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.

[Guest]

I think you are all crazy, but I like the quotes! I a MUCH less knowledgeable programmer so I don't have the slightest what Mike's one liner was, but I'm sure it was good, and I liked the rest of them! Especially feeding the mouse! I'm a mainframer, so my funny lines are more like this:

Me: Do you know how to get to the "kicks" screen?
Her: Kicks? I don't know what that is.
After much deliberation....

It was the CICS screen!!!!

I bet nobody gets the humor in that, but I couldn't resist posting the one joke I had!

CoCo

[Jon]

grimw wrote:

Just because it's more advanced doesn't mean it's any less valid.

That’s arguable.  Consider your own language: You wouldn’t think someone was illiterate just because they didn’t know what apposition or shibboleths are with respect to the English language.  You would also probably not say that a person is illiterate if he doesn’t mind going against a loosely enforced Latin rule of grammar and ends a sentence with a preposition (this is not always a bad thing, and may even be more appropriate given the English language’s roots in a German dialect).  The same goes for improper use of â€Ã...“whoâ€Ã, and â€Ã...“whomâ€Ã, which we all do every day.

There are probably grammatical or spelling errors in this message, but I doubt that even an English major would consider me to be illiterate for the simple reason that these are fairly â€Ã...“advancedâ€Ã, topics.

[William Grim]

However, it can be argued that the person is indeed more illiterate than you are if they don't understand something that you do... at least for that specific example.

[Stiffler]

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

Thanks Dale. :-D I get retired over and over. :-P Actually it's the Anti-Psychotics that make me tired, but that's a different story.

Oh, BTW, I hope you all know that XOOPS records IP addresses and can ban people by IP, so if the Anon guy's IP is the same and not a school IP, then ... well, I think this would be the first ever Banning on CAOS.  :-o So let's end this fueding. This is going nowhere, and it is pointless.

Jon

[Jarod Neuner]

Over the last year my definition of "Computer Illiterate" has changed dramatically. For instance, I find many Computer Science majors and even Computer Science professors that blindly labeled scripts 'viruses', my interpretation of computer illiterate dropped to a very fundamental level. In fact, exchanging an ethernet cable with a telephone cable is commonplace in my world. That in mind, I will now share some of my favorite moments serving as a Residential Technology Assistant.

Anonymous Girl #1 (alias Jane='echo 'Guy #1''):
Jane: "I tried to plug in the keyboard, but the cable wasn't long enough. And now my TV doesn't work."
Jarod: "Did you plug the TV into the wall outlet?"
Jane: "Umm, I don't think so. If I plug in the TV will my keyboard work?"
Jarod: "There isn't anything worth watching on the TV anyhow."

Anonymous Guy #2 (alias John='echo 'Guy #2'')
John: "When I push the power button, nothing happens"
Jarod: "What kind of computer do you have?"
John: "A Dell"
Jarod: "Is it a Desktop or a Laptop?"
John: "Umm, Laptop is the one without wires right?"
Jarod: "Well, kindof. Laptops can work when cables aren't plugged into them."
John: "Then it is a laptop"
Jarod: "Was it working previously...like this weekend or last week?"
John: "It stopped working this weekend while I was writing a paper. I was typing and it just shut off."
Jarod: "Did you get any error messages before it shut off?"
John: "No, but it said it was going to standdown or something."
Jarod: "Umm, is the battery charged?"
John: "It should be. The box says the battery only needs to get replaced after like 3 years."

And amongst the best:
Anonymous Girl (alias Sue='echo 'Sorority Girls are dumb')
Sue: "My disk doesn't fit in the computer"
Jarod: "That isn't a disk, it's a calculator"
Sue: "What? Where are the buttons?"
Jarod:
Sue: "Oh" "You must think I'm so dumb now!"
Jarod: "I figured that out yesterday"

Now I am returning to my Econ homework.