Have you ever tried to teach computing basics to someone who says "are you sure? I don't want to break it"? For me they're usually relatives or friends of relatives, and I politely roll my eyes and explain that (almost) nothing they could do will break their computer. Well, I was trying to do something pretty basic on the site today, and I BROKE IT! I broke it bad, too, they had to completely reinstall the OS. Twice.

My server rep told me the same thing I tell my relatives that do manage to muck things up: "next time, just tell me what you want done".

My server rep told me the same thing I tell my relatives that do manage to muck things up: "next time, just tell me what you want done".


Yeah, but then you'd never learn anything.

Learning means we make mistakes, and it's in recovering from those mistakes that we get better.

But have I had someone come back to me telling me they followed my instructions and it's broken their computer?

All the time, it's one of the givens when you're cleaning Malware off computers, that somewhere along the line you're gonna bork someone's machine.

Fortunately we're usually able to recover most situations, and you learn from it and refine your technique, but every now and then you fail big time (a real lesson in humility).

Which is why I now always tell them up front that removing Malware from their box is not a hazard free enterprise.

Are you willing to get a lesson in humility?
Not only catastrophes will teach you a lesson. You can also ask for advice... and get it.
I would suggest to compare by yourself:
- your own sophisticated postprocessing with some kind of auto adjustment
- your raw procecessing with the out of camera jpeg
Sometimes, you'll learn something, and the software won't laugh at your work!

...and explain that (almost) nothing they could do will break their computer. with Windows, it tends to be more than '(almost)'. it's my single biggest complaint with windows, that the o/s is so vulnerable to destroying itself and so hard to repair/restore. even booting up can be an adventure. yesterday, i booted up my xp machine and as it loaded itself up i suddenly had nothing but diagonal squiggly lines all across the screen. i could hear the little music thing as the desktop loaded up, but all i could see were the diagonal squiggles. the mouse pointer was there also, but couldnt see a thing of windows. my thoughts were, 'oh lord, my monitor is going bad #$!@#!' and 'maybe it's the vid card going bad #!#$@!' and '!#$!$# i cant afford this right now!' and other, like thoughts and general curses.

but, knowing that windows will do this at times, and having seen all the text screens one sees during booting up, i went, 'wait, the monitor cant be bad; i saw the text.'. so, i reached over, hit the reset button and everything loaded up just fine! no squiggles!

so, my point is, it's not just the user at times. yes, we shld all know more and always do everything precisely correct, but the o/s shld actually be so robust that we cant really break it, or, if we do, then the o/s shld be so easy to restore that we wouldnt all have nervous breakdowns when we do break it :D