Your Digital Friend

You're using one right now, but how many times have you wanted to thump your computer for just being so goddamn stupid? How many times have you wanted to take Bill Gates by the neck and shake him up and down until his brain falls out? Thought so. There's a message here for programmers and users alike; Programmers need to think about how people will react to what they are making the computer do. Users need to think before reacting.

Don't Tell Me What To Do!

From: Mike (no more information supplied)
My computer is supposed to be a tool, right? I am the one in control and it should be subservient to my will. So why the fuck does it insist on popping up a stupid message telling me it thinks I'm writing a buisness letter and shouldn't I do it *this* way? If I wanted to do it that way I'd have done it that way. And I wanted that whole word in capitals, you moron. It's like having a five year old editing my work. This so-called 'Wizard' (ha!) is designed to 'help' people with no creativity of their own produce boring documents that conform to some 'standard layout'. Not content with conquering the paperless office, Microsoft now wants to conquer our paper as well.

We Are The Only One In Existence

From: CACSADE
This gets right on my tits, this does. Microsoft's Way of Marketing. Misleading the public into thinking that they're the only computer company out there, or that they're the only people who can do something, but you need to upgrade your computer first. I've got a computer made in the UK by a small company (Acorn) that I haven't significantly upgraded in 3 years and it can still run all the latest software. And it's had 'Plug'n'Play' since 1986. Microsoft just invented a name for it so people would think they're the only people who do it. Before you listen to the hype, listen to what they're *not* telling you. It's far more important.

You Are Obviously An Idiot

From: Paul in London
A quick word on computers. Whilst I love my Mac (It's a 9600/350 MHHz) it has a tendancy to crash sometimes when working on 200 Mb files. Oh well, this is OK, but what I really can't abide is the little message you get after re-boot which tells you that you failed to shut down properly and shows you on a little childs diagram how to do it next time. Aaaarrrrggghhhhh!!!!!!!!

Look, It's Only A Machine!

From: Paul The Foon in Brisbane
I work keeping computers alive and helping users with problems. And the fundamental problem that 90% of the people that I talk to have is that they don't know how to use the thing. Yeah, sure, "it's just a tool". Yeah, sure, "I just want to do my job." If you wanted to drive a car, do you just hop in and see what happens? Did you get shown how to use a hammer, or did you just figure out how to use it by yourself? Do you blame your washing machine when your clothes run?
And the ignorance people display when using computers is startling. A lot of these people don't even know whether they're running Windows 95 or 3.1 - despite it being displayed every single time they start up their machine. What's that, you deleted a file and now you want it back? Why did you delete it in the first place? Why has mail stopped working? Well, that might just be because you haven't deleted a single item of mail since 1992 and the server is now full!
The most frustrating thing about these people is that, otherwise, they claim to be highly qualified for their jobs - they've gone to university and studied. Wow! With all that intelligence, why do they find it so damn difficult to understand what "Cannot write file - disk may be full" means? They've got used to cupboards and files - why do computers suddenly become limitless and infinitely powerful? For people so allegedly intelligent, they can be really ignorant, bloody-minded and stupid some times.
So next time you think "What's this error message mean", perhaps reading it might enlighten you. Next time you complain that the computer's doing something that you didn't want it to, check the back of your head. No thought-reader patch? Then you'll have to instruct the computer what you want, you moronic technophobe, and use its own language next time!

Yes, I Want To Learn!

From: CACSADE and many other people
It really bugs me when computer-types bang on about user-friendliness. They want huge rows of button bars that obscure most of the screen so you can't see what you're editing. They want GUIs that take no time to learn. They want everything visible at once. This is not what I want, or what anyone I've spoken to wants. We don't mind if there's a bit of a learning curve on our software. We're prepared to spend a bit of time learning about a system if that system will let us work quickly when we're used to it.
But as Paul the Foon (above) points out, there are users who don't see it that way and are not prepared to spend an hour or two learning how to do things. And because they're the people who phone tech. support, they're the people who get their voices heard. So the software companies want to make their software easier for these people to use. They want to fill our screens with huge dialog boxes that take frustrating seconds to open, and fill them with idiot diagrams telling us 'Printing' means. Why does Win98 take 20 seconds to open a directory viewer? Because of all those stupid graphics that are supposed to 'explain' what's going on. I hate it. This is *not* good GUI design - it's a substitute for good GUI design. If the GUI was well-designed you wouldn't need all this help and you wouldn't have people calling their helpdesks every 5 minutes. If these people actually took the time to learn how to use their computers, they'd make life easier for themselves and everyone else. You don't expect to be able to drive without taking lessons do you? A computer is a bit more comlex than a car, so just sit down and admit that maybe you're not *that* clever and some training might help.

Do it Yourself!

From: Mr. Wild Pants in Farmborough
[Editor's Note] Mr. Pants was obviously quite wound up when he sent us this. We've censored it slightly to prevent the server from melting.
F*****g ungrateful little sh**s. WHINGEING WHINING LITTLE F***WRENCHES!!! Who? Those ungrateful bastards and bitches who I go out, install new machines for and then they complain because it hasn't got some crappy little package that they've been using since the dark ages on there!! The only reason it doesn't have this software is because ITS MORE EFFECTIVE TO USE A DIARY THAN LOTUS ORGANISER!!! Bloody Word Perfect and Lotus123 users. They're sh**s, the lot of them. And then I go into an office and say "I'm here to install your new machine", to which i get the reply "I'm busy. Can't you do it out of hours?" NO I F**ING WELL CAN'T!!! IF I WANTED TO SPEND ALL NIGHT DOING REMEDIAL WORK WITH ONLY THE BUZZING OF THE NETWORK FOR COMPANY THATS WHAT I'D BE DOING, ISN'T IT?? YOU MORONIC TURDS!!!!
I'm off for some more pills.

You Little Winker

From: Dan in That place with the tall cacti with arms on them.
Since we're ranting about computers, let me talk about the Microsoft Office Assistant. I hate that little bastard. Every time you click help or F1 or whatever to find out why Redmond doesn't want you to use your own words or formatting, up pops this vile little animated paper clip with a vast yellow word balloon floating over it. I detest the little scumfuck. Whenever I select "Save As..." it decides to make it my problem that MS can't make its file formats backward-compatible, and gives me this load of blather about RTF format AND YOU CANNOT GET RID OF IT UNTIL YOU DO WHAT IT SAYS.
But that's not the worst thing. The worst thing is when you click the little creep's close button. Does the repulsive little shit do the decent thing and vanish? No! First, it has to -- pardon me, my gorge is rising ... okay -- it has to waste several seconds WINKING at you.
Let me spell this out:
you click the button that's supposed to make a window go away, but they're so sure that you love the ghastly little bit of animated vermin, that IT REFUSES TO OBEY THE COMMAND TO FUCK OFF WITHOUT FIRST GIVING YOU THIS ANIMATED WINKY THING! I hope that the programmer who designed this bit of loose stool is in the Witness Protection Program, because if I ever find him I'm going to introduce him to whole new realms of hurt.
(Editor's Note:) We couldn't agree more with Dan about this repulsive little shitty pule of bumcakes. The only people we've ever seen who like it are dim-witted soulless nerds. We've found a way to get rid of it, though. We don't use any Microsoft products. Life is so much nicer now.

And the problem is...

From: Norma in North Adams, Masschusetts, USA.
I'm starting my third year of tech support, and I have to speak out against know-it-alls. I'm not talking about condescending techs (though God knows there are too many of them), I'm talking about computer illiterate people who know techs.
There's nothing worse than asking someone a question about a software or hardware problem and being told "well, my brother (father, sister, boyfriend) said the problem was..." or "(fill in the blank) said I have..."
First of all, that doesn't tell me anything about your problem. Second, Your Friend (or Relative) The Tech could be wrong.
I simply can't believe the ignorance people show around computers sometimes. You ask about their OS and they don t know what they have. Win' 95 turns out to be 3.1, '98, NT, or even MAC OS. Then there are the people who believe Office '97 is Win'97, and AOL is the internet. "You said you have the internet," they cry, "Why can't I use AOL?" You're perfectly free to use any other ISP you want to (though you're already paying for one with your Tech fee, and we don't try to kick you off every 45 minutes).
Would these people buy a car with that little information? People can be such sheep.
(Editor's Note) Norma is perfectly right. There are, of course, know-it-alls in all walks of life, but somehow people seem to me to be afraid to admit that they don't know the first thing about computers.

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