5 ms·

Things People Believe About Computers

39 points by klimeryk 13y ago

whiddershins 13y ago
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2013/07/22/12-silly-things-people-believe-about-computers/&strip=1 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
- Slackwise 13y ago
  Readability cache, with images, good formatting, and images intact: http://www.readability.com/articles/djg4qlyo http://www.readability.com/articles/djg4qlyo
unimpressive 13y ago
Literally writing a book right now where I try and slay some of these. Thanks for reminding me of a few.
pestaa 13y ago
This was a nicely written article, but missed a few pet peeves. Like how a full generation thinks the blue "e" icon is the internet, that they can close the internet by closing the browser, etc. Some of them even think Google home page is the internet itself. And don't let me start on how people name files: sent you a Word file, have you received my Excel file?, gotta present you a PowerPoint... Hurts a little inside.
- freehunter 13y ago
  What's wrong with "sent you a Word file"? I say that all the time. It's a file I created in Word.
  - GeneralMayhem 13y ago
    If it's not .doc[x], it's not a Word file. I suspect parent was griping about people who would use "Word file" for anything they can open in Word.
    - levosmetalo 13y ago
      If it has a Word icon in Windows Explorer, then it is a Word file. You can ask ~90% computer users if you don't believe me.
      - fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
        >You can ask ~90% computer users if you don't believe me. The point of the article is that there are a lot of common misconceptions made by average people. Also, there is no magic filetype detection that makes the Word icon appear, just a setting which is pretty easy for a novice to bodge-up, incidentally. If you were being sarcastic, I just missed it.
  - igravious 13y ago
    I meet you at the mall. I ask you how you got here. You say: A) I drove here. B) I drove here in my car. C) I drove here in my Hyundai Accent. If you say C (or even B) people will look at you funny because you've given them too much information. Why can't people say, "I sent you the spreadsheet" or, "I'm going to show you my presentation", or "Here is the text document"? Why when it comes to computers do otherwise smart people suddenly start spouting gibberish?
    - Dylan16807 13y ago
      Word file is both more specific and shorter than text document. Your analogy is horrible because one way to drive implies only one kind of file. Try "I drove here." "I took a bus here." "I took a taxi here.". And if they have multiple cars it's especially reasonable to say which one they took. I really don't understand why you have this complaint. Do you have some kind of weird overattachment to genetic terms?
    - fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
      Bad habit, I agree, but probably due to certain companies' very-effective marketing. For example, in some areas of the country, people used to commonly refer to carbonated beverages as "Coke".
      - groovy2shoes 13y ago
        In some areas of the country, people still commonly refer to carbonated beverages as "Coke".
    - nahname 13y ago
      Let me google that for you. We are just as guilty.
    - freehunter 13y ago
      "I sent you a file". Okay, which one? Can you be more specific? I have four files that you sent. Saying "I sent you a Word file" isn't too much information, it's just the right amount of information. As for saying the brand name, text documents vary far and wide. I wouldn't ask someone to open a docx in Wordpad or Notepad, it'd either be horrible formatting or useless noise. Even opening a docx in OpenOffice could turn out poorly, depending on which features of Word you used in the creation of the document. If someone was asking if they could ride with me, it makes a big difference if I drove here in my Hyundai Accent or if I rode here on my Schwinn.
- sdevlin 13y ago
  The format of a document is relevant to the recipient. Not every text editor will open a Word document. Also, you probably wouldn't look at someone funny for requesting a kleenex. All the things you mentioned have pretty strong brand-name recognition, such that e.g. even non-PowerPoint slide decks are called PowerPoints.
- mdip 13y ago
  I totally agree with you on the "e" icon. My parents had received a virus that originated from a web site (seedy in nature) that exploited a vulnerability in IE 6. After having to revisit them twice in a month, I replaced the shortcut with Firefox and Adblock+ (adblock was to prevent explotation of vulnerabilities in Flash Player that were happening with increasing frequency from popular ad networks). It wasn't until last year that I flipped the icon back to Firefox when I installed their new computer. The first week I received two phone calls from my mom asking "Where's the Internet"? The second one concluded with her asking me to put the other picture back "next time I come over" because she liked it better than the red/orange icon.
calgoo 13y ago
This reminds me of when I was describing to my wife how the NSA was snooping on the internet traffic, and she had a "special" moment: "But how can they get the data if its floating in space". Talk about cloud computing!!!
- aestra 13y ago
  51% of people think stormy weather affects cloud computing, and a full 95% of people don't think they ever use cloud computing. http://www.businessinsider.com/people-think-stormy-weather-affects-cloud-computing-2012-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/people-think-stormy-weather-a...
  - whiddershins 13y ago
    who even answers these questions? have you ever had the patience to stay on the phone and be interviewed about computer use? I rest my case. (oh, I should mention, I loved reading and will love quoting that stat, regardless)
    - aestra 13y ago
      They were answered by people who did an online survery who responded to an email invitation. It was right in the article.
jiggy2011 13y ago
Computers and especially software are really difficult to explain because of the sheer amount of abstraction involved, it doesn't help that software often presents abstractions to users that do not reflect the underlying mechanism. You will tend to find misconceptions about things very commonly amongst even people who work in IT as their livelihood. If you ask 100 mechanics how a 4 stroke engine works you're likely to get approximately the same answer. Ask 100 IT people or developers what an operating system does and you'll get 100 different ones.
- bebna 13y ago
  Ask them about the 4stroke and you get even more differences.
  - jiggy2011 13y ago
    With something like that it's easier to know how much you know. I could probably give a reasonable description of it, I might get some specifics wrong or not be able to go into as much detail as someone more knowledgeable but at least it wouldn't be completely insane. I probably have more misconceptions about computers that I'm not even aware of.
  - techdmn 13y ago
    Suck squish bang blow.
    - canthonytucci 13y ago
      Was hoping someone would say this. I would love for someone more clever than I am to come up with the OS equivalent.
      - VLM 13y ago
        Suck the money out of your wallet squish 10 gigs of shovelware and trialware and just junk onto the hard drive bang it crashes and needs reinstallation on a regular basis blow. windows blows.
kunil 13y ago
> #9: Computer Science courses teach you how to repair computers Oh god, this. edit: People also think CS teaches us which computer brands are good or answers to the questions like "This computer has 4gb ram, should I buy it"
- lubomir 13y ago
  That may be one badly chosen name. However, it is not just the name. In my language, instead of computer science it is called "informatika" (which would translate to informatics [1]), and while that name does not even suggest computers, many people have the same thoughts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informatics_(academic_field) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informatics_(academic_field)
mumbi 13y ago
Cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2013/07/22/12-silly-things-people-believe-about-computers/&strip=1 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
- Jgrubb 13y ago
  There's some irony in an article about how normal people don't know how to use their computers getting taken down by a front page HN appearance.
  - hamax 13y ago
    Where is the irony?
    - Jgrubb 13y ago
      If caching was set up on the webserver I might be able to read the article.
      - icebraining 13y ago
        Well, OP did have WP-Cache installed once; not sure if he reinstalled it after the migration.
      - tuxmentat 13y ago
        WP-Cache was in place, but HN hammered the server anyway. Typically it is not an issue but "dat traffic spike" was more or less way too much for the poor linode to handle: http://i.imgur.com/3jPD0iB.png http://i.imgur.com/3jPD0iB.png I think Wordpress + Apache is just a beast - I've seen people talk about running Ngnx in front of Apache as a proxy serving only static content but I haven't gotten around to investigating that kind of setup yet.
eieio 13y ago
I'm split on this article. On the one hand, I empathize with the author. It can be very frustrating dealing with non-technical friends/family who use computers all the time and are seemingly incapable of doing the most basic things. Especially googling their problems. On the other hand, there are plenty of things that I do or benefit from about which I have no knowledge. I drive to work 5 days a week. I hate it. I don't even have a long commute, typically it takes under 10 minutes. But I treat it as a necessary evil and I have very little knowledge of my car. It's a tool that I use every day, but I'm sure there are many more than 12 misconceptions I have about it. Put another way, I wonder if grilling enthusiasts write articles titled "Things People Believe About Grills" targeted at folks like the author.
- showsover 13y ago
  But the difference is that you don't drive your car for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, years on end.
  - eieio 13y ago
    Fair enough. I guess I'm just wary of articles like these because I think that nerds like me(and I'm assuming the author) have the tendency to put computers on this pedestal because we use them a lot and really really like them. It's not the end of the world when someone confuses memory with storage or thinks that www should go in front of everything. In fact, these days I'd argue that it's not hugely important for "normal" people to know either of those things. I'd say that the most important part of this article is about learning to use Google, which is a hugely important skill at this point. Misconceptions about viruses are annoying and sometimes very problematic. And backups are important. But I'd argue that just about everything else listed isn't hugely important. They're annoying misconceptions, sure. But that's about it. It's ok to be an unsophisticated user. Understanding that is what allows us to write good, usable software for "normal" people.
- GeneralMayhem 13y ago
  This argument comes up in every conversation about non-computer people, and I don't buy it. I don't know anything about how my car works, and I wouldn't be able to get a Formula 1 car out of the driveway, but I do know how to use it for ordinary tasks. Moreover, if my lack of knowledge got in the way of my everyday life, I would learn something and use that knowledge. The car equivalent of the sort of people the author is complaining about isn't you and me, it's someone who doesn't know where the steering wheel is and refuses to learn because all they need to know is gas pedal -> go forward, and the car should figure it out from there and/or is a Magical Voodoo Machine that they can't touch. In short: complete and willful ineptitude vs. mastery is a false dichotomy.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
enthdegree 13y ago
Terminally Incoherent is a great name for a website.
abritishguy 13y ago
Hollywood hacking: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8qgehH3kEQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8qgehH3kEQ Hollywood enhancing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxq9yj2pVWk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxq9yj2pVWk
nkoren 13y ago
Actually, the "zoom and enhance" thing isn't necessarily quite as wrong as he suggests.[1] True, this doesn't exactly generate new information, but it generates new pseudo-information that can look awfully convincing, and in many cases is actually correct. See HN discussion here:[2] Finally, the author omits the number one silly thing that people (well, people in Hollywood at least) believe about computers: that they go "beep beep beep" with every bloody keystroke. I swear I want to hurl things at the screen every time I see that.... 1: http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~vision/SingleImageSR.html http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~vision/SingleImageSR.html 2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4241266 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4241266

39 points by klimeryk 13y ago

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2013/07/22/12-silly-things-people-believe-about-computers/&strip=1 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

Slackwise 13y ago
Readability cache, with images, good formatting, and images intact: http://www.readability.com/articles/djg4qlyo http://www.readability.com/articles/djg4qlyo

unimpressive 13y ago

Literally writing a book right now where I try and slay some of these. Thanks for reminding me of a few.

pestaa 13y ago

This was a nicely written article, but missed a few pet peeves. Like how a full generation thinks the blue "e" icon is the internet, that they can close the internet by closing the browser, etc. Some of them even think Google home page is the internet itself. And don't let me start on how people name files: sent you a Word file, have you received my Excel file?, gotta present you a PowerPoint... Hurts a little inside.

freehunter 13y ago
What's wrong with "sent you a Word file"? I say that all the time. It's a file I created in Word.
- GeneralMayhem 13y ago
  If it's not .doc[x], it's not a Word file. I suspect parent was griping about people who would use "Word file" for anything they can open in Word.
  - levosmetalo 13y ago
    If it has a Word icon in Windows Explorer, then it is a Word file. You can ask ~90% computer users if you don't believe me.
    - fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
      >You can ask ~90% computer users if you don't believe me. The point of the article is that there are a lot of common misconceptions made by average people. Also, there is no magic filetype detection that makes the Word icon appear, just a setting which is pretty easy for a novice to bodge-up, incidentally. If you were being sarcastic, I just missed it.
- igravious 13y ago
  I meet you at the mall. I ask you how you got here. You say: A) I drove here. B) I drove here in my car. C) I drove here in my Hyundai Accent. If you say C (or even B) people will look at you funny because you've given them too much information. Why can't people say, "I sent you the spreadsheet" or, "I'm going to show you my presentation", or "Here is the text document"? Why when it comes to computers do otherwise smart people suddenly start spouting gibberish?
  - Dylan16807 13y ago
    Word file is both more specific and shorter than text document. Your analogy is horrible because one way to drive implies only one kind of file. Try "I drove here." "I took a bus here." "I took a taxi here.". And if they have multiple cars it's especially reasonable to say which one they took. I really don't understand why you have this complaint. Do you have some kind of weird overattachment to genetic terms?
  - fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
    Bad habit, I agree, but probably due to certain companies' very-effective marketing. For example, in some areas of the country, people used to commonly refer to carbonated beverages as "Coke".
    - groovy2shoes 13y ago
      In some areas of the country, people still commonly refer to carbonated beverages as "Coke".
  - nahname 13y ago
    Let me google that for you. We are just as guilty.
  - freehunter 13y ago
    "I sent you a file". Okay, which one? Can you be more specific? I have four files that you sent. Saying "I sent you a Word file" isn't too much information, it's just the right amount of information. As for saying the brand name, text documents vary far and wide. I wouldn't ask someone to open a docx in Wordpad or Notepad, it'd either be horrible formatting or useless noise. Even opening a docx in OpenOffice could turn out poorly, depending on which features of Word you used in the creation of the document. If someone was asking if they could ride with me, it makes a big difference if I drove here in my Hyundai Accent or if I rode here on my Schwinn.
sdevlin 13y ago
The format of a document is relevant to the recipient. Not every text editor will open a Word document. Also, you probably wouldn't look at someone funny for requesting a kleenex. All the things you mentioned have pretty strong brand-name recognition, such that e.g. even non-PowerPoint slide decks are called PowerPoints.
mdip 13y ago
I totally agree with you on the "e" icon. My parents had received a virus that originated from a web site (seedy in nature) that exploited a vulnerability in IE 6. After having to revisit them twice in a month, I replaced the shortcut with Firefox and Adblock+ (adblock was to prevent explotation of vulnerabilities in Flash Player that were happening with increasing frequency from popular ad networks). It wasn't until last year that I flipped the icon back to Firefox when I installed their new computer. The first week I received two phone calls from my mom asking "Where's the Internet"? The second one concluded with her asking me to put the other picture back "next time I come over" because she liked it better than the red/orange icon.

calgoo 13y ago

This reminds me of when I was describing to my wife how the NSA was snooping on the internet traffic, and she had a "special" moment: "But how can they get the data if its floating in space". Talk about cloud computing!!!

aestra 13y ago
51% of people think stormy weather affects cloud computing, and a full 95% of people don't think they ever use cloud computing. http://www.businessinsider.com/people-think-stormy-weather-affects-cloud-computing-2012-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/people-think-stormy-weather-a...
- whiddershins 13y ago
  who even answers these questions? have you ever had the patience to stay on the phone and be interviewed about computer use? I rest my case. (oh, I should mention, I loved reading and will love quoting that stat, regardless)
  - aestra 13y ago
    They were answered by people who did an online survery who responded to an email invitation. It was right in the article.

jiggy2011 13y ago

Computers and especially software are really difficult to explain because of the sheer amount of abstraction involved, it doesn't help that software often presents abstractions to users that do not reflect the underlying mechanism. You will tend to find misconceptions about things very commonly amongst even people who work in IT as their livelihood. If you ask 100 mechanics how a 4 stroke engine works you're likely to get approximately the same answer. Ask 100 IT people or developers what an operating system does and you'll get 100 different ones.

bebna 13y ago
Ask them about the 4stroke and you get even more differences.
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  With something like that it's easier to know how much you know. I could probably give a reasonable description of it, I might get some specifics wrong or not be able to go into as much detail as someone more knowledgeable but at least it wouldn't be completely insane. I probably have more misconceptions about computers that I'm not even aware of.
- techdmn 13y ago
  Suck squish bang blow.
  - canthonytucci 13y ago
    Was hoping someone would say this. I would love for someone more clever than I am to come up with the OS equivalent.
    - VLM 13y ago
      Suck the money out of your wallet squish 10 gigs of shovelware and trialware and just junk onto the hard drive bang it crashes and needs reinstallation on a regular basis blow. windows blows.

kunil 13y ago

> #9: Computer Science courses teach you how to repair computers Oh god, this. edit: People also think CS teaches us which computer brands are good or answers to the questions like "This computer has 4gb ram, should I buy it"

lubomir 13y ago
That may be one badly chosen name. However, it is not just the name. In my language, instead of computer science it is called "informatika" (which would translate to informatics [1]), and while that name does not even suggest computers, many people have the same thoughts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informatics_(academic_field) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informatics_(academic_field)

mumbi 13y ago

Cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2013/07/22/12-silly-things-people-believe-about-computers/&strip=1 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

Jgrubb 13y ago
There's some irony in an article about how normal people don't know how to use their computers getting taken down by a front page HN appearance.
- hamax 13y ago
  Where is the irony?
  - Jgrubb 13y ago
    If caching was set up on the webserver I might be able to read the article.
    - icebraining 13y ago
      Well, OP did have WP-Cache installed once; not sure if he reinstalled it after the migration.
    - tuxmentat 13y ago
      WP-Cache was in place, but HN hammered the server anyway. Typically it is not an issue but "dat traffic spike" was more or less way too much for the poor linode to handle: http://i.imgur.com/3jPD0iB.png http://i.imgur.com/3jPD0iB.png I think Wordpress + Apache is just a beast - I've seen people talk about running Ngnx in front of Apache as a proxy serving only static content but I haven't gotten around to investigating that kind of setup yet.

eieio 13y ago

I'm split on this article. On the one hand, I empathize with the author. It can be very frustrating dealing with non-technical friends/family who use computers all the time and are seemingly incapable of doing the most basic things. Especially googling their problems. On the other hand, there are plenty of things that I do or benefit from about which I have no knowledge. I drive to work 5 days a week. I hate it. I don't even have a long commute, typically it takes under 10 minutes. But I treat it as a necessary evil and I have very little knowledge of my car. It's a tool that I use every day, but I'm sure there are many more than 12 misconceptions I have about it. Put another way, I wonder if grilling enthusiasts write articles titled "Things People Believe About Grills" targeted at folks like the author.

showsover 13y ago
But the difference is that you don't drive your car for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, years on end.
- eieio 13y ago
  Fair enough. I guess I'm just wary of articles like these because I think that nerds like me(and I'm assuming the author) have the tendency to put computers on this pedestal because we use them a lot and really really like them. It's not the end of the world when someone confuses memory with storage or thinks that www should go in front of everything. In fact, these days I'd argue that it's not hugely important for "normal" people to know either of those things. I'd say that the most important part of this article is about learning to use Google, which is a hugely important skill at this point. Misconceptions about viruses are annoying and sometimes very problematic. And backups are important. But I'd argue that just about everything else listed isn't hugely important. They're annoying misconceptions, sure. But that's about it. It's ok to be an unsophisticated user. Understanding that is what allows us to write good, usable software for "normal" people.
GeneralMayhem 13y ago
This argument comes up in every conversation about non-computer people, and I don't buy it. I don't know anything about how my car works, and I wouldn't be able to get a Formula 1 car out of the driveway, but I do know how to use it for ordinary tasks. Moreover, if my lack of knowledge got in the way of my everyday life, I would learn something and use that knowledge. The car equivalent of the sort of people the author is complaining about isn't you and me, it's someone who doesn't know where the steering wheel is and refuses to learn because all they need to know is gas pedal -> go forward, and the car should figure it out from there and/or is a Magical Voodoo Machine that they can't touch. In short: complete and willful ineptitude vs. mastery is a false dichotomy.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

enthdegree 13y ago

Terminally Incoherent is a great name for a website.

abritishguy 13y ago

Hollywood hacking: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8qgehH3kEQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8qgehH3kEQ Hollywood enhancing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxq9yj2pVWk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxq9yj2pVWk

nkoren 13y ago

Actually, the "zoom and enhance" thing isn't necessarily quite as wrong as he suggests.[1] True, this doesn't exactly generate new information, but it generates new pseudo-information that can look awfully convincing, and in many cases is actually correct. See HN discussion here:[2] Finally, the author omits the number one silly thing that people (well, people in Hollywood at least) believe about computers: that they go "beep beep beep" with every bloody keystroke. I swear I want to hurl things at the screen every time I see that.... 1: http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~vision/SingleImageSR.html http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~vision/SingleImageSR.html 2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4241266 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4241266