Colloquial Computer Terms That Annoy

[hulver]

Running out of memory on the hard disk.

Screen resolution seems to confuse people as well.

If somebody says "Make it larger", I increase the resolution of the screen. The is opposite to what some people expect. They expect the icons to get larger.

[CommuteTooFar]

The confusion between resolution and definition.

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

People who say chairlift when they mean stairlift.

[mrcharly-YHT]

People who say chairlift when they mean stairlift.

If a stairlift gets you upstairs, does a chairlift get you upchairs?

[mcshroom]

I find using VDU is a good way of confusing people at work, then again we seem to have moved now to the point where people don't understand what I mean by RAM as all the suppliers are just calling it 'Memory'.

'Interweb' and 'ww.' are my pet hates.

[Kim]

'Interweb' and 'ww.' are my pet hates.

Yeah, it's 'Interwebs'   

(see above comment about the danger of irony)

[Kim]

Oh, another one is "wet string".  Originally a colourful metaphor for a network link with some kind of hardware fault, I see it increasingly abused, usually by non-geeks with geeky family and friends, to describe any kind of internet problem.  Occasionally there's added assumption that the performance of the metaphorical string will improve if it's allowed to dry out 

[rafletcher]

Running out of memory on the hard disk.

Screen resolution seems to confuse people as well.

If somebody says "Make it larger", I increase the resolution of the screen. The is opposite to what some people expect. They expect the icons to get larger.

Now that's IT pedantry, as you you perfectly well what they mean.

[hulver]

Running out of memory on the hard disk.

Screen resolution seems to confuse people as well.

If somebody says "Make it larger", I increase the resolution of the screen. The is opposite to what some people expect. They expect the icons to get larger.

Now that's IT pedantry, as you you perfectly well what they mean.

I do now I've been exposed to it.

The first time it happened I was boggled. I really didn't understand.

I was demonstrating an application to my boss.

"Make your screen larger" said my boss.

I supposed he wanted to check that the GUI parts worked correctly with a larger screen.

I increased the resolution from 1024 up to 1280, then maximized the application to show that it still worked.

"No, larger" he said.

I was amazed he would still be able to read the font, but increased the resolution to 1400 (something mumble).

"Stop making it smaller" he said.

"It's not smaller" said I, "Look how much more I can fit on it!"

"No, make it so the icons are bigger" he said.

I reduced the screen to 800x600, and he was satisfied.

Now if people ask me to "Make it bigger" I ask them what they mean. Most of the time they want things to appear larger on the screen, not make the desktop contain more space.

[Kim]

I find that as a general rule most people don't understand resolution, especially in the context of printing or scanning.

[mrcharly-YHT]

These days people understand 'zoom in' and 'zoom out'. They are used to it on smartphones.

[redshift]

I find that as a general rule most people don't understand resolution, especially in the context of printing or scanning.

Or indeed in the context of television.

A recent example:  A file was delivered to be used in editing, with a bitrate of 1.4Mb/s and a resolution of 720x480.

When placed on an HD timeline and displayed on the 1920x1080i50 output, there was a degree of shock as to how dreadful it looked.  Apparently it was 'all blocky' and didn't look anything like that on his laptop.  Explaining that the file was not only a quarter of the required resolution, not to mention that the bitrate was on the order of 1/1000th of that required for full uncompressed HD, was not seen as helpful.  GIGO.

[Kim]

I find that as a general rule most people don't understand resolution, especially in the context of printing or scanning.

Or indeed in the context of television.

Yeah, but with television the ignorance around resolution fades into insignificance behind the far more stunning ignorance of aspect ratios. 

[Feanor]

Ah. Yes.
It is one of my missions in life.

As I make my way around this life, I find myself looking at aspect-ratio distorted pictures, which are so jarring to the eye as to be painfull.   And yet most people just go "<shrug> looks fine to me".

The most galling thing is where the material is 16:9, broadcast at 16:9, displayed on a 16:9 TV, but still wrong.
The digi-box has defaulted to assume a 4:3 display, and has cropped the image to 4:3.
But the TV is really 16:9, so it  s t r e t c h e s  the mutilated image in an even more grotesque way.

I seek out the remotes, and go into the digibox menus and correct the aspect ratios, and normality is restored.
Untill next time I visit, where I find the horrors have returned.

[Kim]

That's because the aspect ratio controls double as "that setting that makes the black bars go away".

[Arellcat]

Ask them if they typed "google" into Google. That breaks the internet!

Is it possible to make your computer 'ping' every other computer on the internet?  I suppose that might temporarily break the internet, at least from one's own perspective.

I'm not sure about computer terminology, per se, but there are people at my work who double-click hyperlinks.    I can cheerfully ignore that, but get frustrated when my work's publishing guidance requests digital images should be supplied at "no less than 300dpi".  Obviously you can partially reverse-engineer their requirements based on anticipated page layout, but I think I eventually phoned the designer at the publishing company to find out what they actually needed.

[Kim]

Is it possible to make your computer 'ping' every other computer on the internet?  I suppose that might temporarily break the internet, at least from one's own perspective.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smurf_attack

There are simpler (and more useful) ways of overloading one's local network.

[Arellcat]

   I was with the article all the way up to 'The'.

This is probably why I'm not a computer network boffin.

[Feanor]

Is it possible to make your computer 'ping' every other computer on the internet?

If you mean *all* the Internet ( I'm talking IPv6 ) then you'd best start now.  May take a while.

[Feanor]

  I was with the article all the way up to 'The'.

This is probably why I'm not a computer network boffin.

On your network, you are behind a router.
On your own private network.

You might not know this, but on your private network, there exists a special address, called the Broadcast Address.
All machines on your network pick up packets directed to that address.
Now, that may have use *within* your LAN.

But: how ought a router which connects you to the Internet behave when it recieves an external packet destined for the broadcast address?
Should it actually flood it to all devices on your LAN?
Technically, yes.
But that's a recipe for mischief.

A single ping to the broadcast address, if the router expanded that to the whole LAN, would result in *many* replies.

That's a smurf attack, and why most routers are configured not to expand external traffic to the LAN Broadcast address onto the LAN.
 

[ian]

I'm all for stupidifying computers. I want to just open the lid and do stuff. I want computers to be useful tools not dictionaries of acronyms and enumerations of gigabytes. People shouldn't need to worry about codecs and aspect ratios and bit rates. Let the silicon take the strain and absorb the pain. Box make magic light!

[MattH]

Box make magic light!

That's a good point. The TV is a magic box with little people inside it.
The computer is just the same except the people are all ladies. Who don't possess any clothes.

Or is that just mine?

[tom_e]

Running out of memory on the hard disk.

Screen resolution seems to confuse people as well.

If somebody says "Make it larger", I increase the resolution of the screen. The is opposite to what some people expect. They expect the icons to get larger.

Now that's IT pedantry, as you you perfectly well what they mean.

Only after experiencing this problem before.  The first time I found it utterly baffling.

[Ham]

I find that as a general rule most people don't understand resolution, especially in the context of printing or scanning.

Or in the context of pointless arguments.

[Jaded]

I find that as a general rule most people don't understand resolution, especially in the context of printing or scanning.

Or in the context of pointless arguments.

Are the arguments better with Ems?