Things you hear about computing... Please share your experiences...

fcarney

We were discussing things uninformed users say about computers that are sad, humorous, and scary. Note, that these can be completely valid from a user's experiences, but technically wrong. We remembered a couple of really good ones:

Computers slow down after a while and you have to get a new one.
64 bit programs are basically twice as fast as 32 bit programs.

kshegunov

My favourite is: "The computer's wrong" (in regards to computation)

In all fairness your first point, has some basis in fact.
As one N. Wirth stated: 'Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster.'

fcarney

@kshegunov said in Things you hear about computing... Please share your experiences...:

In all fairness your first point, has some basis in fact.

It was back in the Win95 days and the registry would get bigger and bigger and slow down the computer over time. Yes, software is does play a huge role here. I do like it though that when I upgrade my computer I can turn up the settings on games and have a nicer visual experience with the same game.

JonB

@kshegunov

As one N. Wirth stated: 'Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster.'

It's pathetic. When I paid £49 for a ZX-81, or even £200-odd for a BBC micro, you switched the switch on and the OS/command prompt was there within 1 second. Now? Buy another new machine. and it's still ridiculous. Also, similar with a Sky satellite TV box. No excuses. I'd far rather go back to the old days. Oh, also, a "mouse driver" (when they arrived) used to fit inside like a couple of hundred bytes.

Kent-Dorfman

@kshegunov said in Things you hear about computing... Please share your experiences...:

As one N. Wirth stated: 'Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster.'

Oh no! He quoted Wirth...

Nicklaus Wirth, the designer of PASCAL, gave a talk once at which he was asked How do you pronounce your name?'' He replied, You can either call me by name, pronouncing it Veert', or call me by value, Worth'.'' One can tell immediately from this comment that Nicklaus Wirth is a Quiche Eater. -- Real Programmers Dont Use PASCAL, Datamation, July 1983

Kent-Dorfman

One of the things that makes me see red is when QA or cyber security folks actually state that an embedded network device with no keyboard or display may not automatically log in. According to their policy it must be manually started by authenticated login at every power cycle.

J.Hilk

My favorite is:

You don't need to buy more RAM, just go to your settings and increase the size of your virtual memory.

JonB

@J.Hilk
But you have no need to do that, when RAM is available for free download: https://downloadmoreram.com/

jsulm

@JonB Where can I download more CPU cores?

JonB

@jsulm
Funnily enough, as you might have expected given the RAM one, at https://downloadmorecores.com/ ! I have added just the 4-cores one to my machine, and it's much faster now!

jsulm

@JonB Thanks a lot! :-)

sierdzio

A lot of people immediately think their machine is infected or even hijacked by hackers when something does not work.

J.Hilk

Also always funny, people thinking they accidentally deleted a program by moving the desktop link into the garbage bin.

On windows obviously, on Mac, you actually delete programs that way😅

aha_1980

@JonB said in Things you hear about computing... Please share your experiences...:

Funnily enough, as you might have expected given the RAM one, at https://downloadmorecores.com/ ! I have added just the 4-cores one to my machine, and it's much faster now!

Fraud! This is no cross-platform CPU core, but Windows-only. It's absolutely useless for my Linux computer.

JonB

@aha_1980
No, actually the cores are (of course) cross-platform, it's the fact that that site only provides a .msi installer that is Windows only. If you have Linux then you must run Wine and from there you can install via the .msi to increase the CPUs available to your Linux.

aha_1980

@JonB Thanks, indeed that worked like a charm. I installed it two times, now I have 16 virtual cores added :D

fcarney

@Kent-Dorfman said in Things you hear about computing... Please share your experiences...:

Nicklaus Wirth is a Quiche Eater.

Real Programmers don't bring brown bag lunches to work. If the vending machine sells it, they eat it. If the vending machine doesn't sell it, they don't eat it. Vending machines don't sell quiche.

from:
Real Programmers

Kent-Dorfman

@fcarney Actually, real programmers don't work during daylight hours, so lunch is irrelevant.

fcarney

Here is another one:
Black Computers are Faster
Back in the 90s newer computers, especially Dells, were all black. So someone wrote an email about the physics of why black computers are faster.
I am not sure if this is the original, but it is funny.

Kent-Dorfman

@fcarney said in Things you hear about computing... Please share your experiences...:

Black Computers are Faster

Of course...Black is the fastest color for motorcycles too.