picture of hot girl in a bikini” only to find out that it was actually “Picture of hot girl in a bikini.exe/scr/cmd/bat/pif/etc”.
And now we have these geniuses bitching because “All I did was try to open a picture and now my screen is full of porn, my start page is random-fuckedup-site.com and I have a brand new antivirus program telling me I’m at risk! My computer is also a little slower and my friends keep telling me to shut up on Instant Messenger even though I’m not even chatting with them. Please help me Mr Computer Man, I did nothing wrong”.
So that’s right Microsoft! I’m acusing YOU of being responsible for making this guys computer full of porn.
