Computer bloopers

[Moira]

If anyone subscribes to Tech Republic you may have already seen this, otherwise these pictures are quite funny alongside the comments:

Computer bloopers and blunders from the technically clueless

In fact I was sure I already posted this, but I guess it must have been on another forum

[gore]

You might enjoy a page I posted in here a long time ago called Rinkworks Computer Stupidities. It's got a BUNCH of stories on it from tech support people, users, and others who've posted their "What?" stories of technology confusion.

You can find it here:

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


It has them listed by category and you can click on each one to read the stories. Some examples:


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Customer: "Have you ever heard about 'Mozarella Firefox'?"
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* Tech Support: "Now, go back to your desktop."
* Customer: "I don't have a desktop. I have a laptop."
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* Tech Support: "What version of Windows are you running?"
* Customer: "I got the computer in 2003, so I think it's a Windows 2003. Or maybe it's a Windows 2004? I got it late in the year."
* Tech Support: "Um, ok."
* Customer: "Is that wrong?"
* Tech Support: "No, no, that sounds about right. Tell me, would you know what service pack you have for that?"
* Customer: "Well, when I got to the register, the young man who rang me up said was about the 5th person to buy it. So it might be service pack 5."
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A member of getacoder.com posted and asked for someone to write an operating system for him. It had to have all the features of Windows XP Professional. In return, he would be willing to pay $20 to $100.

The listing:

I need someone to program me a new OS (Operasting System) that looks different than Ms Windows XP etc. but has the same style. It does not need to run on a mac but all the other PCs. It's supposed to have a stylish look with clear edges etc. And ITS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE JUST A REDESIGNED WINDOWS as I'm going to sell that operating system later on. These are some important points :

It should have ALL THE FEATURES that Windows Xp Professional has. ALL the files that run on Windows XP ust also run on the BlueOrb OS. It must have a very user-friendly interface (like MS WINDOWS XP) When it gets Installed, the user needs to insert a serial number. It HAS to be HACKER SAFE! It must be quick and good looking.

Here's the listing on getacoder.com.
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Someone told me his hard disk was full. His nephew had installed something that would make it larger and had muttered something confusing about slaves and jumpers. But the hard disk, it seemed, was "still full."

My first thought was that his nephew had installed an additional hard disk, and the guy got confused about drive letters. But it was worse. He had an 80 GB hard disk with 6 GB used, plus an additional 250 GB hard disk, which was completely empty.

I asked him why he thought his hard disk was full. He said, "But can't you see? There's no free space!" And, really, there was no free space -- not a single inch of free space -- on his desktop.

I gave him a higher screen resolution and put a handful of folders on his desktop. I told him I installed some "drawers" so he had more space. Now he's happy.
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Teacher: "You can't do spaces in HTML. If you see spaces on web pages, then they must be using java to override basic HTML. Java saved the Internet, because it removes limitations of HTML, but it's beyond the scope of this course to show you how to do it."
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My mother overheard a conversation I was having about email viruses. She said that people at work were telling everybody not to open any email messages with a certain subject line, because those were viruses. As the conversation progressed, she started complaining about how it was a frustrating day, because her computer didn't work except in the morning.

* Me: "Did you get the email I sent you?"
* My Mother: "Yes, I got two emails. Yours, and the one with the virus."
* Me: "Did you read it?"
* My Mother: "Yes, both."
* Me: "Why did you open the email with the virus??"
* My Mother: "I just wanted to see what happens. Everyone is talking about these viruses nowadays."
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A teenage lad and his mother called in to our shop and approached me. The mother announced her son needed a virus killer for his computer. The Atari ST had been out a year or two, and Amiga computers were rapidly gaining popularity at the time, and both machines had viruses being passed around on floppy disks. So we asked the son which of those computers he had. He muttered to his mother again, and she announced her son had an Amstrad 464 -- which only had a built-in cassette deck and no floppy drive whatsoever. After we explained that it was the more modern computers which had floppy disk drives that got viruses, the mother calmly stated that the virus had been on his friend's new ST computer and that her son and his friend had played a few games on it. The virus had passed from the friend's computer directly to her son, and thence, later that evening, from her son to his aforementioned Amstrad 464!

Boggling, but still polite, we patiently explained that although computer viruses existed, they could not be "caught" by human beings and passed on to other computers by physical contact. The word "virus" was, we told her, slang that referred to hostile code that replicated itself when a disk was inserted into a computer, not an actual biological virus. Her son's computer probably had just gone faulty and needed a repair. Smiling smugly, and after informing us her son knew about computers (and that we didn't), they left the store to search for more computer-savvy tech support.
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I had an customer that was furious, because he'd spent two hours trying to burn a CD, and nothing was working. I went to the customer's house and removed from the drive the round paper label that comes with a stack of CDs. He thought this was a newer, thinner type of CD.
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* Customer: "My laptop won't boot."
* Tech Support: "Have you tried rebooting?"
* Customer: "I can't reboot, because it doesn't boot in the first place."
* Tech Support: "Sir, we have to do things my way, okay?"
Stupid tech support ^
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[Moira]

Gore, that's an amazing collection! I love the post on getacoder.com I hope he got well slated

You can't believe people can be that stupid! I've come across many "5how M3 HoW +0 H@xor hO+m4IL?" posts, but mostly they don't last very long before some moderator deletes them

[gore]

I've been reading those for years. I could probably add a few to that but I generally just wrote a Bastard admin from Michigan story instead and used whatever it was as a story line. Half the stuff I wrote in those stories would get inspired by someone related to me needing computer help and me "Jokingly" telling them how great deltree /y C:WINDOWS*.* was a great way to clean up a hard drive back in the Windows 98 Days.