I started a class this year, a forensics class related to computers. The intro prompt is interesting, what computer do you have, windows or mac?
I started building pcs to replace cable boxes for people. The realization I had is that most people’s understanding of technology starts and ends with their phone.
And BEOS, of course.
Of course! How else am I going to play a video while I’m word processing?
Nah that dude is just a post Unix purist about to launch into a 3 hour talk about how Plan 9 is (not was) the future.
If that’s true then how come I see non-programmers talk about the somewhat obscure OS developer, Dick Pick, all the time?
‘Is this a windows computer’ ‘No this is a dell computer’
Nah, the title and the field where a person active, including comp sci will not guarantee any of these knowledge savy things, also there are factor of sociability between people , one side can pretend and ignore other in spite or apathy.
Computer scientists don’t understand this. This is systems.
Seriously, I have met computer scientists who admit they don’t know how the computer works, but simply is processional math.
One dude just got his phD in computer science and admitted to me he cannot even use his phone. Wish I was joking.
Computer science doesn’t mean you know how to a use a computer; astronomers and microbiologists don’t know much about telescopes and microscopes.
And CS students have the dumbest “smart” questions.
One dude just got his phD in computer science and admitted to me he cannot even use his phone. Wish I was joking
I mean, computer science is basically the mathematics of computation. It’s not like the people working on knot theory or topology are great with 3d art or knitting
Exactly
I swear I saw a comment around here that said “the average user does not want bloatware like systemd on their computer” and I just kind of wonder if we are all living on the same planet sometimes.
That…can’t have been real and serious
A BSD. There are multiple
If it makes you feel better, you’re probably overestimating their interest in whatever it is.
Yeah the avg people won’t even know about the TempleOS
Poor godless fools.
Most of them haven’t even set up Arch
I use Plan 9 BTW
no way
someone told me their sound for meetings was coming out of their hard drive the other day. I knew what they meant but still.
now if it was a floppy drive I could believe them
Hold up, what did they mean because I cannot translate that
Non-technical people will sometimes refer to whatever piece of plastic or metal that contains electronic components of any sort but does not consist of an LCD display or obvious input device as a “hard drive”. This includes desktop boxes, external modems, docking stations, UPS systems, teleconferencing platforms, and far, far more. If it has das blinkenlights anywhere on it you can expect it to be referred to as a “hard drive” at some point. It will save you a headache if you just mentally translate their “hard drive” to mean “hardware” instead.
Alternatively, if it is a display device (an LCD monitor), expect that to be called either “the computer”, “the server”, or “the internet”.
Probably the desktop tower. I’ve seen many people call it a hard drive, but I’m actually not sure how common it is to have speakers in the tower.
Technically most motherboard has a piezo speaker for POST beeps. Not sure you can route meeting audio through it though.
If you put Linux Mint on the average persons PC and set it up with the same desktop icons as their windows pc they wouldn’t know it wasn’t windows.
My dad has been running Linux Mint for almost 10 years now and he doesn’t know that LibreOffice isn’t “Linux.”
Just show them where the web browser is and done!
No shit I did this for my partners grandparent. All they needed was the browser to do shit like Facebook and paying bills. Slapped Linux Mint on their near dinosaur laptop with a Windows theme and they were none the wiser.
I constantly remind myself of the George Carlin(I think) quote:
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize that half of them are stupider than that.”
Also important to remember Douglas Adams (when underestimating stupid people):
“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”
Have gotten to post that one twice this week!
Adams was truly a modern philosopher of great note.
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
gotta add the babbage classic :
On two occasions I have been asked, — “Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?” In one case a member of the Upper, and in the other a member of the Lower, House put this question. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
I always think about the effort to create a bear proof trash can in Yosemite that gave us the phrase “there is significant overlap between the smartest bear and the dumbest tourist”.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/08/security_is_a_t.html
"There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists.”
While I don’t disagree with this in principal, it’s important to distinguish between stupidity and ignorance. Most people don’t know about OSes because they’ve never needed to learn more than how to do basic tasks, and so are ignorant of how they work, what alternatives are out there, and why someone might choose one. This is very different to being incapable of those technicalities if shown a good reason to do so.
