Most computer illiterate comment ever

[Tyler]

I've heard some good ones in my day.

Which part is the monitor?
What do I do when my mouse gets to the edge of the desk?

My favorite, although not really that bad--How do I get my music from Windows Media Player into Winamp?  I love how people think you download music into a program and that it won't work with other music software.

What are some of the more entertaining ones you've heard?

[Bryan]

I would have to think about this one...

[William Grim]

Not really so much of a computer illiterate comment as it is something plenty of people don't know you can do on the command line.... (shell scripting).

I write a one-liner on the shell doing something like:

cd /home && for i in `\ls -1` ; do [ -d $i ] && chown $i:users $i && chmod 0701 $i ; done

I get comments ranging from "Oh, you can do that?" to "Whoa!  That is awesome!"  Even though it's not that awesome, because it's an every day thing to write one-liners like that.

[Guest]

um, yeah.  great example.

[John Paul]

Here are a few
-Which key do I press when it asks press "Any" key?
-Will this mouse pad be compatible with my mouse?

If you consider these two literate how about this
-I am afraid to touch my computer as it is infected by virus!

[William Grim]

Ha ha.  Anonymous didn't understand it.

Where is Anonymous' example?

[Tyler]

I don't want to get in the middle or grimw and anonymous' little exchange, but I think Anonymous' post was commenting on the fact that grimw's post before that was not a very computer illiterate example.  It was in fact a very computer literate example.

[Guest]

Mike the subject of this post was "computer illiterate comments" not "show off your shell scripting abilities to feel important"

here's a new word for your vocabulary:
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=modesty

[bill corcoran]

though unexpected, i think mike's post was right on topic.  for some less GUI dependent folk (as i hope most real computer enthusiasts would be...) an exclamation of surprise or admission of ignorance in response to the capabilities of simple on-the-fly one-liners that mar the distinction between scripts and common command-line usage do qualify as frequently heard computer [command-line] illiterate comments.

or at least that's what i thought.

[Stiffler]

I think y'all need to chill. Anon is not me, by the way. I though Mike's was a good example.

Anyways, back on track ...

"How do I print this here?"
*He opens IE to print a MS Word doc*
*I slap myself in the face*

"My mouse is not working"
*I look where the trackball is and potato chip crumbs fall out so I could not resist*
"You are not suppose to feed your mouse."
*He gives me a blank stare*

Me: "You need to click the save icon."
Him: "What's that?"
Me: *Slaps self in face* "That icon right there." *Points to icon*
Him: *After clicking icon* "Now what?"
Me: "Give it a name."
Him: "How do I do that?"
Me: *Gives up*

These are a few of the more amusing things that I have heard, and some are done by a person that wanted to be a Computer Scientist. :S

Jon

[William Grim]

Sounds more like a personal problem to me, especially when you don't log in and just decide to complain about it.

Anyway, I thought it was a decent example.  Just because it's more advanced doesn't mean it's any less valid.

[Guest]

You know just because it's anonymous doesn't mean that it's the same person.

[William Grim]

Okay, well, either way, I'm done feeding the trolls.

I don't mean to sound rude, but this is just getting totally out of line.

[Guest]

A while back a girlfriend's grandma called me for some help to get the icon back for IE she accidentally deleted.  (does MS even let you uninstall IE?).

Unfortunately, I was nowhere near a computer to find the file name and path, so I had to have her look for it.  I decided to go command-line after I figured out that she was totally inept at windowing interfaces.  I had to describe what the minimize button looks like and where the program went when it was pressed.  When it popped up with a modal message box, she didn't see it and couldn't figure out why it wouldn't let her continue.  She was about to hit the reset button when I figured out the problem was a message box!:blink:

After explaining that by "space" I meant " " , by "dot" ".", etc. it went as follows:

Me: Type in "dir \iexp*.exe /s"
Her: OK.
Me: Do you know which is a forward slash and which is a backslash?
Her: Yes.
Me: OK.  What does it say?
Her: "dir \iexp*.exe /s"
Me: Anything else?
Her: No.
Me: Um... my fault, you have to press "enter"
Her: Which one is that?
...
Me: What does it say now?
Her: Invalid switch - iexp*.exe
Me: You've got your slashes backwards
Her: So which one is a backward slash?


After an hour on the phone and failing to figure out the path to iexplore.exe, we gave up until I could fix it in person.  Later, she wanted me to show her how to "download."  She didn't know what it is or why she should do it, but she wanted to know.  I didn't know where to begin.

Retired webmaster of CAOS.

Congrads on your retirement, Jon.
I wish I was retired.  I guess I'm halfway there--right now I'm only tired.

[DaleDoe]

I know I logged in for that!  I guess while I was interrupted in the middle of writing it my session timed out or something.

Now I'm responding to my own posts.