Mystification Of Computing - Psychology, Philosophy, and Licenses

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venam
Administrators
Mystification Of Computing
==========================

Hello fellow *nixers,
This thread is about the prejudices "normal" people (or just retards) have about computing, or as I called it _mystification_ of computing.

Use this thread to discus and/or dump all your mystic materials.
A content is classified as mystic if it deviates from reality, or relate to a urban legend,
or is just completely hilarious because of its stupidity.
The content can vary from quotes to movie extracts. It can be anything.

Rules: You have to name each "case" of mystification and you have to give a little explanation of what you think is going on.

###The "Internet Explorer case" (aka the IE case):
A lot of people are still using this monstrous browser, in fact, I think 70% of the internet runs it.
This gave birth to what is known as the IE case, people *believing* IE is superior and *safer*.
Examples:
>anon, what browser is that?
>Firefox
>none of the other browsers are even half as good as internet explorer
>internet explorer doesn't work for me. My computer doesn't have Windows
>I'll fix it. I've got a Norton restore disk
>o-oh ok

[Image: 7TG0i]
[Image: Heuj]

###The "Matrix screen case":
There's just too much content around the internet showing terminals with characters falling.
It's obviously a bad cliché, some still believe that someone somewhere is reading those characters.
Example:
[Image: z7Df]

###The "A thief is there case":
This one is pretty hard to explain. It's pretty common for people nowadays to think that stealing their accounts is easy.
Well, sometime it's relatively easy but most of the time it is not and there's already multiple ways to prevent anyone
from accessing someone else account or bruteforcing it. Let's be realistic, most of this is about phising and not about someone cracking accounts.
Example:
[Image: N85]
This would be understandable from a shitty website but not from gmail.

###The "App case":
A picture is better than a thousand words...
[Image: pa3V]
Really, I'm sick of hearing "app" all the time.

###The "CS case" (aka Computer Science is fun, aka counter strike):
"CS is fun, let's play farmville on Facebook", this is what computer science sounds like to some guys and girls out there.
[Image: PBO]

###The "Bill Gate case":
This is about a little quote I hear a lot and that some really believe.
"Bill Gates invented computers"
They still think that this guy started everything.

###The "Basement neckbeard case":
This case covers a lot of things.
Let's just stick to the "GF" sub-case.
"Are there like text-based DOS games that offer me a virtual girlfriend? It doesn't need to be visual;
I'm attracted to intelligence rather than beauty (which is also the reason I don't want an IRL girlfriend)."

###The "Unix Command case":
Let's say that this is about the ones that see Unix as something that lays on the dark side of the moon.
>You'd have to be REALLY enthusiastic (to the point of being an assembly level hacker) to still be using it.

>Are you saying that this linux can run on a computer without windows underneath it, at all ?

###The "Stupid teacher case":
This one is about the stupidest thing some teachers teach their students.
>If you attend my fall course, we'll be learning Java
>Java runs in every webpage you visit

>electronic mail are messages sent between distinct computer nodes on a network
(implying you can't send mail to yourself)

>new to college
>compsci101 class
>teacher asking "which OS do you know ?"
>classmate A answering "OS X"
>classmate B answering "Linux"
>classmate C answering "Windows"
>etc...
>the list finish with Symbian, iOS...
>mfw when nobody said "BSD" or "BeOS/Haiku"
>me answering proudly with "Plan 9"
>teacher proclaiming "What ? No, it's a Linux"
>i'm sad, looking like a dorkie jerk...

###The "Install Gentoo case":
>install gentoo

You can also add more examples to a previous case.
Remember, the more content we have the merrier.
kirby
Long time nixers
Technology holy wars from people who haven't a clue what they're on about, "Apple is better because it's much faster and never breaks", and of course the obvious "he's using terminal must be a hacker" thing, I've collected quite a few glares.
srp
Long time nixers
Reminds me of the time when a buddy changed the color of CMD on one of the netbooks. Teacher accused him of hacking. Hilarious.
~Seraphim R.P.
the artistnixer formerly known as vypr formerly known as sticky
berk
Long time nixers
The WYSIWYG Case:

Microsoft Word, WordPress, Adobe Dreamveawer, etc. sent typesetting programs, and markup languages so deep underground that "learning HTML" became a skill. Okay, there's HTML5 now, complicated technologies, etc. but back in the day, there weren't stuff like that, there were no need to read an entire book on HTML. And LaTeX suddenly appeared to be black magic.

The Copy & Paste Case:

I don't know how this started out. But it growed so much that, a friend of mine did this:

"right click, copy. unplug mouse. plug mouse to another computer, right click paste."

Obviously it didn't work, but look at this: the user expects it to work. To expect it to work, said user must come from a land where operating systems hold their users hands through fields of lilacs, and everything works error-free. There is no such world. Even the most genial, cheerful operating systems like Windows and Mac doesn't help the user __that__ much. However, users can always maintain a high level of expectations from their operating systems. We live in an interesting world.

Nice thread, venam :)
venam
Administrators
I want to add an image to The "Copy & Paste case".
[Image: ffIR]
For those with an inferior browser, it's an animated GIF.
jobss
Long time nixers
(25-09-2013, 07:25 AM)venam Wrote: I want to add an image to The "Copy & Paste case".
[Image: ffIR]
For those with an inferior browser, it's an animated GIF.
That would actually be kinda cool to have.

## The "Free Up Space Technique Case"

To determine why their computer won't boot a customer called Tech. support, the tech. came out and saw that most of the OS files were deleted. He asked the owner some questions and found out that he deleted all the files that he did not know the name to in order to get a couple more megabits to install some RPG's.
The world is quaking from our Linux Thoughts!
venam
Administrators
I've frequently seen the "free up space technique case" around. On Windows™ you never know if deleting a desktop.ini or whatever ~HLHLAF file will break something or not but on *nix you can normally just delete all the stuff in the home dir that won't radically break anything.
berk
Long time nixers
The "Afraid-To-Root" Case:

People think that rooting their Android phone will cause kids in Uganda to die.
venam
Administrators
I'm afraid of rooting because for me rooting is the same as using root as the default user on a GNU/Linux OS.
crshd
Registered
It's really not. It's more like being able to use sudo. You still need to manually grant root access to **apps**
berk
Long time nixers

Yeah.. you can also set a password for it.