3 ms·

Better education hence better understanding of technology would ultimately stop this nonsense.

userbinator 5y ago
The problem is that those in power don't want most people to have a better understanding of technology.
kube-system 5y ago
The teacher who put this tape in a VCR back in the day probably graduated school before home VHS was even a settled standard. What sort of education could she have had that would reassure her that VCRs don't execute code from tape? And for that matter, the successor to VHS, DVD-Video, does have some code execution features. http://dvd.sourceforge.net/dvdinfo/vmi-sum.html http://dvd.sourceforge.net/dvdinfo/vmi-sum.html
- hilbert42 5y ago
  "...reassure her that VCRs don't execute code from tape" That's were a good education comes in. A good education gives one an inquiring mind and thus she'd know from computers of that time that programs on tapes require computers and back then VCRs, at best, had dedicated controllers that had no way of running such a program (they could barely play video let alone do anything else). Moreover, a reality check would come into play. How would any and every brand of VCR be able to respond such a program made after VCRs were designed - that feature having never been mentioned in the handbooks or elsewhere? Even then and even if VCRs had the potential to do so, she'd ask herself the obvious question 'if this were true then everyone would be talking about it by now so why haven't I heard about it?' Right, nothing's impossible, pigs may fly but I've yet to see one (the corollary being the gullible are easily fooled).
  - wutbrodo 5y ago
    > That's were a good education comes in. A good education gives one an inquiring mind Education isn't magic, and can't instill an inquiring mind reliably. I went to a (at the time) $35k/yr private school that I consider to provide a fairly fantastic education. I remember being shocked when I discovered that my college roommate (a friend from the same high school) didn't know that you could delete installer files after installing software, taking up several GB of data back in the day when disk space was dear. I had of course wondered the same thing at some pt in my life, and figured it years earlier by running a two-minute experiment in which I risked breaking the install of a game I didn't care that much about. The difference between him and me certainly wasn't our education.
    - Szpadel 5y ago
      this reminds me about interesting web experiment. there was a page where you got some begging of number sequence, eg 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 ... and you could check if some number belongs to that sequence, and there was a question if you know algorithm of this sequence. the trick part was that most people would assume Fibonacci sequence and they only checked few next numbers of that sequence until they claimed to know what sequence it was. it wasn't it was just another one that just started like that and it was now very sparse, therefore container most of Fibonacci numbers, but most people would only check if numbers that they think they should be there are correct, and didn't try those they would not expect to confirm sequence. this shows interesting thing about humans, that they do not want to do even simple experiments where the result would be a failure
    - hilbert42 5y ago
      "... didn't know that you could delete installer files after installing software, taking up several GB of data..." Although I didn't state it, the point I was making was that there is a considerable - in fact a great difference between being able to solve problems by inference and logical deduction and knowing the specifics of some quirky design that's arisen in the mind of a developer - which, in essence, could be anything, and in fact may itself be illogical and deficient - as I show hereunder! A good education allows one to develop one's skills and ability to be able to solve problems by inference and logical deduction, it does not teach one to read the minds of every Tom, Dick and Harry although if you have to do that a good education probably helps. Moreover, no one who is unfamiliar with computer technology would be able to reasonably deduce the problem that you've raised simply because there are multiple and very logical ways (not to mention illogical ones) that installers could be installed onto a PC. What you said about the removal of installation programs is not necessarily correct, in fact it's often wrong. With many programs installers are required to be left on the PC otherwise the programs will not work or it is impossible to uninstall them without those files! Your suggestion of removing installers became such a problem for Microsoft that it deliberately removed its useful maintenance program Windows Installer CleanUp Utility† 2.5.0.1 from its website specifically because too many people were using it indiscriminately to do exactly what you suggested. Again, the knowledge about cleaning up installer files by simply deleting them that you acquired from somewhere and that you found works for you doesn't necessarily do so for everybody - as Microsoft accurately asserts. What I say about that is no matter how bright you are you would NOT be expected to know that there are inconsistencies in this discovered procedure simply BECAUSE the procedure is illogical - that to say not all programs are equal in this respect when they ought to be. __ † This is one of a number of Microsoft sites where it discusses this problem https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/windows-installer-cleanup-utility-removed-all/fa37b793-bbeb-48f6-ad01-fb59ba15c5ee https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/window.... BTW, the program is still on my machine because I now know how to use it with care - that is, I've learned to do so after several fuck-ups.

The problem is that those in power don't want most people to have a better understanding of technology.

The teacher who put this tape in a VCR back in the day probably graduated school before home VHS was even a settled standard. What sort of education could she have had that would reassure her that VCRs don't execute code from tape? And for that matter, the successor to VHS, DVD-Video, does have some code execution features. http://dvd.sourceforge.net/dvdinfo/vmi-sum.html http://dvd.sourceforge.net/dvdinfo/vmi-sum.html

hilbert42 5y ago
"...reassure her that VCRs don't execute code from tape" That's were a good education comes in. A good education gives one an inquiring mind and thus she'd know from computers of that time that programs on tapes require computers and back then VCRs, at best, had dedicated controllers that had no way of running such a program (they could barely play video let alone do anything else). Moreover, a reality check would come into play. How would any and every brand of VCR be able to respond such a program made after VCRs were designed - that feature having never been mentioned in the handbooks or elsewhere? Even then and even if VCRs had the potential to do so, she'd ask herself the obvious question 'if this were true then everyone would be talking about it by now so why haven't I heard about it?' Right, nothing's impossible, pigs may fly but I've yet to see one (the corollary being the gullible are easily fooled).
- wutbrodo 5y ago
  > That's were a good education comes in. A good education gives one an inquiring mind Education isn't magic, and can't instill an inquiring mind reliably. I went to a (at the time) $35k/yr private school that I consider to provide a fairly fantastic education. I remember being shocked when I discovered that my college roommate (a friend from the same high school) didn't know that you could delete installer files after installing software, taking up several GB of data back in the day when disk space was dear. I had of course wondered the same thing at some pt in my life, and figured it years earlier by running a two-minute experiment in which I risked breaking the install of a game I didn't care that much about. The difference between him and me certainly wasn't our education.
  - Szpadel 5y ago
    this reminds me about interesting web experiment. there was a page where you got some begging of number sequence, eg 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 ... and you could check if some number belongs to that sequence, and there was a question if you know algorithm of this sequence. the trick part was that most people would assume Fibonacci sequence and they only checked few next numbers of that sequence until they claimed to know what sequence it was. it wasn't it was just another one that just started like that and it was now very sparse, therefore container most of Fibonacci numbers, but most people would only check if numbers that they think they should be there are correct, and didn't try those they would not expect to confirm sequence. this shows interesting thing about humans, that they do not want to do even simple experiments where the result would be a failure
  - hilbert42 5y ago
    "... didn't know that you could delete installer files after installing software, taking up several GB of data..." Although I didn't state it, the point I was making was that there is a considerable - in fact a great difference between being able to solve problems by inference and logical deduction and knowing the specifics of some quirky design that's arisen in the mind of a developer - which, in essence, could be anything, and in fact may itself be illogical and deficient - as I show hereunder! A good education allows one to develop one's skills and ability to be able to solve problems by inference and logical deduction, it does not teach one to read the minds of every Tom, Dick and Harry although if you have to do that a good education probably helps. Moreover, no one who is unfamiliar with computer technology would be able to reasonably deduce the problem that you've raised simply because there are multiple and very logical ways (not to mention illogical ones) that installers could be installed onto a PC. What you said about the removal of installation programs is not necessarily correct, in fact it's often wrong. With many programs installers are required to be left on the PC otherwise the programs will not work or it is impossible to uninstall them without those files! Your suggestion of removing installers became such a problem for Microsoft that it deliberately removed its useful maintenance program Windows Installer CleanUp Utility† 2.5.0.1 from its website specifically because too many people were using it indiscriminately to do exactly what you suggested. Again, the knowledge about cleaning up installer files by simply deleting them that you acquired from somewhere and that you found works for you doesn't necessarily do so for everybody - as Microsoft accurately asserts. What I say about that is no matter how bright you are you would NOT be expected to know that there are inconsistencies in this discovered procedure simply BECAUSE the procedure is illogical - that to say not all programs are equal in this respect when they ought to be. __ † This is one of a number of Microsoft sites where it discusses this problem https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/windows-installer-cleanup-utility-removed-all/fa37b793-bbeb-48f6-ad01-fb59ba15c5ee https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/window.... BTW, the program is still on my machine because I now know how to use it with care - that is, I've learned to do so after several fuck-ups.