I'm an "Uber Cool Nerd God!" . . . at 58 years old...
I also got a 98% on the space test... what can I say...
Clicjk my award to take the test yourself...
Posted on 12/25/2007 5:28:49 AM PST by Kaslin
When I bought one of these small, cheap, old-fashioned cathode-ray TV sets on sale to watch while on my exercise machine, I had no idea how high-tech and computerized even these obsolete sets had become.
Nor was this a blessing. I could not even turn the set on and get a channel without reading a 60-page instruction book. If the truth be known, I could not do it even after trying to make some sense out of the instructions.
The next time my computer guru came over to help me with my computer problems, I asked him to set up the TV set so that I could turn it on.
After he went through the instruction book and waded through all the high-tech options -- none of which interested me in the slightest -- he set up the TV so that I could do something as elementary as turn on the set and choose a channel to watch.
Unfortunately, this was not an unusual experience. All kinds of computerized products -- cameras, cell phones, even car radios -- have had the same problem.
There must be some blind spot that computer engineers have which prevents them from seeing that (1) most people are not computer engineers, (2) there is no point making simple things complicated, and (3) not everyone is looking for a zillion features to have to wade through to do simple things.
Let's start at square one. What is the first thing you want to do with any computerized product? Turn it on.
Why should that be a problem when people were turning things off and on for generations before there were personal computers?Yet computer engineers seem determined to avoid the very words "off" and "on."
Apparently they feel a need to coin new terms for everything, no matter how simple or well-known those things may be. For computers, the word is "start," which you have to go to for either turning the computer off or on.
With our microwave oven, the word is "power." For my car radio and cell phone, there is no word at all.
For other things, there is the same coining of new words for things people already understand by old words. Printers can be set for "landscape" or "portrait," as if people had never heard of horizontal and vertical.
When I had to have a new radio put into my old car, I told the man who installed it, "I didn't go to M.I.T" and wanted the simplest radio to use that he had.
Yet even the simplest radio he had in stock came with over 100 pages of instructions -- and nothing on the radio that said "on" or "off." In fact, none of the buttons on the front of the radio had anything to indicate what they were for.
The man who installed the radio turned it on for me. But this was an old car that I did not use very often, and I did not always want the radio on when I was driving.
Since he had not told me how to turn it off, I just turned the volume down as low as possible, rather than go into the 100 pages of instructions.
I would probably never have learned how to turn that radio off and on if the car's battery had not gone dead one day. While I was waiting on the roof of a parking garage for the Triple-A truck to get there, I had nothing to read except the radio instruction book.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, so I read the instruction book. You might think that telling you how to turn the radio off and on would be on page 1. But you would be wrong.
That would be too obvious, and computer engineers avoid the obvious like the plague.
Eventually, I came to the place where the instruction book said to turn the radio on by pressing the "source" button.
There was of course nothing on the radio itself that said "source." By leafing through the instructions, however, I eventually found a diagram where one of the buttons was identified as the "source" button. Eureka!
My new cell phone also has nothing to give you a clue as to how to turn it off or on, much less do anything so complicated as phone somebody. The next time the car battery goes dead, I will read the thick instruction book, so that I can call Triple A.
Interesting test...
My results:
good article.
I'm an "Uber Cool Nerd God!" . . . at 58 years old...
I also got a 98% on the space test... what can I say...
Clicjk my award to take the test yourself...
On the other hand, 75% of test takers were cooler than me... but they didn’t ask whether I used a Mac or owned an iPhone...
It is not that I can’t learn to use the functions, it is that I so rarely use one that I can’t remember how to when needed.
I have learned how to use the alarm clock feature on my cell phone, becuase it is accurate and the siren setting with wake the dead.
Freepmail me if you want my "Bagpipes Playing "Scotland The Brave" ringtone"!!!! I use it for my wife's ringtone. Once she called me when I was in a LIBRARY...ooops. People were too stunned to even say anything, as I slunk away.
My niece tells me, "You are such a GIRL with that thing, I am ashamed of you!"
It’s not that you want fewer features. It’s that you want features that are actually useful and that serve your interests rather than those of the computer company and whoever slipped them a couple bucks. I think they should be ashamed of themselves that after taking money from a customer, they don’t feel obliged to work in only his interests. Fiduciary freakin DUTY and all that. Oh well.
I want a product, a cell phone for example, that does what it is supposed to do; does it well, reliably and with minimum effort on my part.
I have the easiest, simplest mp3 player made. Super price, damn near idiot proof, almost nonexistent learning curve. The most difficult thing about it was finding it. No synchronizing baloney, no problem with bad (or no) ID3 tags. No software needed - if you can drag files in windows explorer you can use it. After owning mine for a year I bought one for my wife. I think it was the 5th different one she has owned. She loves it.
It does two things and it does them easily & well. Data storage/transfer and plays audio files, with 20 gigs of storage. It doesn’t play video, take pictures or stroke you.
I wish many of the other devices I use fitted their niche as properly.
Uber Cool Nerd Here
Does seem hard to imagine, doesn't it!
The fact that you still have a child of yours in the house is a sign that you are still young.
Let me share one with you. Recently, I needed to access a database that I use only rarely. I discovered I had forgotten my password. I called the help desk and explained the problem. They changed the password and gave me a new one. They told me the password they gave me would only allow me to enter the data base where I would find a prompt to change the password again. I was advised to be sure and not change it to my old password. I asked: “So I need to be sure and not change it to the password I forgot?” I was told: “Yes, don’t change it to that one.”
You can access the UNIX operating system in Mac OS X by using the Terminal utility. The Terminal utility is in the Utilities folder in the Applications folder.That's from Leopard's "Finder" help which I found by searching for "terminal" in help. Your mileage probably does not vary on an older version of OSX.
You can access the UNIX operating system in Mac OS X by using the Terminal utility. The Terminal utility is in the Utilities folder in the Applications folder.That's from clicking on the desktop to get to Finder, selecting Help, then searching for 'terminal'. I am using Leopard, OSX 10.5.1, but I think that was the same on older versions of OSX.
I'm pretty good with my computer too, and I do reply to text msgs with my phone, even send/receive/save pics for d/l to my computer.
FIVE remote controls for an "entertainment center" is ridiculous. If a guy wants to get rich, he'd figure out how to run all the pieces through ONE remote that is actually usable.
Dr. Sowell gets a rare "swing and a miss" here.
"Portrait" and "landscape" are old words. Has to do with paintings. Like art and stuff. Portraits, like people's heads go up and down. Landscapes, like painting a picture of a field, goes the other way.
Not new words. Not invented by computer and printer people.
hahah...I’m usually pretty tech savvy...except for one object....I inadvertently changed a setting on my alarm clock and I cannot figure out how to return it to radio wake mode...I know I should look the instructions up on line...but it’s irritating that I can’t just fiddle with it. It’s probably some idiotic function sequence like push this button twice and then some other button...arghhh
We keep the GoVideo around because I make a lot of home videos, and it's just so much faster to output a video to digital tape, then copy to a DVD. Waiting for compression on the computer to crank out a 20 minute video makes me crazy.
The TV has to be set on channel 4. The GoVideo on channel 3. Don't even get me started on having to use the new DVD player ... then we have to switch input sources, switch surround channels, etc.
I know I could probably simplify somewhere, but I have this all memorized now and everything works.
But I still can't do a video capture on my computer. What am I missing?
We have had cell phones in our family for, what, 10-12 years now? Anyway, Mr. RightField *STILL* sweetly says, "How do I get my messages off this thing?" Each time he gets a message, it's like the very first time. Bless him. Just yesterday, on his fairly new LG phone, when he tried to get a message, he ended up setting the alarm clock for 4:31AM.... which of course, we didn't know he had done until 4:31 THIS MORNING .... sigh.
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