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from the it's-2015-and-things-are-easy dept.
I remember a story on the other site years ago when, following the Mojave Experiment, some guys did their own Folgers Test, asking people what they thought of this new (unidentified) UI and most of those folks thought it (KDE) was just more of Redmond's stuff.
Now, there's this story from OpenSource.com.
- Linux is so easy, anyone can install it--even by accident
One day, [...] a user's Windows install went corrupt on her laptop and she accidentally installed Linux. When her laptop couldn't [load the OS] from the hard drive, it automatically booted [to] the network. When she got the PXE install menu, she just hit Enter, installing a Linux desktop with all of our default network security settings and applications.
She then logged into it with her network account and emailed me to say that her Windows had updated and she wanted to know why her Microsoft Office looked so different now and "Where did Outlook go?" We had a good laugh over how Linux is so easy you can install and configure it by accident now, even on a laptop.
Hat tip to Robert Pogson for spotting this. The comment by IT pro oiaohm is, as always, insightful (once you adjust for his dyslexia).
(Score: 5, Funny) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday October 24 2015, @10:09PM
I'm constantly surprised by how little most people know about Excel. Simple, basic things like cutting and pasting entire columns/rows to rearrange some data is an unknown feature. I've watched people sort data by hand instead of using the sort option.
For Word, it's other irritations. Almost every Word document I get has information that's been lined up with spaces instead of using tabstops. Styles completely escapes most people. Want a 1st level heading? Click on bold, change font size to 18, and type “1. A Section,” completely defeating the outline panel and automatic table of contents generation. Then press enter, click bold again to disable it, change font size back to 10 or 12, and start typing. Remember to press space 4 or 5 times to get an indent when starting a new paragraph!
Want to copy something from that Excel sheet to Word? Print out the Excel sheet, and retype it by hand into Word.
Don't even get me started on users who don't understand why I can import data in one PDF in a matter of minutes and why I quote 10 hours of data entry for another PDF (which is invariably an Excel sheet that's been printed out and then faxed or scanned in).
I wish there were more of these “Microsoft Essentials” classes. The real trouble in my mind is that we're getting “Everyone Can Code!” classes that will likely just show how to use Javascript, glossing over the important topics of how data is represented in a computer. I'll bet they'll gloss over completely what's actually happening during an AJAX call.
Car analogy. If most people avoided knowledge about their cars to the extent they actively try to not learn a single damned thing about computers, it'd go like this.
User: “I'm turning the key and pressing the accelerator, but nothing's happening. Would you take a look?”
Tech: “You're out of gas. Get the can out of the back and pour it into your gas tank, then go to a gas station and fill up.”
User: “Wow, you're so smart!”
5 minutes later.
User: “The same thing is happening again. I twist my key and push the accelerator, but nothing's happening.”
Tech: “Didn't you go to the gas station?”
User: “What's a gassatim?”
Tech: “*sigh*. I'll dispatch roadside service.”
Repeat about 10 more times until they learn how to pump their own gas. Except they never learn how to read the gas gauge and just stick to this “it won't go” means put spare gas from can in tank, then go to a gas station pattern.
50,000 miles later.
User: “This car must just have some gremlins. It's just like before. I twist the key and push the accelerator but nothing happens. I even used the gas can. Would you come take a look?”
Tech: “Your engine block's seized up. When was the last time you checked or changed your oil?”
User: “What's Earl? That sounds technical.”
Tech: “*sigh*. You need to buy a new car.”
User: “Ah, ok. You're so smart! I just don't understand these cars at all!”
Maybe it's just flyover country. Too much inbreeding.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 24 2015, @10:16PM
I wish there were more of these “Microsoft Essentials” classes.
Then you need to get your priorities straight. The educational system is *supposed* to encourage critical thinking skills and encourage people to be good citizens, not abuse people (mostly kids) by having them use proprietary software and teaching them to be corporate drones. A good general education will allow people to figure out problems on their own rather than just memorizing how to do very specific tasks for very specific tools. Proprietary software shouldn't even be allowed in schools, since it, by its very nature, does not allow for education.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Sunday October 25 2015, @12:20AM
I agree with you. To be a little more specific though, people should be taught computer software concepts, rather than rote tasks. Every piece of software probably has a different set of terms for specific actions, say for example, formatting the margins of a page. Instead of teaching people that in Z application, you click menu-page-settings, you teach them to look for terms that suggest they are about making such changes. Might be "format page" or "page format" or "formatting" or "margins" or whatever. A person who knows how to do that in one specific program and who is rigidly married to that process, is just a meat robot. A person who can self-navigate a new piece of software has valuable skills.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday October 25 2015, @03:47AM
I feel my school did an excellent job of encouraging critical thinking skills and to question things that were not right. I even had several professors that would deliberately say wrong things in class, hoping one of us would pick up on it. Extra credit if we did. A classroom-wide admonishment if we did not.
If I were to teach a class, I would do the same thing. I loved trying to catch the professor pulling one of his "fast ones" to see if we were paying attention. For me, it was a game. The professors that were doing this had a lot of lively discussion ignited in the classroom using these antics.
Learning to think that way gave me one helluva leg up on "intelligence" tests. However, I am also extremely prone to give odd answers because I may have an alternate parsing of the test question than the test author has.
Some people call it "thinking outside the box" and "creativity", while others simply call it "wrong" because my reply does not match the answer given in the instructor's guide.
So Microsoft gets their software into schools and gets the kids started on it. Good business plan. Cognitive Dissonance for anything coming later. And be sure to teach the kids not to think... just obey. Do as you are told. Teach to the Test.
Its good for business to provide an incoming stream of obedient drones. Lots of em. Competing for fewer jobs than there are applicants. Economics dictates a wild race to the bottom pay so as not to be the one unemployed. From what I have seen, any spark of independent thinking is dangerous to the management hierarchy, as their authority is apt to be questioned if they can not justify their actions.
A child trained to think for themselves makes a poor blindly obedient corporate drone. They are very apt to be insubordinate when faced with what they interpret as incompetent leadership.
Churches do the same thing. They would really work on parents to get their kids involved in their Sunday Schools and Vacation Bible Schools, where they could get the kids started with the obligations of obedience to the Church. If you can get your thing into people first, anything else coming in then has to displace that which is already there. Look how long America has stayed on this "United States Customary Units" measurement system, while the rest of the world is running a far more elegant Metric system.
I have had a tagline for years that I took straight from the Bible which I use to justify my questioning of what I have been simply told and expected to accept without evidence of proof... The Bible itself is full of admonitions of "Do not be deceived". If I am indeed a created entity, why would it please my creator for me to be so superstitious and gullible as to accept whatever some man ( known full good and well to be very capable of lying - motivated by personal gain ) tells me?
I will offer another line straight out of the Bible...
"Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it." [KJV: Proverbs 22:6]
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 25 2015, @06:57AM
Economics dictates a wild race to the bottom pay so as not to be the one unemployed
1 incorrect word there.
What you described is *Capitalism*.
There other economic models.
In a **Socialist** economic system, the workers would vote on whether they wanted a race to the bottom.
Any bets on what they would decide?
My bet: They would decide to NOT try to wring every possible cent out of the system, would NOT overproduce, and would NOT create any bubbles.
If/when their market softened a bit, rather than layoffs, they would choose to shorten the workday for each worker and wait out the market recovery (probably investigating other markets).
N.B. With construction of new housing in the crapper, Mondragon's appliance division actually encountered this situation and the workers of the Mondragon cooperative chose to reassign idled workers to another division, with each worker already at that location working a slightly-reduced schedule.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 25 2015, @11:36PM
You describe capitalism as a wild race to the bottom ... and yet capitalism has the most consistently successful growth and development of all economic systems in the history of mankind, period. Feudalism offers stability, but ossification. Mercantilism offers local growth but not global enrichment. Socialism offers ... well, let's see what you have to say about socialism.
Apparently, socialism is ... any system where the workers get to vote? So you can have a socialist cooperative in a capitalist system? Cool, go forth and start all the cooperatives you want. Socialism in capitalism, the best of both worlds. Of course, you don't exactly detail what happens to the workers who don't belong to a cooperative - do the benevolent cooperatives just let them join in? Let them buy in? What happens to the stakes in the cooperatives?
Please, do offer us detailed and specific outlines of precisely how this system works, it sounds fascinating.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 26 2015, @02:19AM
Capitalism rarely goes more than 7 years without a recession|slump|slowdown.
Every 80 years or so, Capitalism completely flushes the economy down the crapper and at least 20 percent of workers can't find a real job at a living wage.
Those are really shitty metrics for "successful".
I have repeatedly mentioned a place that has NEVER had a worker laid off since it started in 1956.
It's called Mondragon. Look it up.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 26 2015, @03:42AM
So what you're saying is that capitalism, which has actually produced massive growth and measurable elevation in standards of living, sucks compared to some other system ... that is so secret you can't tell us about it? Because sometimes it hits difficulties? I suppose by that measure the car with the best suspension in the world is the one that never drives anywhere - never a bump in its road!
As a matter of fact, I'm familiar with Mondragon, and it turns out that Mondragon thrives (when it thrives - not exactly constant) in a ... wait for it ... capitalist environment. Sure, the workers have a say in how things go down, but they buy and sell under rules similar to everyone else in Spain. So by holding Mondragon up, at best your argument is that a cooperative is a good way of running a company.
Nothing about that supports an assertion that capitalism is unwise, nor that anything else would be an improvement on it.
So, returning to the point at hand: what, precisely (details, please, and lots of them!) are you proposing by way of an alternative? How do you recommend that the world resolve competing claims on resources? How will intermediate products be passed between primary, secondary and tertiary industries? What limits will be placed on individual ownership or control of resources? How will you prevent accumulation of resources which would normally be a normal part of capitalism?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 26 2015, @05:37AM
I'm done with idiots who insist that Socialism is a subset of Capitalism.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 26 2015, @02:15PM
Oooh, me too! Me too!
Uh, does that mean you'll actually answer the questions?
(Score: 2) by edIII on Saturday October 24 2015, @11:18PM
One of my favorites. I mentioned AJAX calls before to a user, and they said they knew I was pulling their leg on that one and just making up shit as I went along. I asked what they meant, and they replied that their computer doesn't run on dish soap. I told them that they were making that up, and we both googled it. It was indeed dish soap. We both learned something that day.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday October 25 2015, @01:58AM
Styles completely escapes most people.
This.
An absolute disaster when you finally realized the new employee manually formatted every frikin line in the entire document.
I blame the "reveal codes" mentality of Word Perfect days.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Sunday October 25 2015, @03:19PM
I laughed until I cried at this.
I worked at a trust bank once, one of the largest in the world. The division there had a set of 5 Excel files they used to calculate their rich clients' financial footing and formulate investment recommendations for them. They would tabulate the bank balances in one file. Then they'd manually copy & paste that over to a second file, where they put it next to the current net worth of their stock portfolios, which they had tabulated in file 3. And so on. It would take them a week and a half to process one client. I brought all five files together in one in the form of tabs, linked it and automated it with macros and their turnaround time per client shrank to 30 minutes. Yup, rocket science, right? The bankers looked at me and said, "You're, like, a freak of nature."
Yes, it was in flyover country.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday October 26 2015, @05:39PM
I used a similar anecdote when I was working on my Father-in-Law's computer. As he put it, the difference is that his PC cost him something like $400. Assuming it lasts a few years, that's pretty cheap.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"