Experiences with non-techies

[BURNINGJUNK]

This just in... Just had to explain to my computers teacher, and the rest of the class, that other companies make Android phones besides Samsung. *facepalm

[kelvindeschutter]

34 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Well I contacted IT by the link they sent out in the original notification email and actually got a decent answer.  Apparently their reasoning (which I didn't even ask about so it's nice they explained it actually) was that some users had been falling for phishing emails, giving up enough info that the attacker could sign into their account and enable forwarding to an account the attacker controls, allowing them access to any and all personal info that came in through the email.  So, as is tradition, all of use have to suffer because of the stupidity of a (hopefully) small few.

But, I did setup POP and SMTP so now I still get emails going to my personal account   At least until an attacker realizes they can do the same thing as before with that method and IT locks it down even more...

shhhh dont say you never know

[kelvindeschutter]

6 minutes ago, Strando123 said:

I was just watching a TV series about a fictional hotel, they were talking about a break in and how they should check the surveilance server. Then their "tech guy" came and told them not to do that bechause a virus had eaten the data from the server and grown too big for their anti virus to "figth"..... WHY CANT THEY TRY TO MAKE IT REALISTIC????

it makes the plot move this way. its also a way so that non-techies can know what there talking about

[Boink]

One of my teachers couldn't get sound working over external speakers on her laptop and asked me if I could figure out why. It seemed reasonable enough so I asked if she had plugged the speakers in (always start with the simple questions). Lo and behold, she not only hadn't plugged them in, she didn't know what cord coming out of the desktop next to her belonged to the speakers. 

Did you just expect them to work magically? 

[thedigitaldoctor]

24 minutes ago, Boink said:

*snip*

Did you just expect them to work magically? 

Yes.  Most people expect things that they don't understand to just work magically.  Ask any computer tech, auto mechanic, chef, farmer, or any other person who creates or fixes things.  Fewer and fewer people are interested in knowing how stuff works.

[Fgtfv567]

1 minute ago, thedigitaldoctor said:

Fewer and fewer people are interested in knowing how stuff works.

The downfall of humanity...

[kelvindeschutter]

23 minutes ago, WFMB said:

I found a huy.

what is that?

[MacAlisterL]

I was taking off the front mesh of my Air 540 to be sanded to later be painted. When I was done sanding it, I really liked the look of just the bare metal. I asked my mom if she liked the brushed metal or if I should just paint it. She said why can't you just leave it black. It came black after all.  She is the one that thought it would be ingenious if she took apart a circular saw and painted it purple. She did and the saw never worked again. 

[LukeTim]

14 hours ago, thedigitaldoctor said:

Yes.  Most people expect things that they don't understand to just work magically.  Ask any computer tech, auto mechanic, chef, farmer, or any other person who creates or fixes things.  Fewer and fewer people are interested in knowing how stuff works.

 

I think that is strongly related to the fact that there are more and more things to know about. You might not be so interested in how your computer speakers work, but you could be very handy fixing things in your car.

[asim1999]

I probably posted this before.

Well a person in my year decided it would be a good idea to fork out £600 for a Galaxy S6 Edge Plus just a month before the Galaxy S7 Edge gets released. She 'didnt care' but me and everyone else found it funny.

Here are a couple of savage jokes i came up with that made everyone laugh:

1)Galaxy S6 Edge: On the Edge of release date

2) The camera hump on the new S7 will only be 0.8mm. Thats how many brain cells you had when you bought the S6 just a month before release. 

 

[Fgtfv567]

1 hour ago, asim1999 said:

I probably posted this before.

Well a person in my year decided it would be a good idea to fork out £600 for a Galaxy S6 Edge Plus just a month before the Galaxy S7 Edge gets released. She 'didnt care' but me and everyone else found it funny.

Here are a couple of savage jokes i came up with that made everyone laugh:

1)Galaxy S6 Edge: On the Edge of release date

2) The camera hump on the new S7 will only be 0.8mm. Thats how many brain cells you had when you bought the S6 just a month before release. 

 

I really hope all the rumours about the S7 are true so that I have something to upgrade from my S5 (especially water-resistance!)

[Raytsou]

Well boys, its been a long ride. I spent over three months and read through EVERY post in this forum. Time well spent.

Here we go with a story:

In my school, we have a pi club. The plan is to buy raspberry pi's and it's supposed to be a tech club. Unfortunately, our school only buys Macs, so we couldn't even use the pi's. Not really non techie, just a funny oversight.

 

Another one: 

I had a friend tell me that you don't need ram, because only really powerful computers can utilize it and by then, they're so fast that they only need a little bit of ram.

[dcb-z]

More about the Colonel in charge of the JROTC program at my school.

 

So all this week, the school H: drives have been down because of a virus on the drives. They disconnected them and uploaded the latest clean backup onto Google Drive. Unfortunately, the Colonel is pretty tech illiterate. I had to spend most of the class period teaching him how to get to drive and how to find the files he needed. Perhaps the most frustrating part was that he didn't minimize his windows, he'd just close them out completely. So every time he'd switch to Word to find a file name to search (he couldn't remember the names of any of his files), he'd close Chrome and have to re-open it and navigate back to Drive when he went to search the file in Drive.

[Str_Mape]

Customer ~ "I really want to get an AMD computer because I have AMD in my laptop"

[WkdPaul]

lolll local "professional computer shop" in the local classified is advertising something hilarious!!!

 

Pentium 4GHZ 8 cores ...

 

and then the first line of the description is;

CPU: Amd fx-8320

 

hahahaha ... "professional" PC repair men and custom PC builders that don't know the difference between Intel and AMD!!!

[LukeTim]

5 hours ago, wkdpaul said:

lolll local "professional computer shop" in the local classified is advertising something hilarious!!!

 

Pentium 4GHZ 8 cores ...

 

and then the first line of the description is;

CPU: Amd fx-8320

 

hahahaha ... "professional" PC repair men and custom PC builders that don't know the difference between Intel and AMD!!!

 

I have known some older fashioned folks (who seem to still be stuck in the 90s) who refer to x86 as Pentium* so they possibly just meant it was an x86 machine?

 

 *My old University Tutor did it... in fact he was so old fashioned he had an old Pentium III machine running Windows 98 in his office. 

[vanished]

5 hours ago, LukeTim said:

 

I have known some older fashioned folks (who seem to still be stuck in the 90s) who refer to x86 as Pentium* so they possibly just meant it was an x86 machine?

 

 *My old University Tutor did it... in fact he was so old fashioned he had an old Pentium III machine running Windows 98 in his office. 

That doesn't make it right though, pentium refrrs to a specific model line like "core 2".  There was the 8086 (why its still called x86 and not x32 to this day) then the 80286, or just 286 for short, followed by the 386 and 486, then instead of calling it a 586, they went with pentium (pent for 5) because apparently there was a time when Intel cared what its chips were named

[LukeTim]

30 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

That doesn't make it right though, pentium refrrs to a specific model line like "core 2".  There was the 8086 (why its still called x86 and not x32 to this day) then the 80286, or just 286 for short, followed by the 386 and 486, then instead of calling it a 586, they went with pentium (pent for 5) because apparently there was a time when Intel cared what its chips were named

Yeah, I don't agree with it either. But that's where it comes from is all I meant.

[vanished]

So just now our instructor some how exited out of the powerpoint presentation and couldn't get it back up for like 5 minutes.  He told us to "stop messing with his computer"... I think he was half joking but half serious   It's a macbook btw, which makes the fact that people were saying things like "oh no it blue screened" when he pulled out the cable that went to the projector even more disheartening.

[lol1290]

So my teacher many times doesn't know how to correctly plug-in the speakers, connect the pc to the projector, etc...

 

And its really bugging me, cause (for example) last time, the pc power plug was not plugged in, and the only outlet nearby was in the "mini locker" (where they also have the fuse switches), but it was locked (dunno why, its just dumb...)

 

My teacher then called the janitor, to bring the keys, and before everything was working, 20min were gone.

 

But the point is, because I'm almost the only one "tech savvy" in my class, everyone said after that: "OMG, what a noob, cant even start a computer..."

And that also happend 3x times before...

 

[vanished]

I do sometimes wonder, if there was a committee setup to estimate the total economic impact on, say, just the USA ever year due to tech incompetence... what would they find?  I bet it would be to the tune of several billion dollars.  Consider this:

• How much is spent diagnosing, chasing, and removing viruses from both home and business PCs every year
• How many hours are wasted by people not knowing how to get things working? (personal incompetence)
• How many hours are wasted by people not being able to get things working because the equipment is crap because the managers bought the lowest cost solution instead of the one that actually works (management incompetence)

I could probably go on but just those alone probably total in the billions.  I don't understand why there is this general notion that it's OK to be completely clueless about computers; that "it doesn't hurt anyone", and if it's not your job you shouldn't need to know.  Think of the damage that's actually done by that mentality!  Computers are an integral and massively prevalent part of modern society.  This is only going to get increasingly true with time.  Accept it, and do something about it!  What if the vast majority of society had refused to learn how to drive, or to use a telephone?  Where would we be, as a species?  Seriously, when most people just ignore such a massively influential and important part of the world, it hurts everyone!  I'm really curious about why this has happened, when other technologies seem to have been adopted just fine... I'm not asking everyone to be an IT expert, but some really basic things, like how to plug stuff in and turn it on, or how to recognize a virus, etc. would be easy to learn and would go a really long way!

[kelvindeschutter]

25 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

snip

i dont even want to know. if i knew i would prob facepalm and be ashamed

[Akolyte]

On 2/2/2016 at 2:56 PM, Psybadek said:

While I won't go on everything, Apple was the first to create an OS with a GUI interface. So in a way, he is correct about that.

Steve Jobs was smart, but not tech smart only business smart.

He knew the market, he knew what people wanted, he executed it and was an absolutely fantastic leader and boss.

 

Apple never invented the GUI, neither created it.  Another company did, but Apple bought it and used it.  Steve Jobs used things that were average and clumped them together to make them great.

On 2/1/2016 at 8:53 PM, Trikein said:

Wow, where to start. I worked Tier 1 for a ISP for a while, and let me tell you, the stories I have. 

1. Customer called wondering why TV didn't work. She had no power cord plugged into the TV, and the coaxial from the TV going into the modem. The modem also didn't have power. When asked what she was trying to do... "Get wireless TV". TT

2. Was working on someone's PC remote when I asked them to replicate the issue. I asked them to right click on something but they were unable. When I went to watch their screen,  they were trying to "right click" by left clicking repeatedly but to the pattern to spell out "right click". No lie. It's so dumb it's not even funny.

3. Customer called up trying to get VOIP phone to work. I use "customer" loosly because he didn't have a account and was trying to hook up a DSL modem (ISP was cable) to a VOIP modem. They had the RJ11 out of the VOIP modem then going into DSL modem, then ethernet from DSL modem into VOIP modem. Perpetual internet machine!

I have so many more, but I try to repress them. 

I admire you're stamina because I would die if I had a job like that, not because it was difficult but because my brain physically could not handle the stress of being yelled at sometimes because other people didn't know what I was actually doing or saying. 

 

Speaking of which, once I had a guy who bought a router without a modem.  He smashed his modem with a hammer because he beileved he didn't need it.  We had to call his ISP and get him a new modem.  He was using DSL and so he couldn't just plug the RJ11 cable directly into his RJ45 port on his router. Even then, his router didn't have a modem.

 

Besides, here the ISPs use PPOE on the DSL connections, so you need a username and password, if you're on a third party ISP then it's specific for every person.  The 2 hour hold on the phone for the ISP didn't help.

On 2/3/2016 at 7:56 AM, Strando123 said:

I was just watching a TV series about a fictional hotel, they were talking about a break in and how they should check the surveilance server. Then their "tech guy" came and told them not to do that bechause a virus had eaten the data from the server and grown too big for their anti virus to "figth"..... WHY CANT THEY TRY TO MAKE IT REALISTIC????

Then their tech guy is such a noob. 

Any tech guy knows antiviruses suck and they are used only block the mainstream malware which is about 20-50%.  The bigger attacks should be blocked manually by the 'tech guy' or if they were smart they would buy hardware to actually combat the APT. 

If it was that big it would be classified as an APT.

 

Viruses don't eat btw. If they wanted to make this realistic all they need to do is search NSA on Wikipedia and research the programmes they use.  If the Virus got in they must have had pretty crappy network appliances.

if they were at risk of getting hacked... 

 

A SNORT IDS, A decent UTM, An Endpoint Antivirus and a good Active Directory domain would be required.  If they had that maybe a Virus wouldn't have compromised them.

 

Lets think about this...  The only way they could have broke in:

1. Using a Vulnerability inside of a system, which is why it is imporrant to have multiple systems such as Active Directory, so certain users do not have permissions to execute permissions.

2. Using a unique attack which would have passed an internal UTM Sandbox, Security signatures, hueristics and firewalls, as well as the custom-made signatures inside the SNORT IDS system. 

3. If it was custom-wrote and zero-day.  This is so it could have passed something like SEP which is highly configurable and if well configured can be quite difficult for a peice of malware to hide from it even if using the sleep method.

 

On 2/3/2016 at 8:00 AM, BURNINGJUNK said:

This just in... Just had to explain to my computers teacher, and the rest of the class, that other companies make Android phones besides Samsung. *facepalm

I was teaching the class, which is CNA which stands for computer networking, even though CNA means computer network attack...

On 2/5/2016 at 1:35 PM, Raytsou said:

Well boys, its been a long ride. I spent over three months and read through EVERY post in this forum. Time well spent.

Here we go with a story:

In my school, we have a pi club. The plan is to buy raspberry pi's and it's supposed to be a tech club. Unfortunately, our school only buys Macs, so we couldn't even use the pi's. Not really non techie, just a dingy oversight.

 

Another one: 

I had a friend tell me that you don't need ram, because only really powerful computers can utilize it and by then, they're so fast that they only need a little bit of ram.

That was certainly an oversight lol.  It's fine though, my school has done worse.  

 

You do need RAM lol, It is true big million-dollar range systems use page and swap files more than an average consumer system as they are normally custom-coded to do so. 

But RAM is used in every computer a computer without RAM is pretty unfunctional, and is totally unoperabal these days.

On 2/5/2016 at 3:26 PM, Str_Mape said:

Customer ~ "I really want to get an AMD computer because I have AMD in my laptop"

i can remember when I used to think that way haha. 

But that is certainly the wrong way to think about it, I realize that now and have realized that for a while.  if a processor has a different model number it's a different processor.  And that's something some people need to realize, while AMD processors are similar to other AMD processors, the same goes for Intel.  They are still made different.  And are good for different things.

 

PS - Thanks for helping me with my first ever system it's lasted me all this time and is still lasting.  I have come far since then and you were the start. 

Just wanted to say I haven't forgotten

[Bhav]

Online support is very helpful ...

 

 

 

I just ... How? Its freaking embedded into your chat window you class A noobasaurous rex.

[Bhav]

http://www.tp-link.com/en/faq-919.html

 

Then right click on “Ethernet” (right click on Wi-Fi if you want to check the wireless IP address), and go to Status-->Details;

There you will see all the TCP/IP details of this computer.

 

Step 2

Right click on “Ethernet”, go to “Properties”, and then choose “Internet Protocol Version 4”, click on Properties;

 

Except there is no 'Ethernet' to right click on ....