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Computer Stupidities

evildave

Unregistered
E
http://www.rinkworks.com/stupid/

This site is one of my favorites, though its updated only intermittently.

Unfortunately, I've seen variations of many of these stories acted out before my very eyes.

So please, when it appears I'm not giving you the benefit of the doubt about yout technical abilities, keep in mind that though some of the stories are probably apocryphal, many of them are not only true, but commonly repeated.

I am always more likely to meet someone who could add whole new chapters to this archive than I am to meet someone who knows what they're doing.
 
Great site. I submitted this one (below) years ago. My friend was sure the CD on top of his PC was being scanned.
===
I recently helped my friend buy a new computer. I set it up for him and showed him all the basics. Several days later, he called me.

Me: "What's wrong with it?"
My Friend: "My CD drive is screwed up!"
Me: "What exactly happened?"
My Friend: "Well, remember you showed me how to load a CD? Before I turned on the computer, I took the CD out of the case and placed it on top of the computer right above the CD drive. When I turned on the computer, the CD drive tried to read the CD!"
Me: "What??"
My Friend: "I know it was trying to read it because I saw the little light flashing, so I took the CD off the top of the computer, and the lights stopped!"
Me: (stiffling laughter) "I assure you, it wasn't...oh, never mind."
===


Similar, but not really...check out The interface hall of shame.
 
Great link. Thanks.

A few years ago my best friend and his wife were planning on getting their first computer. I lived in another town so I told my friend to call me before they decide to get it so I can give them some advice. He said they weren't planning on getting one for at least a month. Two weeks later he calls me up saying his wife just bought a computer. He described it, pretty simple computer with nothing special, and I asked how much she paid for it. He said she wouldn't tell him. So he dug around looking for the receipt. The final total was $3500. This computer was worth no more then about $1100 give or take. I told him to take it back but he didn't want to get into a fight with her.
The marriage lasted about two years.
 
Well, the latest (repeated) idiocy is ISP tech support people telling customers that their computer is "broken" because they can't connect to certain web sites, or (in many cases) get their email from this very ISP.

What's more awful is, I get a call shortly afterwards with "emergency" overtones that the "COMPUTER IS BROKEN!" So, I come over, and of course it's not broken: the WEB SITE they were visiting, the one that doesn't come up when ALL OF THE OTHERS IN THE WORLD do come up, is down. What's worse is, the same people have told me their computer "is broken" for this exact same reason on multiple occasions!

They must sell a lot of TV sets to people when a particular channel doesn't have a signal on a particular day. "Wahhh! My TV set must be broken, because I can't watch FOX right now!"

I wonder if these people drive up to a "bridge out" sign, and conclude their car is broken?
 
evildave said:
http://www.rinkworks.com/stupid/

This site is one of my favorites, though its updated only intermittently.
Click to expand...

These are always fun. In passing, though, I have to say that at minimum half of these "stupidities" are results of systems not being designed right in the first place.

Also, some months ago I posted an extended transcript of some interactions I had with tech support. It was probably purged. Purged, I also have to note, by people who didn't write an SQL query and a couple of Perl scripts to keep the purging from affecting people's record of number of posts.
 
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