Ignorant ungrateful microsoft worshipping sheep

[AlexPlank]

At my school, alot of times the microsoft comptuers get fscked up. Sometimes the security software prohibits me from fixing them. The ignoramus techsupport guys always say, stuff to teachers like "Sorry about the adware. It isn't that much of an imposition to have to close browser popup ad windows while internet explorer isnt even open and you are trying to type a paper. To fix the computer I would have to reinstall windows xp which means you would loose all your files." How can an idiot like that get paid? more than a a good teacher? Actually i should refrase the question. How can an idiot like that be let to use the schools computers, much less administer them????? At least most teachers know how to do his/her job.

[AlexPlank]

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR SIMILAR EXPERIENCES.

[retoon]

The best thing I could say is don't use those computers. I know what its like to be blamed for things because people think that if you touch it, you broke it. The truth is, had you simply loaded more paper into that printer, had you not opened real player on school property, none of that would have happened. Chances are your family would get along fine with out your help. Manuals are very informative, and most network device manufacturers offer tech support over the phone. That is the way with my parents, and they don't know the difference between PS/2 and USB. I'm not saying you caused those problems, but in a sense, your actions caused an equal and opposite reaction within an operating system that doesn't really seem to be all that dependable. Help with little things, but don't touch. Unless necessary, don't touch. If they have a question, ask them to sit at the computer, and tell them where to click.;)

[neondog]

IMHO you should have informed teacher #1 about having to change the printers. RealPlayer blows so it was bad luck on teacher #2. As far as the school's "tech-spurt" goes it is not really your problem, and I doubt their is much you can do to change the policy. Don't go messing with the Sec unless you wanna get labelled as a hacker. It won't help you in the job market down the road... Otherwise keep up the good work!

[JohnT]

Remember diplomacy wins out over technology when it involves the inept.

[AlexPlank]

I forgot to mention. The LiveCD distros like knoppix or morphix are awesome. I use them and I dont have that kind of school problem anymore. I also dont have to deal with popups from the adware infested machines.

[terribleRobbo]

Originally posted by retoon
If they have a question, ask them to sit at the computer, and tell them where to click.;)

And they'll still blame you. :(

At Uni, you can't use any flash disks on the Linux computers - they refuse to set /dev/sda1 as user-mountable (the only thing blocking the use of the USB port).

Also, at the Win2k computers, you have permission to install devices (eg. insert the afore-mentioned flash disk), but if you try to eject them, it doesn't let you (the usual 'the admins have blocked this, ignorant sheep,' message).
The best solution I've found is to wait a few minutes after I copy something over, lock the disk, then unplug it. 2k complains, but it works.

*Grumph* :mad:

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

Oh, heck. Aren't these experiences fun?

I remember working on an old Packard Hell 486 that a friend of mine had. Somehow, his monitor went kaput. He got a loaner while his new one came in, but it wasn't a very good one-- just a 640x480 14" VGA monitor. Not knowing that it was such a crappy monitor, I asked him why the screen looked so poor. Offering to help, I was going to show him how to use Windows's display properties settings to change the resolution on the monitor.

Again, not knowing that it could only handle 640x480, I tried to give it 800x600. When I did this, naturally, the screen went haywire.

Now, most of us probably know that if you wait 15 seconds, the screen will return to its original resolution. It just happened that my friends mom walked by, and saw the screen flipping out, as we were sitting there doing "nothing" (waiting the 15 seconds) to fix it. So, she screams "WHAT THE H311!?!?!?!" and promptly hits the power switch on the CPU, which apparently set the bad resolution.

So, when she turned it back on, the screen was still flipping out. She SWEARS to this day that I "typed something" to screw up her machine. What was her solution?

format c: /s

But what did that do? Erased all of her files, now it just booted to DOS. That was my fault, too, of course, because she had to do it.

And here's the kicker. Since she just loaded DOS on it, and not any CD drivers, she couldn't have used the Windows 95 install CD to reinstall Windows, even if she had known how. So, she had to pay somebody to do it.

It took three years before she'd let me near their other computer. And that was only because I had enrolled in a college, in a degree program for Networking and Administration. :eek:

[AlexPlank]

Packard Hell! LOL

I had a 486 packard bell.
I deleted windows. little did i know that the cdrom was plugged directly into the soundcard and was not IDE compliant. Here is the kicker. The drivers only work in windows and i only had a windows install on cd. I had to borrow an IDE cdrom drive from another comptuer.

[SonOfAres]

Anyone ever had the "My monitor doesn't work!" Problem from the teacher down the hall?
It's really hard to keep a straight face when i walk in and plug the cord into the wall.
Alex, bro, you sound lucky. You actually get the BUDGET to set up a wireless ANYTHING? I was once told to take a site the teachers were using for educational purposes "off the internet" because they were done with it.
My reply? "Uhm... ok.... how do you want me to do that?"
The answer? What else? "Well, go into the C drive. There should be a folder called FAVORITES..." ugh.
Oh, yeah, and the thing at home? When I tried to update my sound driver, I uninstalled, then found out I had the wrong driver downloaded, so had to redownload. I go with my dad to dinner, and come back only to see the computer shut off and the keyboard gone. Why? Because I broke the sound. Computer goes slow when my sister tries to acces her hotmail (which has hundreds of e-mail) on my 128 ram Pentium computer? I broke the internet. At least I get dibs on breaking the new Dell!
But really tho, how else are we gonna learn NOT to delete the files in the "DO NOT DELETE" folder unless we do it first? Yeah... I had to reinstall Windows a lot when I was first learning how to use a computer...

[terribleRobbo]

Originally posted by SonOfAres
But really tho, how else are we gonna learn NOT to delete the files in the "DO NOT DELETE" folder unless we do it first?

Learn to read, perhaps? :D

[glussier]

Originally posted by AlexPlank
Packard Hell! LOL

I had a 486 packard bell.
I deleted windows. little did i know that the cdrom was plugged directly into the soundcard and was not IDE compliant. Here is the kicker. The drivers only work in windows and i only had a windows install on cd. I had to borrow an IDE cdrom drive from another comptuer.

Some years ago, all cdrom drives were designed to connect on a proprietary interface, be it Mitsumi or sony. Most were connecting to sound cards, but if you didn't have a sound card you could connect a cdrom controller card onto an isa slot. At that time, you needed a dos cdrom driver to start the cdrom drive. You could have gone on the internet and download a dos cdrom driver and modify your win95 startup disk, to do like win98 and enable the cdrom device. You had to borrow and ide cdrom drive because of your lack of knowledge about these devices. Sorry if I am blunt, but it's just to show you that, everybody can be seen as being ignorant.

[terribleRobbo]

Originally posted by glussier
...you could connect a cdrom controller card onto an isa slot.

And if there wasn't one just conveniently hanging around the place?

[AlexPlank]

they didnt make dos drivers for my device. only windows drivers

[glussier]

Originally posted by terribleRobbo
And if there wasn't one just conveniently hanging around the place?

Read his post, the cdrom was connected to a sound card, so he didn't need an extra isa slot. He just didn't know how to make it work.

[glussier]

Originally posted by AlexPlank
they didnt make dos drivers for my device. only windows drivers

Yes they did, you just didn't know that they were available. If you had win95 on that Packard Bell, for sure that drive could work under dos.

[dungscooperdave]

Heh, yeah, I always used to get blamed for breaking the computer, but since no one else knew how to fix it, they would be pretty much forced into letting me onto it anyway. :)

[AlexPlank]

Originally posted by glussier
Yes they did, you just didn't know that they were available. If you had win95 on that Packard Bell, for sure that drive could work under dos.

'They made drivers for the cdrom, it just took me an hour to find them(which didnt really work at all) and one site told me that the drivers were only for windows 3.11 or higher. That really is beside the point. It was easier just to borrow my other computers cdrom to install windows. If it took a long time for me to find the drivers, thnik about what the average user would go through.

I hate how some of you guys think you are know it alls and jump on anything anyone says even though you dont know the circumstances of the whole problem. Unless you had the exact same CDROM and computer that I had, you shouldnt argue with statemnts not ment to argue with using false conclusions backing up your arguments.

I had a 486 and windows95 would probably be too slow on an average 486 so that wasnt a very informed statement either. I could have had windows 95(if i had a faster 486) but you should have asked before using that as an example.

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

Originally posted by AlexPlank


I hate how some of you guys think you are know it alls and jump on anything anyone says even though you dont know the circumstances of the whole problem. Unless you had the exact same CDROM and computer that I had, you shouldnt argue with statemnts not ment to argue with using false conclusions backing up your arguments.

I kind of agree. It is kind of annoying when people are just wanting to go on a rant after some experience, and someone makes some "corrective" comment, seemingly to put someone "in their place", and it turns the thread into a degenerative argument...

[retoon]

Yeah, it is a pain in the *** to deal with some poeple. I say let them argue, just drop it, and let it go. Some people are very insecure, and look for oppurtunities, whether on the internet, or in REAL life, to break into a conversation and establish themselves as knowledgeable. Some people are weak, let them be.:cool:

[gretchen]

In the line of stupid Windows sheep:

I once attended for a semester a small religious school. Needless to say they were low budget. The computer lab consisted of about eight computers that ran Windows 98. All internet was sent though the server so that certain sites could be blocked. (Certain sites would be 75% of the internet including hotmail half the time)

Apparently when these machines had been set up three years ago Windows 98 had been installed and they hadn't been looked at since. Three years of students having full free rein over these computers had turn the computers into hell. Each time I was forced to use one, I went in and uninstalled a ton of spyware. Finally it was so bad that two of the machines were unuseable because they had spyware on them that immediatly sent the browser to a porn site no matter what you typed in. Of course the blocking software kicked in so all you got was the wonderful picture of happy kids. Made me gag. I'd try to fix it but the computers really needed a reinstall. I was trying to offer to fix it up, but could somehow never get ahold of the computer administrator.
Someone did finally get ahold of him however, because they put deep freeze on all the computers. Deep Freeze freezes the hard drive so any changes made are lost on reboot. However, they didn't clean the computers up before they froze them, so all the files students had left on there were there, all the spyware and all the stupid games.
I went to the library for my internet, and left after one semester.

This was before I found Knoppix.

[ricstr]

Originally posted by AlexPlank
Packard Hell! LOL

I had a 486 packard bell.
I deleted windows. little did i know that the cdrom was plugged directly into the soundcard and was not IDE compliant. Here is the kicker. The drivers only work in windows and i only had a windows install on cd. I had to borrow an IDE cdrom drive from another comptuer.

I had a 486 just like that, i tried a newer CD-Rom drive but it was the BIOS that didnt support CD-Rom drives, real pain in the arse, probably easier to stick a ethernet card in it to do a network install.

[glussier]

I hate how some of you guys think you are know it alls and jump on anything anyone says even though you dont know the circumstances of the whole problem. Unless you had the exact same CDROM and computer that I had, you shouldnt argue with statemnts not ment to argue with using false conclusions backing up your arguments.

I had a 486 and windows95 would probably be too slow on an average 486 so that wasnt a very informed statement either. I could have had windows 95(if i had a faster 486) but you should have asked before using that as an example.


This is exactly what you did, when you started you post talking about the ignorance of some people. This is why I replied to youir thread.

Windows95 ran perfectly on every 486 computers as long as it had at least 8mB of ram installed. I installed win95 on many Packard Bell computers, so I know what I am talking about, when I say the only thing you needed to install win95 was a cdrom dos device driver. Since there was 3 standards at the time (Sony, Mitsumi and Panasonic), one out of 3 device drivers would have work for you.

Conclusion, if you don't want to be called ignorant, don't start threads talking about the ignorance of others. I'm sorry but this is a pet peeve of mine.

[AlexPlank]

Originally posted by glussier
This is exactly what you did, when you started you post talking about the ignorance of some people. This is why I replied to youir thread.

Windows95 ran perfectly on every 486 computers as long as it had at least 8mB of ram installed. I installed win95 on many Packard Bell computers, so I know what I am talking about, when I say the only thing you needed to install win95 was a cdrom dos device driver. Since there was 3 standards at the time (Sony, Mitsumi and Panasonic), one out of 3 device drivers would have work for you.

Conclusion, if you don't want to be called ignorant, don't start threads talking about the ignorance of others. I'm sorry but this is a pet peeve of mine.

I NEVER directly stated that someone was ignorant as you did to me. I said the computer people in general at a school of which no one here knows the name, were ignorant. THERE WAS NO DOS DRIVER FOR THE SPECIFIC SOUNDCARDMODEL I HAD. also, your statement "as long as it had at least 8mb of ram installed." proves my point that you couldnt be sure that i have windows 95 installed. Anyway i specifically said windows wouldnt install. In 1994 the computer had 4mb ram. PLEASE DONT DIRECTLY SAY TO ME THAT I AM IGNORANT BASED SOLELY ON A POSSIBILTY THAT I MADE A MISTAKE ABOUT A CDROM DRIVER. OF COURSE THE MITSUMINI DRIVER WORKS IN DOS BUT THE SOUNDCARD DRIVER DIDNT WORK IN DOS. WHEN THE SOUNDCARD DRIVER DOESNT WORK THE CDROM WONT WORK EITHER. UNLESS YOU CAN PROVE ME TO BE WRONG, PLEASE DO NOT SAY I AM IGNORANT. IF YOU MAKE ASSUMPTIONS LIKE THAT YOU ARE THE ONLY IGNORANT ONE.



PS: WINDOWS 95 NEVER RUNS "PERFECTLY"

IF WINDOWS 95 RUNS PERFECTLY AND LINUX ISNT PERFECT, WHY USE LINUX???????
NOT COUNTING COSTS.

[AlexPlank]

Originally posted by retoon
Yeah, it is a pain in the *** to deal with some poeple. I say let them argue, just drop it, and let it go. Some people are very insecure, and look for oppurtunities, whether on the internet, or in REAL life, to break into a conversation and establish themselves as knowledgeable. Some people are weak, let them be.:cool:

Alex and retoon:
Thanks for your support. Im going to drop it now. no matter what arguments occur, i will ignore them.

I just (foolishly) worried that without clarifying my position, everyone would regard me as stupid. I get selfconscious like that sometimes. its a flaw i have.

Oh yeah: Please continue to post your similar sometimes quite amusing computer-illiterate people experiences

[plattypus1]

Computer illiterate experiences... My school's full 'of 'em.

The password for full local AND domain admin was "admin" for the longest time.

They changed the password... to abc123.

Any time anything goes wrong at my house involving the computer, I automatically did it, while most of the time it's actually a problem with Winblows. When I say "well, I have to re-install Windows" I always get the same kind of flack.

Our school doesn't allow users to right-click, but the command prompt is left WIDE OPEN. Can anyone say format c: /s ?

Regedit is also left open.

I could go on for hours...

[AlexPlank]

Originally posted by plattypus1
Computer illiterate experiences... My school's full 'of 'em.

The password for full local AND domain admin was "admin" for the longest time.

They changed the password... to abc123.

Any time anything goes wrong at my house involving the computer, I automatically did it, while most of the time it's actually a problem with Winblows. When I say "well, I have to re-install Windows" I always get the same kind of flack.

Our school doesn't allow users to right-click, but the command prompt is left WIDE OPEN. Can anyone say format c: /s ?

Regedit is also left open.

I could go on for hours...

LMAO
Are school has something called fortres which prohibits right clicking and such. It doesnt allow users to user explorer I can however type C: into internet explor and use explorer to change/delete any critical system files except for ones that should be deleted like the adware programs.

Oh yeah. Unlike your case where you might have HAD to reinstall windows. I forgot to mention that instead of reinstalling windows, that computer admin could have used lavasofts adaware. And he could have used a backup program do prevent the files from being lost if he were actually going to unnecsessarily reinstall windows.

[RWiggum]

When I was in high school (a decade ago) we had the height of security. We had some kind of IBM workgroup LAN system, that had a text login and a text menu with the programs you could run. We mainly used it as a front end to the BASIC interpreter. The fun part was, you could type "shell" from BASIC and it would drop you to a DOS: prompt. Then, all you had to do was get around the awesome MS-DOS user directory security. I think the command was:

C:\>cd \{insert username}

We also discovered that any passwords were reset to nothing if the user didn't log in within the expiration period. Or, you could make a BASIC program that displayed the IBM login screen, collected the user's password, then displayed some bogus error message like "SYSTEM MALFUNCTION PLEASE REBOOT" to cover your tracks. What was really beautiful about that one was that my buddy who wrote it actually turned it in for class credit. The CS teacher was so clueless she didn't realize what it did.

Of course, I certainly don't condone breaking into systems or rummaging through people's files. We mainly did it for the fun of it. I'll call that the "Mitnick Defense" - yeah, that'll work.

[terribleRobbo]

Oooh, I forgot about our librarian.

About two years ago, our school was chucking out a bunch of 486's (I would've nabbed one or two, but there was practically nothing useful in 'em). The librarian was assigned the task of taking them (or getting them taken) out to the cleaner's office to be put in the bin.

She decided, while she was at it, that she would clean out the rest of the room of computers.

That's how we ended up with our file server and proxy server out by the cleaner's office being taken apart by Year 7s with screw-drivers.
The Year 7s were completely and utterly clueless - one was trying to unscrew the 'screw-holes' found on either side of the serial port at the back (you know, the bit where you screw the plug in to make sure it stays there).

Thankfully I managed to recover the fileserver before they starting throwing it around. Our proxy wasn't so lucky.

[tucolino]

for all you that use knopix, livecd's, etc. you're telling me that they don't disable booting from other media in public computer clusters? I tried everywhere at my uni, and you cannot boot from cd nor floppy at any of the computer labs... they disable it in the bios and then lock 'em. how do you guys go about it?

tuco

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

Heh... I just remembered another funny one that happened to me:

Back in the 7th grade, I was the local student Mac guru. We actually had a competant admin for the school, but a lack of funding for maintenance kept him confined to teaching class and troubleshooting only during the 5 minute breaks between class, essentially.

This was before Internet access was so prevalent in schools. In fact, we were one of the first schools in my district that actually had 2 Macs in nearly every classroom. I was using the puzzle, which was about the only thing installed on these machines, which were crippled by a software suite called AtEase.

While working for the 8th time in a 15 minute period, I was putting together the puzzle of the racecar (the only picture the puzzle had!), when I realized how bored I was. I hit <command>-Q, which would normally quit most Mac programs. Instead of Quitting, the machine crashed hard.

So, being the local Mac guru, I knew what to do: <Command> <Ctrl> <Power Key>. It rebooted. Naturally, it made the "bwaaah!" noise those all in one Power Mac 5500s made. Hearing this noise, my 60+ year oold teacher came running over:


Last said by my 7th grade teacher:

WHAT DID YOU DO TO THAT PIECE OF ELECTRONICS??!?!?!?!?!?!??!? :mad: :mad: :mad:

I explained to her that it froze, and the only thing I could do to it was to reboot the machine like I did.


Said by my now enraged 7th grade teacher

YOU'RE NEVER TOUCHING A COMPUTER IN THIS SCHOOL AGAIN!!!! AAAAAGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!! :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

She sent me to the principal's office, and I explained the situation. He agreed with me-- the lady was a loon. He sent me back to class, and told me to mention nothing of it anymore.

The next week, there was a teacher inservice to train teachers how to turn on and off the Macs that we installed in their rooms!

But, a final word on the whole "know it all" bit that occured:

"Keep your mouth shut, and people will think you're a fool. Open your mouth, and remove all doubt."

[terribleRobbo]

Originally posted by tucolino
I tried everywhere at my uni, and you cannot boot from cd nor floppy at any of the computer labs... they disable it in the bios and then lock 'em. how do you guys go about it?


I'm not surprised. Uni's tend to have the money to hire admins with half a brain.

At our school the machines' BIOS's weren't locked down at all - we had full reign until someone changed the language to Spanish and set a boot-up password on a bunch of computers in the library.

[Fryguy8]

Alex, seems to me like you think you know more about computers than you actually do. The worst thing in the world is to try to show off and then complain when you screw things up. If it's not your computer, don't go modifying crap on it. I've learned that lesson a long time ago. My parents used to constantly bug me about crap on our computer, yet I was actually keeping it running in tip top shape. I had a 500mhz celery running faster than 800mhz p3s that my friends had etc. And all they did was ***** when something was broke. People don't notice when stuff works, they only notice when it doesn't.

[joesbox]

i used to be the ignoramous. (sp) i was first introduced to computers when i entered the armed services. we had win95(uuugggghhhhh). at the time i didn't know just how stable this os really was and i was also that one person that was curious enough to snoop around the puter and see what everything was and what it did. well i just seemed to be the lucky one that would get all of the crashes. everytime i was on the puter the damn thing would lock or crash and being so new to computers i had to call for help. by the time i left i was known as the computer killer. 5 years later i am the admin for 8 computers (6 win & 2 lin) to which i have to know how to fix and how to read/write/fix perl/bash scripts inorder to keep this little office running 24/7. also i have been the person that everyone comes to when they have a problem with their home puter (which makes me rather proud of myself). i try not to make fun of people that don't really know what is going on with computers but some of the questions that i get from my parents are outrageous.

my mom called the other day and we got on the subject of how she deletes cookies (i am suprised she knows what they are) and she told me that she 1. left clicks to highlight 2. right clicks to bring up the menu 3. selects delete FOR EACH COOKIE. so i tried to tell her that she can open explore and drag a highlight box over all of the cookies and shift+delete to delete multi-files without putting them into the recycle bin for her to empty later. well she said that she was following my directions but every time that she would highlight all of the cookies then it would duplicate each one. (mind you that we were on the phone so i could not see her error) by the time we finished the discussion she said that she had about 3 or 4 hundred cookies now that she would have to click on each to delete and that she wanted to thank me for that. </sarcasm>

i know that the first bit wasn't a funny story but it was to show that some idiots can change.

[Fryguy8]

JSOK, ctrl-a is a nice computer-illiterate shortcut :)

[tucolino]

Originally posted by JOES_BOX

my mom called the other day and we got on the subject of how she deletes cookies (i am suprised she knows what they are) and she told me that she 1. left clicks to highlight 2. right clicks to bring up the menu 3. selects delete FOR EACH COOKIE. so i tried to tell her that she can open explore and drag a highlight box over all of the cookies and shift+delete to delete multi-files without putting them into the recycle bin for her to empty later. well she said that she was following my directions but every time that she would highlight all of the cookies then it would duplicate each one. (mind you that we were on the phone so i could not see her error) by the time we finished the discussion she said that she had about 3 or 4 hundred cookies now that she would have to click on each to delete and that she wanted to thank me for that. </sarcasm>

i know that the first bit wasn't a funny story but it was to show that some idiots can change.


thats when you tell her to press ctrl-A and delete :)

sorry , i'm really bored.... trying to procratinate a bit. i'm putting a presentation together for design patterns class....

tuco

[tucolino]

Originally posted by Fryguy8
JSOK, ctrl-a is a nice computer-illiterate shortcut :)

damn!!! you beat me to it!! :)

[AlexPlank]

A

[AlexPlank]

[sarah31]

to the original post all i have to say is.....suck it up and be a man. i would likely respond the same way as your teachers. they may not think you busted the computer but you were irresponsible with the use of them. if you use someone else's stuff be sure you return it in original condition or be prepared to pay the price. it is common courtesy --- which you seem to lack.

now stop crying and get on with your life.

[Stween]

Originally posted by AlexPlank
I used a teachers computer once this year and changed the printer to a differnent one(not the default one, just a temporary change because the default printer was out of paper.) after printing i leave. The teacher thinks the computer is broken because there is a message saying something like the printer isnt the default one. He doesnt let me use his computer after that because he thinks i am a trouble maker.

You can't complain about this one, because you didn't restore the original settings when you were done :rolleyes:

I'm with Sarah31. Live with it. The school you're at could quite happily not allow any computer access if they so desired - but it wouldn't be in anybody's best interests. As we're constantly reminded at uni, the labs that we're provided with are a privilege.

You have no right to expect to be able to do *anything* on a computer system or network that you do not own. Get over it, get out more.

[AlexPlank]

Originally posted by Stween
You can't complain about this one, because you didn't restore the original settings when you were done :rolleyes:

I'm with Sarah31. Live with it. The school you're at could quite happily not allow any computer access if they so desired - but it wouldn't be in anybody's best interests. As we're constantly reminded at uni, the labs that we're provided with are a privilege.

You have no right to expect to be able to do *anything* on a computer system or network that you do not own. Get over it, get out more.

Very good point.

[ashibaka]

If you want to know an easy way to get suspended from school: simply fix Microsoft Word's AutoCorrect so that it replaces all instances of "the" with "teh". That was an April Fools' joke which my elementary school teachers were not impressed with.

The only interesting ignorant-MS-user story I have besides that is the Missing Driver Annoyance. There's a guy at my high school who runs the computer lab, and one day he got a new computer in whose drivers couldn't be detected by Windows. Instead, it was using the default mode of 640x480 with 16 colors. GREAT fun for people trying to do anything useful. He couldn't figure out how to get the drivers working.

Of course, me (a freshman) and a junior knew exactly how to fix this problem: insert Knoppix, reboot. The mysterious, obscure driver was automatically detected. :cool: The Internet connection and local network worked as well. Of course, the admin did not like that and now it's running in 640x480 Windows again (ever try closing popups in 640x480? Yay for IE).

[retoon]

Sorry, no insult intended. But, if they tell you they don't have the time to learn how to use the computer, tell them that they shouldn't have the time to own one either. Besides, the movies lately are highly over rated.:D

[YorkshireYank]

Originally posted by ashibaka
If you want to know an easy way to get suspended from school: simply fix Microsoft Word's AutoCorrect so that it replaces all instances of "the" with "teh". That was an April Fools' joke which my elementary school teachers were not impressed with.

At college, my whole class consisted of 6 people - we weren't the most dedicated students (we were 16 yo kids with better things to worry about)... we spent most of our time in the college library screwing with people... we once went around every machine on the first floor (about 30 machines) and changed the auto correct so that when someone typed "the" they'd end up with something like "I am the master of the universe" but we did it for 10-15 common words - most people weren't too good at typing so they'd only look at the screen after a paragraph or 2 between the hunting and pecking... we did get caught eventually but it was worth it....

if you want to know about computer illiterate people then just work tech support for a week - i promise, you'll feel like a genius... you wouldn't believe how many different things can be referred to as the "modeum" ;)

a quick story would be the time when a customer called be reporting that he was getting an error message and he didn't know what to do - so like any logical person would do, i asked what the error was - his reply? "waol has commited an unlawful act" - which is why we have "mute" buttons :)

and the only error more popular than "explorer.exe has caused an error in unknown" is the infamous id-10-t error

[Ryochan7]

Most of the people at my old high school barely know how to read. How would they be expected to run a computer, even with dumbed down Windows 98 on it? I just recently graduated and I am proud to be out of that hellhole. Luckly I wasn't asked many technical question by any of my teachers, expect for the technology teacher. Mrs. McCabe basically taught all the computer related classes and I had to put up with her for two years. I had to help her with stupid crap, like how to open a pdf file or playing sound in a Powerpoint presentation. Last semester, when everyone started making web pages using crappy Netscape Composer, I had to help everyone with that project. I even had to deal with problems brought to me by Mrs. McCabe regarding problems with the school website. I just worked on my project by writing the page in Notepad, mostly with code imported from my current site.

Of course I had some "fun" moments back in my days of starting to learn Windows 95 back in the old days (8th grade). My family was too poor to afford a computer back in that day, and they still are now. I had to buy my own computer and my family's computer, just so they could leave mine alone. Anyway, one of the first things I played with was making web pages. At one point when I tried to load one of my pages in IE, IE crashed and then came the wonderful blue screen of death. Lucky me, huh? After that, the old System Administator, who was also a math teacher, came to me to ask what happened as to why all the data from the computer had been apparently deleted. He was not pleased. After explaining the story, he just assumed that it must have been a virus. Of course, it was just crappy Windoze at work.

Well, I think that I have said enough. Me tired and want lots of cookies!!!! Later.

[Jo.Mo.]

We had to do powerpoints for my American History class last year, and we'd have to present them in front of the class on the projector. I got tired of him having everyone login and logout so i suggested everyone drop their files into the teachers "drop" folder. of course, I was one of two people in my class who knew how to do it, so i had to show everyone in the class how to do it on the screen. of course, noone was listening, so everytime we were working on it in the library "uhhh, john, i need help". in the middle of the semester, my GENIUS network admin changed all the windows XP's to not have ANY access to the network thru explorer, so i had to teach this class how to bypass the security thru a mount program. after mumbling how much i hate Windows, this girl asked me "so if you don't like windows, what 'server' would you use?" out came my copy of Knoppix.

[sharth]

alex, you seem... angry. or something. mostly, people here are not out to get you. take everything said with a grain of salt and don't respond to flames and don't respond with a flame. It'll get you farther in an internet community. But that's just my perspective on things.

Basically, me and my brother were the ones in my house that understood computers. My brother, however, had no inclination to learn. He only knew what he picked up from random places. He used the computer for personal enjoyment. It was a tool and a game for him. Personally, its more of a past-time. It's a little thing that I can waste time on to fiddle with because I enjoy doing that.

Now lets see, stuff... Well, just recently i think i destroyed a hard-drive... (won't boot, bios nor linux don't recognize it)

At my school, we got lucky :) Macs. We don't have much in the way of global priviledges, and the agreement terms say that you can't install anything ( but nobody listens to that. ). Generally, it works nice, since you can't screw with what other people have installed. That and we have stupid teachers down in the tech stuff, but they hired some graduates from the school who do know what they are doing :)

and if the mother knew about the format command, you think that she might not have been so quick to do what she did. (just knowing that it existed...)

[raz0rblade]

I suppose ive been lucky to never have to experiance the `horror` of using windows at school. We've always had macs, though with a security program called FoolProof. Dumb SysAdmins set the pass to unlock the whole computer to foolproof :rolleyes: And when they did set to a harder password, it took me and my friend 5mins to hack an iBook we took from school. I truly believe nobody at my current school has heard of linux other than me. Quite sad. Also I had my share of stupid @$$ questions. Once I got banned from using the computer at school cause I saved a document to the hardrive :rolleyes: Another time my stupid old math teacher gave me detention for press apple-q to shut down the computer and it beeped. What lame sh!t. Also even though the newest imacs have OSX installed, the people there are to damn stupid to use. They prefer using some sh!t it takes someone like me to crack in 5mins top, instead of UNIX security (which i havent cracked yet on a mac. Ive hacked the root accounts of Linux boxs with my debian cd tho :)) Well im done, bye:D

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

Originally posted by Stween
You can't complain about this one, because you didn't restore the original settings when you were done :rolleyes:

I'm with Sarah31. Live with it. The school you're at could quite happily not allow any computer access if they so desired - but it wouldn't be in anybody's best interests. As we're constantly reminded at uni, the labs that we're provided with are a privilege.

You have no right to expect to be able to do *anything* on a computer system or network that you do not own. Get over it, get out more.

I would have to disagree with this. I don't know about anyone else here, but I have to pay to go to my college. Along with the Tuition Fees I paid, there was something called a Technology Access fee.

Now, if I'm specifically paying for this Technology Access, I don't think that it's a priviledge. I'm paying for my education at that school, and I'm darn well going to use the Technology that I paid my Technology Access fee for. If I was told that usage of my college's computers was a priviledge, I'd immediately walk to the business office, explain to them how having my money is a priviledge to them, and ask for an immediate refund.

[Stween]

Originally posted by Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379
I would have to disagree with this. I don't know about anyone else here, but I have to pay to go to my college. Along with the Tuition Fees I paid, there was something called a Technology Access fee.

Now, if I'm specifically paying for this Technology Access, I don't think that it's a priviledge. I'm paying for my education at that school, and I'm darn well going to use the Technology that I paid my Technology Access fee for. If I was told that usage of my college's computers was a priviledge, I'd immediately walk to the business office, explain to them how having my money is a priviledge to them, and ask for an immediate refund.

Well in that case you have the right to access these machines and use the applications that are required of you for the course, and presumably a little network space to store files on. You cannot expect to be allowed to start altering settings on systems that you do not own like AlexPlank was doing.

[AlexPlank]

Originally posted by sharth
alex, you seem... angry. or something. mostly, people here are not out to get you. take everything said with a grain of salt and don't respond to flames and don't respond with a flame. It'll get you farther in an internet community. But that's just my perspective on things.


Im not angry. I didnt mean those posts to be flames. Im just passionate. Dont take anything the wrong way. Sorry to make you guys think that I am like that.

[ashibaka]

Originally posted by sharth
Last semester, when everyone started making web pages using crappy Netscape Composer, I had to help everyone with that project.

Beats teaching everyone to make webpages with Frontpage. :eek: :eek:

[glussier]

PLEASE DONT DIRECTLY SAY TO ME THAT I AM IGNORANT BASED SOLELY ON A POSSIBILTY THAT I MADE A MISTAKE ABOUT A CDROM DRIVER. OF COURSE THE MITSUMINI DRIVER WORKS IN DOS BUT THE SOUNDCARD DRIVER DIDNT WORK IN DOS. WHEN THE SOUNDCARD DRIVER DOESNT WORK THE CDROM WONT WORK EITHER. UNLESS YOU CAN PROVE ME TO BE WRONG, PLEASE DO NOT SAY I AM IGNORANT. IF YOU MAKE ASSUMPTIONS LIKE THAT YOU ARE THE ONLY IGNORANT ONE.


I never said you were ignorant, but now consider that I just did.


Posted by AlexPlank
I HATE WHEN PEOPLE CLUTTER THE DATABASE WITH STUPID POSTS LIKE THIS ONE. YOU NEED TO SEARCH THE FORUM BEFORE POSTING SUCH AN OBVIOUS OBSERVATION THAT EVERYONE HAS NOTICED!!!!!!!!! YOU SUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


J/K



I was looking at another thread, and after reading the above comment coming from you to another poster. All I can say, is if you wnat respect you better give-it to others. Respect has to be earned, until you can respect other posters, you won't get it, from me at the very least. Do you really believe that you thread isn't as stupd?