I've been working with computers since the mid 1970s, and thought I'd seen every possible stupid thing users could do. Coffee cups on the PC's cup holder. $20 bills jammed into the slot (floppy) to purchase stuff on the internet. Pretty much everything featured on TDWTF. Nothing could surprise me anymore. Until today.

A co-worker in another group, upon finishing a presentation, asked me to distribute it to the folks in my department. I told her I'd need six copies. She said she'd get them to me. So far, so good.

An hour later, I got an e-mail from her. Ok, so I'd have to print out six copies myself. Still, so far, so good. Then I opened the e-mail, to find six copies of the presentation attached.

Today, I learned to never underestimate Mother Nature's ability to create idiots faster than Natural Selection can kill them off!

*sigh*

I once asked a user for a copy of an Access database they were having trouble with. I asked if they needed to be walked through getting it to me, but they were generally pretty sharp and said they could handle it.

The next day my inbox had an email from the user with attachments. I was kind of surprised it came out ok until I opened it to find that the attachments were images of the icons. They were indeed images of the icons of database files though!

JoC:

I once asked a user for a copy of an Access database they were having trouble with. I asked if they needed to be walked through getting it to me, but they were generally pretty sharp and said they could handle it.

The next day my inbox had an email from the user with attachments. I was kind of surprised it came out ok until I opened it to find that the attachments were images of the icons. They were indeed images of the icons of database files though!

Nice!

JoC:

I once asked a user for a copy of an Access database they were having trouble with. I asked if they needed to be walked through getting it to me, but they were generally pretty sharp and said they could handle it.

The next day my inbox had an email from the user with attachments. I was kind of surprised it came out ok until I opened it to find that the attachments were images of the icons. They were indeed images of the icons of database files though!

Atleast they had the skills to take images of the icons. I remember receiving zipped up shortcuts to mdbs on  a 1.44 MB floppy. Good gracious. Imagine tolerating the - "it unzips and works on my computer" remark after that.

snoofle:

...$20 bills jammed into the slot (floppy) to purchase stuff on the internet. Pretty much everything featured on TDWTF. Nothing could surprise me anymore. Until today.

...

An hour later, I got an e-mail from her. Ok, so I'd have to print out six copies myself. Still, so far, so good. Then I opened the e-mail, to find six copies of the presentation attached.

I'm sorry, I think the $20 bill thing is way more surprising than the 6 copies.

Did she tell you that she would need at least one of the copies back when you were done? And then did you say, "OK, but since I'm printing it out, it'll be on paper."?

You think a $20 bill causes a mess with the floppy slot? You should have seen my uncle when he browsed to his first adult website with a wad full of $1 bills...

What you say is so damn true. I remember my school days when we had an introduction to information technology. It was quite ok, because the teacher was a regular math teacher and I can say that 90 % of the pupils would have surpassed him in any kind of knowledge.

I remember one moment when we had to get save some data from our systems to a floppy disk, so we could work on it at home. (nothing WTFesk until now). One of the girls (no she was not blone nor hot at all like hairpulling girl or foosball girl) REALLY tried to put the floppy-disk into the CD-ROM drive.

This was a major WTF at that moment, because god damn at the kindergarden you play with some wooden stuff that teaches you the difference between circles and squares. A 5 year old child would have done a better job at this.


(Another true wtf is that with every key that i press while typing this i create at least 10 javascript errors which makes typing really laggy)

I do remember that when I did my electronics course (Early 1990s) we had to do an "introduction to IT" unit. This was probably fine for the "just out of school" crowd, but I had been working as a programmer for years.

I sat through the first "lab session" - I did the exercises in the first few minutes, then explored the set-up on the PC. It had a number of DOS applications run from a “secure menu” that you could only exit by entering a password. It had a simple CAD program, WordStar for word-processing, some sort of spreadsheet and a few other bits.

At the end of the lecture I asked the lecturer if I could be excused the rest of the unit because of my experience.  She said that I would need to demonstrate my computer literacy first.  To me this meant showing that I understood DOS and the way it controls the computer, not a bunch of basic applications; so I thought that I needed to start with a DOS prompt. But I didn’t have the password to get out of the menu system.

No problem… when she showed me to the nearest PC (sat at its ‘secure’ menu) and asked me to show her what I knew, I header straight for DOS (my way). I selected WordStar, hit Ctrl-K F to “run a command” typed “command” to run command.com and received a DOS prompt. I turned to the lecturer and asked what she wanted to see. She looked blank for a moment then said “I haven’t the foggiest what you just did, so lets assume you know more than I do!”

snoofle:

I've been working with computers since the mid 1970s, and thought I'd seen every possible stupid thing users could do. Coffee cups on the PC's cup holder. $20 bills jammed into the slot (floppy) to purchase stuff on the internet. Pretty much everything featured on TDWTF. Nothing could surprise me anymore. Until today.

A co-worker in another group, upon finishing a presentation, asked me to distribute it to the folks in my department. I told her I'd need six copies. She said she'd get them to me. So far, so good.

An hour later, I got an e-mail from her. Ok, so I'd have to print out six copies myself. Still, so far, so good. Then I opened the e-mail, to find six copies of the presentation attached.

Today, I learned to never underestimate Mother Nature's ability to create idiots faster than Natural Selection can kill them off!

*sigh*

That's nothing.

My dad was Ireland's main importer of Motorolla computers back in the seventies. He fitted a huge pig farm and a huge gardening centre with computers to monitor stock and what have you. (DBase, I believe was the db language, but it's been some years now)

He got a call from the first place which said that after a power spike the system went down, that's not too serious though, the system was programmed to do nightly back ups and he instructed them on how to stick in a floppy disk and take them out. He stressed how important it was to keep them safe so he asked if they had copies. She said they did so he got in his car and drove out. She did have the floppies, but she had punched them to store them in a folder. "You only said not to let them get torn or cut, you didn't tell me not to punch them".

The pig farm lost their re-install cds and asked to be sent out new copies. When my dad said it would either take a week or two in the post or they could have him deliver them (for a reasonable price) they demanded he fax them down.

wing:

The pig farm lost their re-install cds and asked to be sent out new copies. When my dad said it would either take a week or two in the post or they could have him deliver them (for a reasonable price) they demanded he fax them down.

Maybe they received their computers by fax.

kuroshin:

wing:

The pig farm lost their re-install cds and asked to be sent out new copies. When my dad said it would either take a week or two in the post or they could have him deliver them (for a reasonable price) they demanded he fax them down.

Maybe they received their computers by fax.

lol....

wing:

The pig farm lost their re-install cds and asked to be sent out new copies. When my dad said it would either take a week or two in the post or they could have him deliver them (for a reasonable price) they demanded he fax them down.

Just tell them to put the CD-ROM template media into the fax machine in place of the paper and you'll get straight on it!

RayS:

wing:

The pig farm lost their re-install cds and asked to be sent out new copies. When my dad said it would either take a week or two in the post or they could have him deliver them (for a reasonable price) they demanded he fax them down.

Just tell them to put the CD-ROM template media into the fax machine in place of the paper and you'll get straight on it!

I'm definitely going to remember that one.

One of my friends once brought me a floppy disk. He said, "there are some software programs on this floppy. Really nice ones. Try them." I put it in, and saw - Adobe Photoshop, CorelDRAW, Microsoft Office 2k, Visual Studio 6, Macromedia Dreamweaver. They were all windows 9x "shortcut to's". Turned out he right clicked the Start menu links and did a "Send to... floppy".

And talking about needing a license to use a computer, one particular republican actually seriously believes so. Quote from http://www.shelleytherepublican.com/ - "There should be an “Internet drivers license“. Anybody wishing to use the Internet should be examined on their knowledge of the Windows operating system, plus have a basic standard of morality. References from a church or local republican party officer may be required to get the license. Ex-convicts and people with lax morals should be kept from the Internet for their own good!"

 The only bad part is that this guy also believes that Linux, atheists and liberals are all the spawns of Satan.

I mean, I've been partial to the first part after spending three hours trying to get X11 to work, but honestly.

Alex - time to stop posting the link to the original post?  :)

pianohacker:

 The only bad part is that this guy also believes that Linux, atheists and liberals are all the spawns of Satan.

I mean, I've been partial to the first part after spending three hours trying to get X11 to work, but honestly.

 

Wait... What?

MasterPlanSoftware:

pianohacker:

I mean, I've been partial to the first part after spending three hours trying to get X11 to work, but honestly.

 

Wait... What?

Yeah, didn't think about that, but yeah, get yourself a distro that doesn't suck.  Considering he's a piano hacker, maybe he was trying to install linux on a piano?  or an Easy Bake Oven?

Also keep in mind that, without X11, he was trying for three hours in text only mode.

 

belgariontheking:

MasterPlanSoftware:

pianohacker:

I mean, I've been partial to the first part after spending three hours trying to get X11 to work, but honestly.

 

Wait... What?

Yeah, didn't think about that, but yeah, get yourself a distro that doesn't suck.  Considering he's a piano hacker, maybe he was trying to install linux on a piano?  or an Easy Bake Oven?

Also keep in mind that, without X11, he was trying for three hours in text only mode.

I wish I had a clue what the hell he/you are talking about! (without rereading all the posts in this ancient thread)

MasterPlanSoftware:

 

belgariontheking:

MasterPlanSoftware:

pianohacker:

I mean, I've been partial to the first part after spending three hours trying to get X11 to work, but honestly.

 

Wait... What?

Yeah, didn't think about that, but yeah, get yourself a distro that doesn't suck.  Considering he's a piano hacker, maybe he was trying to install linux on a piano?  or an Easy Bake Oven?

Also keep in mind that, without X11, he was trying for three hours in text only mode.

I wish I had a clue what the hell he/you are talking about! (without rereading all the posts in this ancient thread)

 

I like cupcakes.

R.Flowers:

snoofle:

...$20 bills jammed into the slot (floppy) to purchase stuff on the internet. Pretty much everything featured on TDWTF. Nothing could surprise me anymore. Until today.

...

An hour later, I got an e-mail from her. Ok, so I'd have to print out six copies myself. Still, so far, so good. Then I opened the e-mail, to find six copies of the presentation attached.

 

...

Did she tell you that she would need at least one of the copies back when you were done? And then did you say, "OK, but since I'm printing it out, it'll be on paper."?

Maybe a boundary object is a boundary object, digital or not? Maybe not so bad when you think about. Perception, possession, the lot.

The line about your uncle, please say it isn't true.

mercurysquad:

And talking about needing a license to use a computer, one particular republican actually seriously believes so. Quote from http://www.shelleytherepublican.com/ - "There should be an “Internet drivers license“. Anybody wishing to use the Internet should be examined on their knowledge of the Windows operating system, plus have a basic standard of morality. References from a church or local republican party officer may be required to get the license. Ex-convicts and people with lax morals should be kept from the Internet for their own good!"

 

Granted, I can't view this in all its glory because my employer's proxy blocks it, but based on what I could read via alternate methods, this HAS to be a troll. There's no other possible explanation. 

R.Flowers:

 You should have seen my uncle when he browsed to his first adult website with a wad full of $1 bills...

 

 Actually I'm pretty glad I missed that ...

MasterPlanSoftware:

I wish I had a clue what the hell he/you are talking about! (without rereading all the posts in this ancient thread)

They would be referring to Shelly the "republican", said person(s) "pretend" to be mentally-handicapped and insane republicans who among other things worship vista more than they do their god and loathe the existence of an operating system that actually treats knowledgeable users like the knowledgeable users they are. pianohacker was mentioning an anecdote about his ventures into the lovely world of X11 configuration which is not something one wants to do without a fair amount of knowledge or a second computer handy. Personally I have a folder named /etc/X11/xorg which contains every xorg.conf I've made for that system + the default one, then I just link /etc/X11/xorg.conf to the appropriate one, makes error recovery super easy. But his system didn't have sane defaults, which is odd because afaik xorg will guess quite accurately without a config file.

markleo:

Granted, I can't view this in all its glory because my employer's proxy blocks it, but based on what I could read via alternate methods, this HAS to be a troll. There's no other possible explanation. 

I don't think it's a troll, but rather a spoof, a send up, a parody. The thing is, it's only the computing articles that give it away for me. I reckon a lot of people read it, and not only don't see it as a joke, but believe in and agree with it

m0ffx:

I don't think it's a troll, but rather a spoof, a send up, a parody. The thing is, it's only the computing articles that give it away for me. I reckon a lot of people read it, and not only don't see it as a joke, but believe in and agree with it

 

 

 

That's the real WTF..

 

moonlighter:

The line about your uncle, please say it isn't true.

 

It's not true.

 Man, this thread is old. Memories, though, eh?

Lingerance:

which is not something one wants to do without a fair amount of knowledge

Most current distros will, in one way or other, have an auto-configurator for X or an easy way to change configuration.

 

Here, I generated my xorg.conf file by using xorgconfig and then editing it to use the NVidia driver. 

 

 

Renan_S2:

Most current distros will, in one way or other, have an auto-configurator for X or an easy way to change configuration.

This is mostly what I was getting at.  I use Debian, and when I installed it, it installed X11 and KDE for me so I never had to configurate it.  It did it from a graphical interface, even, so it already knew (by the fact that I was responding to the questions on the screen) that it had a valid configuration.  

If you don't have X11 configured, how do you expect to configure it?  From a command line.  Maybe that's what I should have said, instead of "text only mode."  That was my WTF

pianohacker:

 The only bad part is that this guy also believes that Linux, atheists and liberals are all the spawns of Satan.

I mean, I've been partial to the first part after spending three hours trying to get X11 to work, but honestly.

X11 predates Linux by four years, and I don't think anybody would seriously defend it (except maybe the ones smoking the x.org crack pipe). It's a pile of crap, it's just that everything else out there that does the same job is worse.

Lingerance:

But his system didn't have sane defaults, which is odd because afaik xorg will guess quite accurately without a config file.

Renan_S2:

Most current distros will, in one way or other, have an auto-configurator for X or an easy way to change configuration.

I'm not all that much of an old hand, but it makes me feel that way to see comments like this... It wasn't all that long ago that X11 on Linux meant XFree86, not X.org, and an invalid configuration meant no display. Back in the day, I spent my fair share of time tweaking XF86Config to get X working... Sure, this time around it was simply boot, install, run, but it wasn't always this easy... As asufffield points out, X11 predated Linux, and in the good old days of Unix, configuration meant editing text files, not running an "autoconfig" script...

<practicing voice="oldman">Now, get of my lawn!</praciticing>

random_garbage:

I'm not all that much of an old hand, but it makes me feel that way to see comments like this... It wasn't all that long ago that X11 on Linux meant XFree86, not X.org, and an invalid configuration meant no display. Back in the day, I spent my fair share of time tweaking XF86Config to get X working... Sure, this time around it was simply boot, install, run, but it wasn't always this easy... As asufffield points out, X11 predated Linux, and in the good old days of Unix, configuration meant editing text files, not running an "autoconfig" script...

 

This is pretty much what I meant. I've only had major problems with X config files on an old Debian machine and a system with an ATI chipset and nVidia video card that hated each other, but they stand out. Also, a lot of the X.org built-in guessing code is kinda new, and still needs tweaking sometimes on laptops and other edgy cases.

Note to all: Yes, I resurrected an old thread. I forgot to check the modification time, and I'm sorry.